Saxon machine factory

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The Sächsische Maschinenfabrik formerly Richard Hartmann (around 1905)
Richard Hartmann's machine factory in Chemnitz, 1856

The Sächsische Maschinenfabrik in Chemnitz was one of the most important mechanical engineering companies in Saxony in the second half of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. Including several predecessor companies, the company existed from 1837 until its liquidation in 1930; individual branches of business that were taken over continued to exist in other companies until 1990. The company is closely linked to the name of the founder and long-standing company leader Richard Hartmann , whose name was previously incorporated into the company name Sächsische Maschinenfabrik , which was changed after 1878, Richard Hartmann .

Company focus

Name plate in the Norsk Jernbane Museum in Hamar

The main focus of the company consisted in the development, construction and production of

A total of 4,699 locomotives left the company's production facility between 1848 and 1929. The majority were delivered to the Royal Saxon State Railways , but customers for the locomotives could be found worldwide. The delivery list for the spinning and textile machines from the Hartmann company is just as impressive. For many decades, the machines from Chemnitz and the other subsidiaries belonging to the company shaped the reputation of the German mechanical engineering tradition.

Company history

Foundation and growth into a large company

Richard Hartmann (1809-1878)
Advertisement of the machine factory (1861)
View into the production hall (1868)
Transport of a new locomotive to Chemnitz main station

In 1837 August Götze and Richard Hartmann founded the Götze & Hartmann company, which was engaged in the manufacture of machines of various types. Hartmann, who had gathered experience from scratch in a number of companies, quickly grasped the scope of numerous technical innovations. As early as 1839, the company acquired the technical concept of a carded yarn spinning machine, which was developed to market readiness and successfully sold as a product. But the main focus of the company remained for some time the repair and construction of individual technical solutions (according to today's term special machine construction ). In 1842 the company had around 200 employees. Numerous company expansions, relocations and new buildings within the city of Chemnitz followed in the years up to 1845.

From 1848 steam locomotives were built in the company, which was now dominated by Hartmann , but this branch of business only became a major source of revenue a decade later, initially the buyers of the Royal Saxon State Railways had to be convinced of the quality of the work with very small numbers of locomotives .

From 1855, the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik also produced turbines and mill equipment, so that by 1857 the workforce had grown to around 1,500 employees. In the mid-1860s, steam locomotive production had already reached a very high level; in 1868, for example, a new production hall was built in which up to 36 locomotives could be assembled at the same time.

Conversion into a stock corporation

In 1870 the company was transformed into "Sächsische Maschinenfabrik AG". Richard Hartmann took over the chairmanship of the board of directors, which he held until his death in 1878. Richard Hartmann's sons took on important functions in the company, which from then on appeared under the name "Sächsische Maschinenfabrik formerly Richard Hartmann Aktiengesellschaft".

In 1878 the 1000th locomotive left the production of the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik, numerous company expansions took place during this time in order to meet the constantly growing global demand. In 1896 the construction of a new administration building began in Chemnitz, in the same year a subsidiary in Luhansk (Russian name: Lugansk) was founded by Richard Hartmann's son, Gustav Hartmann , in the Ukraine, which was then part of Russia , which is still called the Luhansk Locomotive Factory today exists. Josef Hallbauer was in charge of the company's own operations in Lauchhammer at the time .

In addition to locomotive production, the company had built up a strong armaments division at the beginning of the twentieth century and produced, among other things, guns, artillery equipment and ammunition. Several other companies were integrated into the group during this time. The Sächsische Maschinenfabrik also produced standard machines such as the Kemna EM road locomotive. Among other things, these were sent to the victorious powers across Europe as reparations.

The decline of the company

Share over 1000 RM of the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik vorm. Rich. Hartmann AG from March 1, 1929

Numerous acquisitions were made in the 1920s. In 1922 the " König-Friedrich-August-Hütte " near Dresden, previously an important supplier to the company, was taken over, and the last one was the textile machine company Walter Löbel AG in Dresden. However, the effects of the changed economic situation caused the company to get into increasing difficulties in the mid-1920s, and the establishment of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG) in 1924 led to a sharp reduction in the number of locomotives, as the orders were primarily awarded to Prussian mechanical engineering companies . The foreign business climate also had a lasting negative impact on the political effects of the First World War .

In 1926 the machine tool manufacturing business area was terminated and several smaller companies took over parts of the production. In 1928/29 the last major order was carried out for the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft. However, of the newly developed standard locomotives for the Saxon narrow-gauge railways, only 13 machines were delivered. Berliner Maschinenbau AG (BMAG, formerly Schwartzkopff) took over the remaining part of the planned order for a total of 32 machines . Only six more locomotives came after these 750 mm narrow-gauge locomotives from the Lokschmiede in Chemnitz, then the company, which was in financial difficulties, was an early victim of the global economic crisis .

Concentration on textile engineering

Former administration building, today's police headquarters

In 1928 the "König-Friedrich-August-Hütte" in Freital was sold again, the textile machine construction, which had been very fragmented through acquisitions, was restructured and the steam roller and locomotive construction was discontinued in 1929. The company Sächsische Maschinenfabrik, vorm. Richard Hartmann AG was liquidated in 1930, the still existing economic core of the textile machine area was converted into the newly formed Sächsische Textilmaschinenfabrik. Richard Hartmann AG brought in. With this company, as in the early days of Hartmann's entrepreneurship, only spinning machines and looms were manufactured. In 1933 the merger with a few other companies took place to form the Chemnitz textile machine company . The remaining business area of ​​the former Hartmann company was now exclusively spinning machine construction.

