History Window

The conclusion of two long-term delivery contracts for the transport of limestone and ores marks the beginning of towboat shipping at Franz Haniel & Cie. In contrast to tugboat shipping, the new transportation technology allows orders to be completed more quickly and cheaply, because, among other things, the barges to be pushed are unmanned and the barge train produces just one bow wave. Haniel gives the first construction contract to the Walsum Rhine shipyard of Gutehoffnungshütte in Duisburg. In the next few years, the company commissions more and more towboats, so that by the end of the 1970s it commands the largest fleet of towboats of all German shipping companies.

It had first been brought into existence on 22 June 1917 with the founding of Franz Haniel & Cie. GmbH. The shareholders were Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH) and the Neumühl, Rheinpreussen and Zollverein coal mines. The reason for the dissolution is the new Works Councils Act, which regulates for employee participation in the Supervisory Board. An Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting takes the place of the former Supervisory Board. The Supervisory Board does not return until 1952. At first it comprises individual family members, and then employee representatives following passage of the Works Constitution Act.

 Twelve people are killed in a firedamp explosion at the mine which opened in 1879. Because the colliery is connected below ground to the Oberhausen mine, nine miners there also lose their lives in the tragedy. The catastrophe prompts the works management of the Gutehoffnungshütte ironworks (GHH) to improve the climatic and ventilation conditions at the mine by installing a powerful new ventilator. The new machine began operating in 1886.

The Protestant church in Ruhrort was built in 1842 on what is today Fabrikstraße at the corner of Dr.-Hammacher-Straße. It was badly damaged during the Second World War. For a long time it was not clear what should be done with the church. Among other things, the report of 1 December 1988 recommended preserving the church tower. Haniel as the immediate neighbour assumed the costs for the extensive restoration work. In 1991 the tower was given back its original spire with copper roofing. However, the church nave was demolished and replaced by a kindergarten and residential building.

On Christmas Eve 1881, a horse-drawn tram travels for the first time from Duisburg to Ruhrort and in 1889 a gas lantern is erected to provide illumination. At the end of the nineteenth century the town council buys the Haniel Bridge and in 1904 starts to build a new bridge immediately adjacent to it. Since 1907 the Oberbürgermeister-Lehr Bridge has replaced the Haniel Bridge.

The marriage of the third oldest son of Franz and the only daughter of his brother Gerhard Haniel unites the two branches of the family. The entire assets are held within the family and can accordingly be used for expanding the company. But Hugo and Bertha Haniel also deploy their assets for charitable purposes. For example, the couple donates 2,500 thalers to the Haniel hospice in Ruhrort on the occasion of their silver wedding in 1887. The marriage between Hugo and Bertha produces two children: Adeline (1838 - 1915) and Franz (1842 - 1916).

After the Second World War, the victorious powers initiate the liquidation of large German corporations. The Control Council legislation is intended to restructure German coal mining, the chemicals industry, the major banks and the German iron and steel industry. Act No. 75 places all companies from the hard coal mining and iron and steel industries under allied control. The first intervention by the British occupying power affects GHH Oberhausen AG. In the period to follow, the company loses its 42 percent stake in Franz Haniel & Cie. GmbH (FHC). By 1953 what was once the world’s largest heavy industry corporation has been split up into four independent companies.

With this new branch, the company aims to compensate for the declining coal trade in Switzerland and break away from highly competitive mineral oil trading. In 1962, Haniel builds a large-scale gravel plant in Hard, near Weiach. It is one of the first gravel plants in Switzerland to include a modern facility to conduct gravel quarrying on a large scale. Haniel sells Weiacher Kies AG in 2004. Today, it belongs to the Swiss company Eberhard Holding AG.

In 1964 after the sale of Rheinpreussen fuel trading company Haniel started to take an interest in the consumer goods trade and Metro in particular. The first two Metro outlets opened in 1963 and 1964 in Essen and Mülheim as modern cash & carry outlets based on the American model. In March 1965 initial talks take place between Haniel and Metro founder Wilhelm Schmidt-Ruthenbeck and general agent Otto Beisheim. The result of these talks is Haniel’s participation in the construction of the Metro store in Berlin-Tiergarten. Haniel is involved with further Metro outlets from the outset. In 1966 three further Metro companies are founded in Hamburg, Munich and Cologne. Today Haniel holds 34.24% of shares with voting rights in the Metro AG management holding.

