Find aids: Findbuch 1978, Revision 1988 (online searchable) Registraturbilder: The DCGG was founded on 12.03.1855 in Dessau on the initiative of the entrepreneur Viktor von Unruh and the Dessau banker Louis Nulandt. At first a gasworks was built in Dessau, which supplied the city with town gas for street lighting from 1856 onwards. This was followed by gas works in cities at home and abroad, such as Mönchengladbach, Magdeburg, Frankfurt/Oder, Mülheim/Ruhr, Potsdam, Warsaw and Lemberg. In 1857, Unruh brought the engineer Wilhelm Oechelhaeuser sen. into the company. In 1859 Nulandt retired after accusations of irregularities and Oechelhaeuser became the sole director general. Both the production of appliances for the sale of gas and the production of gas-consuming appliances themselves grew rapidly. The Centralwerkstatt Dessau was founded in 1871 to convert existing gas meters and to produce new ones. In 1921, the Centralwerkstatt merged with Carl Bamberg Werkstätten für Präzisionsmechanik in Berlin-Friedenau to form Askania-Werke AG. In 1872, Berlin-Anhaltische Maschinenfabrik AG (BAMAG), which manufactured the vertical furnaces used in the gas works, and Dessauer Waggonbau AG, which manufactured gas-powered trams, operated in Dessau. From 1886 Dessau received the second power station in Germany after Berlin. The required generators were developed by Wilhelm von Oechelhaeuser jun. Together with Hugo Junkers, brought into the factory in 1888, they succeeded in using powerful two-stroke counter-piston engines from 1892 onwards. Wilhelm von Oechelhaeuser jun. followed his father in 1889 as general director. Under the management of Bruno Heck, the company achieved a dominant position in Central Germany in 1917 with the founding of Elektrizitätswerke Sachsen-Anhalt AG in Halle. When the property located in the Soviet occupation zone was expropriated after the end of the war, the company moved its headquarters to Hagen/Westphalia in 1947. The alleged transfer of assets was the reason for the GDR's first Stalinist show trial, which was negotiated in 1950 under Hilde Benjamin in Dessau and ended with high prison sentences. The inventory is supplemented by the deliveries of the E-Werke in Bernburg, Dessau and Coswig. Inventory information: The collection was handed over in 1967 by the archive of the VEB Energieversorgung Halle to the then Historische Staatsarchiv Oranienbaum, now Abteilung Dessau. Small supplements were added in 1978. Included photos: 110
