IG Farben - Erzeugnisse unserer Arbeit_EN

One from 125000

Of all the creative German people, our holiday is today: the first of May! April showers and belated snow flurries belong to the memory. The city, covered with flags, looks out for the warming rays of the spring sun. Day of class struggle and hatred of people against each other elsewhere in the world; day of national work, order and harmony at home.

Ready to march together to the fe stival area, we listened to the speech of our plant manager and our plant chairman, who, in this annually repeated hour of communion, express with heartfelt words our unwavering commitment and comradely cohesion.

Then, carried by the airwaves, the voice of our Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor reached us, and we knew that millions and millions of people all over Germany, but also all over the world, had listened with us to this ever -prominent message.

But now, in the afternoon, I, one of us 125,000 fellow worker s of the I.G., am sitting outside in my settler's cottage, resting thoughtfully. I have a clear view of the neatly arranged neighboring houses and of the sprouting activity in all the many small gardens, to whose luxuriant prosperity we have contributed with diligence and effort. I have taken a workmate out with me, who wants to have a look at what is intended for him, the younger one, in the same way, when he - it is not long now - will have brought his bride home as his wife. He is already on the list of those for whom the new settlers' houses are being built. By the end of the year it will probably be so far, and like him, other

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factory comrades, who today still have to live in the city itself, will join the closer comradeship of us settlers.

We have time until the evening, which will unite us once again for a cheerful comradeship celebration; a few hours of quiet contemplation lie ahead of us.

The words of our plant manager, who had exhorted us to faithful cooperation within the I.G. so that this I.G. of ours could fulfill its great task within the German national economy in the service of the German nation in accordance with the orders of our Fuehrer, still echo in us. And as I shake hands with my workmate in farewell, it is like a mutual promise that we will act in this way.

Remaining alone, I feel how this unspoken thought does not want to let me go. My thoughts continue to circle around this concept of the I.G.. My gaze wanders here and there, through the rooms and out into the garden. My reflections lead me to the realization that my connection to this I.G. does not only exist through my profession, but that this I.G. with its products accompanies my and my family's life and that of my comrades as well as the life of all my fellow Germans at every tu rn and that these products are present everywhere as a matter of course.

What do I actually know about the I.G.?

I get up from my chair and, accompanied by this question, I begin a walk through my house. It is almost like a game of riddles as I examine ea ch object from the angle of its face: I.G. or not I.G.? First, a look into the light: the flowered curtains on my windows still shine as beautifully today as they did when I bought them. Twice I changed my apartment in the city with them, and then they came out here with me when my cottage was ready to move in. They've been lengthened and shortened, they've survived numerous washes and years of sun exposure, but the colors are still as bright and fresh today as they were on day one.

I.G. Farbenindustrie, th eir pride is the Indanthren colors with which these fabrics are printed. And it is a truly justified pride!

I push back the curtains a little, in the garden outside my wife is busy: she sets the coffee table.

Her beautiful vistra dress, her colorful apron, the colorful tablecloth made of artificial silk, they too are indanthrene and they still shine as colorfully as the day I surprised my wife with these gifts.

The light blue dishes, the butter dish and the

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children's drinking cup, how many times they fell to the ground and yet remained whole! They are made of the plastic Pollopas, it too is from the large family of I.G. products. Marching songs now sound from our people's receiver, through which our eldest tries to participate in the people's holiday. The bare housing is made of synthetic resin, and the synthetic resin is also a product of the I.G. Above the boy's fuzzy head hang neatly framed a few cherished photographs. This is how our children looked when they were very small; there my wife is standing by the cradle of the youngest; there my family is resting, a memory of beautiful vacation days, in the green shade of the edge of the forest. All this was captured with the cheap Agfa box, and the Agfa also belongs to I.G. The black calico frames stand out well against the corn -yellow wallpaper. Their paint is again an I.S. product, and so is door and window paint and the color of the ceiling.

Cleanliness and brightness: and so the word health comes to mind of its own accord. Anyone who has children know s what concern for their physical well being means. Would my boy, who tilts his head toward the radio, still be mine today if he had not been treated with Behring's diphtheria serum back then?

Would my Funge, who tilts his head toward the radio, still be m ine today if he had not been treated with Behring's diphtheria serum back then? And the Marburg Behring Institute belongs to I.G. When I suffered so much from headaches back then, when my wife lay in a fever, whenever autumn and winter threatened with thei r illnesses - the pharmaceutical Bayer products of I.G. brought relief and healing, and they prevented new illnesses.

I continue walking, a moth flutters out. Yes, the moth plague! You don't scare me, you moths! What, as in my case, is treated with Eulan o f the I.G., is and remains moth-proof, and in my case you pests, who devour so much of the people's wealth, will die a miserable death of starvation. I also bought my feather beds and horsehair fillings immediately Eulan -treated, and many a person who did not want to believe in it has been convinced by my experience.

