Wolgaster Actien-Gesellschaft für Holzverarbeitung

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The Wolgaster Actien-Gesellschaft für Holzverarbeitung was a company founded in 1868 , which is considered to be the first manufacturer of prefabricated wooden houses in Germany.

history

The company began in a shipyard in Wolgast , which was taken over in 1868 by the then 24-year-old master shipbuilder J. Heinrich Kraeft and expanded by a steam granulator before 1878 .

After a devastating fire, Kraeft founded a limited partnership based on shares in 1884 , which subsequently began building wooden barracks . At the end of the 1880s, the company was already importing large quantities of resilient construction timber ( Cypress , Yellowpine) from the USA ( Alabama , Georgia ) and thus also supplied the capital Berlin . The trading partner in Alabama was AC Danner & Co. in Mobile .

1889 changed its name , the company Wolgaster Actien- Society for woodworking . In the following years, in particular, elaborately designed, prefabricated and assembled on the building site residential houses and villas were manufactured, including numerous in the seaside resorts on Rügen and Usedom . In addition, the company, which had over 150 employees in 1892, also manufactured barracks, pavilions, drinking halls, garden houses, fences and joinery work. Prefabricated houses were not only produced for Germany, but also exported overseas, especially to South America and East Africa. The shipment took place via Stettin and Hamburg .

The Berlin critic, playwright and theater director Oscar Blumenthal had the model house allegedly presented at the 1893 World Exhibition in Chicago - dismantled again - transported to his summer residence in Bad Ischl and rebuilt as " Villa Blumenthal ". This building, which has been preserved to this day, was designed by the Berlin architect Johannes Lange, like many of the Wolgast buildings.

Company founder J. Heinrich Kraeft died in 1897 after allegedly having to vacate his management post two years earlier. His successor was Max Riemer.

The so-called dragon house built by the "poet of the Baltic Sea", Max Dreyer , in 1901 in Göhren on the island of Rügen is one of the buildings carried out at this time .

In 1903 the company changed its company again to Wolgaster Holzindustrie-Actiengesellschaft . In 1908, after Riemer's dismissal, under the new leadership of Paul Linke, radical changes took place. The construction of wooden houses was temporarily stopped and small furniture was produced instead.

A major fire destroyed the plant in 1913. Under the company Wolgaster Holzhäuser-Gesellschaft mbH , Johannes Sproksoff's production was continued in part of the factory premises. In 1927 the company had branches in Berlin, Malmö, Belfort and Sofia. The Wolgaster wood industry AG , however, was in 1921 liquidated .

In 1938 the company was sold to Carl Hagemann. The focus was on the production of accommodation barracks, wooden houses and halls.

On July 1, 1945, Wolgaster Holzindustrie Hagemann & Co. was taken over by the city of Wolgast and transferred to VEB Holzbau Wolgast , whose business was initially limited to the manufacture of barrels and the repair of freight wagons. From 1947 barracks were built as reparations for the USSR . The construction of interior doors and windows later developed into a core business, and VEB was the largest specialist window construction company in the GDR . Ten years after the fall of the Wall, the successor company, Nordfenster GmbH, had to file for bankruptcy in 2000 , ending a 130-year company tradition.

Examples of completed buildings

literature

  • Hermann Rückwardt : Modern wooden buildings. Kessling & Spielmeyer, Berlin 1893.
  • Kurt Junghanns : The house for everyone. On the history of prefabrication in Germany. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-433-01274-1 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Bauer: Wooden houses from Wolgast. Icons of resort architecture. Part I, IGEL Usedom-Verlag, Heringsdorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-9810371-4-2 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Bauer: Wooden houses from Wolgast. Icons of resort architecture. Part II, IGEL Usedom-Verlag, Heringsdorf 2011, ISBN 978-3-9810371-5-9 .
  • The strange villa of the “bloody Oscar” and the birth of world success. (Brochure) Janisch-Medien KG, Bad Ischl o. J.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wochenblatt für Baukunde , No. 13 (of March 28, 1888), p. 26.
  2. ↑ Deutsche Bauzeitung , Volume 22, 1888, No. 23, p. 139.
  3. ^ Letter from JH Kraeft to G. Engelmann dated May 8, 1878 , accessed on September 22, 2018.