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Norbert Schneider

A Piece of Erfurt Industrial History

Since Weimar was made the Cultural Capital City of Europe in 1999, many foreign as well as German people have come to recognise the corporate logo TOPF as the sign identifying the manufacturers of the fire doors and the notorious crematory of Buchenwald.

In fact, the company which built these ovens on behalf of the Nazi concentration camp administration was the world-wide acting firm of Topf and Sohne. They settled in Erfurt at Dreysestrasse, now named Sorbenweg, situated on the road to Weimarische Strasse, 15 minutes by foot from the Erfurt main train station. If you try to look at this rather extensive area, you will only find deserted buildings and weeds.

After the Second World War the firm was expropriated by the Soviet occupying power and its name changed several times. In the early fifties the production of crematories was stopped and given to the firm Zwickau in Saxony. The enterprise became GRD state owned and continued under the name Erfurter Malzerei-undSpeicherbau (EMS). It went bankrupt in 1994 and has been administered by trustee since that time. The factory facilities were going to rack and ruin and there was vandalism.

The area was completely fenced off and you could not enter it. In April of 2001 one of the buildings was occupied by a group of anti-fascist youth. For a long time they have been fighting for a place where they could run a youth centre and live in self government. Now they squat on the property without permission, but the trustee has not asked for help until now.

History of the firm Topf and Söhne

The firm was founded in 1878 by Johann Andreas Topf, a beer brewer. His brewery was settled at Mainzerhofplatz, then changed to a location in Dreysestrasse. He was a man of excellent practical experience and engineering innovation. The firm produced reliable machinery for equipping breweries and Topf experimented with new developments in his own brewery. He was convinced that existing technology had to be improved and so he extended the field of innovation to heating and ventilation systems.

In 1885 his two sons Ludwig and Julius with their father founded the firm TOPF und SÖHNE. Later, his two other sons, Albert, an engineer and Gustav, a chemist joined the firm, Ludwig took over the commercial leadership. They worked as a team to guarantee innovations with the highest quality. In 1903 they had as many as 1,300 employees with branches in Berlin, Munich, Cologne and Brussels. The second Topf generation created the slogan Topf in alle Welt (Topf all over the World) when they started supplying breweries beyond Europe.

The two main items of production were modern steam boiler plants and plants for the production of malt. Later, cereal silos were added with a full range of gears and means for transporting goods including devices for drying grain, and other special machinery for the foodstuff industry. Worldwide breweries were equipped by Topf and Söhne such as DAB, Pilsener, Carlsberg, Konig, Castle Beers and Tuborg.

In 1935 the two brothers, Ludwig (junior) and Ernst Wolfgang took over the head of the firm as the third generation. Despite the worldwide economic crisis and later the war they continued their policy of creating innovative products. More than a hundred engineers were working to supply about 7,000 plants around the world. The firm obtained special success in the development of special technological gear much like a large mechanical grate where the brown coal that is mined in many different areas of Germany is burned continuously in small and large steamboilers, going continuously.

Among other things they built the largest coal steamboiler in Europe. It was located at the coal power plant in Weisweiler, Rhineland in 1938 and 1939. Its dimension was 129.5 square metres. In this development these engineers were the top pioneers of brown coal furnaces in all of Germany.

The Development of Crematories and How Topf & Söhn Entangled Themselves in Mass Extermination

Around the turn of the19th century, the first cremations were introduced at German cemeteries. Instead of burying the entire corpse, the burial was of a tiny quantity of ash instead. At this early stage the firm Topf participated in the new development and later in the twenties and thirties German town administrators grew interested in the practice and Topf was supplying crematories in throughout Germany. The first ones were built in Hanover, Dortmund, Ilmenau and Freiburg.

According to their own firm's philosophy of developing the newest innovations, Topf and Sohn did their utmost to get to the top of the competing firms regarding design and preparation and became responsible for this new branch integrated under part of the heating department. From 1928 on, this group was lead under the firm-made and self-taught engineer, Kurt Prufer.

The special type of Topf construction was extensive in projection and in the instruction and overseeing of assemblers, in the repairing services and the continuity of improvement to the design of crematory ovens and into the maintainance of connections with the customer before and after receiving their order. Most important was that Topf should be much better than any possible future competitors and quicker in winning any new orders. In relation to total sales, the crematorium turnover was not that important. All the same, in 1940 Topf sought out connections to the Nazi organisation of the SS, which was the head of concentration camps. Prufer and his department manager Sander took note of the fact that in these first camps the mortality rate was rather(sic!) high, much higher than in other parts of society. So Topf built crematory ovens in Buchenwald, Mauthausen and other concentration camps. From 1942 to 1944 they equipped the continuously growing camp Auschwitz, followed by Auschwitz-Birkenau as the chief site of German mass extermination and cremation.

It is important to know that Topf, Prufer and Sander planned and designed he furnaces to run like factories in 1942 with the capacity of cremating 3,300 dead bodies per day, possibly extended to 4,300 per day. The ashes were to be used for different processings. Topf supplied additional components for the gas chambers of Auschwittz-Birkenau, designed and developed by the Topf ventilation department. The expert in this field was the engineer Schulze. His expertise in handling gas within closed rooms was gained from his experience with constructing malt factories. Nb: There is proof that the SS did not put Topf and Söhn under any pressure to take on these contracts. The firm itself was eager to participate.

There is no doubt that the leading personalities - at latest from 1942 knew exactly to which purpose the crematories and gas chambers were built. Temporarily the assemblers worked in building sites day and night. All the orders were of the highest grade of urgency. There is proof in the firm papers, that one of them named Messing, almost was broken by the work he had to do looking at the mass of bodies, their condition and the terrible atmosphere.