Gradually I get warm, as I check the things of my daily use for the question: I.G. or not I.S.? I light my holiday cigar .... STOP! The matches are colored red.

The color was supplied by the I. G.! The match flames up: the chemists of the I.G. supplied the necessary material. The cellophane wrapping of my noble herb, which keeps it moist and tasty, comes from an I.G. affiliated factory. I place the match in the ash pan: it is made of hydronalium, a light metal from I.G. that gives my wife particular pleasure because it retains its silvery luster unchanged. In the bathroom, everywhere I look, always I.G.! Here, too, the bathrobes, the terry towels, the soapcloths are indanthrene -colored. The pink color of the soap itself: I.G.! The pretty bottle with the mouthwash Dontalol, the Ortizon balls, the Kolynos toothpaste, the Handgriffer toothbrush, the

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viscose sponge, the tube with the sunscreen Delial, other colorful containers with ointments and ti nctures, the indispensable means in the medicine cabinet: always I.G.!

Now, through the open window, the sound of an airplane's engine thunders; silvery glows the bird made by man, announcing the use of I.G. light metals for its construction. Engines! Leun a gasoline from the I.G., made from German coal!

I hear my wife's voice calling to me from the garden: coffee is served. I nod to her, still lost in thought; my gaze falls on the dark bale of Huminal to which we owe our rich crop yields and which is but on e piece of I.G.'s great nitrogen fertilizer program, now so vitally involved in the struggle for the dependence of Germany's agricultural supply. Slowly, I walk out through the hallway. Suits, Dresses, children's clothes, made of the synthetic fibers of th e I.G., dyed with the colors of the I.G., water -repellent by Ramasit of the I.G. On the little table under the mirror mother's ring; he too I.G.? Yes, he too! The beautiful sapphire was created in an I.G. movement, as were the rubies that serve as bearing stones in my pocket watch.

The door to our pantry is open. Should my youngest?... Oh well - today is a holiday! But here again and again the call of the I.G. The preserving jars are hermetically sealed with cellophane, the beautiful fruits processed in the m have flourished so well because we had treated the trees and bushes in time with the plant protection agents of the I.G.. Wherever I go in my house, the I.G. will be there! And I know: when I will congratulate my wife on the splendidly risen cake, she wi ll say: I owe that to the leavening agent "ABC Trieb", and that too comes from the I.G. And if it comes from the I.G., it has somehow once passed through the hand of one of my 125000 I.G. comrades!

But how little the superficial observer usually perceives of it and how significant and at the same time how revealing for each of us I.G. comrades is the fact that from the smallest to the greatest necessities of our existence everything is closely connected with chemistry and thus again with the great production plant of which Germany can and may be so proud: with our I.G.!

What do we know about all this, we 125,000 factory comrades of the I.G.? Now and then, when we walk through our own home, we think of this and that; but

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if we want to know more and more pr ecisely, if we want to penetrate completely into the deeper meaning of our community work, then we would have to be able to take in what could only be hinted at here in a summarizing description.

Wouldn't it be a worthwhile task if the I.G. had its experts in the various sectors describe the entire production and its connections with the national economy in a broader and more in -depth form? How tempting it would be for the work colleagues entrusted with this task to not only illuminate the things that directly surround us, but also to look at the entire human field of life and activity from this perspective. The picture would have to be rounded off by a presentation of the historical development of our I.G. We have the result of this train of thought in fron t of us: an expert from every field of activity of the I.G. speaks to us 125000.

We hear how and why our work received its present form, we get an overview of the individual achievements in each field of work, we are fulfilled what the title of this book s tates: the

"Products of our work" step in front of us.

We see the birthplaces of these products rising from words and pictures; in our minds, the great factories on the Rhine and the Main, in central Germany, in the north and the south of our beautiful fatherland stand before us. But what would all this be, were it not for the decisive factor behind all these plants: the creative German man? Everything would have to remain a dead entity, if it were not for the invincible strength and joy of creation, if it were not for the untiring commitment of the German worker of the forehead and the fist!

To place this German man at the center of our consideration, to dedicate the final chapter to him, as it were, as a crowning achievement, was one of the most beautiful of the tasks set for the authors of this book.

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With combined forces

The increase in speed to almost limitless levels has almost become a matter of course for us. This may have something to do with the fact that what was yesterday is often forgotten today. Whoever joins the ranks of the I.G. today, but also many work colleagues who have been with us for years, but not from the beginning, they certainly have a feeling for the fact that something very big lives and weaves here in a fir mly established organization, but when and how and also why it became so and not differently, that is something not too many know. And yet this knowledge of the history of the work in which one is working should also be something like a prerequisite for th e work itself. We at I.G. in particular should know the history of our company in order to share in the justifiable pride with which it can look back on its development.

