 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Gasolin AG was a German oil company from 1920 to 1971 (trading under this name from 1926); it ran its own chain of petrol stations.
Gasolin was founded on 23 March 1920 as Olea Mineralölwerke AG in Frankfurt, taking over the Deutsche Schmiermittel GmbH (German lubricant company). The purpose of the company was "acquisition, construction and operation of plants and enterprises aimed at the extraction, production, processing, recycling, storage, transport and trade of fuels of all kinds, lubricants, technical oils and greases, petroleum, tar and their reprocessing products, bitumen and related substances and other chemical products". From 1922 it operated under the name Oleawerke AG für Mineralöl-Industrie based in Frankfurt (Main), from December 1923 based in Berlin. By this time, it had already taken over Süddeutsche Oel- und Melanolwerke GmbH, based in Freiburg im Breisgau. [1]
In June 1923, Hugo Stinnes took over A. Riebeck'sche Montanwerke AG, which mainly owned mines and shares in mines in the Halle (Saale) area and Weißenfels-Zeitz; it also owned oil concessions in Argentina as well as mineral oil, paraffin, candle and montan wax factories. From them, he formed the Hugo Stinnes-Riebeck Montan- and Oelwerke AG, in which he bundled his oil interests. In 1923/1924 he acquired Oleawerke, which had refineries in Frankfurt (Main) and Freiburg, [2] which took over the distribution of the entire brown-coal (lignite) production of A. Reibeck'sche Montanwerke, as well as the petrol refinery at Dollbergen, and the AG für Petroleumindustrie (Api) in Berlin. In addition, he acquired the majority of mining rights for the Concordia mine near Nachterstedt and the Messel mine near Darmstadt, in order to strengthen his oil interests.
After the untimely death of Hugo Stinnes in 1924, his heirs were unable to form a viable company, so the conglomerate was divided up the following year. BASF took over the oil business. In April 1925, Oleawerke and the incorporated oil works with their refinery in Dollbergen were spun off into a subsidiary and renamed Hugo Stinnes-Riebeck Oel-AG, based in Halle (Saale). The remaining A. Riebeck'sche Montanwerke returned to its original name in September of the same year. In the 1920s, BASF wanted to secure the German crude oil industry. Together with Royal Dutch (today Royal Dutch Shell) it had half-shares in the Internationale Bergin Compagnie voor Olie en Kolen Chemie, founded in 1921 for the purpose of international use of the German-patented method for hydrogenation of coal. In 1925/1926 BASF and Standard Oil of New Jersey (today ExxonMobil) decided to cooperate in the production of synthetic petrol from brown-coal (lignite), and to build up Hugo Stinnes-Riebeck Oel-AG as their sales company in Germany; both would participate in it directly.
On 4 May 1926, Hugo Stinnes-Riebeck Oel-AG was renamed Deutsche Gasolin Aktiengesellschaft (D.G.A.), registered in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The shareholders were I.G. Farben, A. Riebeck'sche Montanwerke AG, Royal Dutch, and Standard Oil of New Jersey, with 25% shares each. In the divisional structure of IG Farben, Gasolin appeared alongside the IG Oils division, together with the Nitrogen syndicate, and the sales divisions for Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Photo and artificial silk, and the colours/dyestuffs (Farben) division. It was mainly intended to sell synthetic Leuna gasoline through its pumps. To this end, the expansion of the petrol station chain was prioritised. Until production facilities for synthetic gasoline were built up, Gasolin sold its petrol (mainly from Dollbergen) as 'German gasoline' in order to differentiate itself from the foreign mineral oil imports of its competitors.
In 1929, Deutsche Gasolin had a balance sheet total of RM27 million. [2] It was thus in 5th place in the list of oil companies operating in Germany.
In 1935, the Gasolin was one of the 'Big Five' petrol station chains in Germany with 3,315 petrol pumps (5.9%) and a sales quota of 6.7%. [3] In 1938, Gasolin had a market share of 1.4% for diesel fuel and 1.3% for lubricating oils.
