History
For decades, Offenbach as a chemical location was an important image factor with strong economic power in the city. Nevertheless, production has always been subject to changeable development. Now the transformation into an innovation campus can begin. A look at industrial history.
170 years of chemical production: Historical development
The history of today's Clariant site, which has also operated under the names Oehler, Hoechst and Alessa in the meantime, began in 1842 with the construction of a chemical factory for distilling tar by Dr. Ernst Sell. He chose Offenbach as the location, as there was no freedom of trade in Frankfurt at the time and manufacturing industry was rejected. Factory founder Sell was a student and friend of Justus von Liebig (University of Giessen) and the first operator of a tar distillation factory in Germany. Among other things, it produced disinfectants and moth powder.
In 1850, Karl Oehler acquired the factory from Sell, who had fallen ill, and expanded tar distillation; the factory burned down in 1856. Oehler then experimented with new products made from tar and produced the first synthetic paint from 1851. According to the commemorative publication "Werk Offenbach - Fortschritt aus Tradition", which Hoechst had produced in 1992 to mark the 150th anniversary of the site, this took place before the generally accepted "birth of the tar dye industry" due to the accidental discovery of the dye mauveine made from tar by the English researcher Perkin in 1865.
The rise and fall of the dye industry
In 1862, blue dyes made from aniline were awarded a prize by Oehler at the World Exhibition in Paris, in 1898 Oehler produced 1/3 of Germany's dyes, and Germany dominated the world market for synthetic dyes at the time (1913 with 85 %). Eduard Oehler, Karl's son, was dubbed the "Blue King" by experts. As a result of a patent lawsuit and further errors in patent applications, the plant, which had 530 employees at the time, got into difficulties and was sold to Griesheim Elektron in 1905. In the period that followed, the plant flourished again and employed more than 2,000 people. Research continued to be carried out at the plant, for example by Arthur Zitscher (who received an award from experts for "Naphtol AS") and Leopold Laska. The social building on Friedhofstrasse was built later. By 1924, the plant already had 2,300 employees.
Due to reparations after the First World War and increasing competition on the global market, the German paint industry fell into crisis. As a result, the plant merged with other German companies to form IG Farben in 1925. Only 550 employees were still working in Offenbach at the time. After 1933, the demand for dyes increased again and led to a surge in expansion and modernization at the Offenbach plant, 70 percent of which was destroyed after the Second World War. The Americans broke up IG Farben and closed the factory, in which they then briefly operated a depot for looted art. From 1946, the now independent Naphtol-Chemie restored the war-damaged production facilities. In 1953, the company was taken over by Farbwerke Hoechst, which expanded the site for Trevira production from 1961. Among other things, this led to an expansion into the Kuhmühltal (a former oxbow lake of the Main), for which the watercourse was piped and moved far away from its natural bed. From 1970, "blue" production also took place again.
Farewell to a chemical site
After several name changes in the following decades, chemical production was discontinued on March 31, 2010 with the closure of the last plant ("Blau") at the Offenbach site. Clariant had previously sold the plant to Allessa, so that Clariant itself no longer operated any production at all even before the site closure, as the site offered no prospects for a chemical park concept such as the one in Frankfurt-Höchst. Allessa was the leaseholder and ultimately the operator of the site, but then withdrew from its lease and Offenbach prematurely in order to concentrate on the Fechenheim site.
The long-term decline of the Offenbach chemical site began with the restructuring of the Hoechst Group in 1994 and the sale of some facilities to Clariant in 1997. Allessa's Naphtol plant was closed in spring 2003. Further closures of chemical production facilities followed in 2006, 2007 and 2009 with the important Invista plant.
In the meantime, almost all of the factories have been demolished. A few listed buildings, such as the administration building, are to be incorporated into the planned new development of the industrial estate. From 2007, individual smaller companies and start-ups settled on the derelict site as interim uses. Most recently, the wood pellet plant of Energieversorgung Offenbach (EVO) was built on the site.
The decline of the site also documents the development of jobs. At its peak, up to 2,500 people are said to have been employed on the site. According to newspaper reports, there were around 2,000 employees at the Hoechst AG plant in Offenbach in 1982. In 1997, the year Hoechst was broken up, 748 employees were still working at "Cassella" in the Offenbach plant area. According to the source "Das Oehler-Werk in Offenbach. Historische Ansichten einer Industrie-Ikone" by Rainer Conrad, the Allessa site still had 1,000 employees in 1994, but this number fell continuously to 60 in 2010 until the site was closed. However, the city does not have any specific personnel data from the companies. The city is obliged to remain silent about the amount of trade tax, but does not deny the constantly circulating assumption that this has made a positive contribution to the city's economic situation.