VEB Spinnereimaschinenbau and successor

Company sign of the VEB Spinnereimaschinenbau

During the Second World War , a large part of the factory halls, plants and equipment were destroyed, after the reparations payments to the Soviet Union only around a tenth of the plants remained for the restart as VEB Spinnereimaschinenbau in 1946. From 1978 it belonged to the VEB Kombinat Textima Karl-Marx-Stadt and was the parent company of this combine from 1984 . Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the company was a leading manufacturer of textile machines for the production of cotton yarns in the Comecon area .

This company was converted into Chemnitzer Spinnereimaschinenbau GmbH in 1990 and taken over by the trust company; at the end of 1994 it was sold to the holding company Neue Länder. The predominant focus on the collapsing Eastern market and an overpowering competition led after the merger with two other Saxon textile machinery companies to form CSM - Sächsische Spinnereimaschinen GmbH Chemnitz, despite technically high-quality products, to the discontinuation of production in 1998 and the subsequent full execution. With that, the remnants of the company's tradition finally disappeared from the market.

At the end of 2010, the listed company property at Altchemnitzer Strasse 27 was auctioned to an investor.

Maintenance of tradition

festive locomotive transport 2009

In memory of Richard Hartmann's work, part of Limbacher Strasse was renamed Hartmannstrasse. The former villa of the company boss is now available for events. A vocational school center in Chemnitz bears the name Richard Hartmann School. Not far from the police headquarters of the city of Chemnitz are Hartmannplatz and Richard-Hartmann-Halle . Since 1990, the memory and tradition associated with the name Richard Hartmann and his Sächsische Maschinenfabrik have been receiving increasing attention. In the city of Chemnitz as well as in the Saxon metal and electrical industry and with the operators of locomotives from the factory halls of the Saxon machine factory, the company name is associated with a special Saxon tradition in mechanical engineering.

Also in memory of the contribution made by Sächsische Maschinenfabrik in equipping the Saxon narrow-gauge railways with locomotives and thus also their current appearance, the Association for the Promotion of Saxon Narrow-Gauge Railways (VSSB) kicked off the construction of a new locomotive of the Saxon class IK 125 years ago in 2006 After the delivery of the first locomotive for the Saxon narrow-gauge railways in 1881, this company received a special monument. Since the VSSB was transformed into the Saxon Narrow Gauge Railways Foundation, IK No. 54, which was put into service in 2009, has been owned by this foundation.

List of products still received

Locomotives

The MULDENTHAL being brought into the Dresden Transport Museum (1956)
f1Georeferencing Map with all coordinates of the section Locomotives : OSM

Other products

  • Textile machines
  • Machine tools

literature

  • Richard Hartmann's machine factory in Chemnitz - guide through Richard Hartmann's establishments . Chemnitz around 1860 ( digitized version ).
  • Richard Hartmann AG (Ed.): Locomotives. Edition 1910. Self-published, Chemnitz 1910 ( digitized version ).
  • Richard Hartmann AG (Ed.): 1837-1912. Anniversary publication on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik vorm. Richard Hartmann Aktiengesellschaft . Self-published, Chemnitz 1912.
  • Günther Reiche: The Chemnitz mechanical engineering company Richard Hartmann and his locomotives. A collection of facts. Oberbaum Verlag, Chemnitz 1998, ISBN 3-928254-56-1
  • Günther Reiche: Richard Hartmann. November 8, 1809 - December 16, 1878. From kit maker to Saxon locomotive king. Series Chemnitzer Lebensbilder Volume 6, Verlag Heimatland Sachsen, Chemnitz 2007, ISBN 3-910186-60-2 .
  • Sächsische Textilmaschinenfabrik formerly Richard Hartmann Aktiengesellschaft (ed.): 100 years of Hartmann textile machinery in 1937. For the company's centenary. VDI-Verlag, Berlin 1937.
  • Wolfgang Uhlemann: 2008 - Four anniversaries for the Rich company. Hartmann / Sächsische Maschinenfabrik, formerly Rich. Hartmann AG, Chemnitz. In: Erzgebirgische Heimatblätter Heft 2, 2008, pp. 5–8.
  • VEB ERMAFA Karl-Marx-Stadt (ed.): 150 years of mechanical engineering 1837–1987. Karl-Marx-Stadt 1987.

Web links

Commons : Sächsische Maschinenfabrik  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kemna (company) . In: Wikipedia . July 19, 2020 ( wikipedia.org [accessed July 20, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Brief description of the company's history on the website of the Saxon State Archive with reference to archive material ( memento of March 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Accessed July 20, 2020
  3. ↑ Spinning machine building complex finds buyers . In: Free Press . December 1, 2010.
  4. ^ Homepage of the Richard Hartmann School. Retrieved December 18, 2018 .
  5. ^ Richard-Hartmann-Halle. City of Chemnitz, accessed on December 18, 2018 .


Coordinates: 50 ° 50 ′ 17.8 "  N , 12 ° 54 ′ 48.2"  E