For it was certainly not a desire for power or monopoly, nor were selfish capitalist motives the determining factor when it was decided to create a "concern" here. Rather, very hard and serious facts forced the implementation of the merger, which was associated with a degree of sacrifice for the companies involved that was only made bearabl e by the fact that, from the very beginning, the interests of the individual were subordinated to the interests of the whole. It is too often overlooked that the tasks set for I.G. cannot be limited to the German economy alone, but that I.G. is involved in international competition on the world markets like hardly any other company. And if, therefore, one were to set aside all the considerations which would make the merger of the leading paint factories in Germany seem desirable at a given moment, there wou ld still remain the unavoidable compulsion to meet the opponents outside in the world with the same

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weapons which were forged there against German trade, especially in the post-war period.

The individual parent companies, which later merged to form I.G. , were all founded in quick succession at the beginning of the 1960s. They owed their emergence and rapid flourishing to the revolutionary inventions in the field of tar dyes, inventions that were almost without exception feats of German genius. Driven by the German inventive spirit, which never rests even from the seemingly perfect, these companies took a happy rise. Their sales territories grew, their goods went beyond the national borders into the whole world, where the markets readily accepted these Ger man quality products. But the first dangers were already appearing in this promising sky. Patent disputes at home led to protracted and costly litigation. 8 Abroad, this internal strife was expressed in dangerous price undercutting.

At that time, the idea of a large community of interests of all German tar dye factories was already emerging, the ultimate goal of which was to be the complete merger into one company; neither economically unhealthy internal competition nor the selfish pursuit of profit by indi viduals at the expense of others was to be detrimental to the common development. But this idea was greater than the time in which it was born. Thus, the first attempt in 1904

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brought together only the following three companies into a loose community: Actiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation, Berlin, Badische Anilin - und Soda-Fabrik, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedr. Bayer & Co., Elberfeld.

However, this community of interests initially only provided for the exchange of experience and the elimination of mutual competition.

Then came the world war.

Enormous demands were placed on the German chemical industry in one fell swoop, because peacetime operations had to be suddenly adapted to the necessities of war and the requ irements of an increasingly ruthless material war had to be met for more than four years. All special requests now had to be silenced. Only through the combined efforts of all forces was a solution to the task at hand possible. The year 1916 thus became th e birth year of the expanded "Interessengemeinschaft der deutschen Teerfarbenfabriken," which, in addition to the three companies already mentioned, was joined by the following firms: Leopold Cassella & Co. G.m.b.H., Frankfurt am Main, Chemische Fabrik Gri esheim-Elektron, Frankfurt am Main, Chemische Fabriken vormals Weiler -ter Meer, Uerdingen, Farbwerke vormals Meister Lucius & Brüning, Höchst am Main, Kalle & Co. Aktiengesellschaft, Wiesbaden -Biebrich.

However, the individual member companies still remain ed legally independent within this 99-year-old community of interests, for which the short name I.G. became established in the following years. It was still possible to terminate the association "for important reasons", and it was still not possible to implement decisive organizational measures as a result. The possibility of an unexpected dissolution imposed a cautious restraint on the companies with regard to the demand for understanding centralization, which in itself was recognized as correct.

Only the post-war period was to bring the final conclusion to this development. For now the circumstances clearly showed that a further coexistence in production and sales was no longer sustainable. Developments on the world markets, to which reference has already been made, were the decisive factor. In all the industrialized countries of our wartime enemies,

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entrepreneurs and scientists had begun to open their own factories, partly in the factories that had been forcibly seized abroad, and partly in newly built plants, often making use of the ruthlessly stolen German patents.

The German chemical industry was thus faced with a large number of new competitors, strengthened by the war economy, who, with the help of their governments, were determined to maintain wha t had been achieved at all costs. All over the world, the companies of I.E. felt the effects of this competition.

In addition, they were gradually finding it difficult to sell their domestic production, even in areas where they had previously found enough room to coexist. This situation forced us to act. First and foremost, the late Privy Councilor Carl Duisberg and the current Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Privy Councilor Carl Bosch, did not want to wait until the hardship of the times would inhibit the freedom to exploit. A form had to be found in the shortest possible time that would allow the necessary commercial and technical measures to be implemented as quickly as possible without paralyzing internal rigidity.

The various individual companies we re finally merged to form one large company. The parent companies lost their legal independence and became branches of a single company. The following companies were merged into

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Badische Anilin- L Soda-Fabrik, which changed its name to I.G. Farbenindus trie Aktiengesellschaft, Frankfurt (Main): Farbenfabriken vormals Friedr. Bayer & Co, Leverkusen, Farbwerke vorm. Meister Lueius & Brüning, Höchst am Main, Actiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation, Berlin, Chemische Fabriken vorm. Weiler -ter Meer, Uerdinge n, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim -Elektron, Frankfurt am Main.

