Viennese bridge construction and iron construction company

The Vienna Bridge and Iron Construction AG (WBB) was a Viennese company for the construction of iron and steel structures in general and of bridges in particular.

Company history

Founding and development until 1938

Wiener Brückenbau und Eisenkonstruktions AG was founded in 1920 by the Anglo-Austrian bank and private individuals. The first location was the factory acquired from Teudloff & Dittrich Armaturen- und Maschinenfabrik at Engerthstrasse 115.

The foundation took place at an economically unfavorable time, the companies Gridl , Wiener Eisenbau AG, Ingenieur Wahlberg and Waagner Biro were tough competitors. The membership in the bridge building cartel did not bring much because of the bad quotas , so that the WBB left this cartel , which intensified the competitive situation even more. Nevertheless, it was possible to employ between 90 and 190 people.

Third Reich

In 1938/1939 Wiener Brückenbau und Eisenkonstruktions AG was merged with Wiener Eisenbau AG, whereby the locations Hardtmuthgasse 131-135 and Laxenburger Straße 1 came into the possession of the WBB.

During the Second World War , production was converted to war-essential needs:

• Individual elements for war bridge equipment that built bridges with a span of up to 50 meters using the modular system .
• Body for two-man submarines , the completion of which took place in Wilhelmshaven .

Of the people employed here in 1941, one third each were Austrian workers, conscripts and French prisoners of war, for whom there was a separate prisoner-of-war camp .

Post-war period and takeover by VOEST

From April 11, 1945, Wiener Brückenbau und Eisenkonstruktions AG belonged to the Soviet USIA group - initially with Austrian management under Soviet control, from 1953 only under Soviet management. About 80 percent of the production went into the communist sphere of influence and only the rest remained in Austria.

On August 13, 1955, the company was handed over to the Republic of Austria , which Wiener Brückenbau und Eisenkonstruktions AG had already nationalized in 1946 .

The state administration was given the task of rebuilding and modernizing the WBB, as only the most necessary investments had been made under the rule of the Soviet Union . The machine park was correspondingly outdated . In addition, an adjacent area with a rail connection was acquired and expanded as the Inzersdorf II plant .

In 1959 Wiener Brückenbau und Eisenkonstruktions AG received new management, which was in part identical to the top management of VOEST Linz, so that from this point on, WBB was in a personal union with VOEST and was nevertheless independent under company law.

The new management tried to concentrate the locations in the south of Vienna. The plant in Engerthstrasse was sold as was the one in Hardtmuthgasse, which was handed over to the new owner in 1967.

In 1963 the shares in WBB were transferred from the Republic of Austria to VOEST, in accordance with a resolution of the National Council, in which Wiener Brückenbau und Eisenkonstruktions AG subsequently merged.

In the early 1980s the name was changed to "VOEST-Alpine Hebetechnik und Brückenbau-AG", or "VA-HEBAG" for short.

Privatization and bankruptcy

As part of a profit and loss agreement between the company and VOEST-Alpine AG, the parent company had suffered the loss of the company for many years. When the group itself got into considerable economic difficulties, VA-HEBAG was sold to a German entrepreneur in mid-1987. However, this did not succeed in putting the company on an economically sound basis, so that bankruptcy had to be declared in May 1988. The entire workforce resigned prematurely at the end of April because salaries were no longer paid. The industrial site in Oberlaaerstraße was subsequently closed. A large hardware store was later built on this site.

Cableways

From 1948 the company also built cable cars. The first was a single chairlift that went up to the Ehrenbachhöhe in Kitzbühel until 1985 . The last bridge building in Vienna was a two-cable gondola , the Zwölferhorn cable car in St. Gilgen on Lake Wolfgang. It was shut down in 2019.

The cable car construction department was presumably taken over by the Girak company. This happened at the same time as the takeover of the entire company by VOEST.

Products

In the diploma thesis written in 1973, Peter Hana mainly deals with the business management aspects of Wiener Brückenbau und Eisenkonstruktions AG, but does not mention any construction projects that have been carried out. The few examples mentioned here are finds from the Internet.

The WBB was active in the business areas:

• Hall construction ( heating house roof in Strasshof an der Nordbahn , 1947)

• Bridge construction ( Uferbahnbrücke on the Vienna Danube Canal )

• Crane construction (gantry cranes and hall of the LD steelworks at Henrichshütte in Hattingen , approx. 1970)

• Turntable construction

• Stage equipment for theaters

• Container construction (According to Vienna City Hall correspondence, repair of the Baumgarten (Vienna) and Simmering gasometers after the Second World War)

• Vehicle construction ( garbage truck ) (According to the Vienna City Hall correspondence dated May 4, 1948, garbage trucks for municipal garbage disposal were manufactured together with Österreichische Saurer-Werke AG )

• Cable cars, among other things, to the Stubnerkogel in Bad Gastein and to the Schöckl in Sankt Radegund near Graz

In addition to the products listed above, the following should be mentioned:

• Steel construction : hangar roof for Amman Airport, Jordan; Roofing of the Prater Stadium in Vienna; numerous hall structures, u. a. for steelworks built by VOEST-Alpine;

• Bridge construction : Danube bridges, mostly in collaboration with other Austrian companies, in Krems, Vienna (Prater), and the temporary bridge for the tram after the collapse of the Reichsbrücke in Vienna;

• Crane construction and port handling technology : numerous steelworks cranes, such as casting, loading, slab tong and scrap yard cranes, for several steelworks in Wallonia (Belgium), in the Linz steelworks of the parent company, as well as for steelworks built by the parent company, e.g. B. Shlobin, Belarus, Misurata, Libya, and Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia; the stripper crane with the highest stripping pressure in the world (500 tons) for a steel mill in India; a slab tong crane with slewing trolley and large crane track width for a steelworks in Ijmuiden, the Netherlands; Grab ship unloading bridges : a total of 5 pieces for Antwerp, with grabbers for 20 or 25 tons; one for Bakar, Yugoslavia, one for Swinouscie, Poland, 2 pieces with 50 t grabs and 2000 t / h unloading capacity for Constancea, Romania. A ship unloader that had been ordered by a Greek company and could not be erected at the intended installation site in Patras for environmental reasons, was still stored with its parts on the premises at the time of bankruptcy and was later assembled near Marseille. In addition, a slewing crane in the Vienna harbor, which had been built by another company, was repaired or z. T. renewed after it was overturned and badly damaged.

• Theater technology : the last order in this sector was the floating stage for the Bregenz Festival. After this order, the division was discontinued because the management suspected insufficient demand worldwide.

literature

• Peter Hana: Wiener Brückenbau und Eisenkonstruktions AG , diploma thesis, University of World Trade, Vienna, 1973.