The industry died in spurts

Offenbach is indeed no longer a factory town. But in the 1960s, concrete steles at the entrances to the city still indicated that we had now reached the "industrial city of Offenbach". It was not until the following decade that the industrial decline took hold like an epidemic. It changed the city within a short space of time.

Some remember it as a gradual process. Others, looking back, see it as a rapid series of explosions. Perhaps it really did start with a bang. When the Mayer & Sohn leather factory on Mainstrasse was demolished in the spring of 1969, explosives were used. It dismantled what was left of the 110-year-old company. The following year, Bürgeler Lederwerke Becker went into liquidation. The Hofmann leather factory was the last of Offenbach's typical tanneries to close its doors in 1973.

The urban fabric was not yet shaken by the demolition on Mainstrasse. The fate of a large company in Nordend also remained without serious consequences. The people of Offenbach knew it as "Schraubenfabrik Heyne", although it had long since become a specialist in precision turned parts.
Heyne Bros. mainly supplied the automotive industry and its suppliers with parts that required precision down to thousandths of a millimeter. The factory had already shrunk to around 350 employees when the owner family sold it to the Stinnes Group in 1962. Five years later, Stinnes phased out production, almost a hundred years after the company was founded. 57 of the oldest employees were taken on by "Offenbacher Präzisions-Drehteile", a company founded by Heyne sales manager Hans Hubert. The others were not made redundant either. They were easily placed with Löbro, MAN Roland and Collet & Engelhard. The labor market was still able to cope with such a closure.

It was only the development of the Collet & Engelhard machine and tool factory, founded in 1862, that caused major concern. Those who were employed there enjoyed the security of a job for a long time. But in December 1971, the more than 800 employees learned that the shareholders' meeting had decided to close the company. A few months later, they had to watch as the factory equipment was sold off in a total sell-off. This loss of jobs was still more or less bearable. Other companies were in a position to offer jobs.

With Collet & Engelhard, however, the industrial decline became an avalanche. Around the same time, the Jacob Mönch metal goods factory on Ludwigstraße closed. It was a supplier to the leather goods industry, which was already ailing. In 1972, the company Friedrich Schmaltz on Waldstraße, known as "Automaten-Schmaltz" and founded in 1884, followed. 250 employees had manufactured grinding machines and grinding wheels there. The company Gebr. Schmaltz on Luisenstraße, which had the same name but was not identical, operated in a similar product area. It also disappeared from the market at this time. At almost the same time, the grinding machine manufacturer MSO on Senefelderstrasse closed its first operations. This affected around 250 employees. From 1967, the plant belonged to the American Cincinnati-Milacron Group. Some time after the shrinkage, the company ordered its complete closure.

There was talk of "mass redundancies" in the newspaper. In 1972, the prestigious Eduard Rheinberger shoe factory on Berliner Strasse closed. This was a reminder that Offenbach was still an important location for the German shoe industry at the beginning of the century. Another 100 or so employees lost their jobs when the metal goods factory Sustan GmbH on Sprendlinger Landstraße went bankrupt in 1974. Among other things, it had produced standard parts for tools. Around 200 people lost their jobs when the Peter Schlesinger company on the corner of Waldstraße and Bismarckstraße, a supplier to the bicycle and automotive industry founded in 1885, filed for bankruptcy in 1974.

This attracted particular attention because artists and politicizing youth groups set up shop in the buildings, initially illegally. In 1980, they were evicted by the police so that a parking garage could be built there. The Rowenta company, a leader in lighters and electrical household appliances, stood like a beacon on Waldstrasse during this dark period. Thinking of expansion, it acquired the neighboring site of the recently defunct Hartmann AG, an export-oriented specialist for conveyor systems, in 1976. On the other side of Waldstrasse, Rowenta also acquired the industrial wasteland left behind by Schmaltz. However, the company, founded in 1884, was to have no future: in 1963, the private owners sold it to the American Sunbeam Group. In 1988, it became part of the French SEB Group. The chimney was blown up in 2000. Although the Rowenta brand still exists, the Offenbach production site, where Rowenta workers were once considered privileged, no longer does.

In 1988, the vending machine manufacturer Markomat went bankrupt, and in 1989, the Neubecker company on Frankfurter Strasse, which specialized in brewing machines. It has a special place in Offenbach's history, as the Kaiser Friedrich spring was drilled on its site in 1888, which almost turned Offenbach into a spa town. The spring, which became an independent company after it was tapped, no longer bubbles. The mineral water fountain on Ludwigstrasse has been sealed and the brand sold. The bottling machines were taken by the scrap dealer.

The company Friedrich Heim & Co. on Rödernstraße can look back on a proud founding year of 1821. For a long time, it had a monopoly on steel engraving embossing presses. It also disappeared. In 1994, the end came for fur finisher Thorer on Mühlheimer Strasse, originally a Leipzig-based company that successfully started up again in Offenbach after 1945. The closure affected around 300 employees.

When the company Stahlbau Lavis, founded in 1897, was sold by its owners at the end of the century, there were still almost 300 specialists working on the construction of bridges, large tanks and high-rise steel buildings. Today, the Ring-Center shopping center operates on the Lavis site. The list is not exhaustive. In the span of a single generation, the 20th century wiped out what the previous century had developed: the industrial city of Offenbach. Those were terrible years with painful cuts in the flesh of the city. They bled for a long time and the scars still itch. It exacerbated social problems, bent lives and forced politicians to think differently. In just thirty years, Offenbach has become a different city.

Lothar R. Braun, 2007