United steel mills

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The Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG ( VSt ), at the time known as VESTAG or Vestag , was a vertically integrated German mining company founded on January 14, 1926 with its headquarters in Düsseldorf , which was broken up by the Allies after the Second World War. One of the successor companies was August-Thyssen-Hütte AG, a predecessor company of thyssenkrupp AG .

history

United Stahlwerke AG's 1000 Reichsmark warrant from July 1, 1926

The VSt was created in a crisis situation in the Weimar Republic, characterized by falling prices and overcapacity, in 1926 through the merger of the Thyssen Group (share 26%), the Phönix Group (share 26%), the Rheinische Stahlwerke (share 8.5%) and the companies of the Rheinelbe Union ( German-Luxembourgish mining and steelworks AG , Bochumer Verein and Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG ; shares together 39.5%).

The merger thus included a large part of the German iron, steel and mining companies in basic production; of well-known companies remained outside Hoesch , Friedrich Krupp AG , Klöckner-Werke , Gutehoffnungshütte , Mannesmann and the Saarland companies Röchling and the Stumm brothers .

By 1930, the VSt had founded two new companies, some of which also included parts of the founding plants:

Vestag owned a minefield and smelter in 1930

VSt was one of the largest German corporations in the 1930s. At times, the United Steel Works were also the largest steel group in Europe and the second largest steel group in the world with 28 mines, 66 ironworks with a total of around 242,000 workers and an annual turnover of around 2.5 billion marks, which is 15 percent of German coal production and 34 Percent of German steel production.

From 1928 onwards, the corporate headquarters of the United Steelworks were located in Düsseldorf in the “ New Stahlhof ”. The company's first CEO until 1935 was Albert Vögler . The first chairman of the supervisory board was Fritz Thyssen . The deputy chairmen were Ernst Poensgen , Carl Rabes and Gustav Knepper . In 1935 Ernst Poensgen was appointed chairman of the board and Vögler moved to the supervisory board as deputy chairman, from where he continued to rule as the unofficial "second chairman". Poensgen was succeeded in 1943 by Walter Rohland , who had been a member of the board since 1941 and remained its chairman until 1945.

As a result of the global economic crisis , the German state indirectly participated in the VSt in 1932 in order to save the group from ruin. The state acquired shares in Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG (GBAG) from Friedrich Flick , which at the time was the main shareholder of VSt. The GBAG shares were acquired at a far inflated price (99 million Reichsmarks; the market value of the securities was 25 million Reichsmarks), which led to great public outrage (see Gelsenberg affair ). In 1933 VSt and GBAG were merged, whereby the German state acquired a direct stake in VSt of 26.5%. This participation was reprivatised in 1936 when the state sold the shares with a book profit of 33 million Reichsmark to VSt, which subsequently withdrew the shares as part of a capital reduction. In order to enable a capital reduction of this magnitude, a law was specially passed (see Lex Stahlverein ).

At the end of 1939 there was another change of ownership. After Fritz Thyssen, previously a major shareholder and chairman at the beginning of World War II in September 1939 along with his family in Switzerland had fled his industrial holdings as well as the private property on the orders were Hermann Goering in December the same year seized by the Prussian state. The Prussian state came into possession of Thyssen's United Steelworks share package and thus obtained a blocking minority in the group. In 1944 the state reduced its stake in the mining group by selling part of the block of shares to Alfred Hugenberg .

Supervisory board

The first supervisory board included a. the following members:

Political role

Law on the collection of taxes in connection with the reorganization of the Stahlverein Group of March 7, 1934

In the spring of the 1932 Reichstag elections, the United Steel Works AG is said to have donated 500,000 Reichsmarks to the NSDAP , according to Heinrich Brüning's memoir . Albert Vögler had already been a co-initiator of the so-called Anti-Bolshevik Fund in January 1919 , which pushed ahead with the suppression of the German Soviet republics . In the company newspaper "Das Werk" of the United Steelworks from 1927 it was stated:

"The history of almost all peoples is an eternal urge to expand, a never-dormant need for expansion." Germany has "too little, far too little land "

According to the research of the American historian Henry A. Turner , the support of the steel industrialists in the rise of the NSDAP should not be overestimated: For example, the deputy chairman of the board Ernst Poensgen kept his distance from the National Socialists both before and after 1933; In the autumn of 1932, the chairman of the board, Albert Vögler , signed a call for support for the Papen government - but he did not sign the industrialists ' proposal that was made at about the same time and was intended to induce Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor of the Reich.

