BASF Historical Milestones 1865 - 2005

CChronik-E_1865-1900_K2.inddhronik-E_1865-1900_K2.indd 2-32-3 001.09.20051.09.2005 14:24:0214:24:02 UhrUhr The Birth of the Chemical Industry and the Era of Dyes

The first stage of German indus- Soda ash has helped Britain to These efforts are strengthened trialization begins in 1835 with build the world’s most productive by calls for improved medical the building of the first German textile industry and the best care by the physician railway. At around the same time, glass industry. Soda means soap Rudolf Virchow. Experimenting customs barriers between the can be manufactured more with coal tar in 1856 in an individual German states are cheaply. Soap, once a luxury, attempt to synthesize the anti- abolished, creating an internal becomes a basic commodity. malaria drug quinine from coal German market – a powerful Thanks to improved hygiene, the tar, the young English chemist incentive for the growth of new incidence of infectious diseases William Henry Perkin obtains industries such as engineering declines rapidly and average life the first synthetic coal tar dye, and iron smelting. expectancy doubles. Soda ash aniline purple, named mauveine. becomes a significant object of Within a short time, chemists At the same time, the German global trade. throughout Europe discover a textile industry, and in particular whole range of new synthetic the mechanized processing of But the textile industry needs dyes from aniline yellow through cotton, begins to grow rapidly. dyes too. Existing natural dyes Bismarck brown to Hofmann Traditional processing methods can no longer satisfy growing violet. Thanks to their beauty and such as exposing yarn or cotton demand. Justus von Liebig leads brilliance, the dyes fetch high to sunlight are too time consum- the chemical industry’s second prices. The discovery of coal tar ing and need to be replaced by growth spurt. In his Chemical dyes fuels the spread of a “gold faster and more efficient meth- Letters written in 1844, he makes rush” among industrialists, ods. This push for modernization the bold prediction that a way scientists and business people. provides the momentum for the will soon be discovered to make development of the fledgling brilliant dyestuffs or drugs from chemical industry. “Chlorine coal tar. Scientists are busy bleach” is the buzzword of the searching for a way to synthesize day. Huge amounts of inorganic the drug quinine. chemicals such as sulfuric acid, soda ash and chlorinated lime are needed for processing and bleaching.

CChronik-E_1865-1900_K2.inddhronik-E_1865-1900_K2.indd 4-54-5 001.09.20051.09.2005 14:24:0414:24:04 UhrUhr Friedrich Engelhorn, owner of a Occupational safety and health However, the first coal tar dyes In collaboration with Berlin In 1872, construction begins on coal gas company in Mannheim, care establish a strong company are disappointing as they are professors Carl Graebe and Carl the large “Hemshof colony,” very quickly recognizes the tradition of social welfare. neither colorfast nor lightfast Liebermann, Heinrich Caro a development encompassing opportunities for coal tar, a by- The first company doctor is hired (i.e., they fade). The traditional successfully synthesizes the first more than 400 dwellings that pro- product of his company’s busi- in 1866. Twenty years later, the natural dyes madder (Turkey red) natural dye in 1869: Alizarin, a vides BASF workers with afford- ness. In 1861, he begins pro- medical department moves into and indigo continue to dominate red dye derived from the root of able housing. All the houses in the ducing fuchsin (magenta), a red a new infirmary on the site. the market, but can no longer the madder plant, mainly used colony are detached, surrounded dye, and aniline, the raw material satisfy growing demand from to dye cotton, becomes BASF’s by gardens and divided into four obtained from coal tar. But he In the second half of the 19th the textile industry. This calls first global success story. apartments each. has bigger ideas – a company century, Ludwigshafen is one of for intensive chemical research. Other new dyes such as eosin, The workers’ houses have one- that spans the entire production the fastest growing cities in In 1868, BASF appoints the true red and auramine follow. and-a-half stories: Each apart- process, from raw materials and . The housing shortage chemist Heinrich Caro (1834 – ment has two parlors, a bedroom, auxiliaries through precursors becomes an urgent social 1910, chemist at BASF from kitchen, two basement rooms and intermediates to dyes. problem. The construction of 1868 to 1889) as its first head and a garden. The houses for In 1865, Engelhorn turns his company housing is mentioned of research. The first research supervisors and foremen have groundbreaking idea into reality. as early as 1865 in BASF’s activities take place in a labo- two-and-a-half stories, and each On April 6, he founds a stock application for an operating ratory in Mannheim. When the apartment has three parlors, two corporation in Mannheim under license. A year after the com- property is sold, research con- bedrooms, a kitchen, basement the name Badische Anilin- & pany is founded, four buildings tinues in a lab situated next to room and garden. In addition to Soda-Fabrik. After the planned are built on the edge of the site, the main gate of the Ludwigs- the Hemshof colony, housing for acquisition of a site in Mannheim in the extreme southwest. hafen site, the forerunner of white-collar employees is built falls through, the manufacturing These contain apartments and the main laboratory. next to the site in the following facilities are built on the opposite sleeping accommodation for years. side of the Rhine River in workers.