Two others that had also belonged to the old syndicate, namely Leopold Cassella & Co. G.m.b.H., Frankfurt am Main, and Kalle L Co. Aktiengesellschaft, Wiesbaden-Biebrich, did not merge at that time because they were already largely owned by the other I.G. companies. However, they were included in the organization and operational structure of I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft (Cassella had meanwhile also been taken over by I.G. at the end of 19Z7). For understandable reasons, the names of the merged companies were not to be extinguished; they were therefore retained by registration as branches. The registered office of I.G. was moved to Frankfurt am Main.

Two traditional terms were chosen to carry the name: "I.G.", the community of interests that had become known throughout the world in the course of almost ten years, and "Farben", the products with which the individual companies had all grown up and which also remained their basis. The I.G. piston, which has become known everywhere today, is formed from these two letters I. and G. It thus brings the company name in the abbreviation in which it has become a fixed term in Germany, but also in the world.

After the founding of I. G. Farbenindustri e Aktiengesellschaft, there was still a whole series of difficulties to be overcome, mainly in the area of organization, if the former individual companies were really to become a unified entity with a uniform spirit, if a truly new corporate tradition was to be formed.

The greatest danger threatened precisely from the word organization, if it was understood as an end in itself. What mattered was certainly a conscious centralization, which, however, could not interfere with the healthy independent life of the individual plants. The goal was therefore: uniform management of the individual lives of the companies that had been welded together. We

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all know that this goal has been achieved over the years.

But even though at first glance it may seem as if it c ould not have been any other way, I.G. comrades should always remember that this merger was a question of existence for the German chemical industry. The former individual companies would never have been able, each on its own, to solve the enormous tasks t hat the war and, even more so, the post -war years posed for the German chemical industry. A single company would have had neither the organizational possibilities nor, above all, the financial strength to carry out the indispensable conversions and moderni zations of its operations; nor would it have been able to approach the opening up of completely new areas on the required large scale with such daring, areas which we I.G. comrades had to face in their overwhelming scope. comrades are familiar with in all their overwhelming scope, if we only think of the problem of coal hydrogenation, for example, or of the development of artificial silk and artificial staple fibers, or of the synthetic rubber Buna and of the bewilderingly broad field of new plastics in general.

However, that the implementation of the unification of forces within the I.G. was necessary can be seen most clearly when one considers the new great demands that have been made by the Four -Year Plan. Its goal is to ensure the economic independence o f the German people. It thus imposes on German industry the duty to make the German economy independent in the procurement of all raw materials whose production is possible domestically.

There is no need to explain the role played by chemistry in this cont ext. All these enormous problems are therefore also faced by the I.G.. Work that had previously only been tested in small -scale operations had to be converted to large-scale production in the shortest possible time. This posed technical tasks that required an immediate solution, whereas otherwise a generation might not have been able to cope with them. Only a large company, managed according to uniform guidelines, in which there is no competition, let alone opposition, is capable of mastering such tasks. We , who today in this I.G. fulfill our duty to the plant and the state, admire the farsightedness of those leaders who, years ago and in spite of all short -sighted niggles, foresaw the necessity of a step, which is the prerequisite for our successful work of today and tomorrow, and have unflinchingly taken it.

All of us, however, on whose table on the first of May this book of the products of our work lies, take with us from it to our machines and to our desks, to our retorts and to our boilers our pride in t he fact that we are employed in such a decisive position for the implementation and realization of the liberation of our people and our fatherland. What is required and expected of us is the joyful use of our work within the work of the entire nation.

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A great time has again dawned for German chemistry. Closer to life than ever, it is creating the new values of our new age. Never has the word "service" had a more beautiful and higher sound than today, when every service, and thus also ours within the I. G., becomes a service to the entire German nation!

The realm of colors

Quote (translation): By the colored reflection we have life." - Goethe

Life without color is unimaginable. Colors mean life affirmation. Nature lavishly scatters colors, colors, colors from its inexhaustible cornucopia!

From the gossamer green of the first leaf buds to the colorful splendor of spring and summer blossoms to the blazing beacon of autumnal forests, the plant world displays all the tones of nature's infinitely rich color scale.

The animal world is not inferior to it in this respect. The rich "reddish brown of fox and deer, the radiant plumage of the golden pheasant, the metallic sheen of the ground beetle, the lovely colorfulnes s of our butterflies, the shimmering wedding dress of the fish in our aquarium, are they not example enough ! Above all this the sky arches in the most beautiful blue, the morning red laughs, conjured up by the awakening sun, and the evening horizon flames in intoxicating hues. And even as we grow older, we stand amazed like children before the magic bridge of the rainbow, the epitome of nature's color fairy tale.

Finally, man also has his part in this thousandfold, inexhaustible beauty of the colors. Sung about by poets and lovers of all times, the colors of his skin, hair and eyes have often been of fateful significance in the life of the individual as well as in the life of entire peoples. In addition, mankind has since ancient

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times also borrowed fr om the rich colors of the plant and animal world.

