Rhenania-Ossag

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Large tank system of Rhenania-Ossag in Königsberg (1927)

Rhenania-Ossag Mineralölwerke AG is the former name of a German mineral oil company . Today it is called Shell Deutschland Oil GmbH .

history

One of the leading gasoline manufacturers in the German Empire was Heinrich Späth (1869–1940) at the beginning of the 20th century, who had headed the Süddeutsche Petrol Works GmbH since 1902. While looking for a strong partner, he got involved in a relationship with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (NV Koninklijke Nederlandse Petroleum Maatschappij) owned by Henri Deterding , which is now the Dutch part of the Royal Dutch Shell . Both now wanted to open up the German gasoline market for themselves. Späth convinced his Dutch partners not to build the new plant near the coast, as was previously the case, but close to the consumer. After communal resistance to the construction of a factory for processing raw gasoline had been overcome, Späth succeeded in acquiring a plot of land on the Rhine in Reisholz near Düsseldorf . On October 28, 1902, the benzin works Rhenania GmbH was founded in Düsseldorf by a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, the NV de Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij in The Hague . Most of Rhenania's share capital was held by two confidants of Deterding, the directors Abraham Capadose and Hugo Loudon. Späth, who had hoped to become the sole authorized signatory of Rhenania, had to come to terms with the fact that he got a commercial manager at his side after a dispute with the chairman of the supervisory board, Wilhelm Rudeloff.

The reason for founding our own German subsidiary was the customs requirements, which stipulated that only petrol could be sold in Germany that had also been refined in this country. In 1903, the parent company, the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, set up a tank facility in the Port of Hamburg so that the raw gasoline supplied by the Dutch could be handled directly in Germany. The Dutch supplied the best quality petrol at affordable prices. Rhenania thus dominated almost 90 percent of the market after just under two years. This caused the American Standard Oil Company to withdraw from the gasoline market for a short time. The main business of Rhenania was initially on the sale of gasoline for the large number of stores operated in Germany stationary engines for agriculture, trade and industry, in the production of special fuel for rubber and textile factories and in the Weather Tools gasoline for the mining required mining lamps. In addition, Rhenania began developing its own products very quickly. Two of these innovations for paint and varnish production were not only convincing in Germany, but also internationally and displaced the American turpentine oil that had been common up until then from the market.

In response to the rapid increase in automobile traffic, Rhenania responded by producing new fuels under the brand names “Kraftalin”, “Stellin” and “Dynamin”. The steadily increasing demand for these products could only be met by expanding the business. Therefore, in 1910, another gasoline plant was built in Wilhelmsburg near Hamburg to relieve rice wood. In 1913, Rhenania also set up a new gasoline plant in Regensburg in southern Germany that could be supplied via the Danube . Simultaneously with the increase in fuel consumption in automobiles, lubricants became increasingly important. That is why the lubricating oil refinery Mineralölwerke Rhenania GmbH was also built in Monheim am Rhein in 1913 , and was completed during the First World War. With the start of the war in 1914, the German mineral oil companies also entered the war economy. Since the Netherlands remained neutral , the shareholders there were able to continue to benefit from the business of Rhenania. The Prussian War Ministry classified the company as "patriotic", to which the patriotic sentiment of the German directors and supervisory boards had certainly contributed.

In December 1914, the Dutch secured their shares in Rhenania by forbidding the German shareholders to transfer their small shares to third parties. The production and storage companies, which were legally independent until 1917, were united under one roof with the establishment of Mineralölwerke Rhenania Aktiengesellschaft on October 12, 1917, with directors of the Dutch parent company acting as founders. The plant in Monheim processed Romanian and Galician petroleum residues into lubricating oil. The Dutch had not been involved in the lubricating oil business until then. Due to the Edeleanu process used in Monheim and other developments by the Berlin engineering company Edeleanu, crude oils from Venezuela could be processed into lubricants for the first time , which led to the breakdown of the lubricant monopoly of the USA and Russia.

Between 1919 and 1921 the company opened branches in Ludwigshafen , Düsseldorf, Regensburg , Hamburg, Leipzig and Berlin. Rhenania had already acquired a stake in the Stern-Sonneborn AG ( Ossag ) oil works during the First World War . Its refineries in Hamburg-Grasbrook and Freital near Dresden produced high-quality special oils that were already used during the war. In 1924, a petrol pump was installed in Neuss as the first Rhenania-Ossag petrol station . In June 1925, Ossag was completely taken over by Rhenania AG. Rhenania took advantage of Ossag's weak capital and took over the traditional company for 8.8 million Reichsmarks. The Ossag founder and general manager Jacques Sonneborn (1863–1936) now received a place on the Rhenania supervisory board. This step significantly strengthened Rhenania's market position. Since then the company has operated as Rhenania-Ossag Mineralölwerke AG .