Ludwigshafen, then part of the Samples of dyed kingdom of Bavaria. fabric created by Heinrich Caro: Modest beginnings: Alizarin and eosin. BASF in 1866

1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872

The founding fathers: Friedrich Engelhorn, Carl Clemm, August Clemm and banker Seligmann Ladenburg

Eat-in kitchen in the Hemshof colony around 1914

The company’s first onsite medical clinic around 1914: The royal Bavarian medical superintendent Professor Koelsch hails it as a “remarkable facility with treatment, operating and X-ray rooms plus halls for therapeutic gymnastics and medical baths.” Social commitment: The first company Tracing the origins of housing estate in BASF: Royal Bavarian Hemshof around 1880 letter dated April 27, 1865.

CChronik-E_1865-1900_K2.inddhronik-E_1865-1900_K2.indd 6-76-7 001.09.20051.09.2005 14:24:0714:24:07 UhrUhr The successful synthesis of BASF is also involved in the In 1876, Heinrich Caro succeeds In 1880, , a alizarin opens the world’s public debate on health and in synthesizing a pure blue chemist in Strasbourg, success- markets to BASF. However, the welfare benefits for workers dye for cotton – methylene blue. fully synthesizes indigo, the most company still lacks a proper in industry. To safeguard its A year later, BASF is awarded important natural dye at that time. sales organization. It therefore workers, it establishes a health Germany’s first patent for a coal BASF, together with the Hoechst merges with two well-known dye insurance fund in 1875 that tar dye for methylene blue. dyeworks, acquires the rights merchants in Stuttgart in 1873, pays sickness benefits solely However, methylene blue plays to exploit the indigo patent, thus Knosp and Siegle. BASF has out of company funds. an increasingly important role joining the race to produce in- already been channeling most of not just in the textile industry but digo on an industrial scale. its sales through these compa- in medicine too. Medical pio- For many years, the venture is nies as both have worldwide neer Robert Koch, for example, unsuccessful due to the inability trading networks with more than uses it to make the tubercle ba- to produce the raw material 5,000 customers. Moreover, they cillus visible in his research into cost-effectively on a large scale. operate their own “control” dye- tuberculosis. It is not until 10 years later that works, an applications-oriented Professor Karl Heumann of department with close contacts Zurich discovers an appropriate to customers. Production facili- synthesis method, which is ties and sales offices are set up adopted by BASF and Hoechst. abroad: in New York in 1873, in But the procedure does not yield Butirki near Moscow in 1877 and sufficient indigo. A second syn- in Neuville-sur-Saône, France, thesis discovered by Heumann in 1878. Siegle’s Stuttgart-based three years later appears to pigment production reverts to be more successful. BASF also Siegle in 1889. In 1970, BASF acquires the rights to this pro- acquires the entire Siegle group cedure, paving the way for the in order to expand its pigment production of indigo on an operations. industrial scale.

Dye sample case

Color sampler

1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880

From the Imperial Patent Office, founded in 1877: The first German dye patent protects the production process for methylene blue.

BASF’s factory in Butirki near Moscow The first copy of the indigo formula in a letter written by Adolf von Baeyer to Heinrich Caro Price list cover on August 3, 1883

CChronik-E_1865-1900_K2.inddhronik-E_1865-1900_K2.indd 8-98-9 001.09.20051.09.2005 14:24:1814:24:18 UhrUhr A local telephone network is In connection with Bismarck’s In 1887, a small three-kilowatt To manufacture anthraquinone- set up in Ludwigshafen in 1882. social security system, BASF generator powering two arc sulfonic acid, the basic substance The first subscriber to be con- introduces the first company lights at the Rhine quay and in for alizarin dyes, BASF needs nected is the Badische Anilin- & health insurance plan in 1884. the coal storage area marks growing volumes of fuming Soda-Fabrik. It is also the first It does much more than the law the dawn of the age of electricity sulfuric acid (oleum). The key phone connection in Bavaria. requires. The new plan repre- at the Ludwigshafen site. suppliers are vitriol distilleries in Three years later, BASF estab- sents a major step forward and BASF is self-sufficient in electric- Bohemia, which cannot keep lishes a telephone switchboard features a significant improve- ity until 1938 – by which time pace with rising demand: Oleum at its Ludwigshafen site. ment in the protection of BASF has 121,000 kilowatts of becomes scarce and expensive. workers’ families at a time when generator capacity. After this Rudolf Knietsch (1854 – 1906, a breadwinner’s long illness date, RWE, a public utility, sup- chemist at BASF from 1884 to could threaten the livelihood plies additional power. 1906) develops an economical of families. alternative process in 1888. His sulfuric acid contact process makes BASF the largest sulfuric Chlorine liquefaction – a sketch of this major acid producer in the world at this invention in Rudolf time. At the same time, the way Knietsch’s laboratory is paved for catalytic processing. journal In the same year, Knietsch intro- duces another groundbreaking invention: liquefaction of chlorine, a gaseous element. Until then such efforts had been frustrated BASF’s switchboard by the exceptional aggressive- already has 20 ness of the substance. Now it operators in 1921. becomes possible to store, transport and process chlorine, an important raw material for the chemical industry, in liquid form. Its purity and easy transport- ability in gas bottles makes the product a bestseller for the expanding company.

1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888

BASF in 1881: Belching smokestacks

BASF’s sulfuric acid plant around 1914

CChronik-E_1865-1900_K2.inddhronik-E_1865-1900_K2.indd 10-1110-11 001.09.20051.09.2005 14:24:3214:24:32 UhrUhr There are now 18 small labora- In January 1890, a patent office, The multitude of newly developed In 1892, BASF begins building tories at the Ludwigshafen site. later to become the patent dyes means customers in the Europe’s first public sanatorium Most, however are ancillary department, is established after textile industry need comprehen- for company employees with operations conducting trials and Caro’s departure. A letter sive care and advice. The various tuberculosis in Dannenfels in the experiments, and some are circulated by the management applications and production dye- Palatinate. A convalescent home even housed in huts – not a good says: “From today, all patent works on the site can no longer is built in Kirchheimbolanden in basis for efficient research, matters will be attended to by meet this demand. As a result, a 1904. In Albersweiler-St. Johann, which, even then, is necessary Dr. Glaser, assisted by attorney central technical dyeworks facil- a rest home for the wives and to keep up with the fierce Hecht, in the patent office.” ity is established in 1891, the children of BASF blue and white competition for national and The patent department is respon- forerunner of BASF’s technical collar workers opens in 1914. international trademarks, sible for formulating, submitting service center (AWETA). A convalescent center in Kirnhal- patents and process expertise. and defending patent appli- den in the Black Forest opens its Research requires a more cations, handling trademarks as Eugen Sapper (1858 – 1912, doors to BASF employees in efficient organization and more well as dealing with patent dis- chemist at BASF from 1883 to 1920/21. staff. A dedicated research putes with competitors. Between 1887 and 1890 to 1912) dis- building is urgently needed. 1877 and 1888, 60 patents covers the catalytic phthalic acid BASF builds its “main labora- Indigo – “King of Dyes”: resulting from the company’s re- process, allowing phthalic acid, The decisive patent is tory” next to the administrative granted in 1890. search activities are registered which is used to produce numer- headquarters in 1888. At the in Germany. Between 1889 and ous dyes, to be produced more same time, an analytical labo- 1900, the number of patent simply and more economically. ratory and pilot plant for small- registrations rises to 468. scale trials are set up. A com- pany patent lab headed by Heinrich Caro is also established

in the main laboratory to handle Heinrich Brunck, the domestic and international “father” of BASF’s social patent issues. policy: On his 25th service anniversary 1894, “his” workers present him with a decorative commemo- rative memento.