Flowers, feathers and colorful iridescent shells are found as jewelry even among the most primitive peoples. The natural colors of plant and fruit juices, and even the blood of captured animals, were used i n ancient times to make tattoos and dyes to beautify the body. And from the Greek saga history the narration is handed down to us of the finding of the most distinguished dye of past millennia, the purple.

One day Hercules was sitting at a bay of the Medit erranean Sea, while his faithful companion, a large white dog, was playing on the beach. Called back, the animal appeared with an amethyst colored snout. Hercules investigated the matter and found that the dog had bitten a snail, namely, whose juice then provided for centuries that magnificent color between amethyst and blue black - not a bright red, as is so often assumed - which, as a symbol of the highest dignity, was almost only allowed to be worn by crowned heads.

Almost as old as human historiography is the blue of the indigo and the red of the cochineal louse. Indians, Chinese and Persians were dyeing with these natural colors as early as 2000 BC. The Greek and Roman cultures used purple, saffron, madder, woad and gall apples as dyes. From Roman write rs, however, we also know that the Germanic tribes possessed a highly developed art of dyeing.

People have always been connected with the colorful palette of colors in a significant way. Then as now, man felt and still feels mysteriously drawn to his favorite color; the symbolic meaning attributed to colors is still valid today. No less a person than our own Goethe created a foundation for color research with his "Theory of Colors". With his statement: "Man generally feels great pleasure in colors. The eye needs them as much as it needs light", he expressed what every human being consciously or unconsciously feels and senses: we cannot even imagine a life without color, it cannot exist.

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Today we live in the age of our tar colors, which can compete with the most beautiful colors of living nature. The following lines are intended to explain that, with our chemistry, we have once again drawn on the unimaginable wealth of colors of a sunken world.

In long ago times of the earth history mighty forests covere d the surface of the earth. This world of gigantic ferns and strange animal giants of the dinosaurs was brought to ruin millions of years ago by natural disasters.

Enormous rearrangements of the earth's surface let this blooming, green, sun saturated world sink into the bosom of the earth. Here now a comprehensive transformation, thus chemical process took place. For under the tremendous pressure of the burdening earth's surface, hard coal emerged from the sunken world. These black, shiny coals, which conc eal the former colorful splendor of the primeval forests, are now the scene of a miracle of German chemistry that puts all the fairy tales of the Arabian Nights in the shade. Coal tar is obtained during the coking of hard coal. And from it, the chemist extracts the colors that nature has produced and then allowed to disappear again, and brings them back to the light of day in the form of synthetic dyes.

Professor of Chemistry A. W. Hofmann, the Englishman W. H. Perkin, in an attempt to produce quinine from aniline oil, did not find the quinine he was looking for, but he did find the first aniline dye: mauveine. However, it was the ingenious benzene ring theory of Professor Kekul é from Bonn that made the brilliant development of the tar dye industry possible. The successes that were achieved in uninterrupted succession from 1865 onward were systematically built on this benzene formula.

The benzene ring is as follows: every substance is composed of atoms, and the nature of the substance itself depends on their interconnection and mutual addition. The chemist must know this concatenation in order to arbitrarily change the sg structure of the substances within the framework of the laws of nature and to create new compounds of value to mankind. Kekul é's great deed is that he has discovered the grouping of atoms in benzene and thus opened the gate to the miracle garden of synthetic colors.

Is there any object at all that would be without color? Wherever we look, colors are everywhere!

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Already the typeface of this book about the "products of our work" and the colorful pictures in it owe their origin to a quite important branch of color production, the printing inks; the typewriter with which the manuscript to this book was written had a color ribbon, with red and b lue pencils the improvements were applied.

The colorful wallpaper of our room walls or their colored paint, doors and floor, are they conceivable without color? Likewise stove and radiators, or sanding varnishes and lacquers of our furniture? The leather p ortfolio on the desk is effective because of its beautiful brown color. Leather can be dyed by brushing and fulling with dye solutions, and if necessary, to achieve a calm fabric appearance, it can still be covered on one side by spraying with Corial or Eucanol dyes. The cases are over -sprayed or painted with Kasara case paints, resulting in durable, glossy finishes. Penholders and pencils on the green-dyed stoneware inkwell - even the ink contains dyes! - show appealing, durable colors. Stamps are kept in brightly colored cardboard boxes. They are red, blue, green. These colors must have a characteristic, to which we will return repeatedly, and which is closely connected with the achievements of our I.G. in particular. They must be light and water resistant , also when used for banknotes and check forms. They must also react to certain chemicals by changing color, so that counterfeiting is prevented.

The murals in oil, pastel or watercolor shine before us in their lightfast, inorganic and organic colors; for the color prints, the modern printing inks give all their tones. But also elsewhere, wherever you look, colors everywhere!