With the transition to wartime economy in September 1939 and the associated central state control by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mineralölverteilung (AMV, working-group for mineral oil distribution), the brand names disappeared, and the petrol stations were subsumed by the Central Office for Mineral Oil. The distribution syndicate of the AMV supplied unbranded petrol on provision of a fuel pass or purchase certificate.
In May 1940, a British bombing raid took place on a refinery of the Deutsche Gasolin in Emmerich. The refinery remained intact, but there were some deaths. [4] Gasolin and its employees are remembered in the Emmerich tapestry, in the city council chamber, which depicts a Gasolin worker with an oil barrel. [5]
In 1943 Gasolin had sales offices in Berlin, Breslau, Dortmund, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart as well as in Vienna.
In the course of 1944, the refineries in Emmerich and Dollbergen were destroyed by air raids. To replace them, work began in August 1944 at Lohmen (Saxony) in connection with Dachs VII, creating an underground tunnel in the sandstone leading to two shafts in the quarry of the Alte Poste. This had possessed a siding to the Pirna railway junction since 1907. Above ground, the small distillation plants, Ovens 19-22, were immediately built, and in 1944 began to produce gasoline using crude oil from the Vienna Basin near Zistersdorf, which arrived by train in tanker wagons. [6]
From 1943, the Deutsche Reichsbank in Berlin was the only securities collection bank in Germany. Thus, at the time of the end of the war in 1945, the shares of Deutsche Gasolin AG found themselves in the Soviet sector of Berlin. Although Gasolin became an independent petrol station company in the west (registered in Berlin-Charlottenburg) with the loss of its ownership in the east due to the unbundling of I.G. Farben, the securities were "blocked" from a Western point of view. And the largest supplier of gasoline, the Leunawerke, was also in the east and was no longer available.
This blockade of the shares made a bid of securities impossible. In order to eliminate the legal uncertainty, a securities adjustment was carried out. Due to the Securities Adjustment Act of 1 October 1949, Gasolin's shares were declared invalid and replaced by a collective certificate.
At first, after the Second World War, Gasolin was run on the Eastern side, in the Soviet occupation zone, as a Staatl. A.G. Gasolin Zeitz. The petrol station business in the GDR was later continued by Minol.
Subsequently, the previous owners were able to prove that they remained the rightful owners of part of the company. Standard Oil of New Jersey with its German subsidiary Esso AG and Royal Dutch with its German subsidiary Deutsche Shell AG both received their respective 25% ownership of the collective deed. A further 6.557% was held by the Bank Deutscher Länder and some smaller shareholders. In 1951, the trustees of I.G. Farben offered for sale 41% of the shares, with capital value amounting to 13.2 million Deutschmarks, the current share-holding of A. Riebeck'sche Montanwerke AG, following dealing amongst the shareholders. In return for the write-off of a $2.4 million Gasolin debt from the 1930s, Esso and Shell also agreed to sell their stake in the package. [2]
At this time, Gasolin had a market share of about 6.5% for petrol and about 3.9% for diesel. Gasolin's filling station network consisted of 504 so-called large filling stations and a further 1400 petrol and dispensing points.
Caltex together with Ruhr Oel and Mineralöl-Werke Ernst Jung on the one hand, and Wintershall and DEA on the other hand submitted offers. Although Caltex could have paid the dollar debt, the idea of a further loss of the German market to foreign investors did not appeal to the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The Caltex offer was withdrawn in May 1952, after which there remained an offer from Gulf Oil, in June. However, Wintershall and DEA prevailed as German mineral oil producers, and took over the 91% majority of shares in Deutsche Gasolin AG in July at a ratio of 65:35. They continued to run the company as a mineral oil company with its filling stations and the remaining refinery in Dollbergen (producing 120,000 metric tonnes of crude oil per year). [2] Gasolin was mainly to sell the fuels and lubricants from the Emsland oil refinery in Lingen, which was then under construction.
