Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Karlsruhe
The Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Karlsruhe was a 1929 previous insolvent manufacturer of steam locomotives and railroad cars.
Foundation
The company's roots can be traced back to the year 1836, when the entrepreneur Emil Kessler and Theodore Martiensen acquired a company that Jakob Friedrich Messmer 1833 mechanical workshop in Karlsruhe. On the basis of the two men founded the following year the " Maschinenfabrik by Emil Kessler & Theodor Martiensen ". In December 1841, shortly after the opening of the first railway line in Baden, the first steam locomotive Badenia was delivered to the Baden State Railways.
1842 Emil Kessler eventually rose to become the sole owner of the factory. On March 13, 1846, he founded a second company in Esslingen, the " Maschinenfabrik Esslingen ". As the end of 1847 Keßlers donors, the Bank Haber, was forced to declare bankruptcy, Kessler was pressured to repay all loans. The attempt to save the plant in Karlsruhe by a takeover by the Esslingen company failed. By transforming the company into a stock corporation, the " joint-stock company Maschinenfabrik Carlsruhe " founded on July 20, 1848, the situation stabilized, although they cost Kessler but the control over the company. On October 30, 1851, the company had to eventually be liquidated. Because of its strategic importance to the Grand Duchy of Baden, but was taken over in 1852 by the government. In May of that year, Kessler moved to its factory in Esslingen.
New beginning
With the financial help of the Frankfurt bank Bethmann Emil Kessler founded in 1852 in Karlsruhe, a new company, the engineering company Carlsruhe, which started the locomotive again and in 1854 the first locomotive surrendered.
The engineering company Karlsruhe has always been one of the smaller manufacturers of steam locomotives, the nachbaute mainly designs from other manufacturers under license. The main customers were the Baden State Railways, initially the Bergisch- Märkische Railway Company, the Cologne -Minden Railway Company, the Rhenish Railway Company and the Royal Hanoverian State Railways.
End
After a period of full utilization of the plant in the wake of the First World War was followed in 1925 a sales crisis, because the Reichsbahn for several years almost no new steam locomotives ordered, so in 1928 the locomotive of the engineering company Karlsruhe had to be stopped. Attempts to save the company by building diesel locomotives were not successful, so it was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1929. A total of 2,370 locomotives were built from 1842 to 1928 in Karlsruhe.
The premises of the engineering company was initially located south of the city center of Karlsruhe during Karlstor, 1902 the production was relocated to new premises at the Karlsruhe Westbahnhof in green angle. Especially in the first 30 years of its existence, working renowned engineers at the Karlsruhe locomotive forging, including Emil Kessler, Niklaus Riggenbach, Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach.