Ria Picco-Rückert, Reichswerke Hermann Göring

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Description

Ria Picco-Rückert, ‘Reichswerke Hermann Göring-Hochofen mit Erzbahn’
Biography: Ria Picco-Rückert

Depicted is a blast furnace (one in a row of 8) and iron-ore railway in the City of Salzgitter.
Created 1940. Large size.
In 1940 Ria Picco-Rückert created more then ten paintings, all of them depicting the Salzgitter complex. Seven of them were displayed at the GDK’s.

Ria Picco-Rückert, original sticker on the back of the painting reading: ‘Reichswerke Hermann Göring-Hochofen mit Erzbahn”.

Left: Rio Picco Rückert, sketch. ‘Reichswerke Hermann Göring, Hochofen und Erzbahn’ (‘Reichswerke Hermann Göring, Blast furnace and iron-ore railway’). GDK 1941, room 28.
Right: Adolf Hitler visiting the Herman Göring Werke, Salzgitter, 1940.
  

The state owned ‘Reichswerke Hermann Göring’ was an industrial conglomerate established in July 1937 to extract and process domestic iron ores from Salzgitter (domestic ore, iron and steel program had become a national priority). In November 1937 Hermann Göring obtained unchecked access to state financing and launched a chain of mergers, diversifying into military industries with the absorption of Rheinmetall. After the Anschluss the Reichswerke absorbed Austrian heavy industries, the cluster of steel mills and supporting companies in Linz became its most important asset. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia the Reichswerke absorbed between 50 and 60 per cent of Czech heavy industries. The pattern was repeated in occupied Poland, France and the Soviet Union. The Reichswerke operated captured assets as far from its base as Liepāja in Latvia and Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine. It provided one-eighth of German steel output during World War II. By the end of 1941 the Reichswerke became the largest company in Europe and probably in the whole world, with a capital of 2.4 billion reichsmarks and about half a million workers.
The conglomerate was dismembered by the Allies in 1944–1945, but the Salzgitter plant continued operations as Reichswerke until 1953. The Reichswerke logo, which resembled Göring’s coat of arms, remained in use by Peine+Salzgitter until the middle of the 1980s.

Left: iron shield of the Hermann Göring Werke, Salzgitter plant. In October 1939 the Salzgitter furnaces produced its first pig iron. The logo of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring was based on the coat of arms of the Göring family. The Reichswerke logo remained in use by Peine+Salzgitter until the middle of the 1980s.
Right: the coat of arms of the Göring family.
    

Left: brick logo of Reichswerke Hermann Göring AG Berlin, inlaid in the floor of the Museum Voestalpine, Linz, ‘Voestalpnine exhibition of contemporary history’ (originally incorporated in the wall of the plant in Linz).
Right: brick logo of Reichswerke Hermann Göring AG Berlin, originally incorporated in the wall of the plant in Linz.
  

Metal beam produced by the Reichswerke Hermann Göring (HG) in Salzgitter; remains of the ‘Truppenmannschaftsbunker 750’, once located at the Hannoverschen Straße in the city of Wilhelmshaven. Photo 2012.

July 23, 1937 Göring announced that the Reichswerke would begin mining and processing Salzgitter ores. It produced its first pig iron in October 1939 (and its first steel in August 1940).
The majority of Salzgitter area staff, 47,000 workers, were non-Germans. Housing was not sufficient even for native Germans. The Gestapo ran an on-site correctional camp for the delinquent workers. Forced labor of concentration camp prisoners was not employed until May 1944. Salzgitter was the target of Allied bombings several times but damage to the plant was insignificant. Its blast furnaces operated until captured by the Americans in April 1945.

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