Wolff Walsrode
| Wolff Walsrode, until 1969 Wolff & Co.
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| legal form |
Aktiengesellschaft , former, until 1965 limited partnership on shares |
| founding | January 20, 1815 |
| Seat |
Walsrode , Germany (main location: Bomlitz ) |
| management | (last) Dr. Dieter Herzog |
| Number of employees | 1500 (2005, 1970: 3966) |
| sales | € 329 million (2005) |
The factory in Bomlitz (based in Walsrode ), which had been operating as Wolff & Co. for almost a century , emerged from a powder factory founded in 1815 and was one of the oldest and largest chemical sites in Lower Saxony . The Wolff Walsrode AG was most recently a holding in Bayer Corporation. It included companies in the chemical industry , the packaging industry and production-related services.
Several independent companies and parts of the company have emerged from the plant and characterize today's industrial park Walsrode in Bomlitz. A substantial part of it has been a business unit of the Dow Chemical Company since 2007 under the name Dow Wolff Cellulosics GmbH . Another essential part has merged into the Wihuri Packaging Group and is the largest location of the Wipak Group .
location
The factories of the former Wolff Walsrode AG are mainly located in Bomlitz , which lies in the southwest of the Lüneburg Heath between the metropolitan areas of Hanover , Hamburg and Bremen . Here, the former factory parts extend today's Industrial Park Walsrode Altwerk and Kiebitzort almost two kilometers along the Bomlitztales and Fuchsberg and Röpersberg above the northern valley slopes. The settlement development of Bomlitz and the neighboring Benefeld is spatially and historically closely linked to the development of the factory facilities. The similarly early industrialized town of Bitterfeld in Saxony-Anhalt was added as a further location in 1996 .
Powder factory Bomlitz and Wolff & Co. from 1815 to 1914
In 1814 (as Napoleon's reign ended and the Kingdom of Hanover in the Congress of Vienna re-emerged) was at the barrage of the former Bommelser paper mill (1681 to 1812) to the then Bommelse mentioned Bomlitz the powder mill Leschen, Holiday & Wolff built and Commissioned in 1815. After the initiator and first technical manager, Dr. Georg Leschen, who had already given up in 1819 and the second co-owner, Ludolph Urlaub, left in 1824, August Wolff ran the August Wolff powder mill from Walsrode, 7 kilometers away.
The company grew very slowly at first, but exported overseas in 1818 when only five mills and a nitric plant were in operation. By 1855, three large neighboring farms had been bought, which enabled the construction of three more barrages and at the same time created the largest agricultural operation in the Fallingbostel district with 430 hectares . In 1857 the Bomlitz powder factory with 10 powder mills passed to Wilhelm Wolff. The later rapid expansion to 21 production sites was made possible by the switch to steam power from 1873. The drive was transferred to the production sites by means of wire cables (up to 1.85 km). From 1875 onwards, the expansion entailed the establishment of a first industrial railway ( Feldbahn ), which existed until 1945.
Also in 1873 Wolff merged with the small powder factory Fallingbostel , which was only founded in 1865, and the Rönsahler powder factory in Westphalia to form Deutsche Pulverfabriken Actien-Gesellschaft zu Rönsahl und Walsrode . In 1876 the powder factory in Rönsahl left the company.
The remaining works in the Heidmark firmierten then for the following 98 years as a partnership limited by shares under the name Wolff & Co . In 1878 Wolff began to manufacture gun wool , which was crucial for the later development of the company.
When Oskar Wolff took over the plant management from his late father in 1886 , the plant had 205 employees. In a cartel agreement , Wolff & Co. joined forces with the Cramer & Buchholz powder factory in Rönsahl in 1887 and, in 1889, with the two other important powder producers of the German Empire, from whose merger in 1890 the United Cologne-Rottweiler Pulverfabriken AG emerged as the dominant member of the cartel. Although this cartel link brought profit advantages , it hindered Wolff & Co. as the smallest member in the long term from offering their own developments of smokeless military powder to the Prussian War Ministry. The production of smokeless powder, which started in 1888, ensured the long-term existence of the company and led to the establishment of what is now the largest part of the plant in Bomlitz, the Kiebitzort plant. (In 1926 the other cartel members merged with IG Farbenindustrie AG, whereas Wolff & Co. remained independent. However, ¾ of the limited partnership shares were held by IG Farben.)
In the following years the production of nitrocellulose and gun wool was expanded and in 1909 the production of safety explosives began, especially for the potash industry south of Hanover ( Bomlit and Kiwit ). With the construction of a power station in 1912, steam power was replaced by electrical energy. In 1913, attempts to make photographic films began for a short time .
