Powder factory Wolfgang

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The powder factory Wolfgang (the full name was: Königlich-Preußische Pulverfabrik Wolfgang ) was an armaments factory in Wolfgang , today a district of Hanau , during the Second German Empire . The Wolfgang Industrial Park is now located on the former premises .

founding

In 1872, after the Franco-Prussian War , the Kingdom of Prussia looked for a suitable location for the production of gun cotton in its western parts of the country. Hanau and the surrounding area north of the Main have belonged to Prussia since 1866. Ultimately, an approximately 5000 hectare (ha) area was removed from the state forest of Wolfgang in order to build the facility here. Several factors influenced the choice: the area was state-owned, so it could be rededicated quickly and inexpensively without expropriation proceedings, it was far away from populated areas, which was important because of the danger of explosion , with the Hanau garrison being stationed nearby , which was able to professionally guard the facility, and Hanau was an important railway junction , so it had excellent transport links . The factory naturally had sidings .

Start of operations

Initially, 115 hectares of land were used. In order to minimize damage in the unavoidable industrial accidents, work was carried out in many, but small, units and a large safety distance was maintained between the individual factories. The individual parts of the system were connected with a works railway , which was operated with steam storage locomotives in order to avoid flying sparks from conventional steam locomotives . The official founding day of the "Königlich-Prussische Pulverfabrik Wolfgang" is June 23, 1875. Production started in the same year. Under local law , the Wolfgang powder factory was given the status of an estate district in the Hanau district .

65 buildings had been erected by 1880, including a service villa for the director of the factory. The largest production facility, the so-called “Schießbaumkirche”, a 25 × 50 meter and 18 meter high hall, in which the actual production facility for the gun cotton was located, was located in the center.

expansion

The production facility continued to expand well into the First World War . At the beginning of the First World War it employed 500 people, at the end of the war, meanwhile mostly women, the men were at the front, 5000. The production methods were highly modern, very effective and were constantly being modernized. However, occupational health and safety was - as is customary - not particularly pronounced.

The establishment of the factory was followed by a civil settlement, Wolfgang , at a safe distance from the production site . It is on the Hanau – Fulda railway line and has its own train station . It was initially called the powder factory near Hanau and was renamed Wolfgang (Kr Hanau) in 1917 .

Industrial accidents

Dramatic industrial accidents were unavoidable given the highly explosive product of the plant, and uncontrolled explosions occurred again and again:

  • In 1888 four workers were killed;
  • 17 people died in 1889. This accident, which was perceived across the Reich , resulted in an employment ban for women that was not lifted until the labor shortage in the First World War .
  • September 20, 1915: Seven people died in the explosion in smelter house 63. The number of injuries is not known due to the war-related censorship.

End and re-use

The French side tried several air strikes on the powder factory during the First World War , but always unsuccessfully. The target was too far behind the front for the flight technology of the time. At the same time, the German factory was secured against air strikes with tethered balloons and an “anti-aircraft train”.

The factory stopped powder production after the end of the First World War. According to the Treaty of Versailles , Hanau was in the “demilitarized zone”, which also included the ban on further production of the powder factory. The French military blew up the production facilities in 1919, and most of the machinery was scrapped.

However, because of the excellent transport links and the expansion options on the large open spaces that were formerly used for operational safety, the site offered an excellent industrial location that attracted subsequent uses. Above all, the Deutsche Kunstlederwerke GmbH should be mentioned here , which was taken over by DEGUSSA in 1933 , which subsequently led to the Wolfgang Industrial Park .

Monument protection

Some of the buildings of the powder factory and its civilian settlement have been preserved. Today they are cultural monuments due to the Hessian Monument Protection Act :

  1. Water tower from 1890/1891, Aschaffenburger Strasse 99
  2. Old boiler house from 1875–1877 and 1889, Rodenbacher Chaussee 4
  3. Shooting tree hall from 1915, Rodenbacher Chaussee 4
  4. New boiler house from 1915, Rodenbacher Chaussee 4
  5. Compressor house from 1915, Rodenbacher Chaussee 4
  6. Bahnhaus from 1878, in front of the powder mill 1
  7. Syringe house from 1878, in front of the powder mill 1
  8. Headquarters (later: school), in front of the powder mill 10
  9. Canteen building, in front of the powder mill 11
  10. School building from 1887, Forsthausstrasse 7

Worth knowing

  • From the beginning, the factory was referred to in local parlance as a “powder mill”.
  • In 1899, laboratory and other skilled workers from the powder factory Wolfgang joined forces to unite the fireworkers and armory members of Hanau in an association that was formed in 1925 in the Bund der Feuerwerker e. V. rose.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ In Prussia there were two production sites for gun cotton at that time: Spandau and Neisse .
  2. ↑ With the Prussian territorial reform of 1927, Wolfgang became a separate rural community (Kurz, p. 21).
  3. ↑ Numbers 1–5 are, in terms of monument law, part of the entity “Plant facilities of the historic Königlich-Prussische Pulverfabrik Wolfgang” (Krumm, p. 592).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Briefly, p. 12.
  2. ↑ Kurz, pp. 15, 20.
  3. ↑ a b c d Kurz, p. 20.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Kurz, p. 15.
  5. ↑ Kurz, pp. 15, 32.
  6. ↑ a b c Kurz, p. 26.
  7. ↑ a b Kurz, p. 31.
  8. ↑ Railway Directorate in Mainz (ed.): Official Gazette of the Railway Directorate in Mainz of July 16, 1921, No. 41. Announcement No. 809, p. 558 (with reference to: Tariff and Traffic Gazette , year 1917, p. 192) .
  9. ↑ Kurz, p. 36f.
  10. ↑ Kurz, pp. 35, 37.
  11. ↑ Briefly, p. 37.
  12. ↑ Kurz, p. 42.
  13. ↑ Krumm, p. 590.
  14. ↑ a b c d Krumm, p. 592.
  15. ↑ a b Krumm, p. 601.
  16. ↑ a b Krumm, p. 602.
  17. ↑ Krumm, pp. 591f.

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 16.6 ″  N , 8 ° 57 ′ 28.7 ″  E