During the National Socialist era , the group played a key role in armament. Since the United Steelworks but not expanding their capacities as required by the government measure, the kingdom founded in Salzgitter the Reich Hermann Göring (now Salzgitter AG ) as a competitor.

In Dortmund, on the grounds of the Dortmund Union at Huckarder Strasse 111, there was an external command of the Buchenwald concentration camp from October 1944 to March 1945 at the United Steel Works AG. 745 women lived there in a building that was connected to the bullet factory on Rheinische Strasse by an underground tunnel. The house had barred windows, but no barbed wire fences, and the outer doors were locked.

During the Second World War, the production facilities were largely destroyed by Allied air raids; after the end of the war, the United Steel Works were broken up and parts of the production capacities were dismantled. In the Federal Republic of Germany several successor companies emerged from 1951, including Dortmund-Hörder Hüttenunion AG , August Thyssen-Hütte AG, Rheinstahl and the Bochumer Verein. The last companies that had not yet become independent were merged in April 1954 in the Handelsunion AG . Handelsunion AG later became part of the Thyssen Group.

Individual works after the unbundling

The West German smelting works that were merged in Vestag were split up into the following individual stock corporations, which were mostly merged again into groups within the next few years.

Name and seat of the company Previous affiliation with a group
Hüttenwerk Ruhrort-Meiderich AG, Duisburg Vestag
Hüttenwerk Rheinhausen AG, Rheinhausen Croup
Hüttenwerk Oberhausen AG, Oberhausen Good Hope Hut
Hüttenwerk Dortmund AG, Dortmund Hoesch
Hüttenwerk Hörde AG, Dortmund-Hörde Vestag
Hüttenwerk Union AG, Dortmund Vestag
Hüttenwerk Haspe AG, Hagen-Haspe Kloeckner
Hüttenwerk Huckingen AG, Duisburg Mannesmannröhren-Werke
Hüttenwerk Ilsede Peine AG, Peine Ilseder Hut
Hüttenwerk Niederrhein AG, Duisburg Vestag
Georgsmarienhütte AG, Georgsmarienhütte Kloeckner
Rheinische Röhrenwerke AG, Mülheim (Ruhr) Vestag
Cast steel works Witten AG, Witten (Ruhr) Vestag
Cast steel plant Bochumer Verein AG, Bochum Vestag
Stahlwerke Bochum AG, Bochum Otto Wolff
Stahl- und Walzwerk Großenbaum AG, Duisburg-Großenbaum Mannesmannröhren-Werke
Steel and pipe works Reisholz AG, Düsseldorf-Reisholz Pressing and rolling mill (Thyssen-Bornemisza Group)
Hüttenwerk Geisweid AG, Geisweid Vestag
Stahlwerk Osnabrück AG, Osnabrück Kloeckner
Cast steel works Oberkassel AG, Düsseldorf-Oberkassel Vestag
Stahlwerk Hagen AG, Hagen Hoesch
Eisenwerke Mülheim-Meiderich AG, Mülheim (Ruhr) Vestag
Gußstahlwerk Gelsenkirchen AG, Gelsenkirchen Vestag
Eisenwerke Gelsenkirchen AG, Gelsenkirchen Vestag
West German Mannesmannröhren AG, Düsseldorf Mannesmannröhren-Werke
Hüttenwerke Siegerland AG, Siegen Various