In the mid-1950s, the market share of "foreign" petrol station chains was about 40%, the share of large "German" companies about 36%; the rest was spread over a large number of small and medium-sized companies. In order to strengthen the German share of the filling station market, Wintershall and DEA became co-owners of the BV-Aral Association in 1956, contributing their sales subsidiary NITAG (Wintershall), their filling stations (DEA) and their respective shares in Gasolin.
As a result, NITAG with its approximately 800 filling stations was merged into Gasolin with about 2000 filling stations to become Deutsche Gasolin-Nitag AG. In 1956, the turnover of the new company amounted to approximately 400 million Deutschmarks with fixed assets of 45 million, current assets of 75 million and total assets of 120 million Deutschmarks. [7]
After taking over 50% of Rheinpreußen AG für Bergbau und Chemie (Mining and Chemicals) in 1959, DEA withdrew from BV-Aral in 1960. DEA took with it its own chain of petrol stations, and was compensated for its shares in Gasolin, which remained in BV-Aral.
In 1961, the 100% member companies in the BV-Aral association decided to market their various products (fuels and lubricants) under the common brand-name Aral. This did not apply to Gasolin, whose shares were only 91% owned by BV-Aral (Gasolin still had some small shareholders, see above).
In 1967 the name was changed to Gasolin AG. The oil refinery in Dollbergen was shut down in 1969.
The red and white Gasolin brand and the AG survived until August 1971 when they were merged with the Wintershall subsidiary Aral, which is now part of BP. The last Gasolin headquarters was at Jordanstrasse 32 in Hanover. The approximately 3,500 filling stations in West Germany were operated from here.
Today a company Gasolin GmbH still exists, at the same address as the headquarters of Aral AG in Bochum. Up to 2006, the company submitted its own accounts to the Elektronischer Bundesanzeiger (German equivalent of the UK Companies House), but since then it has been freed of the requirement by its status as a company with small capital, run by a larger business, Deutsch BP AG.
The brand was revived after the reunification of East and West Germany, when some Aral petrol stations in East Germany were reflagged. Two of them are still operated today, in Pasewalk and Ueckermünde, by a private leaseholder under the Gasolin brand in order to protect the brand. [8]
Gasolin expanded in Austria following the annexation of Austria in 1938. From 1938 to 1945, Gasolin Ges.m.b.H. in Vienna operated an oil refinery on the southern outskirts of Korneuburg. This refinery operated from 1923 to 1961, and was partially destroyed in the Second World War.
In 1945, Gasolin in Austria (in the Soviet sector) together with the refinery in Korneuburg fell to the Soviet Petroleum Administration (SMV) as "German property". In 1955, in accordance with the Austrian State Treaty (lists 3 and 4), the Soviet Union received ownership rights to Deutsche Gasolin A. G., Verteilungsstelle in Österreich, G.m.b.H., the Austrian part of Gasolin. Subsequently, Gasolin in Austria was nationalised and taken over by Austrian Mineral Oil Administration (ÖMV, today OMV), founded in 1956, the Soviet Union receiving compensation. The refinery in Korneuburg was shut down in 1961 after the construction of the new Schwechat refinery.
The property in the other three sectors was handed over directly by the Allies to Austria as the new owner, as a result of the Austrian nationalization laws in 1946. Around 1952 and 1954, the new owners published road-maps under the name Gasolin Gesellschaft m.b.H. (Salzburg). The ÖMV combined Gasolin with NITAG and the Benzene Association in the organization Martha. All of them traded under the Aral brand from 1956 until they were renamed today's OMV.