Shell product brand from Rhenania-Ossag, 1927

While Rhenania had previously mainly processed American and Russian crude oil, the name changed to Shell crude oils. In 1927, Walter Kruspig , who came from Ossag, was appointed to the management of Rhenania-Ossag. One of his first plans that were implemented was to give the fuel brand "Stellin" the name of the now used international brand "Shell". At the petrol pumps Shell was now offered as normal gasoline, Dynamin as a special shell mixture for highly compressed (high-compression) engines and the heavy gasoline Kraftalin for trucks and buses.

Also in the mid-1920s, Rhenania began to build up its own tanker fleet through company acquisitions . Since the company, in contrast to the competing German-American Petroleum Company (DAPG), had so far had no maritime traditions, the Rhenania had until then been dependent on hiring foreign ships. In the 1920s, Rhenania invested large amounts of capital in the rapid expansion of the filling station network in Germany. The first oil cabinets were set up next to the petrol pumps in order to be able to sell the Voltol from Ossag . Rhenania opened up new markets in 1927 with the establishment of a refinery in Harburg-Wilhelmsburg in order to be able to offer bitumen products. Rhenania-Ossag had already begun attempts to distill bitumen in the early 1920s. The new plant started operations in the spring of 1929. In addition to Ebano Asphalt-Werke AG, which was also active in Harburg and was founded as a subsidiary of the American Standard Oil of Indiana in 1928, Rhenania subsequently became the most important producer of bitumen in Germany. Until then, Mineralöl-Asphaltwerke AG (Mawag) had dominated the bitumen market as the largest producer and had a new bitumen refinery built in Ostermoor , which at that time belonged to the parish of Brunsbüttel, in 1929 .

Even before the start of the global economic crisis in 1929 there were many smaller suppliers of bitumen products in addition to the large producers, so that overproduction became apparent. In this situation, the bitumen processing industry in Germany formed a cartel in 1929 , the so-called Bitumen Convention , which existed until the outbreak of war in 1939. Rhenania-Ossag, DAPG, Ebano, Mawag , Deutsche Gasolin AG and Westfälische Mineralöl- und Asphaltwerke, WH Schmitz KG , agreed to this . Kruspig, who became general director of Rhenania-Ossag in 1930, took over the chairmanship of the cartel.

In 1929, Rhenania-Ossag had a total of 15 large and 104 small tank farms and 7,500 employees in Germany. The company's total assets in the same year were 259 million Reichsmarks. Measured against the capital invested in Germany, Rhenania-Ossag had thus ousted DAPG from first place. This was now in second place with total assets of RM 103 million, followed by Deutsche Petroleum AG (DEA) with RM 45 million. The shares of the two market leaders in the entire oil business, however, were almost the same.

After the competition decided in 1929, the Shell house of Rhenania-Ossag Mineralöl-Werke AG was built in Berlin from 1930 to 1932 . However, the company's headquarters were relocated from Düsseldorf to Hamburg in 1930.

During the global economic crisis , the shares of MAN and Haniel in Oelhag went entirely to the German-American Petroleum Society and Rhenania-Ossag. The Atlantic Richfield Company also gave up so many shares that the three companies became one-third shareholders each.

Shell product brand from Rhenania-Ossag around 1935

The gasoline-benzene mixture Dynamin in the 1930s was a mixture of gasoline with about 45% benzene plus "alcohol" ( potato schnapps , ethanol ) to increase the knock resistance. Due to the compulsory admixture in force since 1930, alcohol was added at a level of 2.5%, gradually increasing to 10% of the fuel weight from October 1932.

1930/31 built former tank station by Rhenania-Ossag in Nordhausen am Harz

In 1935, Rhenania-Ossag was the second largest petrol station company of the Big Five in Germany with 16,363 petrol pumps (29.3%) and on par with DAPG with a sales quota of 20.9%. Only the Benzol Association had higher sales.

Rhenania-Ossag refinery destroyed in the war in the port of Hamburg (1945)

In 1938, DAPG and Rhenania-Ossag took over half of Oelhag each with the help of their non-executable foreign exchange reserves. As a result of the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the subsequent reorganization of the industry there, the Royal Dutch Shell in Vienna was assigned to Rhenania-Ossag in addition to its refinery in Floridsdorf .