Wolff & Co. from 1914 to 1945
During the First World War , the number of employees rose from 568 to 2800, which was largely due to investment promotion measures by the Prussian War Ministry. The daily output of smokeless nitrocellulose powder was from 2 to 15 to. increased. The 3.6 km long and steeply steep Cordingen-Bomlitz industrial railway was also built and completed in 1916. As a replacement for the Holland gunpowder department , which was destroyed by an explosion in 1916 , the Haßmoor gunpowder factory was rebuilt in the Bomlitztal, above the Röpersberg department . Only now has the factory premises been fenced off.
After the war, as a result of the Versailles Treaty, the wartime production facilities had to be dismantled , which was monitored from 1920 to 1925 by the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission . In the meantime, up to 240 of the remaining 660 employees could be kept thanks to non-business railway engineering orders and Glauber's salt extraction . In 1919 the factory management, which had previously been based in Walsrode, moved to a new representative building in Bomlitz. By here also equipped research laboratory is now mainly the production of developed cellophane films ( Transparit ), artificial casings for food packaging ( Walsroder intestine ) in partially self-made production lines. The production of plastics was discontinued as early as 1940 by order of the authorities because it was not of sufficient importance for the war effort. It was not until 1925 that the production of gun wool and nitrocellulose powder started again. At the same time a cooperation with the company Sander in Bremerhaven began , with which the development of rocket propellants was operated. In 1930 Wolff & Co. had 894 employees in around 400 buildings on around 2000 machines.
After the so-called seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933, the production of military explosives rose sharply again. It was financed by the Stahl- und Maschinengesellschaft mbH ( STAMAG ) affiliated with the Reichswehr Ministry . At the request of the Reichswehr Ministry, Wolff & Co built a larger plant for the production of nitrocellulose ( Waldhof plant ) on the Fuchsberg plateau in 1935 and relocated the black powder and can factory there. The hillside location made it possible that the dangerous liquids did not have to be pumped. In the same year, the contractual basis for the establishment of the Eibia company was fixed at Wolff . At the instigation of the Army High Command , a test facility for the further development of powder types and for the production of nitroglycerine was built in 1937 and 1938 on a slope in the lower Bomlitz Valley , the Walo I facility . These and other systems built from 1937 were operated from 1938 by the subsidiary Eibia , which was managed by Günther Wolff and was directly subordinate to the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition ( Albert Speer ). The black powder production, which continued at Wolff & Co during the Second World War , was of secondary importance.
In 1940 Wolff & Co. was one of the 78 members of the non-profit fund of Hanoverian industrialists .
Wolff & Co. from 1945 to 1969
On April 17, 1945, British troops occupied the plant and shut it down. Just a few weeks later, drinking water was allowed to be pumped again and electricity to be produced, and then the central workshop and NC artificial casing production were allowed to work again. In 1946 the collodion wool plant on the reparations list was restarted due to demand in the American occupation zone . The only partial dismantling and the bridging of the coal crisis through three small mines in the Ruhr area caused the number of employees to rise to over 1,000 in 1948. In 1950, with the start of carboxymethyl cellulose ("CMC") production, a new business area was opened and the number of employees doubled. In 1954 Wolff was completely released from Allied control. In 1956 the 30-meter-high viscose tower , which still characterizes the Bomlitz townscape, was put into operation. In 1960 the new business area was expanded to include a methyl cellulose production plant ("MC"), and the number of employees reached the 3000 mark. In 1965, the Metzeler Group, Frankfurt , became the sole owner of the share capital of what was now Wolff & Co. AG . From 1968 on, hydroxyethylmethylcellulose ("HEMC") was also produced in addition to MC .
Wolff Walsrode AG from 1969 to 2007
In the course of years of gradual share takeover by Bayer AG, which was completed in 1974, the company was called Wolff Walsrode AG from 1969 . In 1974, after a three-year construction period, a large wastewater treatment plant with initially 190,000 population equivalents was put into operation together with the Bomlitz community . In 1979 the company was divided into the chemical products divisions (especially cellulose chemical products , such as nitrocellulose as a raw material for coatings) and foils (refined foils for food packaging). 1982–1984 additional production facilities for CMC and MC were put into operation in the Röpersberg plant section.
Wolff started up a new methyl cellulose production facility in Bitterfeld in 1994 (today Dow Wolff Cellulosics GmbH ) and in 1998 bought the film business from Elf Atochem Germany . Attempts to make biodegradable films usable for food packaging and waste disposal were initially abandoned.