1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895

Veranda in Dannenfels, Europe’s oldest TB sanatorium, 1916

BASF’s new main laboratory: More room for research

CChronik-E_1865-1900_K2.inddhronik-E_1865-1900_K2.indd 12-1312-13 001.09.20051.09.2005 14:24:3814:24:38 UhrUhr After 17 years of intensive re- From the Annual Report 1898: From the Paris World’s Fair BASF’s Gesellschaftshaus opens force, to help them in difficult René Bohn (1862 – 1922, chem- search and 18 million gold marks “Of all our new products, syn- catalog 1900: “Badische Anilin- at the end of December. situations and in this way en- ist at BASF from 1884 to 1920) in costs – more than BASF’s thetic indigo is the most impor- & Soda-Fabrik is without question The social center includes dining courage and foster a sense of discovers a new blue dye in 1901. share capital at that time – BASF tant. The expectations, which the largest chemical producer in and social rooms for senior man- attachment to the company.” Indanthrene blue RS surpasses successfully launches its syn- we had hoped existed on the the world. At its site in Ludwigs- agement, a library with reading indigo in colorfastness and light- thetic “pure indigo from BASF” basis of the product’s outstand- hafen on the Rhine it employs room for workers and a hall for The company’s social policy fastness. The high-quality vat in 1897, winning the race to ing properties and its potential 148 scientifically trained chemists, festive events. The company’s is initially driven by a sense of dyes (water insoluble textile dyes) manufacture the “king” of natural for acceptance and sales vol- 75 engineers and technicians, social policy it represents is de- paternalistic care on the part developed from it provide color- dyes. A profitable market is ex- umes, have been completely and 305 commercial staff. The scribed as follows: “The manage- of management. But BASF soon ists with new applications for pected to develop. However, fulfilled. The results of practical number of employees, which ment of BASF already demon- adopts the demands of contem- dyeing and printing textiles. indigo soon has to make way for trials soon convinced customers amounted to 30 in 1865, the year strated in the company’s early porary social philosophy and The introduction of indigo and an in-house rival. BASF’s color- of the huge advantages offered the company was founded, has years that the responsibilities it acts accordingly: Welfare ben- indanthrene gets a decisive fast and lightfast indanthrene by the new indigo and its appli- risen steadily and totaled 6,207 has toward its workers and efits for workers should be seen boost from reducing and vatting dyes are increasingly replacing cations. Any doubts raised about on January 1, 1900.” salaried staff are not restricted not as a handout, but as a legal agents “hydrosulfite conc. BASF” indigo. Indigo experiences a the nature of the synthetic prod- to the payment of wages and entitlement. and Rongalit, which convert the renaissance in the mid-1960s, uct compared with natural 1900 sees the construction of salaries on a scale determined dyes into a water-soluble form when blue jeans become fashion- indigo in order to discredit the Dye labels for the the second major housing colo- by overall economic conditions… during the dyeing process. Indian and Chinese able for an entire generation synthetic product had to, and markets: Labels are ny. According to an excerpt from Many types of responsibilities and indigo becomes a pillar of were, dispelled.” particularly impor- the Annual Report: “Land prices had to be fulfilled. They were ini- BASF’s dye business for a tant for selling dyes in the immediate vicinity of the tially restricted to the plant and abroad. The sump- second time. tuous motifs on tin site have soared unjustifiably. covered accident prevention cans wrapped in Speculators have made it virtu- measures and sanitary and hy- glassine paper serve ally impossible to acquire large giene measures. The latter were as identifiers for the many end users in parcels of land. We have sought soon extended not only beyond export countries who a solution and found one. the plant but to family members cannot read. We have purchased a large es- too, covering assistance for hous- tate (Limburger Hof) right next to ing, health care, medical treat- the railway station in Mutterstadt, ment and prevention. Nor did which is linked to our site by they stop at physical welfare, but railway and is only 8 kilometers also included improving the eco- away. Here we plan to build a nomic situation of workers and workers’ colony which we will be promoting their cultural and able to expand as required. intellectual welfare. Foundations Workers will be able to get direct- and funds were established ly to the factory from there using to secure as far as possible the specially organized trains.” long-term future of the work-

1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901

Cover page of a Price list cover 1896 company brochure

“Built for its senior management and workers”: BASF’s Gesellschaftshaus

CChronik-E_1865-1900_K2.inddhronik-E_1865-1900_K2.indd 14-1514-15 001.09.20051.09.2005 14:24:4314:24:43 UhrUhr