Kabelwerk Dr. Cassirer and Co.

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The Poelzig-Halle, north-west view, 2012

The cable factory Dr. Cassirer und Co. AG (alternatively: Havelwerk , (lead) Kabelwerk Cassirer ) was a cable manufacturer based in the Berlin district of Hakenfelde .

The workshop, designed by the architect Hans Poelzig between 1928 and 1930, is now used by the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation as a museum depot and is a listed building.

history

Timber trade and housing construction

The Cassirer family has its roots in Silesia. The brothers Louis and Julius Cassirer had achieved respect and wealth as entrepreneurs in Breslau and Görlitz and now dared to venture into booming Berlin. The Cassirer companies made an appearance in the 1870s to the beginning of the 1890s, particularly with the construction and timber trade, cardboard and maché production as well as with residential construction in east Berlin. In 1892 Julius lived in a villa at Fasasenstrasse 12 in Charlottenburg and was able to increase his private fortune to over 3 million marks by 1912. Until the 1890s, the Cassirers saw the greatest opportunities in property trading and housing construction.

Entry into the electrical industry

Share over 1000 RM of Dr. Cassirer & Co AG from October 1930

In 1896 the family finally entered a new line of business. With the establishment of the “Dr. Cassirer & Co. AG “they started producing cables and rubber threads. For the first location, rooms in a back courtyard at Schönhauser Allee 62 were chosen, but as early as 1898 production had to move to the newly built factory building on Charlottenburg Keplerstraße - the so-called Keplerwerk .

The modern machines, as well as innovative and popular products ( Cassirer Störschutzkabel ) and early participation in related companies, such as the enamelled wire factory Karlshorst , contributed to the economic success . The business developed steadily up to the First World War , so that in 1914 it was one of the most distinguished companies in the world market: 630 employees generated a turnover of 10 million marks.

In 1904, after the death of Louis Cassirer, the brothers Alfred and Hugo Cassirer took over management of the company. The fate of the company and the managing directors during the First World War remains in the dark. However, one can assume that the lack of raw materials, reduced production and a lack of export opportunities, like all other companies in the electrical industry , affected the Cassirer Kabelwerke. The lead cable factory area had to be outsourced.

The Havelwerk

New location in Spandau

The choice for a new production location for the company fell on Spandau . Opportunities for expansion on the 6 hectare site, the relatively low price of land, and the rail and water connections to the Spandau-Bötzower Kleinbahn and the Havel were the greatest advantages of one of the city's most important industrial districts. However, the 6.24 hectare site had to be filled up with sand from the Alexanderplatz subway construction site by around 1 meter before construction began .

When Hans Poelzig was awarded the contract in 1928, a factory site with the dominant production hall with a size of around 121 × 78 meters was created, which, in contrast to the other buildings by the architect, was largely ignored. After the First World War and the consequences of inflation, the decision was made to use a more functional building.

Despite the difficult economic situation in the electrical industry, the new plant was planned and carried out in just two years. From the beginning, the architectural design was based on the work processes of the cable factory, so that Poelzig's changes in the planning process were limited to the representative front sides of the building or the height of the porter's lodge. The facade design of the workshop with yellow-brown clinker bricks and dark purple-black frames was also reflected in the other buildings and resulted in a simple but harmonious overall appearance of the facility. In addition to the factory hall, the factory premises included a boiler house with a striking, silver-clad chimney, the porter's facility with adjoining test wall, the loading quay on the Havel and other ancillary buildings.

Construction time and function overview

The backfilling of the site and the laying of the rail connection could already begin towards the end of 1928. In the summer of 1929 the load-bearing iron construction of the workshop was completed, and in 1929 the shell and extension of the building was completed. Between the end of 1929 and the beginning of 1930, the machines and production facilities were relocated from Charlottenburg to Spandau, so that production could start in February 1930. The construction costs of the plant including the machines amounted to more than 2 million marks.

Inside, the hall was furnished in a simple and functional way, with slim and narrow columns and exposed walls dominating the picture. In line with the production flow from east to west, the height of the hall aisles rose from 4 meters to 6.50 meters at the western end of the hall. The production here also required the installation of overhead traveling cranes under the roof in order to transport the completed cable reels out of the hall towards the rails and the loading quay. Skylight caterpillars enabled excellent daylight illumination of the interior. A two-storey warehouse and administration wing on the north and west side belonged to the production hall.

Selling the company

The years 1919 and 1920 were characterized by business and private upheavals for the family company. The conversion of the company from an open trading company (OHG) to a stock corporation (AG) brought more financial security, but the death of Hugo Cassirer in June 1920 weakened the company's management. Due to the global economic crisis and falling sales prices, the electrical engineering industry got into trouble at the end of the 1920s. A cartel formation with the participation of the Cassirer Kabelwerke helped to stabilize prices from 1930 onwards. Alfred Cassirer left the company in 1929 for health reasons, which seriously threatened the continued existence of the company in family hands and initial explorations about the takeover by Siemens-Halske came about, but this did not materialize.

After production had dropped to an all-time low in 1933, a consortium of banks took over the majority of the shares. The Elektro Licht- und Kraftanlagen AG Berlin, a financing company with participation u. a. von Siemens, took over the cable works in Spandau for 6.7 million marks, which sealed the end of the Cassirian family business. Even after the sale, the company produced until October 9, 1941 under the name of Dr. Cassirer & Co. AG before it was renamed Märkische Kabelwerke AG .