Even where we would hardly suspect it, they have been brought in to embellish. From the match, whose wood is often dyed, its box colo rfully pasted, to the sparkling varnish of the large passenger bus, from the walking stick painted with gasoline, nitro or oil paints, to the massive flagpole on the street, we encounter the colors at every turn. Jams and fruit juices are helped along with color to make them more pleasing to the eye. Because we also eat with our eyes, the same applies to many canned vegetables, which are appetizing because of their color. Food colorings are also used for confectionery, butter, margarine, liqueurs. They are, of course, completely harmless and are subject to the most scrupulous control.

Another special field of our dye production is the dyeing of fur. The Ursol dyes developed for this purpose are applied cold and developed by the oxygen in the air or with chem ical oxidizing agents. With their help it is possible to produce excellent imitations of precious furs from rabbit and lamb skins, which are of course appropriately called imitations in sales. Among the things we encounter every day, paper in its manifold forms has become a very great consumer of color. The paper industry uses for its manufacture those fibers

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which, no matter where they may come from, are no longer suitable for spinning or weaving because of their shortness. Paper is obtained from wood in an essentially mechanical process. Our artificial silks and cellular wools are also produced from wood - admittedly only by means of deeper chemical transformations, to which our book will return in other chapters. The dyeing laboratories of our I.G. ar e also involved in the production of these new fibers.

Colors everywhere! Almost all metals and the wood of our houses have a colored coating that protects them from the inclemency of the weather; again a production in itself, these paints or colored varni shes in which our tar dyes or inorganic pigment dyes are deposited on finely dispersed mineral powders.

And in how many other colors does the wood shine, which is used for the many objects of our daily use!

The science of spading, the study of antiquity, has brought to light the most valuable treasures of knowledge in the field of color in recent decades. But also the observations that could be made among the increasingly rare primitive peoples who, as it were, remained behind in the Stone Age just in time before civilization destroyed their ancient own culture, enabled us to get a good idea of the development of the use of dyes in prehistoric times.

In our latitudes, where man cannot exist without a warming covering during the long winter months, skins of hunting animals provided the first clothing.

But even long after people had learned to spin and weave the hair of domestic animals, especially sheep, leather played an important role in the clothing of our ancestors. It has never completely disappeared fr om our clothing. One thinks only of the "Gamsledernen" of our alpine inhabitants and of our gloves.

And so leather dyeing is the oldest and still one of the most important uses of dyes. Tanning was already carried out at a time when not even pottery had been invented. At that time, the skins were depilated with the ashes of the campfire and then rubbed with the phosphoric fatty brains of hunted animals.

If the garments were not covered with fur or embroidered with colorful feathers and the like, then a colo ration could only be brought in by applying colored bodies, which nature offered in a finely distributed state, or which the primitive could also distribute finely enough with his simple means - dust, red chalk and other colored earths, chalk and the like - rubbed onto the leather with fat. With such fat colors, with which, for example, the famous animal drawings in the prehistoric caves of

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the Pyrenees are made, could be painted with the help of a brush, which was made, for example, from a willow rod by crushing one end, also quite good ornaments.

The ancestors of our human race also knew how to help themselves in other ways. By means of a transversely cut branch, which delivered round spots and after notching stars, they could also produce mechanicall y multiplied ornaments with such colors. These are the first beginnings of the printing of stuff, which thus, in contradiction to the usual assumption, where we can only follow the development, precedes the emergence of dyeing.

From the wandering hunter be came then in the course of the development the shepherd, who followed his herd leisurely, and finally the sedentary farmer, for whom beside the animal world now also the plant world became of importance. He found out in prehistoric times that he could tran sform his hides into leather more useful for his many new purposes if he treated them for a longer time with the barks or with certain fruits of various trees. The substances whose action was important here, the tannic acids, are extremely common in nature .

A few of these tannic acids yield undyed leather. But most of them naturally possess a color of their own, or she changes under the influence of the air into a brown to red hue, which they also impart to the leather treated with them.

Therefore, brown is considered the "natural color" of leather, while in reality it is a dyeing process that can be applied to textile fibers in the same way.

We will also find tanning agents later as dyeing aids for other dyeing processes. Let us note the following: all dyei ng processes with vegetable dyes for textiles, which in turn form the basis for modern dyeing processes, originated from even older tanning processes. Among the tannic acids are the first vegetable products that can also serve as dyes for textile fibers. T he plant kingdom is very rich in dyeing substances. There is hardly a plant that does not contain some kind of dye. But all these dyes are generally not related to the fiber, so that they cannot be attached to the fiber by a simple process, as is the case with colored tanning agents. Rather, they require an intermediary, that is, a "mordant."

