Philipp Holzmann
The Philipp Holzmann AG was a global German construction company based in Frankfurt am Main .
Company history
founding
The construction company was founded in Dreieichenhain in 1849 by Johann Philipp Holzmann . After the early death of his father, he began his entrepreneurial activity in 1818 at the age of 13 when he took over the Kreuzmühle, initially supported by his mother. He also built a sawmill and in 1840 supplied sleepers for the Taunus Railway. With the establishment of his own Holzmann company in 1849, Philipp Holzmann broke away from a personal, contractually unclear relationship with other companies. He continuously expanded the services for railway construction. Manual labor and horse riding were the only means of doing earthworks at the time. In 1865 he handed over the “Holzmann” company to his two sons Philipp and Johann Wilhelm. Philipp reports on the early years: “People and a hundred horses all lived under one roof. The mother cooked for all the overseers and servants. The operation went day and night. ”(Hans Meyer-Heinrich, p. 27).
expansion
As an entrepreneur, Philipp continuously expanded the business areas and was nationally oriented. In 1873 the brothers' shares were separated commercially and Philipp founded the limited partnership Philipp Holzmann & Cie . Wilhelm remained connected to the company and, after Philipp's death in 1904, took over the chairmanship of the company's advisory board until his death in 1913. A construction factory (see picture of the factory courtyard) was built to support the company's own building construction 300 carpenters made components such as heavy gates for the Main sewer system. In inner-city sewer construction, the company was heavily involved in the hygienic renovation of the rapidly growing cities. Other focal points were railway construction and bridge construction.
Holzmann gained international attention with the Baghdad Railway, which was started in 1903 and financed by Deutsche Bank . The Italo-Turkish War and the First Balkan War resulted in the mobilization of Turkish workers. For the construction, the company borrowed 10,000 Armenian forced laborers from the Ottoman army free of charge , who were then deported using the same railway in the course of the Armenian genocide .
The temporary largest German construction company was at first mainly in the railway operates, extended his field but soon in all areas of building construction and civil engineering . The first major construction project was the Schwarzkopf Tunnel of the Main-Spessart Railway, completed in 1854 .
In 1856 the company moved to Frankfurt, where its own construction factory was opened in 1863.
From then on, the building history of Frankfurt was closely linked to the company. Between 1873 and 1880 Holzmann built the Frankfurt Opera House based on a design by the architect Richard Lucae .
The Wettstein Bridge over the Rhine in Basel followed in 1877 as the first foreign project, in 1882 the Amsterdam Centraal station , in 1883 the reception building of Frankfurt Central Station , in 1885 8 of the 24 free port storage facilities in Hamburg's Speicherstadt were built by the company, in 1889 work for the Kiel Canal and 1892 the Palace of Justice in Munich . Also in 1899, the company participated as a partner in the Study Society for Electric Schnellbahnen (St.ES) in Berlin.
In 1906, Holzmann's involvement in South America began with holding companies in Argentina , Brazil , Chile , Colombia , Peru and Uruguay . In 1907 Holzmann was involved in the construction of the Elbe tunnel in Hamburg , and in 1910 in the Edertalsperre . In 1917 it was converted into a stock corporation . The company was also active in residential construction with the Hellerhof and Riederwald estates in Frankfurt. Another major project in 1925 was the Hindenburgdamm .
In an era of expansion from 1895 to 1917, the company established itself globally in many areas of activity. The performance abroad approached the scope of the German projects, partly with new foundations, so in 1912 the "Russian Society for Structural and Civil Engineering Philipp Holzmann & Cie" was founded, projects were the expansion of the port facilities of Saint Petersburg , as well as dredging and pier construction and slipways (for dry work on ships) in Reval . Beginning in 1903, substantial parts of the Baghdad Railway were built, similar to a number of other railway lines, port facilities, etc. in Africa. Dams, canals and port facilities were built in the USA, port facilities in Argentina, facilities for the “ German-Overseas Electricity Company ” and the first subway line in Buenos Aires . There were hindrances and setbacks due to the warlike events, so the areas of the Tanganyika Railway and Rwanda Railway were occupied by British troops and all large structures had to be blown up.
On October 30, 1917, the many years of close cooperation with the "International Construction Company" was implemented to found the "Philipp Holzmann Aktiengesellschaft". In this way, a form of organization was deliberately created with which one could react better to the turbulence that became apparent after the end of the war (Hans Meyer-Heinrich, p. 136). In 1920 the heads (later: directors) of the branches were given greater responsibility for the acquisition of orders and construction on site (Hans Meyer-Heinrich, p. 139). The progress made in the mechanization of construction processes was clear (Hans Meyer-Heinrich, p. 151): In the 1924 balance sheet, there were 100 excavators of all kinds, 87 cranes and 233 locomotives in Germany. 665 pumps with accessories, a total of 56,800 tons of equipment. With a German workforce of around 10,000, that's almost 6 tons of construction equipment per construction worker. It was continuously modernized, so the steam engine was largely replaced by the diesel engine.
