Preussag

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Preussag

logo
legal form AG
founding October 9, 1923
resolution July 1, 2002
Reason for dissolution Renaming to TUI
Seat Hanover , Germany

Former administration building in Hanover on Leibnizufer
Historical logo
Preussag AG share of DM 100 from March 1970

Until 2002, Preussag AG was the name of the German tourism group TUI ; Before focusing on tourism, the company operated as a conglomerate .

The company was established on October 9, 1923 as the Prussian Mining and Huts Company (PBHAG) through the transformation of the Prussian coal and steel industry into a state-owned company . In 1997, through the sale of Salzgitter AG and the takeover of the shipping and logistics group Hapag-Lloyd, Preussag became a service company in the leisure industry. With the purchase of the British Thomson Travel Group in 2000, the company became the world's largest tourism group . Since July 1, 2002, it has been operating under the name TUI .

Emergence

Preussag was created through the conversion of the Prussian state ownership of mines , smelters , salt pans and amber works as well as their ancillary businesses into a stock corporation . The state mining that had been in operation until then and had become uneconomical was to be managed more successfully according to business principles. Nevertheless, the state's influence remained. On October 9, 1923, the Prussian state parliament passed the law transferring the management and exploitation of state mining property to a stock corporation. According to the articles of association, the business purpose of the company was the maintenance of mining works for the exploitation of natural resources . The employed civil servants and employees were taken over, with the possibility of a higher salary and the risk of job loss through rationalization.

When the company was founded in December 1923 with Berlin as its headquarters, Preussag had around 31,000 employees. The main areas of business were hard coal mining (17,000 employees, including 13,000 in Upper Silesia ), ore mining and smelting. The main locations were Ibbenbüren , Bad Oeynhausen , Barsinghausen , Obernkirchen , Vienenburg , Dillenburg , Königsberg , Palmnicken , Gleiwitz , Hindenburg , Staßfurt , Schönebeck , Därrenberg, Artern , Bleicherode , Rüdersdorf near Berlin and in the Harz ( Clausthal-Zellerfeld , Oker / Harlingerode , Goslar / Rammelsberg ).

Products

The product range of the state-owned coal and steel company around 1930 included:

Petroleum business

Around 1930, Preussag stepped into the oil business and the processing industry by tapping sources. It became an important factor in the German oil industry . In 1931 the company took a stake in Deurag-Nerag in Misburg near Hanover. Nevertheless, Preussag got into a serious economic crisis in 1930.

Social policy

As a state enterprise , the company presented itself to its employees in an exemplary manner in the social field. The system of additional benefits and security handed down in the coal and steel sector was continued in the 1920s. The employees, invalids and survivors received coal at preferential prices. Workers in the Upper Harz received cheaper grain. In the 1930s there were around 3,500 company apartments , 98 bathing establishments and company consumer associations with around 12,000 members. Other facilities were coffee kitchens, dining establishments, dormitories, advanced training and household schools.

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1933, the National Socialists immediately attacked Prussian state corporations and thus also Preussag. At an extraordinary general meeting in June 1933, most of the 26 members of the supervisory board were recalled. A mining specialist and NSDAP member who wanted to transform the company into a NS model company became the chairman of the supervisory board. However, he was deposed by Hermann Göring in 1934 and a mining official took over the management. As early as July 1933, the Hitler salute was ordered for workers by the Führer decree , and in October the swastika appeared in the company logo. As part of the upgrade of the Armed Forces Preussag from 1933 experienced fast growth momentum after the years of the Great Depression , which was partly just a sham prosperity. With its limestone and cement industry, the company also benefited from the increased construction activity (such as the Reichsautobahn , fortress construction , air raid shelters ).

Second World War

With the beginning of the Second World War , some branches of the company were considered to be essential to the war effort. They also supplied armaments products, such as fragmentation concrete bombs and shell casings. The subsidiary Nerag supplied the Wehrmacht with engine oils. Properties leased from Preussag were used by the military as ammunition and fuel stores. Due to the war-related labor shortage, forced laborers and prisoners of war were employed in the factories , who made up between 20 and 60 percent of the workforce. Until 1944, the Preussag companies were largely spared from the effects of the war. From then on, the Allies carried out a bomb offensive against key industries that were important for the war, including the German mineral oil industry. In 1944, amber production was destroyed in attacks on Königsberg. Extreme factory destruction occurred as a result of around 23 air raids on the Deurag-Nerag refinery. In order to ensure the rapid reconstruction of the war-important production, the Hanover-Misburg subcamp was built, in which an average of more than 1,000 concentration camp prisoners were housed. About 1,000 foreign forced laborers were also used.