Various metal salts can serve as mordants, primarily those of aluminum. If the fibers are soaked with an aluminum salt solution and then treated with solutions of suitable dyes, the dye combines with the aluminum salt to form an insoluble, firmly adhering "color varnish". This dyeing with a "mordant dye" is a rather complicated process. Nevertheless, it was already invented by prehistoric people in various places on earth. With the help of ancient research, we can even trace how they came to this invention. Excavations in

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Northern Germany have brought to light prehistoric leather material, which provides evidence that the Germanic tribes of the area, in addition to fatcured leather and leather tanned with vegetable substances, also used leather as the third the mineral tanned, with alumina salts produced white goarse leather have known. But where did those primeval inhabitants of Germany get soluble alumina salts, which nature offers only very sparsely and in our latitudes not at all? The solution to the riddle is the following: in all latitudes there are plant species that contain dissolved alumina in their juices. In our country, it is the lycopods that attracted the attention of the people early on and were used for all kinds of superstitious purposes. When treated with them, the skins turn into white leather. And if wool is boiled with them, it is stained with clay. When, for example, the Nordic peasant woman of today dyes her homespun wool yarn with lycopodium and then dyes it with madder or, more recently, with alizarin, which was brought into the country by the I.G., she is using a process that her ancestors invented thousands of years ago.

Dyeing with indigo, on the other hand, which we have already briefly mentioned, is a different process.

Indigo is formed from the sap of some plant species when exposed to air.

However, only the woad species common in the temperate zones and the tropical Indigofera species contain it in a quantity that is still worthwhile. All indigo is insoluble in water, so it cannot be dyed in the usual way. To bring it into solution, the indigo must be treated with alkalis or caustic lime and a reducing agent. The agents used for this p urpose in the earliest times were animal or human urine, in which the reduction took place by a fermentation process. The reduced dye baths are called vats, and the same word is also used to describe the vessel in which the dyeing is carried out. If the fi ber, whether it comes from an animal or a plant, is soaked in such a vat and then exposed to the air, the indigo is deposited on the fiber in insoluble form, and by repeating this process several times, dyeing’s of different color depths can be achieved.

Until the invention of blue tar dyes in the last half of the last century, this was the only way to produce relatively true and beautiful blue dyeing’s on wool, cotton and linen. Even if the reducing agents had been improved over the millennia, the essence of this dyeing process has not changed until today.

Later we will hear about the tools used in vat dyeing today and the importance

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it has gained since the factories of our I.G. started to produce indigo synthetically and after whole classes of new vat dyes have been invented.

Apart from dyeing, only the building trade has detailed regulations for its practice from antiquity. The oldest document for dyeing, which was only discovered and interpreted in 1913 in a Stockholm library, the so -called Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis, is a fragment of the large dictionary of the entire technique of Bolos Demokritos from Mendes in the Nile delta, written in the 3rd century BC in Alexandria. In addition to prescriptions for the production of metal alloys of different co lors and for the imitation of colorful stones, it also contains about 70 prescriptions for the dyeing of wool. They describe the washing of the wool with urine and soapwort - the root of the dog's carnation -, the boiling with alumina, iron and copper salt s, the preparation of the dye baths, the manual steps during dyeing, the removal of failed dyeings and finally the examination of the materials according to characteristics, which the dyer sometimes still bases his judgment on in our time.

It can be said that all the knowledge of antiquity about the dyeing of wool is contained in this document. It describes the use of the red safflower, the petals of the dyer's thistle native to Egypt, also the red dyeing orseille, which is made from lichens growing mainly on the sea coast by fermentation with urine, as well as the yellow dyeing turmeric, which had to be imported from India and cost a lot of money; three dyes that directly dye wool from acid bath.

Among the mordant dyes are the root of the red ox tongue, th e alcanna, the madder grown at that time everywhere in the Mediterranean region, mainly in Italy, the yellow berries of the Wegdom, the most valuable of which came from Persia, the root and bark of the pomegranate, which provided a cheap substitute for tur meric. The mordant dyes also include the only dye derived from the animal kingdom, kermes, also called scarlet berry, consisting of the dried females of a species of scale insect that lives on an oak tree in the Mediterranean region. The alum necessary for coloring the mordant dyes was found in Egypt itself, but in its best qualities it was imported from Asia Minor.

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A large place in the Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis is taken by the regulations for blue dyeing in the Küpe. Indigo was already known, but it was apparently too expensive for the purposes of dyeing. The native woad was used for blue dyeing in the urine Küpe. In addition to the above dyes, animal blood, juices of various berries, colored pigments and the like were also used. It may still be remembered that in ancient times people generally did not wear dyed woolen clothes, but clothes made of white linen, which were colorfully patterned with dyed wool.

After that, there is a gap of many centuries in the history of dyeing, although it is known that even in the early Middle Ages the arts and crafts continued unchanged in the old way. The late Middle Ages then give us information about the technical state of dyeing again with the orders of the guilds in the various cities of Italy, where the textile industry had reached its heyday. Hardly later, the same development of the trades into guilds can be observed in other European countries. It is known that the cloth -making towns of Flanders snatched their supremacy from the Italians in the course of time. The textile industry also flourished in individual German cities during this period.