With the changeover to the war economy in September 1939 and the associated central government control by the Mineral Oil Distribution Working Group , all brand names disappeared, and the petrol stations subordinate to the Central Office for Mineral Oil sold unbranded petrol in exchange for a fuel ID or petrol ticket. Rhenania-Ossag continued to be classified as a "German company", was on the list of armaments companies and was given preference for material quotas. In Hamburg and Freital-Birkigt , the company operated lubricating oil refineries in which Voltol was produced. This electrically refined special lubricating oil was used for the air force in high, particularly cold layers of air.

The parent company Royal Dutch Shell was placed under German trusteeship during the Second World War.

The tank steamer Ossag (2793 GRT) of the Tankdampfer-Gesellschaft Ossag , Hamburg, which was taken over with Ossag and built in 1922, was hit by an air raid on April 22, 1944 in the Black Sea off Sevastopol at coordinates 44 ° 22'N, 32 ° 43'E sunk. The tanker, launched on July 2, 1939 as Dorsanum for Anglo Saxon Petroleum , London, was transferred to the German subsidiary Rhenania-Ossag in September 1939 and delivered to the same shipping company as Ossag II (8152 GRT, 8041 tons). It was sold to Russia on May 1, 1940, where it was named tanker No. 2 ran onto a mine east of the Keri lighthouse at Cape Juminda in August 1941 and sank.

In 1943 there were holdings in Hydrierwerke Pölitz AG in Pölitz in the former West Pomerania (together with IG Farben and the German-American Petroleum Society ) and in Ostmärkische Mineralölwerke GmbH in Vienna. The factories and refineries were badly damaged in 1945 as a result of the Second World War.

During the war, forced laborers had to work for the company, including between 1943 and 1945 in the Langer Morgen labor education camp under particularly dire conditions. Women had to do clean-up work for the company in Hamburg.

In 1947 the name was changed to Deutsche Shell Aktiengesellschaft , and reconstruction began.

See also

literature

  • Joachim Kleinmanns: Great, full! A brief cultural history of the gas station . Jonas Verlag, Marburg, 2002. ISBN 3-89445-297-8 .
  • Bernd Polster: Super or normal. Gas stations - story of a modern myth . DuMont, Cologne, 1996. ISBN 3-7701-3516-4 .
  • Rainer Karlsch, Raymond G. Stokes: Factor Oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859–1974 . Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 2003. ISBN 3-406-50276-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 88.
  2. ^ Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , pp. 88−89.
  3. ↑ a b Knut Bleicher : Organization. Strategies - structures - cultures . Gabler, Wiesbaden 1991, ISBN 978-3-322-82919-1 , p. 354.
  4. ^ Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 89.
  5. ^ A b c Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 102.
  6. ^ A b Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 101.
  7. ↑ Knut Bleicher : Organization. Strategies - structures - cultures . Gabler, Wiesbaden 1991, ISBN 978-3-322-82919-1 , pp. 354-355.
  8. ^ Robert Finn - first episode of the dispute over an honorary citizen of the ETV
  9. ^ A b c Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 124.
  10. ^ A b Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 129.
  11. ↑ a b Knut Bleicher : Organization. Strategies - structures - cultures . Gabler, Wiesbaden 1991, ISBN 978-3-322-82919-1 , p. 355.
  12. ^ A b c Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 127.
  13. ^ Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 126.
  14. ^ Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes : Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , p. 125.
  15. ↑ Article tank station of Rhenania-Ossag AG at NordhausenWiki.
  16. ↑ Joachim Kleinmanns: Super, full! A brief cultural history of the gas station . Jonas Verlag, Marburg, 2002. p. 46. (quoted from Walter Ade: The gas station problem in Germany . Hamburg, 1936.)
  17. ^ Rainer Karlsch, Raymond G. Stokes: Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859-1974 . Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 2003. p. 199
  18. ↑ Birkigt (incorporated in 1923) ( Memento from December 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ Bombs on Freital ( Memento from December 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ a b Losses of the German Merchant Navy 1939–1945: Letters N – O – P ( Memento from August 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ Entry on the tanker Ossag in the Miramar Ship Index  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miramarshipindex.org.nz  
  22. ↑ Curriculum Vitae of OSSAG II (Dorsanum)
  23. ↑ Hamburg-Veddel (women). Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, accessed on November 30, 2019 .