The chaotic conditions during the inflation forced flexible improvisations at Philipp Holzmann AG as well. Strategic considerations to ensure the availability of energy led to more "white coal" (electricity), within seven years Philipp Holzmann AG erected 18 large buildings (power plants, barrages) (Hans Meyer-Heinrich, p. 179), such as the Bleilochtalsperre in 1931 the upper hall.
1933 to 1945
The pressure of the National Socialist regime by not considering the company in public building contracts led to the separation from the Jewish members of the board of directors and the supervisory board. The Chairman of the Board of Management, Hermann Galewski, retired early on October 30, 1933. The lawyer Charles A. Rosenthal, who has been on the board of directors for legal and contractual matters since 1921, traveled to Bogotá in autumn to coordinate the South American business through a Swiss subsidiary. At the end of 1934, however, pressure from the NSDAP's Foreign Policy Office resulted in the separation from Rosenthal, with whom an annual severance payment was agreed for five years to terminate his contract. In addition, Adolf Meyer, Paul Stern and Max Warburg had to give up their seats on the supervisory board . The chairmanship of the board was taken over by the grandson of the company founder Heinrich Holzmann, who joined the NSDAP on June 1, 1940 and was the operator. After board member Robert Hartmann died in February 1936 and his colleague Otto Richter moved to the board of directors for reasons of age, on April 1, 1936 the authorized signatories Friedrich Linsenhoff and Hans Meyer-Heinrich were appointed to the board. In 1937 Franz Rudolph took over the management and in 1938 Martin Arndt. Meyer-Heinrich and Rudolph had been members of the NSDAP since May 1, 1933, Linsenhoff joined in October 1942. The chairman of the supervisory board was from 1939 to 1969 Hermann Josef Abs .
As one of the largest German construction companies, Philipp Holzmann AG also benefited from the building needs under National Socialism . In the period from 1933 to 1939 Holzmann received many orders for industrial buildings for war-important companies, such as the factory halls of the Brandenburger Motorenwerke, but was also involved in numerous construction projects of the Nazi regime, mostly in working groups. These included the Jagdhaus Karinhall , the new Reichsbank building and the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin as well as the congress hall in Nuremberg and the KdF facility Prora on Rügen . When building the Reichsautobahn, the company was involved in 22 lots and produced over 300 km of substructures or road surfaces. Holzmann built the Theiss valley bridge and, in a working group, the Rhine bridge near Frankenthal . Philipp Holzmann AG also contributed to the Siegfried Line , a 630 km long line of fortifications on the western border of the German Empire. From the end of June 1938 to April 1939, the company built the approximately 100 km long section between Weil am Rhein and Nonnenweier . Together with 85 "subcontractors and craftsmen accorders", 14,000 workers and employees were deployed and 440,000 m³ of concrete and reinforced concrete were installed in 621 structures. The turnover was 30 million Reichsmarks.
After 1939 one of the main clients was the Todt Organization . At the Atlantic Wall , Holzmann had the largest share of all construction companies with a total contract value of 33.6 million Reichsmarks (16%). In 1941 Holzmann employed around 21,300 workers, of which around 9,000 were foreign civilian workers and 1,300 were prisoners of war. Holzmann was also involved in the construction project for the IG Farben Bunawerk in Auschwitz Monowitz . However, the scope of the order is unknown.
Prisoners of war , forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners , among others , were used on the construction sites that were important to the war effort. As a rule, these were made available by the Todt or Wehrmacht or SS organization for an appropriate fee. The following can be named as construction sites:
- Immediately after the victory over Poland, in October 1939, Adolf Hitler commissioned Albert Speer with the expansion of a residence in the Poznan "Kaiserpfalz". He had bedrooms, workrooms and living rooms furnished there until 1944. In four years, 27 million Reichsmarks were built in , mainly by Polish workers. The executing construction company was Philipp Holzmann. However, Hitler never moved into the rooms in Posen.
- One of the largest underground bunkers in Berlin was the protective system under Alexanderplatz during World War II . It was built from 1941 to 1943 by Philipp Holzmann on behalf of the Deutsche Reichsbahn .