After 1945

After the Second World War, Preussag was placed under allied administration in September 1945 as part of the former Nazi war economy. The British military government was decisive for the company, as most of the remaining operations were in the British zone of occupation . German trustees were entrusted with the administration . In 1947 the Allied supervision was replaced by a German institution. The zone boundary made contact between the companies in the western occupation zones and the head office in Berlin more difficult. In fact, the group had been managed from the Hanover branch from 1947 until Hanover became the headquarters in 1952.

New beginning in the west

The operational parts in the east - in Upper Silesia, Brandenburg and East Prussia, around 70 percent of the former company - had been lost due to being confiscated by the Soviet occupying forces and were dismantled . What was left became public property .

For Preussag this meant a severe loss of substance. Lower Saxony (in the British occupation zone) gradually emerged as a new business center in the first years of the post-war period. After the state of Prussia was dissolved by the Allies, the state enterprise Preussag was initially ownerless, but then became part of the Federal Republic. German trustees were entrusted with the administration. After complete release from the allied administration in 1952, the past was over for Preussag. A reorientation began with a large investment program so that weak companies could get a better economic and technical level.

1950s

Hard coal production in the Barsinghausen mine has been causing continuous losses since 1948 . In 1955 the decision was made to stop the production in the two unprofitable pits. The decision was made against the vote of the works council and workforce and despite the intervention of the federal and state governments. Barsinghausen in particular was a structurally weak area. The miners got work at the Bahlsen and Alfred Teves factories, which opened there in 1956. The Obernkirchen mine had also been shut down before 1960, so that after that there was no longer any coal mining by Preussag in Lower Saxony.

In 1957 the lead mine in Mechernich (trade union Mechernicher Werke) with around 1000 employees was closed. Many then found work in an air force depot of the Bundeswehr in the Eifel.

In the 1950s, Preussag still had the same business areas as when it was founded in the 1920s. These were the mining industry, the production of lead and zinc and the extraction of potash salt , crude oil and natural gas.

Administration building Hanover

The 1953 administration building in Hanover
Monument plaque at the entrance of the building

After Hanover became the Preussag headquarters in 1952, a new administration building was moved into in 1953 based on plans by Gerhard Graubner . It is a concrete - skeleton grid construction with an eight-story high-rise and two four-story longitudinal wings. When it was built, the building was considered to be a modern construction with an approach to new urban planning. This is ensured by the existing light metal window frames with black and gold anodizing , which was considered noble when the building was built in the 1950s. The building has been the seat of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) since 1989 and is now a listed building . In April 2018, the Lower Saxony Minister for Science and Culture Björn Thümler affixed the first memorial plaque in Lower Saxony, valid from 2018, to the building.

Privatization in 1959

On March 24, 1959, people's shares could be subscribed for the first time . These were capital shares in Preussag AG amounting to DM 120 million, which were acquired by around 220,000 new shareholders with a maximum of five shares at a nominal value of DM 100 per person. At that time, the company belonged to the state-owned VEBA group. Preussag was the first state-owned property in the Federal Republic of Germany to be privatized . Due to high customer demand, the German government decided to increase the originally planned volume. 77 percent of the capital was finally given up, the federal government retained a share of just over 22 percent.

The creation of the first people's stock corporation exceeded all expectations. At ten percent, employees were only represented to a small extent among the new shareholders. This is explained by the fact that they did not fall into the euphoria, but knew about the problems of the company. This first privatization was a momentous affair in its time, which received a lot of attention at home and abroad.

New areas of activity from 1960

From the beginning of the 1960s, Preussag shifted its fields of activity to the profitable and promising areas of chemistry, electricity, logistics and steel. In 1960 she became involved in the chemical sector. In Ibbenbüren she built a factory for the production of caustic soda by means of chlor-alkali electrolysis. In 1961, Preussag joined the VTG Vereinigte Tanklager und Transportmittel through takeover from the federal government and became involved in steel construction from 1962. As early as 1955, the company started generating electricity from coal at the Ibbenbüren power station .

From 1960, Preussag expanded its field of activity to include other countries, including drilling for oil in Morocco and Yemen, as well as exploring ore deposits.

