IG Farben Research Articles

Strategies for success: Research organization in German chemical companies and IG Farben until 1936*

Merging six leading chemical companies to form one single enterprise meant also finding adequate ways to coordinate more than 1000 research chemists in more than 50 laboratories scattered all over Germany. IG Farben was successful in organizing corporate research by using the experience and structures of the former independent companies. In the corporate innovative process, the applied works laboratories, the large Technical Stations and semi‐works were of much greater importance than has so far been realized. Their existence goes well back into the late 19th century, but their role has been neglected. In analyzing the research structures of the core chemical companies in Germany until 1925, we find IG's organization anticipated. Though IG used most of the traditional instruments of the former companies, it pursued a much more active research and product policy than known today and developed its own concepts of organized research, which were in contrast to those of its competitors, DuPont in the USA and I...

Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era

Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era

Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era

This book is a detailed and scholarly study of the interaction between the private interests of a major German corporation and the policies of the Third Reich. The author traces the effects of a special mentality among Farben's leaders with an economic structure created to serve Nazi ideology.

Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era

Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era

Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era

Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era

Carl Bosch and Carl Krauch: Chemistry and the Political Economy of Germany, 1925–1945

Carl Bosch and Carl Krauch, accomplished scientists and prominent executives in the BASF and IG Farben chemical corporations, were drawn together by mutual admiration and common technical interests. In the Nazi era, however, they came to embody competing liberal and nationalist conceptions of German political economy. This article examines their relationship, the reasons for their divergent stances, and their individual contributions to the economic and productive power of the Third Reich. Ironically, Bosch's understanding of his industry, his nation, and scientific progress led him to oppose the Nazis, but also to lay the basis for their recruitment of Krauch and the German chemical industry for their expansionist purposes.

IGファルベンの対日戦略-人造石油のケース

This paper aims at clarifying reasons why IG Farben failed in selling the lisence of the IG method for synthetic oil through an analysis of documents held BASF Archive and other documents. In the middle of 1930 es IG Farben changed its starategy and decided to sell the lisence of the IG method for synthetic oil abroad as well as in Germany. Its first target was Japanese market. In those years it dominated in Japan a boom for synthetic oil industry. IG Farben made every effort and approached to South Manchurian Railway Company, Mitsubishi Mining Co., Ogura petroleum Co. and other 10 companies or projects. It could not, however, succeed in concluding any contract with them. There can be three hypotheses to explain IG's failure : (1) The International Hydrogeneration Engineering and Chemical Co., which was established by four big enterprises incuding IG and held the hydrogeneration patent, restrained IG's effort; (2) Strict conditions presented by IG Farben discouraged Japanese companies which intended to introduce the IG method; (3) Japanese Navy, which was trying to develop socalled Navy method for itself, opposed against introducing the IG method strongly. My analysis reveals : (1) In spite of IHEC's negative attitude IG had chances to conclude contracts with some Japanese companies till 1939; (2) There were some cases where Japanese side did not take presented conditions too strict; and (3) The Navy hindered effectively projects of some companies such as South Manchurian Railway Company and Ogura Petroleum Co. Results of my analysis abandon former two hypotheses, but do not abandon the last one.

Big Business in Interwar Germany: Organizational Innovation at Vereinigte Stahlwerke, IG Farben, and Siemens

In interwar Germany, the overall economic importance of big business rapidly increased, as concentration was seen as a suitable means of coping with Germany's post–First World War problems. Growing and integrating vertically and laterally, Germany's big combines had to adjust their organization to deal with these amalgamations. In the following article, Professor Feldenkirchen takes a close look at the measures employed at Vereinigte Stahlwerke, IG Farben, and Siemens, Germany's three largest combines during the interwar period.

