Solvay plant (Buchenau)

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The Solvay factory (Buchenau) was a German-Belgian industrial company in Buchenau near Eisenach in Thuringia for the large-scale production of soda .

history

In 1909 the Creuzburg councilor von Dreyse had a geological report drawn up on the potash salt deposits in the Buchenau corridor. The entrepreneur intended to build a soda factory near Creuzburg.

In 1910 von Dreyse formally founded Dreyse-Soda-Werke AG . The basis was a total of 23.3 km² of pit fields and boreholes in the Mihla districts of Ebenau , Buchenau, Hahnroda , Eschenborn and Freitagzella . It was intended to mine the rock salt, drilled to a thickness of about 20 mater, by a wet process and to produce industrially usable salts and minerals.

However, the construction of the plant was delayed for over two decades due to unexplained technical details and a lack of permits, in particular because a sufficient concession for the necessary discharge of operational wastewater into the Werra was not granted. In the meantime, von Dreyse had sold shares; From 1922, the management of the construction was in the hands of Werrawerke AG Eisenach - mostly owned by Lautzenthal-Glashütten GmbH in St. Ingbert . The construction of the complex industrial plant often stalled and the potash and soda salts already being mined at the Buchenau plant were not sufficient for long-term economic operation. On the opposite bank of the Werra, further storage sites were therefore developed, the water-dissolved brine was transported to the factory premises via pipelines over three pipe bridges. Even today you can find numerous foundations of the former drilling rigs and pumping stations on the slope of the sandwood . The Buchenau soda plant only started operations in 1927. The structural changes in the course of the 1930s concerned the opening of a limestone quarry near Ebenau, the construction of a works railway to the quarry in 1931, the construction of sewage ponds and the construction of a second, 55 meter high chimney in 1933. The plant was supplied with lignite by rail , in the boiler house, a power generator generated the electrical energy for the numerous pumps and technical devices independently of the overland network. About 200 to 300 workers from the surrounding area commuted daily to this large company by rail. The soda produced in the factory was also transported away by freight car.

The Belgian public company Solvay & Cie. headquartered in Brussels owned the majority of the company's shares. Due to the division of Germany after the end of the Second World War, the Bernburg plant , which until then had been the administrative headquarters of the German Solvay works, was expropriated by the rulers of the Soviet occupation zone and transferred to the state-owned company "Vereinigte Soda-Werke Bernburg-Staßfurt".

The Solingen site became the new headquarters of the West German Solvay works . The attempt to prove that the company was entangled in the IG Farben group in order to have legal recourse to expropriation for involvement in war crimes failed. In 1950 DEFA produced an espionage film entitled Secret Files Solvay , which allegedly dealt with espionage activities. In 1954, the company took over the majority of the shares in Hanover-based Kali Chemie AG and thus also its production facilities, including the plants in Bad Wimpfen , Heilbronn , Neustadt am Rübenberge and Nienburg / Weser as well as the headquarters in Hanover .

The Buchenau soda plant developed into an important, high-performance company in soda production with a steadily growing daily production: 1929: 40 tons, 1940: 801 tons and 1955: 2000 tons. In October 1968, based on a decision by the state management of the GDR, soda production was discontinued, the plant and the tracks from Buchenau to Wartha were dismantled.

The residential and administrative buildings as well as a chimney were preserved and were taken over by the Eisenach automobile plant . In 1991 Solvay AG Germany received the Bernburg plant and the real estate in Buchenau back from the Treuhandanstalt .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Beck, Rainer Lämmerhirt On the establishment of the soda factory in Buchenau , in: Werratalnachrichten, Creuzburg-Mihla, edition 12-1994, p. 13.
  2. ^ M. Röder The Buchenau limestone quarry , in: Werratalnachrichten, Creuzburg-Mihla, Edition 09-1995, pp. 9-10.
  3. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt The Soda Factory in Buchenau , in: Werratalnachrichten, Creuzburg-Mihla, issue 48-1997, p. 16.
  4. ↑ New in Germany . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 2009 ( online - March 23, 2009 ).
  5. ^ NN First residents' meeting in Buchenau , in: Werratalnachrichten, Creuzburg-Mihla, edition 49-1994, p. 9.

Coordinates: 51 ° 4 ′ 19 ″  N , 10 ° 16 ′ 49 ″  E