Up to 1945, Gasolin and the "I.G. Abteilung Öle" (I.G. Oils department) primarily sold synthetic Leuna petrol, but also supplied car oil, lubricating oil, asphalt, and Leuna propellant gas. In addition, Gasolin sold normal petrol from its own refineries under the name Gasolin, and knock-resistant petrol with the additive iron pentacarbonyl under the name Motalin. A petrol-benzene mixture was sold as Motorin, and a starting agent for the engine on cold days was called Supralin.
In 1927, in response to accusations of defacing the environment, Gasolin commissioned the architect and designer Peter Behrens to design petrol pumps and petrol stations. [3] At the same time, the architect Hans Poelzig designed pre-assembled, prefabricated Leuna filling stations. [3]
In the 1930s, advertisement was mostly for Leuna petrol. The logo appeared frequently on road-maps, consisting of an open red and white fuel pump. For the 1936 Summer Olympics, the Motanol rhombus symbol, advertising Motanol engine oil was added at the bottom right. This was a red rhombus with a white bar superimposed, carrying the product name in black. [9] In the 1950s, a Gasolin version of this diamond symbol became a registered company trademark.
After 1945, Gasolin had its petrol Benzin and its benzene-mixture super-variety Benzol-Gemisch as products. As late as 1945, Gasolin was using its petrol-station attendant, nicknamed Tankfix, to advertise its "benzene mixture (without lead)"; a typical slogan found printed on advertising materials was "Der Tankfix deckt die Karten auf" ("Tankfix shows the cards"). [10] An inflationary advertising hype spread from the USA to Germany around 1954, bringing petrol nicknames and chemical super-additives. [11] Gasolin, apparently in the interests of its customers, countered these advertising excesses, and launched a successful customer survey. [12] By 1959 the company had abandoned its benzene mixture, and sold petrol as Normal or Super, which cost about 6 pfennigs more.
Meanwhile, the oil continued to be sold as Motanol until in the 1960s it transitioned to Record via Motanol Record.
Gasolin's best-known slogan was "Take your time, not a life", which appeared on signs fixed on the back of trucks. These signs were produced by Gasolin until the mid-1950s.
A second slogan was "Mein Benzin - Gasolin!" ("My petrol: Gasolin!"), with a new little Gasolin-man figure; this appeared in full-page black-and-white newspaper advertisements, and in colour in tips-booklets produced from 1969 in cooperation with the Hamburg painter and commercial graphic artist, Bruno Bergner .
In 1963, the trademark changed, receiving a red, rectangular frame, and with the renaming in 1967, the lettering 'Gasolin' also became red.
Gasolin today is much loved by those who enjoy nostalgia over "Oldtimers", the German term for classic cars. Much of the historical image of Gasolin resulted from the long association between Gasolin and the German independent graphic artist, Bruno Bergner . [13]
Media related to Gasolin (oil company) at Wikimedia CommonsThe 8 booklets of Gasolin-tips have outlasted Gasolin itself, and are still available:
I. G. Farbenindustrie AG, commonly known as IG Farben, was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler Ter Meer—it was seized by the Allies after World War II and divided back into its constituent companies.
DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG was an international oil and gas company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. It was a subsidiary of L1 Energy. In 2018, DEA owned stakes in oil and gas licenses in various countries and operated natural gas underground storage facilities in Germany. DEA is a derivation from Deutsche Erdöl-Aktiengesellschaft, the original name of the company. On 1 May 2019, DEA merged with Wintershall to form Wintershall Dea.
Hoechst AG was a German chemicals then life-sciences company that became Aventis Deutschland after its merger with France's Rhône-Poulenc S.A. in 1999. With the new company's 2004 merger with Sanofi-Synthélabo, it became a subsidiary of the resulting Sanofi-Aventis pharmaceuticals group.
Orlen S.A., commonly known as Orlen, is a Polish multinational oil refiner and petrol retailer headquartered in Płock, Poland. The company's subsidiaries include the main oil and gas companies of the Czech Republic and Lithuania, Unipetrol and Orlen Lietuva respectively.