- From November 1942 onwards, 34 " Eastern workers ", most of whom were Russians, were assigned to the Philipp Holzmann AG company to rebuild the war-damaged buildings of the Berlin Charité .
- On the Project Riese Organization Todt Holzmann was involved with 50%. The construction site had a workforce of 12,000 to 16,000. Above all, prisoners from the Groß-Rosen concentration camp and forced laborers had to work there.
1945 to 1999
After the Second World War , only Martin Arndt could remain in office because he was not a party member. The other board members were screened as part of the denazification process . Franz Rudolph, classified as a fellow traveler, resumed his work on December 1, 1947. Heinrich Holzmann and Friedrich Linsenhoff switched to the supervisory board. Hans Meyer-Heinrich was only reappointed to the board in 1948 after Arndt's death in February of the same year, against the reservations of the works council. Except for the building of the Berlin branch of Philipp Holzmann AG, all branches were destroyed: the offices in Stettin, Stuttgart, Munich, Dresden and Halle were bombed and burned out.
In the post-war years, Philipp Holzmann AG took part in the founding of the Frankfurter Trümmerverwertungsgesellschaft , which produced new building materials from rubble in the processing and recycling plant for rubble . When building bridges over the Rhine, the blasted and bulky rubble of the old structures was an obstacle that was difficult to remove; they had to be dismantled by divers using underwater cutters and lifted from the river bed by large floating cranes. Holzmann was u. a. Involved in the reconstruction of the Goethe House , the town hall and the Paulskirche in Frankfurt . In the transport sector, Holzmann helped build the Frankfurt Airport and also the Frankfurt U-Bahn .
Important construction projects in northern Germany: Eider Barrage , New Elbe Tunnel , Köhlbrand Bridge , Elbe Lateral Canal , Krümmel nuclear power plant and other major projects.
Crisis and bankruptcy 2002
Before the bankruptcy in 2002, Philipp Holzmann AG was the largest German construction company and one of the larger “global players” for decades. In 1994, the group achieved a construction output of around DM 13.1 billion with almost 43,000 employees. The end was the result of mistakes made by management when buying holdings in Germany and abroad as well as in project development . In 1988 bank loans amounted to DM 88 million and securities and bank balances comprised a quarter of the balance sheet total. When Lothar Mayer (* 1933), CEO since 1992, was replaced at the end of 1997, debts totaling 3.2 billion DM were known.
On October 25, 1999, Philipp Holzmann celebrated his 150th birthday. On November 15, 1999, the new chairman of the board, Heinrich Binder, announced that there was overindebtedness “from previously undiscovered contaminated sites”. A loss of 2.4 billion DM had to be conceded, which, as it turned out later, also included an operating loss of around 1.1 billion. On November 23, 1999, negotiations with the banks had failed and the bankruptcy petition was filed. On November 24, 1999, at the initiative of Federal Chancellor Schröder, a "rescue package" was announced, with transitional loans from the banks of one billion DM and a federal guarantee of 250 million DM, which could only be redeemed after all new payments from the banks and therefore never used has been. After further negotiations, a consortium of 19 banks participated in the financing of the company's restructuring concept. The restructuring package at that time comprised a total of 4.3 billion DM and also consisted of the granting of a credit line, participation in a capital increase and the exchange of receivables for convertible participation rights. Binder resigned in December 1999, Konrad Hinrichs was his successor.
In the course of a crisis in the construction industry, the number of jobs in the group fell from 28,300 at the end of 1999 to March 2002 to 10,600 (25,000 including subcontractors). The restructuring of Philipp Holzmann AG finally failed in March 2002 when many creditor banks refused to give any further loans. New losses and a total of 1.5 billion euros in liabilities at the banks led to final bankruptcy on March 21, 2002 due to over-indebtedness. At that time, Philipp Holzmann AG had mostly successful branches in Austria, the USA, China, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia . However, sales proved difficult in the following years; 7000 jobs could be saved through sales.
Clues became known about the guilt issue of the mismanagement: In November 2001 Philipp Holzmann AG reached an out-of-court settlement with the liability insurance of former board members. The insurance company AIG then paid Philipp Holzmann AG 38 million DM. The background to this was the judicial claims for damages against the former board members Lothar Mayer, Lothar G. Freitag, Gerhard Lögters, Dieter Rappert, Jürgen Schönwasser and Michael Westphal. At the same time, the company had negotiated separate settlements with these former board members, which include a substantial waiver of pension benefits. The agreed comparison volume is 50 million DM. Ex-CEO Lothar Mayer and ex-CFO Michael Westphal were summoned to the Frankfurt Regional Court in 2005 in connection with the issue of bogus invoices (e.g. 13 million DM for a potential major Berlin-Brandenburg airport in Sperenberg ) to disguise an unauthorized share buyback - which led to a charge of breach of trust due to falsified VAT information.
