Ship and boat yard Gebr. Schürenstedt
The ship and boat yard Gebr. Schürenstedt was a shipyard in Bardenfleth on the Lower Weser . It existed from 1838 to 1979.
history
The beginnings
The shipbuilding company began in a shipyard that the boat builder Hinrich Schürenstedt founded in 1838 in the extension of his house on an inland dike between Bardenfleth and Motzen . Small wooden boats and utility vehicles were built there over the years.
Moving and growing
About 100 years after it was founded, the founder's son, August Schürenstedt, relocated the shipyard to a new location in front of the Weser dike. He later switched the August Schürenstedt shipyard with his three sons from timber construction to steel ships. Since then, the size of the ships built has increased continuously.
The post-war period brought numerous orders, with a large number of coasters being delivered within the diverse construction program . On the 125th anniversary of the shipyard in 1963, the shipyard with its 300 employees could look back on around 1,300 newbuildings from small vehicles to ships with a load capacity of 13,000 tons. The shipyard had several transverse and lengthways panties and a quay length of 250 meters for equipping the newbuildings. When the three sons took over the shipyard, they changed the name to Schiffs- und Bootswerft Gebr. Schürenstedt KG .
Another move and bankruptcy
The shipyard moved again in 1974 due to the risk of flooding and then had two new buildings, four slips and a 2500-tonne Syncrolift. After the move, it had a workforce of 435 people. The tax advisor Heinrich Wurthmann, who was entrusted with the company's bookkeeping, procured the fresh capital required for the expansion through Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt (Adca). When Adca requested a capital increase shortly afterwards, Wurthmann took a 25 percent stake in the shipyard with DM 500,000. After an auditor commissioned by the Schürenstedts found the sum of 500,000 DM to be too low for the 25 percent stake, Wurthmann convinced the shipyard's banks that a "silent loss" was hidden in the balance sheet, whereupon they demanded a further capital increase. In 1975 Wurthmann brought his share to 51 percent with the help of the former Commerzbank director Enno Poets from Leer and the furniture store owner Ludwig Rieke from Emden.
In 1975/76 the shipyard built three ships for Ms. Wurthmann's holding companies, in which the shipyard invested eight million DM. The third of the three ships, the 23 million DM container ship Scilla , was financed through such unusual business methods that the Schürenstedts finally brought an arbitration procedure against Wurthmann, in which Wurthmann lost his general power of attorney.
The Oldenburger Steuerfahndung convicted Wurthmann of having made false statements in relation to the granting of the investment allowance, but Wurthmann was able to push the Schürenstedt brothers completely out of the shipyard management at the beginning of February 1979 and offered them a severance payment, which they refused. Shortly afterwards, the Hanoverian Ministry of Finance refused the state guarantee for another new building, Adca terminated the loan and the shipyard had to file for bankruptcy in 1979.
Bern shipyard
Shortly after the Bremen bankruptcy trustee Hellmut Vogel started work at the shipyard, Wurthmann, Poets and Rieke managed to lease the shipyard for their Berner Schiffswerft GmbH & Co. KG , and the Ministry of Finance granted the required state guarantees. But already in 1980/81 the shipyard finally went bankrupt.
literature
- Detlefsen, Gert Uwe: From the Ewer to the container ship . The development of the German coasters. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1983, ISBN 3-7822-0321-6 .
- Boie, Cai: Shipbuilding in Germany 1945-52 . The forbidden industry. 1st edition. Publishing house Gert Uwe Detlefsen, Bad Segeberg and Cuxhaven 1993, ISBN 3-928473-11-5 .