Nauen sugar factory
The sugar factory Nauen was from its inception in 1889 until its closure in 1993 one of the leading sugar producers in the region of Brandenburg .
history
In 1888 industrialists and large landowners from Nauen decided to found a stock company for the purpose of building a sugar factory . In October 1889, the factory began work with 250 employees, and around 750 helpers came at harvest time. In the first year of its existence, the Nauen sugar factory processed over 31,000 tons of sugar beet. In 1893 the factory was also connected to the neighboring town of Ketzin by a railway line . This so-called “beet train” enabled the beets to be transported more efficiently from the fields to the factory, while Ketzin, located directly on the Havel, served as a transshipment point for the onward transport of the raw sugar produced by water. In 1905 the Nauener Zuckerwerk bought a competing factory in Ketzin.
Beet cultivation was not very mechanized at that time. Most of the beets were harvested by hand. The hourly wage for a harvest worker was only a few pfennigs, while a kilo of refined sugar cost half a mark. At that time, the Nauen factory only produced raw sugar. The processing into white sugar took place in refineries.
World wars and interwar period
During the First World War , production had to be severely restricted due to the lack of manpower and fuel. Forced labor by Russian prisoners of war kept the company going. In 1916 the sugar industrialist Fritz Harney took over the factory. When, after the end of the war, there was an oversupply of sugar across Europe and, as a result, a drop in prices, Harney pushed for a quota of sugar production and thus also secured the future of the Nauen sugar factory. However, from 1929 onwards, like many other companies, the factory was hit hard by the global economic crisis. There were strikes and mass layoffs.
During the Second World War , sugar production was accelerated to meet the war-related needs using Soviet prisoners of war .
Expansion in the GDR
With the establishment of the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) Fritz Harney was expropriated and the Nauen sugar factory was converted into a state-owned company (VEB).
The sugar factory eventually became one of the most important production locations in the GDR . Of all 43 sugar factories in the state, it was the only one in the Potsdam district . They covered 5% of the GDR's sugar needs. At the same time, the factory was converted to automated operations through modernization and the premises were expanded with numerous new buildings. They also had their own refinery, which has also been used to produce white sugar since 1947. In the 1850s and 1960s, over 2,000 tons of sugar were refined per day. A large part was also exported abroad, preferably to the Federal Republic, but also to India.
The end of the sugar factory
After the fall of the Wall , Pfeifer & Langen , a sugar producer from Cologne, bought the Nauener Zuckerwerk. In the free market economy , however, production was stopped due to a lack of profitability. In the last production year, 1992, only 350 tons of sugar were produced per day. At the end of March 1993, after more than a century of existence, production in the Nauen sugar factory was finally shut down. The production rooms have been empty since then.
Web links
- Early newspaper articles on the Nauen sugar factory in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Märkische Allgemeine, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany: The sugar factory opened in 1889, at that time one of the largest in Europe - even in India people ate sugar from Nauen - MAZ - Märkische Allgemeine. Retrieved July 7, 2017 .
- ^ Funkstadt Nauen: Nauen sugar factory | Historical Nauen | Nauener Zuckerfabrik 1992. June 24, 2017, accessed July 7, 2017 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 36 '18.8 " N , 12 ° 53' 13.4" E