History of the plant after 1945

The factory premises in Spandau survived the destruction of the Second World War largely unscathed, despite British bombing in 1943. The Keplerwerk, however, burned out at the end of the war in 1945. The Red Army dismantled parts of the production machines, which delayed a direct resumption of production. After the recovery of individual parts of the production facilities, production could be resumed in 1946.

A few years later, under the direction of architect Max Däul, the factory premises were extended in a southerly direction, as Poelzig had optionally provided in his original plans. In the course of the new building, the boiler house was replaced by a new building. After the merger of the Märkische Kabelwerke with the Kabelwerk Vohwinkel in 1967, the location belonged to the newly created "Bergmann Kabelwerke". After the end of production on September 30, 1993, a new use had to be found for the area and the hall. Efforts were made to place the factory premises as an ensemble under monument protection .

In the mid-1990s, the boiler house and the meter house at the former factory gate were dismantled. On June 17, 1997, after the factory premises were transferred to the development company Wasserstadt GmbH , a "Hugo Cassirer Straße" was inaugurated. The remaining parts of the building and the hall were listed after renovations in 2000 and 2001.

The Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation has been using the eastern side of the hall since 2003 . Since the expansion of the western side of the hall to meet the needs of a museum in 2010, the foundation has been using the entire hall as a museum depot.

literature

  • Bergmann Kabelwerke: Report. About d. Business year ... Berlin, Wipperfürth.
  • Christian Kennert (2007): Entrepreneur Hugo Cassirer - a contribution to Berlin's economic history. In: Association for the history of Berlin (ed.): The bear of Berlin. Yearbook of the Association for the History of Berlin, Vol. 56. Berlin: Westkreuz-Verlag, pp. 123–150.
  • Dietrich Worbs (1994): Local history. Former cable works Dr. Cassirer & Co. AG. In: Bauwelt-Fundamente (16/17), pp. 868–869.
  • Hans Stefan Bolz (2008): Hans Poelzig and the “modern factory building”, industrial buildings 1906–1934. Dissertation Univ. Bonn. ( Last checked online on August 15, 2015)
  • Dieter Nellessen: Architectural monuments in the water town of Oberhavel. 18th Berlin Monument Day 2004: urban spaces - water spaces - monument sites. State Monument Office Berlin. last checked on September 13, 2012 .
  • Dietrich Worbs: The cable factory Dr Cassirer & Co. AG in Spandau by Hans Poelzig 1928/29. In: Dietrich Worbs (ed.): Insights into the Berlin monument landscape. Berlin: Gebr. Mann 2000. pp. 325–331.
  • Dr. Cassirer et al. Co. AG: The new Havelwerk. Berlin 1931.
  • Elisabeth Schwiontek: Relic of bygone industrial times. In: Berliner Morgenpost, September 6, 2000.
  • Erich Zimmermann: New construction of the lead cable factory of Dr. Cassirer & Co. A.-G. Berlin. In: The industrial building. 21. 1930. (11/12), pp. 285-299.
  • Fritz Godon: Bergmann Kabelwerke AG Berlin and Wipperfürth . 1896-1971.
  • Werner Hildebrandt, Peter Lemburg, Jörg Wewel: Historic buildings of the Berlin industry . In: Senator for Urban Development and Environmental Protection (ed.): Contributions to the preservation of monuments in Berlin, vol. 1. Berlin: Mann 1988. pp. 230–231.
  • Hoppmann, Erich; Schlögl, Herwig (1971): Rationalization through Cartels? Berlin: Duncker & Humblot (publications of the Verein für Socialpolitik, NF, 62).
  • Iris Schewe: ... and now to the cable factory! The library of the Berlin City Museum Foundation. 2011.
  • Ulrich Werner (ed.): Second-hand - but excellent! Libraries build in stock. Bad Honnef: Bock + Herche ( Online ; PDF; 1.7 MB)
  • Jahn, Gunther; Scheper, Hinnerk; Rave, Paul Ortwin: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. Berlin: Gebr. Mann 1971.
  • Kuhbandner, Birgit (2008): Entrepreneurs between the market and the modern. Univ, Wiesbaden, Erlangen-Nuremberg.
  • Gustav Mayer: Memories. From journalist to historian of the German labor movement. 1993. Reprint d. Ed. Zurich and Munich, Verl. Der Zwölf 1949. Hildesheim: Olms (Dept. 5, Literature and Cultural History).
  • Tano Bojankin (2008): cables, copper, art. Walter Bondy and his family environment. In: Andrea Winklbauer (ed.): Modern on the run. Austrian artists in France 1938–1945; [on the occasion of the exhibition Moderne auf der Flucht / Les Modernes s'Enfuient. Austrian artists in France 1938–1945 / Des Artistes Autrichiens en France 1938–1945 in the Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, June 4 to September 7, 2008] = Les modern s'enfuient. Vienna: Turia + Kant, pp. 30–49. ( Online ; PDF; 748 kB), last checked on September 13, 2012.
  • Erich Hoppmann, Herwig Schlögl (Ed.): Rationalization through cartels? Berlin 1971.
  • Dietrich Worbs: Expertise on the monument properties of the former cable works Dr. Cassirer & Co. AG dated October 28, 1993. Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment Berlin, file no. 2586-2450.

Web links

Commons : Kabelwerk Dr. Cassirer  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Bolz, Hans-Stefan: Modern factory building , 2008.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Worbs, Dietrich: Expert report on monument property , 1993.
  3. ↑ a b Zimmermann, Erich: New building of the lead cable factory , 1930.

Coordinates: 52 ° 33 ′ 31.5 ″  N , 13 ° 13 ′ 11.7 ″  E