OMV is an Austrian multinational integrated oil, gas and petrochemical company which is headquartered in Vienna, Austria. The company is listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. In the 2021 Forbes Global 2000, OMV Group was ranked as the 413th -largest public company in the world.
Aral AG is a German oil company established in 1898 as Westdeutsche Benzol-Verkaufs-Vereinigung GmbH. The company is currently owned by British conglomerate BP after it was purchased in 2002.
The VEB Kombinat Minol, founded on 1 January 1956, was the state-owned gasoline and lubricant reseller of the German Democratic Republic.
Wintershall Holding GmbH, based in Kassel, was Germany's largest crude oil and natural gas producer. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of BASF. The company was active in oil and gas exploration and production with operations in Europe, North Africa, South America as well as Russia and the Middle East region. Wintershall employed more than 2,000 people worldwide. In the 2018 financial year the company produced around 171 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of oil and gas. Revenues amounted to 4.09 billion euros.
Naftna Industrija Srbije is a Serbian multinational oil and gas company with headquarters in NIS building, Novi Sad, Serbia. NIS is one of the most profitable companies in Serbia and one of the largest domestic exporters. It employs around 11,000 people in Serbia and the region. As of May 2022, Gazprom Neft is the largest shareholder with 50% of NIS shares, followed by 29.87% owned by the Government of Serbia, 5% owned by Gazprom and rest by minority shareholders.
Dynamit Nobel AG is a German chemical and weapons company whose headquarters is in Troisdorf, Germany. It was founded in 1865 by Alfred Nobel.
The Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 was a secret meeting held by Adolf Hitler and 20 to 25 industrialists at the official residence of the President of the Reichstag Hermann Göring in Berlin. Its purpose was to raise funds for the election campaign of the Nazi Party.
Hermann Schmitz was a German industrialist and Nazi war criminal. CEO of IG Farben from 1935 to 1945, he was sentenced to four years in prison in the IG Farben Trial.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH, oft shortened to Degesch, was a German chemical corporation which manufactured pesticides. Degesch held the patent on the infamous pesticide Zyklon, a variant of which was used to execute people in the gas chambers of German extermination camps during the Holocaust. Through the firms Tesch & Stabenow GmbH (Testa) and Heerdt-Linger (Heli), Degesch sold the poisonous gas Zyklon B to the German Army and the Schutzstaffel (SS).
Brenntag SE is the holding company of Brenntag Group. The company was founded in 1874 in Berlin and specializes in the distribution of chemicals and ingredients. The company is headquartered in Essen, Germany and has operations in more than 600 locations in 72 countries.
Heinrich Bütefisch was a German chemist, manager at IG Farben, and Nazi war criminal. He was an Obersturmbannführer in the SS.
Kontinentale Öl AG was a German oil company during World War II.
The Leuna works in Leuna, Saxony-Anhalt, is one of the biggest chemical industrial complexes in Germany. The site, now owned jointly by companies such as TotalEnergies, BASF, Linde plc, and DOMO Group, covers 13 km2 and produces a very wide range of chemicals and plastics.
Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft, also known as German-American Petroleum Company, was a German petroleum company that was a subsidiary of Standard Oil and was founded in 1890. From 1950 onwards the company was called the Esso Deutschland GmbH and has been a subsidiary of the ExxonMobil group since 1999.
Schmidtsche Schack - ARVOS is a German enterprise with headquarters and fabrication facilities in Kassel. The company also operates a branch office in Düsseldorf and has affiliated units in the US, Japan, and Singapore.
Wintershall Dea GmbH is a German gas and oil producer. The joint venture was created in May 2019 by the merger between Wintershall Holding GmbH and DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG. BASF SE has a 67% stake in it, with the other 33% being held by LetterOne, whose main ultimate owner is the Russian business magnate Mikhail Fridman. As of 2020 it was planning listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