Stockholms Enskilda Bank, German Bosch and IG Farben. A short history of cloaking

Abstract On 20 February 1979 Professor Gunnar Adler-Karlsson wrote an article in the Swedish newspaper ‘Dagens Nyheter’, entitled: ‘Sweden, Neutrality and the Soviet Embargo. Did the USA remove Jacob Wallenberg from office?’1

Ester base stocks

AbstractNatural esters contained in animal fats such as sperm oil, lard oil or in vegetable oils like rapeseed and castor oil have been the main lubricants from antiquity until the early 19th century. By 1890, petroleum oils had almost completely displaced natural oils. However, fatty products were still used as ‘oiliness agents’ to reduce friction and wear in bearings and gears lubricated by petroleum products. About 1937, Dr Herman Zorn of IG Farben Industrie in Germany began an intensive search for lubricants having the lubricating properties of natural oils, such as castor oil, while eliminating the tendency of these natural products to gel at low temperatures and to form gums and lacquers when used in engine operation. This paper describes the properties, types and applications of esters, as a main group of synthetic lubricants developed during the last four decades.

The Swan Song of German Khrushchevism, with a Historic Lag: Peter Weiss' Die Asthetik des Widerstands

With unerring hands German literary criticism has inadequately characterized Peter Weiss' novel Die Asthetik des Widerstands. Critics have compared it to Joyce and Musil, to the roman fleuve, to the paradigmatic aggregates of free associations, whereas any attentive reading of the text would convince us that Weiss neither had, nor intended to have, anything to do with the arabesques of associations. A very consistent, sometimes even mathematically constructed blueprint can be uncovered from the novel's thousand pages. This apparent irresistible tide has many facets, several constituents, all kept in careful and calculated balance, and the overriding element, the author's voice, is invariably under control. primary component of the structure is montage a gesture of deliberate recourse to the traditions of the 'proletarian novel' of Ottwalt, and the political photomontages of the 1920s and 1930s, above all to those of Heartfield. One longer quotation may stand here for the hundreds of pages composed in the same vein, a montage fusing together the writer's mother during her long day's journey into night with the feverish plundering activity of German capital under the protection of the Nazi conquerors: The chants of chauvinism would resound through the cities while they were secretly preparing themselves to loot and were aligning themselves with the v6lkisch demagogue's greed for conquest. Slowly, my mother went over to the kitchen counter, stirred a pot and chopped vegetables on a board. In her thoughts, she went back eight years to the time preceding the Civil War in Spain. In negotiations with Gil Robles, the conservative minister president, they had already secured concessions in the mines and steelworks of the northern provinces, and after fascism had been brought to Spain and been victorious due to the help of arms and their troops sent from Krupp and Thyssen, they could move into the coal mines of Leska and Ollarean, into the ammunition plants of San Sebastian and Bilbao, while Wolff appropriated the silver and lead of the mines at Jaen, Linares and Vilches and IG Farben controlled the copper at Huelva and the wolfram and antinomy in Galicia. At that time in Austria, Krupp, Thyssen, Kirdorf, V6gler, Flick and Wolff had already divided up among each other the Alpine mining 157

Verfahrenstechnik der Kohlehydrierung in Sumpfphasen‐Reaktoren

AbstractChemical engineering of coal hydrogenation in sump phase reactors. The science of chemical engineering was still in its infancy when the hydrogenation of coal was developed from 1924 onwards at Ludwigshafen, Rhineland. The term backmixing, for example, was unknown. Nevertheless, the scale‐up from a pilot to a production reactor was performed correctly at that time. Even with today's knowledge, the IG Farben sump phase reactors could not have been better designed. Almost four decades have meanwhile elapsed since the cessation of coal hydrogenation in Germany (1945). Nowadays high pressure reactors having more than 50 times the volume of the IG reactors can be produced. Considerable advances have also been made in measurement and control engineering. Hence new chemical engineering questions and solutions arise. If coal hydrogenation is to be performed on a significant industrial scale in 10 to 20 years, this will be economically feasible only by exploiting the possibilities of large reactors having a throughput of 1 to 3 million tons of coal per annum.