literature

  • Alexander Donges: The United Steel Works AG under National Socialism. Group policy between market economy and state economy. Series: Family - Company - Public: Thyssen in the 20th Century, Vol. 1. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3506766281 .
  • Jeffrey Fear: Organizing Control. August Thyssen and the construction of German corporate management. Series: Harvard Studies in Business History. Harvard UP 2005 (also via Vestag 1871–1934)
  • Reinhard Frommelt: Pan- Europe or Central Europe . Efforts to reach agreement in the calculation of German economics and politics 1925–1933. DVA , Stuttgart 1977 Series: Series of the quarterly books for contemporary history; No. 34 Zugl .: Univ. Konstanz, Diss., 1975 ISBN 3-421-01793-X
  • Gerhard Th. Mollin: Mining corporations and "Third Reich". The contrast between monopoly industry and command economy in German armaments and expansion 1936–1944 (= critical studies on historical science . Volume 78). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1988, ISBN 3-525-35740-0 (Dissertation. Bielefeld University, 1986).
  • Kim Christian Priemel: Flick: a corporate history from the German Empire to the Federal Republic. Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 3-8353-0219-1 , p. 121ff. online (accessed June 1, 2009)
  • Karl Heinrich Pohl : Weimar's economy and the foreign policy of the republic 1924–1926. From the Dawes Plan to the International Iron Pact. Droste, Düsseldorf 1979. Zugl .: Univ. Hamburg, Diss. Phil. 1978 udT .: From the Dawes Plan (1924) to the International Iron Pact (1926), ISBN 3-7700-0525-2
  • Alfred Reckendrees: The “Stahltrust” project. The foundation of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG and its corporate development 1926–1933 / 34. Series of publications for the journal for corporate history, CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-45819-X
  • Gerald Spindler: Law and corporate group: Interdependencies of legal and corporate development in Germany and the USA between 1870 and 1933. Mohr Siebeck Verlag 1993, ISBN 3-16-146123-1 S110ff. online (accessed June 1, 2009)
  • Ralf Stremmel, Manfred Rasch: Finding aid for the stocks: Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG and Bergbau- und Industriewerte GmbH. 2 volumes. Series: Publications from the Thyssen AG archive. Duisburg 1996
  • Wilhelm Treue , Helmut Uebbing: The fires never go out. August Thyssen Hut. Festschrift for the 75th anniversary. Vol. 1: 1890-1926 , therein Chap. 5: From World War I to Steel Association 1918–1926 (Vol. 2: “1926–1966.”) Econ, Düsseldorf 1966
  • Helmut Uebbing: Paths and waymarks . 100 years of Thyssen 1891–1991. Siedler, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-88680-417-8 (therein: "Thyssen im Stahlverein")
  • The United Steel Works A.-G. Its structure and its significance for Germany and the world economy. Edited by Schwarz, Goldschmidt & Co., Hoppenstedt, Berlin W8 1926.

Films, film contributions

  • Gerolf Karwath: Hitler's elites after 1945. Part 3: Entrepreneurs - Profiteers of injustice. Director: Holger Hillesheim. Südwestrundfunk (SWR, 2002).

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Dietrich, p. 10
  2. ↑ Dietrich, p. 95 ff.
  3. ↑ Who owns the steel association? In: Die Zeit , No. 39/1949
  4. ↑ vg-duesseldorf.nrw.de ( Memento of the original dated August 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vg-duesseldorf.nrw.de
  5. ↑ a b Donges, p. 46
  6. ↑ Donges, p. 292 ff.
  7. ↑ Donges, p. 304
  8. ^ Gerhard Gebhardt: Ruhr mining, history, structure and interdependence of its societies and organizations . Essen 1957, p. 226
  9. ^ Honorary member of the Corps Rhenania Strasbourg ; Kösener corps lists 1960, 100 , 185
  10. ↑ Brüning claims that this was reported from Nazi circles; he expresses indignation about it in his memoirs. Memoirs 1918-1934 . DVA, Stuttgart 1970, p. 531.
  11. ^ Joachim Radkau : Renovation of imperialism under the sign of "rationalization". Economic imperialist strategies in Germany from the Stinnes projects to the attempt at the German-Austrian customs union 1922–1931 In: dsb. & Imanuel Geiss (ed.): Imperialism in the 20th century. Commemorative publication for George WF Hallgarten . Munich 1976, p. 233.
  12. ↑ Henry Ashby Turner: The Big Entrepreneurs and the Rise of Hitler . Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1985, p. 162
  13. ↑ Henry Ashby Turner: The Big Entrepreneurs and the Rise of Hitler . Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1985, p. 365f
  14. ↑ Stahlverein in the final phase . In: Die Zeit , No. 16/1954
  15. ↑ Article "Entflechtung der Stahl-Industrie", "Hüttenzeitung" of the Bochumer Verein, JG 22/23, 1951
  16. ↑ Retrieved on December 2, 2009, keyword: united steelworks