In 2001, Wolff Walsrode AG opened the previously closed factory premises as the Walsrode industrial park for other companies and divided its two business fields, now called cellulose chemistry and films , into legally independent subsidiaries. Thereby forming Wolff Cellulosics (2002: 600 employees, turnover: € 230 million) with its pilot plant and various product and process developments worldwide center of excellence for cellulose chemistry of the parent company, Bayer, whose former division Material Science (now Covestro ) thus at their Bomlitz location on the Concentrated production of cellulose derivatives for building materials, printing inks, paints, food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. The film division was continued by Epurex Films (80 employees), CaseTech (400 employees), Walothen (240 employees) and Covexx Films (530 employees). Technology and on-site operations were taken over by Probis GmbH (400 employees), qualifications and other personnel services by AF Personalpartner GmbH, which ultimately emerged from the vocational school with training workshop founded in 1924.
Wipak , which belongs to the Finnish Wihuri group (packaging) , bought Covexx (composite films for food packaging and medical-technical applications) in 2001 and Walothen GmbH (polypropylene films) in 2004, which means that around 800 employees in Bomlitz belong to Wipak (today around 730).
The CaseTech Group (casings for sausage products, Walsroder) has been part of Equita GmbH & Co. Holding KGaA from Bad Homburg since April 2011 . In 2009 a relocation of the labor-intensive production capacities to the company location in Poland became foreseeable, as well as an expansion of product development in Bomlitz.
In June 2007 Bayer AG sold Wolff Walsrode AG to Dow Germany for € 540 million in order to use the proceeds for the takeover of Schering AG . Wolff Walsrode was dissolved as an independent stock corporation and incorporated into the new business unit Dow Wolff Cellulosics in the form of a newly founded GmbH .
Agricultural activities
Almost during the entire existence of the company, agriculture was practiced on the company's own Gut Bomlitz (from 1883 an independent manor district), sometimes with an experimental character. Initially (data from 1855), the area typically consisted of only one third of fields and grassland , the rest was heather with some forest. In the course of time, the heather areas were completely reforested , with various methods of reforestation being tested in repeated consultation with the Prussian forest administration. The forest image still shows a diverse, sometimes unusual species composition.
Especially Dr. Oskar Wolff was committed to the development of agriculture in Bomlitz and the region (e.g. 1894: asparagus planted on almost 25 hectares, 1895: co-founding of the Walsrode dairy cooperative, from which today's Vereinigte Heidemolkereien eGmbH Walsrode emerged , co-founding of the village of Schneeheide near Walsrode Attempts at a biodynamic management of the property.) The activities in what was then German East Africa (e.g. participation in the Kilimanjaro ostrich breeding society ) became a financial burden for the company. Otto Bittelmann managed Gut Bomlitz from 1951 to 1977 . After 1977 Lochow-Petkus GmbH managed the estate as a seed breeding company, and since 1978 the 230 hectare forest has been looked after by the Walsrode Forestry Office.
Infrastructural importance
The Wolff company as one of the oldest cores of the industrial development of Lower Saxony and its at times largest location for the chemical industry is still of great importance for the development of the rural densely populated area in the middle Bohemia with the cores Bad Fallingbostel, Walsrode and Bomlitz.
At the end of 1877, one of the first telephone lines in the German Reich was laid between the Bomlitz plant and the main office in Walsrode . In 1884, attempts were still made to install electrical street and house lighting in Walsrode, in the same year as the commissioning of Germany's first electrical street lighting in Triberg (in the Bomlitz plant, however, electrical lighting was only installed 6 years later). By 1885 the company health insurance fund , the first company apartments and a school community were established (together with the neighboring village of Westerharl). At times, the company also had an influence on political decisions, as Oskar Wolff was a member of the Hanoverian Provincial Landtag from 1889 to 1920 (at times also a reserve member of the Prussian Landtag ) and from 1896 to 1933 mayor of Walsrode .
Wolff & Co. supported Walsrode's application for the construction of the Hanover – Walsrode – Visselhövede railway (1885) by assuming guarantees, on the basis of which the district council in Fallingbostel also accepted the proposal (1889) and the railway was built by 1890.