It is the first ironworks in the Ruhr and is used for the smelting of bog iron ore, a type of rock with a high concentration of iron. In 1792 Aletta Haniel takes over the haulage of ironware of St. Antony smelting works on commission for a Rotterdam trading company. By 1795 this is supplemented by business with the neighbouring Neu-Essen and Gute Hoffnung smelting works. Franz and Gerhard Haniel, Gottlob Jacobi and Heinrich Huyssen purchase the three ironworks between 1805 and 1808 and merge them to form Hüttengewerkschaft und Handlung Jacobi, Haniel & Huyssen (JHH), the predecessor of Gutehoffnungshütte AG. The residence at St. Antony smelting works today belongs to the Rhine Industrial Museum in Oberhausen.

She is the nephew of industrialist John Cockerill who is considered a pioneer of the Belgian iron industry and owns one of the most important engineering works in Seraing, near Liège. In the 1830s the Cockerill family is a competitor of the Haniels in the construction of steamships. This changes in November 1839 when Friederike Cockerill marries Max Haniel, a son of Franz Haniel. This results in the emergence of the first commercial link between the industrial centres of the Ruhr and the Liège/Aachen area. In 1853 this link is strengthened by another marriage: Friederike’s brother Heinrich Cockerill marries Franz Haniel’s only daughter Thusnelde.

Together with Gottlob Jacobi, director of St. Antony smelting works, and the brothers Franz and Gerhard Haniel he founded Hüttengewerkschaft und Handlung Jacobi, Haniel & Huyssen (JHH), which later became Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH), in 1808. In 1813 Huyssen became mayor of Essen for five years. He made extremely charitable use of his assets. In 1852 he donated a hospital that was inaugurated in 1854 and still exists today as the Huyssen Foundation. In 1865 he also donated a plot of land to the city along which Huyssen-Allee runs today and in 1866 had an orphanage built.

Prior to this only the company representatives and trustee of the family shares had been invited. The family had previously had no right of co-determination since for legal reasons the shares could not be handed over from the trusteeship to the individual family members. Dr. Alfred Haniel uses the shareholders’ meeting to announce his resignation as Chairman of the Supervisory Board. There is already a successor – his son-in-law Thuisko von Metzsch who during his time in office initiates the transition from a fuel trader and shipping company to a trading, production and services enterprise.

Many millions of Germans leave their homeland, are deported or driven out by the Red Army. However, it is impossible to flee overland: The Red Army has closed in on East Prussia and the only way for the people to escape is across the Baltic. Haniel helps more than 15,000 people among the hordes of refugees to escape with its ships Aletta Noot, MS Oberhausen, MS Duisburg and MS Homberg.

Huyssen enters himself here as buyer although he is really only to carry out the negotiations on behalf of Jacobi and the Haniels. He promises to draft a second contract immediately in order to transfer to them the smelting works. However, Huyssen fails to keep his word and in fact continues to implement his self-serving plan. He demands that all smelting works in their ownership and the flour and oil mills are merged and that he is granted a 25% holding in the overall enterprise as otherwise he intends to go into competition against Jacobi and the Haniels. This way the Hüttengewerkschaft und Handlung Jacobi, Haniel & Huyssen is created in the same year.

After studying law he works as a district judge in Bochum until he is transferred to Ruhrort district court in 1880. He marries Alma Haniel, Franz Haniel’s granddaughter, in the same year. The couple have four children. From August 1891 Carp is managing partner of OHG Franz Haniel & Co. and represents the family’s legal interests. His counsel is also in demand in local government and business – for instance as Chairman of the Mining Board of the Zollverein colliery. At the start of the twentieth century Carp moves with his family to Düsseldorf-Derendorf. He dies on 3 August 1924 at his secondary residence in the Eifel region.

It is the only hospital ever to have been built in Ruhrort. Franz and Friederike Haniel donated it on the occasion of their golden wedding in 1856. As is customary at that time, not only sick but also elderly people and those in need of care are provided for at the Haniel Hospice. From 1928 the Haniel Hospice sets up its own nursing school. The deaconesses working there since its foundation support this. In 1977 the patients and staff move into the newly built municipal hospital on Kalkweg in Duisburg. The Haniel Hospice is closed after 115 years and the building, which partly dates from the Wilhelminian era, is demolished.