The insolvency administrator for the assets of Philipp Holzmann AG, attorney Ottmar Hermann, agreed until 2007 within the framework of out-of-court settlements that credit institutions would pay a total of around 210 million euros in favor of the insolvency estate. In return, the insolvency administrator waived all claims made against the banks. The parties have agreed not to disclose the details of the settlement. Officially, it was said that with the comparisons all those involved had avoided long-term legal disputes.
Headquarters / branches
The head office was in Frankfurt on Taunusstrasse , on the site of the Skyper high-rise building . At the foot of this stands the former headquarters of the Holzmann Group, a listed building from 1915.
There were main branches in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg , Hanover , Stuttgart and Munich, among others .
Stock market listings
Philipp Holzmann AG currently only continues to exist as a shell company (status: 2019). Despite the bankruptcy in 2002, shares are still available in 2020. a. still listed in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart.
Shares held at Deutsche Bank
According to the reportable company, as of April 17, 2002, about 19% of the company was still owned by Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft according to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) .
people
- Hermann Ritter (architect, 1851) , director of Philipp Holzmann AG
literature
- Hans Meyer-Heinrich (Ed.): Philipp Holzmann Aktiengesellschaft. In the course of a hundred years, 1849–1949. Umschau Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1949.
- Manfred Pohl : Philipp Holzmann. History of a construction company 1849–1999. Verlag C. H. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45339-2 .
- Holzmann is facing the end. In: Tagesspiegel of March 22, 2002, p. 17 (Chronicle of the development towards insolvency)
See also
Web links
- www.philipp-holzmann.de
- The Holzmann versus Holzmann case
- Early documents and newspaper articles on Philipp Holzmann in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e Hans Meyer-Heinrich (Ed.): Philipp Holzmann Aktiengesellschaft, in the course of a hundred years, 1849 - 1949 . Umschau Verlag Ffm, 1949.
- ^ Manfred Pohl: Philipp Holzmann - History of a Construction Company 1849-1999 . P. 103
- ↑ Azize Tank on the Armenian Resolution: "Not Just a History of Turkey" . Deutschlandradio Kultur . June 2, 2016. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
- ^ Manfred Pohl: Philipp Holzmann - History of a Construction Company 1849-1999 . Pp. 193-204
- ^ Manfred Pohl: Philipp Holzmann - History of a Construction Company 1849-1999 . Pp. 210-216
- ^ Manfred Pohl: Philipp Holzmann - History of a Construction Company 1849-1999 . Pp. 240-245
- ↑ Heinrich Schwendemann: The Poznan Castle - from the "Kaiser" - to the "Führer residence" . P. 124 ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 6.7 MB)
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Steffen Rückl: An inglorious legacy - forced labor and prisoner of war deployment at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität 1939-1945 . In: HUMBOLDT The newspaper of the Alma Mater Berolinensis . Edition 7 2004/2005, May 13, 2005, p. 3 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.4 MB)
- ^ Manfred Pohl: Philipp Holzmann - History of a Construction Company 1849-1999 . Pp. 285-290
- ↑ Manfred Pohl: Philipp Holzmann: History of a construction company 1849-1999 . CH Beck, Munich 1999, p. 278. ISBN 3-406-45339-2 .
- ↑ Wernhard Möschel: The scaffolding of the construction giants . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1995 ( online - June 5, 1995 ).
- ↑ Sören Jensen: Nice facade. In: manager magazin 4/1990. Page 56-66
- ↑ a b c . Wolfgang Reuter: CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY: Savior in the twilight . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 2001, ( Online - May 7, 2001 ).
- ↑ Wolfgang Reuter: Gigantic deception. In: DER SPIEGEL. 33/2000, p. 83
- ↑ The market has made its judgment . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 2002, p. 96 ( Online - Mar. 18, 2002 ).
- ↑ Annette Ruess: "Simply unsalable", in: Wirtschaftswoche March 20, 2003, pp. 68–70
- ↑ Press office of Philipp Holzmann AG, in www.bauingenieur24.de/fachbeituste/unternehmen/451htm, as of 5/2008
- ↑ Focus 45/2005, p. 204
- ↑ Historical share prices and development up to March 9, 2020 , accessed March 10, 2020
- ↑ Details on Deutsche Bank AG subject to reporting requirements. In: database. Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BAFin), April 17, 2002, accessed on March 10, 2020 .