The development of the core town of Bomlitz was almost identical to the history of the plant in the 19th century. Initially, most of the apartments were factory-owned, their number rose from 60 in 1905 (estate area) to 168 in 1945. In the 1920s and 1930s, various social facilities were built that shaped the townscape of Bomlitz until the 1980s, such as a festival - and dining room, a soccer field, a swimming pool, tennis courts, a single home and restaurants. The Bomlitz manor district, which had existed since 1874, was forcibly converted into an independent municipality in 1929 with around 1,600 inhabitants. From the factory settlements and workers' camps of the subsidiary Eibia , the later town of Benefeld emerged , the second core town of the municipality of Bomlitz , which was incorporated into Walsrode in 2020 . Thanks to the income from the trade capital tax , the municipality of Bomlitz was able to form a powerful unified municipality together with Benefeld and other places in 1968 and, by the end of Wolff Walsrode AG, built up a large number of municipal institutions.
External impact
The relationship between the surrounding towns and the largest industrial location between Hanover , Bremen and Hamburg was rather ambiguous. The farmers in the area called the lower Bomlitztal with the early powder factories as Düvelsgrund , and the resistance of the Harburg population against the Bomlitz powder transport through the city culminated in 1885 when a powder-laden Elbe ship was blown up. Wolff & Co. later became the starting point for one of the largest defense industrial projects during the National Socialist era , the historical processing of which began with a long delay at all of the Eibia subsidiary's locations. Later, the industrial site Bomlitz was strongly associated with the water pollution, especially the Bomlitz, and the odor nuisance that lasted into the 1980s.
On the other hand, the plant stands for the development of a small, medium-central agglomeration with urban social structure in the three main towns and for increased social security in the respective time scale (a school foundation and a fund to support workers in need was established as early as 1894 and a consumer association for workers in 1897 in Bomlitz).
literature
- Stephan Heinemann : "The King of Walsrode". From the life of Oskar Wolff (1858–1943) , (Rückblende 4, Ed. Vd Stiftung Geschichtshaus Bomlitz eV), Bomlitz 2008
- Olaf Mußmann : Paper, powder and gentle energy. The pre-industrial milling trade in Bomlitz (aspects of Bomlitz local history 1), Münster 1993
- Günter Riedel: The Bomlitz Powder Factory , Wiesbaden 1997
- Hans Stuhlmacher : The Fallingbostel district. Local history book of the district (edited by the district committee of the Fallingbostel district), Magdeburg 1935
- Hans Stuhlmacher: History of the City of Walsrode , Walsrode 1964
- Carsten Walczok: The powder mills of Meckelfeld and Bomlitz. The manufacture of gunpowder in the 18th and 19th centuries using the example of two powder mills , Münster 2009, ISBN 3-643-10138-4
- Henning Wolff: Wolff & Co limited partnership on shares 1876–1931 (flashback 1, publisher vd Stiftung Geschichtshaus Bomlitz e.V.), Bomlitz 2005
- Oskar Wolff : The development of the Bomlitz powder factory , Walsrode 1942
- Board of Directors of Wolff & Co. AG (Ed.): Wolff & Co. Walsrode 1815–1965. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the company , Walsrode 1965
- Thorsten Neubert-Preine : "" With zeal ". From the powder mill to the modern company location, 1815-2015." Festschrift for the 200th anniversary of the Walsrode industrial park in Bomlitz, Bomlitz 2015.
Individual evidence
- ↑ From October 1, 2015 "Dow Deutschland Anlagengesellschaft mbH, Bomlitz plant."
- ↑ The maps are based on cadastral and land maps of the Bomlitz estate from 1903 and 1918 (taken in 1917) and the measuring table sheet 1529 (today 3023) Visselhövede from 1899. The contour lines are derived from the measuring table sheet and current topographic maps.
- ↑ Non-profit cash register hannov. Industrialist , list of members from May 28, 1940, in: Dieter Tasch (red. Edit.): From the factory owners' association to the industrial club. A Century of Hanoverian Economy 1887 1987 , ed. from Industrie-Club Hannover eV on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the association in October 1987, Th. Schäfer, Hannover 1987, p. 124ff.
- ^ MC production Bayer ( Memento from October 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
- ^ Oskar Wolff: The geological and land u. Forestry conditions in the Fallingbostel district together with an outline of German prehistory and early history, Hanover 1937 (2nd edition).
Web links
- Walsrode industrial park
- Industrial Park Association ChemCoast, with aerial photo
- Dow Wolff Cellulosics ( Memento from December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- Successor to Wipak in Bomlitz
- http://web.mac.com/jpreine/Geschichtshaus_Bomlitz/Einfuehrung.html (link not available)
Coordinates: 52 ° 54 ′ 19.6 " N , 9 ° 39 ′ 34.4" E