Around the mid-1960s, Preussag increasingly entered the consumer goods industry, as it promised high profits due to the increased real wages of employees. The Body Care division manufactured care products and cosmetics, such as mouthwash, perfume, toothbrushes and combs.

Crisis and Overcoming 1970–1973

As a result of the enormous expansion of all areas of the company, a serious existential crisis began in 1970. The dividend for the shareholders was mostly withdrawn from reserves; in the years 1971–1972 it was completely omitted. The small shareholders with their people's shares felt cheated. In 1972 there were personnel changes in the supervisory board and executive board, and the Swedish company Boliden took a 50 percent stake in the company through joint ventures in lead production that had existed since 1970 . Starting in 1973, the new board of directors restructured the company by restricting it to core areas of the business, including a. Handover of the personal care area. The oil crisis of 1974 brought enormous profits to Preussag because it made the oil products it manufactured more expensive.

In 1971 the new company logo was introduced and the company name was changed from Preußische Bergwerks- und Hütten-Aktiengesellschaft to Preussag.

Transformation into a transport and tourism company

In 1989, Preussag took over Salzgitter AG and separated from it again in 1998. This represented one of the largest mergers of the post-war period. The greatest corporate upheaval, however, was the purchase of all Hapag-Lloyd shares in 1997. This added the container shipping business area, which developed into the company's second mainstay. Primarily through the acquisition of Hapag-Lloyd , Preussag entered the growing tourism industry. In 1999, through further acquisitions, TUI was wholly owned by Preussag. With the purchase of the British Thomson Travel Group in 2000, the company became the world's largest tourism group. This covers around 70 percent of the European travel market.

In 2002, Preussag was renamed TUI . With this, Preussag had transformed into a service company and left its company history, which was based on raw materials. As a result, the energy sector was also sold to Gaz de France (Germany activities, 2002) and OMV (international activities, 2003).

Preussag real estate

Headquarters of Preussag Immobilien in Salzgitter

The only nationally known bearer of the Preussag name is now Preussag Immobilien GmbH , based in Salzgitter. She manages real estate assets for third parties and works in the areas of property management, portfolio management, commercial property management, project development and construction management. As such, it is one of the largest apartment managers in the Salzgitter region. It also manages residential property in Kiel, Hanover, Braunschweig and in the Harz region.

In 1937, the company was founded as a housing stock corporation to create living space for the workers in the newly built steel mill . Over the course of time, this resulted in today's Preussag Immobilien. Since the company was founded, an extensive housing stock has been built up for our own management. From 1975 condominium systems were created and property management began in accordance with the Condominium Act. The residential space management support area for third parties has grown to over 8,000 units. The focus is on the regions of Salzgitter, Kiel and Hanover.

In 1988, the first housing stocks were taken over as trust management for investors. Commercial and industrial properties have been managed since 1990. Parts of the own housing stock were sold. Since 1997 the development of larger real estate projects took place. Since 2000, real estate has been developed and managed in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. In 2001 the TUI representative office in Berlin, Unter den Linden, was completed.

In 2005 Preussag Immobilien introduced a central property management (ZIM) in the TUI Group and in 2006 took over the portfolio management for the service centers of the Hapagfly airline at the domestic German airports.

Web links

literature

  • Bernhard Stier, Johannes Laufer: From Preussag to TUI , ways and changes of a company 1923-2003, Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-414-X

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Fröbe, work for the mineral oil industry: The Misburg concentration camp, in: Ders. ua (Ed.), concentration camp in Hanover. Concentration camp work and the armaments industry in the late phase of the Second World War, Part I, Hildesheim 1985, pp. 131–275.
  2. ^ Ore mining_Mechernich. In: mechernich.de. Retrieved July 15, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Guess what a memorial is in picture from April 17, 2018
  4. ↑ http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/1959/index.html
  5. ↑ http://www.manager-magazin.de/geld/geldanlage/0,2828,515061-2,00.html
  6. ↑ http://www.tui-group.com/de/unternehmen/geschichte
  7. ↑ http://www.bundesarchiv.de/cocoon/barch/0000/k/k1959k/kap1_1/para2_12.html
  8. ↑ Boliden over the years ( memento of November 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), chronicle on the Boliden A / S website, accessed on April 30, 2010
  9. ↑ Almost all higher living beings destroyed , in: Der Spiegel, March 5, 1984, accessed on April 30, 2010