Hobby Horse (VEB)

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VEB Steckenpferd was a company in the original district of Radebeul in today's city of Radebeul , whose products soaps and cosmetics were internationally known under the trademark Hobby Horse . The company was founded in 1885 and, as a fine soap and perfume factory Bergmann & Co., was a purveyor to the Saxon court. It was expropriated in 1950 and successfully re-privatized in 1991. The company became best known for the GDR- wide hobby horse movement , through which the GDR was able to procure urgently needed ships with convertible currency.

The factory premises of Schaumaplast Isolierstoffe , formerly VEB Hobby Horse

history

International private company

Advertising sign for lily milk soap. Shield made by the neighboring Union works

In 1885 Bruno Bergmann (1843–1929) founded the fine soap and perfume factory Bergmann & Co. (popularly "soap miner") in Dresden . In 1890 he moved with the company to Radebeul at Hellerstraße 23 on the edge of the Radebeul industrial area ; In that year his son Curt Bergmann was born, who later became a successful tennis player. The successful purveyor to the court with the Hobby Horse logo produced medical, household and children's soaps as well as other cosmetics . The best known was the special product , the hobby horse lily milk soap . In order to expand, Bergmann probably had to talk to his neighbor, as part of the later company premises belonged to the neighboring coffee substitute factory Otto E. Weber in 1880 .

In 1904/1905, Alfred Bergmann expanded the villa at Marienstraße 5 .

Necessary due to its international success, the company had branch factories in Arnhem , Brussels , Tetschen , Warsaw and Zurich . The parent plant in Radebeul alone employed more than 200 people in the 1920s.

Initiator of the Hobby Horse movement

In 1950 the company was expropriated and in 1954 renamed VEB Hobby Horse based on its trademark . A large part of the products continued to be exported.

In 1958, the workforce at the successful company decided to exceed the export plan by $ 100,000. The money was then donated to buy a used merchant ship, as at that time only 18% of the GDR sea trade movements could be carried out by our own fleet. Within a short period of time, 1,600 other companies throughout the GDR joined this initiative for the so-called Hobby Horse Movement , so that numerous ships could be procured unscheduled in the late 1950s. One of the freighters was named Hobby Horse after the initiating company .

The ships of the Hobby Horse Movement

"10,000 ton freighter Hobby Horse handed over to its destination." (Far right in the picture the bow of Hobby Horse )

After the call for the Hobby Horse Movement , Swedish ship sellers were mainly addressed, as they were viewed as neutral during the Cold War . Of these, the following used merchant ships were procured for the GDR merchant fleet and put into service for the Deutsche Seereederei Rostock (DSR) (the date of handover to the DSR and the origin in brackets):

The "ceremonial commissioning of the flagship of the Hobby Horse Fleet ", the MS Hobby Horse , was filmed by DEFA and can be seen in the newsreel documentary Der Augenzeuge 1959 / A 5 . In addition to these ships, which are directly attributable to the Hobby Horse Movement , various other, mainly FDGB holiday ships, were declared as belonging to the movement, for example the Friendship of Nations and the Fritz Heckert .

Conversion of the production base

In 1965/1966 the company was gradually converted from soap production to the manufacture of insulation and packaging materials made of polystyrene and later incorporated as part of the company into the VEB Presswerk Ottendorf-Okrilla .

After its liquidation in 1991, the company was reprivatised as Bergmann & Co. Treuhandbetrieb and came to Schaumaplast GmbH in Reilingen as Schaumaplast Isolierstoffe GmbH . The company premises were developed into the Schaumaplast industrial park , which today (as of 2014) still houses a sales office. The production of EPS parts (expanded polystyrene , styrofoam) has been taking place at Schaumaplast Sachsen GmbH in Nossen since 1995 , where there has also been a plant for EPP parts (expanded polypropylene , Neopolen-P) since 2003 with Schaumaplast Nossen GmbH .

Works

  • Alfredy, C. [arl] : My hobby horse . Rhinelander for medium voices. Dedicated to Bergmann & Co, Radebeul - Dresden, Zurich (client). 2 pages. Music publishing house Metropol, Berlin around 1905.
  • Bergmann & Co, soap factory Radebeul-Dresden (ed.): Das Nibelungenlied. A German hero song . Collective picture album . 1st part: Siegfried's death / 2nd part: Kriemhild's revenge . Published on the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary 1885–1935. 1935.

neighborhood

The premises of the United Bussard Chemiewerke Heinz Demmrich , later also VEB Bussard Chemie, a manufacturer of waxes and oils , were located on the neighboring property, Hellerstrasse 19-21 .

literature

  • Frank Andert (Red.): Radebeul City Lexicon . Historical manual for the Loessnitz . Published by the Radebeul City Archives. 2nd, slightly changed edition. City archive, Radebeul 2006, ISBN 3-938460-05-9 .
  • Gerd Peters: The purchase of old tonnage ships for the GDR merchant fleet. Poetry and truth about the hobby horse movement . In: Full ahead. For sailors and friends of seafaring (PDF; 553 kB). Issue No. 12, May 2007, pp. 4/5. Type IV drivers e. V. (Ed.), Rostock 2007.
  • Wolfgang Jacob: The “Hobby Horse” movement - purchase of used tonnage ships from additional export proceeds . In: Panorama Maritim , 1989, no. 24, pages 40-44. German Society for Shipping and Marine History V., Tübingen.
  • Renate Schwärzel: On the importance of the hobby horse movement in the context of the socialist competition in the VEB Berliner Glühlampenwerk 1959/60 . In: Yearbook for Economic History (JWG), 1978 / III, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, p. 207.
  • Annegret and Hellmut Räuber: Hobby horse, ahoy! Children's book publisher Berlin

Web links

Commons : Hobby Horse  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Curt Reuter; Manfred Richter (arrangement): Radebeul chronicle . Radebeul 2010, p. 50 (first edition: 1966, online version (pdf) ( memento of February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive )).
  2. ↑ Gerd Peters: The purchase of old tonnage ships for the GDR merchant fleet. Poetry and truth about the hobby horse movement . In: Full ahead. For sailors and friends of seafaring (PDF; 553 kB). Issue No. 12, May 2007, pp. 4/5. Type IV drivers e. V. (Ed.), Rostock 2007.
  3. ↑ Der Augenzeuge 1959 / A 5. Retrieved June 28, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Hobby horse skin cream box from Bergmann & Co Treuhandbetrieb Radebeul
  5. ↑ A specimen copy of the sheet music for Hobby Horse Soap can be found in the Dr. Meyer, Nuremberg.
  6. ↑ The Song of the Nibelungs. A German hero song at biblioman.ch  ( 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.biblioman.ch