 However, coal continues to be mined in pits four and five. From 1900 they are bored using a new type of technique developed by colliery manager Heinrich Pattberg for which percussion borers are used. In order to facilitate the sale and dispatch of the coal, construction of a proprietary port for the mine was started in 1906 despite the protests of Duisburg’s harbour master. It was one of the most modern ports of the coal-mining district and situated immediately adjacent to the Rhine.

At the age of 24 the merchant marries Maria Gertraud Roland “ob der Linggasse Kantt” – in other words at the house at the corner of today's Lintgasse in Cologne's old town. The marriage produces four children. Their only son Jan Willem later builds a packing house in Ruhrort, thereby sewing the seeds of the Haniel enterprise. Here he offers traders generous quantities of warehousing space for their colonial produce such as tea or cotton. His daughter Aletta marries Duisburg merchant Jacob Wilhelm Haniel in 1761. She takes over the packing house and associated businesses with him after her father’s death.

His grandmother Adda Carp is a great-granddaughter of Franz Haniel. Jan von Haeften’s career starts at Rheinpreussen GmbH, half of which belongs to the Haniel family. In 1978, he becomes a member of the Supervisory Board of Franz Haniel & Cie. GmbH and, ten years later, is appointed its Chairman, an office he holds until 2003. In 1991, von Haeften additionally joins the Supervisory Board of Metro Holding AG in which Haniel holds an interest. In 2000, he also assumes the position of Supervisory Board Chairman at Metro AG for three years.

Following the death of their mother Aletta in 1815, the three siblings Gerhard, Franz and Sophia Haniel auctioned off the property with all its attendant facilities, barns, yard and garden among themselves.  Franz won the bid for 10,000 thalers. Only his oldest brother Wilhelm did not bid, perhaps because his inheritance had already been paid out in 1809.

At 15,577 hectares, this would be the district’s largest coal field. However, the procedure takes longer than expected. Haniel nevertheless starts drilling barely two weeks later. In 1854, his miners discover a 150-centimetre bed of coal with good bituminous coal at a depth of 175 metres. When the mining authority finally gives permission for coal mining to take place in 1857, Haniel starts work on sinking the shafts, making him the first entrepreneur to mine coal on the left side of the Lower Rhine.

The reason behind the restructuring is that the merger provides the coal mines with more weight in the Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate, a distribution cartel for the regulation of coal sales, so that they can increase their production rates. Furthermore, the family avoids tax payments that become due after the war for coal mines without trading companies.

He is considered a suitable match because he makes a steady living and owns a house with a garden. Together with his three brothers-in-law Gerhard and Franz Haniel and Heinrich Huyssen, Gottlob founds Hüttengewerkschaft Jacobi, Haniel & Huyssen in 1808, which later becomes the Gutehoffnungshütte stock corporation (GHH). The marriage of Sophia and Gottlob produces seven children, of which only four sons and one daughter reach adulthood.

Numerous guests come to the grand opening ceremony where the Management Board presents the new training concept of the Haniel Group. At seminars and workshops, management and skilled personnel are to be supported in strengthening their personal and professional skills. There was previously an indoor riding arena on the site in which coal sacks were dried and repaired during the Berlin Airlift. Later, a tennis centre replaced the derelict building prior to the construction of the Academy.

All those seeking employment receive a job and nobody is made redundant. Furthermore, JHH establishes an eating house and ensures that staff are fed during illness. All those in need receive bread, fruit and other food at a small price or even free of charge. Altogether JHH donates 7,000 Reichmarks during this period, which is a lot of money since the average annual salary came to around 110 thalers.

This is approved by the shareholders with an overwhelming majority of 99.98% at the Annual General Meeting. The reason for the change of name was the company’s growing internationality. The new name enables all the operating companies to see themselves as part of a company. Furthermore, GEHE AG was often confused with the operating wholesale business bearing the name GEHE in Germany and the Czech Republic.

“Exhaustion” is entered in the church register as cause of death. Aletta married Jacob W. Haniel at the age of 19 and gave birth to eleven children during her marriage. Owing to the high infant mortality at the time only four of Aletta’s children survived to adulthood. After the death of her husband she took over the business and successfully developed the company further under the name J.W. Haniel seel. Wittib. The wine and general haulage and commission trade was later supplemented with coal trading. Today the company bears the name of her youngest son Franz.