After the war, one of the two heads of the firm, Ludwig Topf escaped from capture by Soviet Army by commiting suicide.

Ernst Wolfgang fled to West Germany and refounded the firm in Wiesbaden, supplying crematories but after about ten years he gave up. Prufer, Sander, Schulze and the last manager Gustav Braun were sentenced to long enforced labour. Prufer and Sander died in the Gulag camps. Schulze and Braun returned in 1955.

My Time with Topf as an Apprentice

In 1947, I left school after ten years of attendance to start an apprenticeship. I chose the firm Topf & Söhne. I had decided to become a draftsman in the area of mechanical engineering, and Topf was well-known as a place which offered excellent professional education. My first working day was on September Ist, 1947.

In the course of our education all metalworkers, including the draftsmen and women, had to attend a basic term in their training workshop for half a year, after that spend another half year working through each workshop department. Even with the skills of an engine-fitter the draftsmen still had to train in the designing offices. For a further half a year there we had to attend a basic course in technical drawing, and still after that the apprentices were integrated into the various design departments and were normally given their own working place. This meant a drawing board including the normal drawing machine, and a writing desk, as all other designers had. By accident I got assigned to the department for heating and steam boilers. I kept working there until I took the skilled worker examination and left the firm for my studies in March 1951. I never worked at the firm after that time.

I was in the department where crematories were designed too, and when I came into this office they did repairs or reconstructions of such existing facilities from time to time. My field of work was that within a construction/designing group which designed furnaces for burning brown coal. The team consisted of about a dozen people, and it was the biggest group in the construction hall. At that time I got my first exposure to the subject of burning brown coal, and, be that as it may -I mostly kept to this special field steam boilers and brown coal for most of my professional life in general. The whole department consisted of about two dozen engineers, constructors and draftsmen. Within the structure of the firm it had been given the short name Abteilung D (department D).

The Erfurt supporting association Förderkreis Geschichtsort Topf & Söhne

In Germany and elsewhere there are places set aside to remember those crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. The main sites are the concentration camps. Very close to Erfurt is the Buchenwald camp for example. Normally these are memorials to the mass of victims at the original locations where Nazi crimes took place. It is difficult to localize places where offenders were acting however, if they were not active as members of concentration camp staff immediately in their area.Only one known site , where the actions of Third Reich police units for the occupied eastern countries for mass extermination of the local population were organized in the Villa ten Hompel in Münster has been preserved as an example where offenders out side of state administration operated. There we are reminded of that type of offender who acted on command from political officials or higher officers. Absolutely unknown in Germany is a memorial site where those kind of offenders are remembered, who acted in the area of private business and as a member of civil society . The offices and production halls of the firm Topf & Söhne is this site which was and is unique in Germany. In 1997 Eckhard Schwarzenberger, a cultural scientist living in Berlin, together with a member of Topf family, Hartmut Topf, a journalist in Berlin , started up their first discussions about the idea of reminding people that there is a place for thinking about offenders in civil society in Erfurt. Schwarzenberger published a brochure with information about firm history and their involvement in Nazi mass exterminations. He organized inspections of the firm area, and in 1998 the first conference took place in Erfurt - the subject was brought to the public's attention. A number of interested citizens, scientists and experts discussed the significance of and practical ways of creating a site where thinking about what happened among normal working human beings and why it led to supporting such an unimaginable crime could be invited and encouraged.

As a consequence of these activities a circle of personalities from private and official life, met to set up an association with the purpose of supporting the idea and necessity of establishing a place for working, teaching and researching in the way I have described above. The only possible place is the original area of the firm itself, in particular that construction hall where all ideas of cremation technology for concentration camps came into being. The association named itself Förderkreis Geschichtsort Topf & Söhne, it's not a legal entity or institution, but it has the status of a civil social uniting. Everyone who is interested in the task may join.

The Förderkreis organized a series of lectures in Erfurt Begegnungsstätte Kleine Synagoge from February to December 2000. All of the lectures, discussions, results and further contributions are summarized in a book, edited by Eckhard Schwarzenberger called Firma Topf & Söhne - Hersteller der Öfen für Auschwitz. Ein Fabrikgelände als Erinnerungsort? (translation: Topf & Söhne-Manufacturers of the Auschwitz Crematoriums. A Factory as a Memorial Site?)

At present, an historian, Dr. Annegret Schüle from Leipzig, is working to research the firm history, she has been working for two years in cooperation with the Gedenkstätte Buchenwald. Her task is to prepare a touring exhibition about the firm's history and involvement in Nazi mass extermination. The exhibition is planned to be opened in Erfurt on January 27th, 2005 - this is the 60th anniversary of liberation of concentration camp Auschwitz. The exhibition will be created under the responsibility of Gedenkstätte Buchenwald and The Museum of the City of Erfurt (Stadtmuseum). It will tour throughout the country of Germany as well as selected neighbouring countries.

Apart from the international Auschwitz Museum research, the first book about crematories in Auschwitz appeared in 1993 by Jean-Claude Pressac, a French amateur historian, living in Paris. The book is entitled : Die Krematorien von Auschwitz. Die Technik des Massenmordes.The late Pressac was in possession of the most important parts of the Topf firm archives. Pressac gave the inaugural speech in February 2000 for a series of lectures held in Erfurt.

Picture selection of the article above

A photo showing myself at my workplace "Abteilung D", about 1950.

The construction hall "Abteilung W" today, the photos were taken in October 2000 and show much vandalism inside the building. Drawing boards and drawing machines type ISIS are the oldest there, possibly 1 worked at one of thern, but maybe, too, that crematories were designed at one of them between 1940 an 1944.