The commandments and prohibitions of these guild ordinances concerning the use of dyes and auxiliaries show a very far -reaching agreement. It was precisely prescribed which additives were permitted, and in some towns these were not even weighed by the dyer, but by a confidant appointed by the authorities, while the owner of the cloth had to witness the dyeing process! It is remarkable that the number of dyes allowed for use was limited to a few particularly genuine ones. Actually, only the Indian redwood has been added to the previously kn own ones, which, by the way, was forbidden in many cases.

Progress of a chemical -technical nature compared to the regulations of the old Egyptian document, however, is not to be found in these dyeing regulations.

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But next to this "official" writing runs the colorful teem of recipe books that monks made for the needs of their monasteries, doctors for all sorts of wishes of their patients, artists and craftsmen for their particular professional purposes. The oldest presc riptions for dyeing silk are found in a manuscript belonging to the library of the monastery of S. Salvatore in Bologna. The oldest regulations for cloth printing are in a manuscript belonging to the National Library of France. The oldest rules for dyeing linen, on the other hand, are found in the middle of the notes of a German, still unpublished in the manuscript collection of the Heidelberg University Library.

From all these documents, one can see that dyeing was still quite poor throughout the Middle Ag es. It is true that linen could be beautifully dyed blue in the Waidküpe and that even patterned fabrics could be produced by preprinting reserves that prevented the absorption of the dye in the printed areas of the Küpe. And top -quality German blue prints even reached the courts of oriental sultans as gifts from German emperors. But mordants could not yet be attached to vegetable fibers, and therefore mordant dyes could not be dyed on them. There are only a very small number of dyes in the plant kingdom th at can be applied directly to vegetable fibers. One made do with berry juices. For example, blueberries on linen give a color similar to that of the purple snail.

It was not until the discovery of America that the art of dyeing was perfected.

There, the cochineal was discovered, a cactus scale insect that was richer in dye and cheaper than the cermes, which was similar in nature to it, and therefore soon replaced it. South America was also rich in new colored woods.

Bluewood, which originated there, produ ced a black of hitherto unknown beauty in iron stains on wool and could also be used on vegetable fibers. By the way, bluewood is the only plant dye that is still used today in abundant quantities in dyeing and fabric printing.

After all, it took about 100 years for the new dye materials to become fully established!

The new era in the history of dyeing did not begin until the end of the 17th century with the reform of dyeing that Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV, initiated and implemented, and which was to become exemplary for conditions in many other countries as well. France thus gained the lead in the field of wool dyeing, to keep it for a long time.

An instruction for dyeing wool from that time does not report any new achievements in dyeing techn ology, but the good was separated from the merely useful for special purposes, and the insufficient

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was eliminated from use altogether. In practice, this was expressed in the division of the dyers into "true" and "bad" dyers, each of whom was assigned his particular tasks.

It would be going too far to describe in detail the period that followed until the invention of tar dyes. All progress in the dyeing and printing of vegetable fibers in this period is ultimately due to the fact that, following the Ind oOriental model, it was learned how to attach the metal mordants, in particular the alumina mordants, to the vegetable fiber material as well. However, a particularly important process for dyeing vegetable fibers must be remembered, which, like indigo dye ing, has led a special existence: it is the production of "Turkish red" with the alizarin contained in madder on fat tanning alumina mordant. In this way, dyeings of an authenticity are obtained that was unique until the beginning of this century. Turkish red" originated in the steppes of Central Asia in prehistoric times and was taken along by the Turkmen people, the ancestors of today's Turks, on their conquests to the West and transplanted into the empires they conquered in Asia Minor and Europe. For a l ong time, the textile industry of Central and Western European countries depended on Turkey for the supply of true red dyed cotton yarns, despite all efforts to imitate the process in their own country. It was not until 1747 that French entrepreneurs, with the help of Greek dyers, succeeded in transplanting red dyeing to Marseilles and Rouen. From there, it spread to other European countries. The very lengthy process was gradually shortened and simplified; the "old red" became the "new red", which was bette r suited to the requirements of piece dyeing. The last stages of this development, however, occurred at the time when the newly invented tar dyes began to compete with vegetable dyes.

The first observations on the formation of a dye from a coal tar produc t date back to 1834, when the chemist Runge found that the aniline he had discovered in coal tar turned into an insoluble black body when treated with oxidizing agents. However, it was not until 1863 that Lightfoot, the colorist of a calico printing compan y in Accrington, succeeded in forming it on the fiber by adding copper salts as catalysts to his printing inks in addition to oxidizing agents. Because of its beauty and fastness, aniline black is still the most widely used black in stuff printing today.

Far more important and momentous, however, was the discovery, several years before Lightfoot's invention, of another dye from aniline, mauveine, which we have already mentioned. The discoverer succeeded in producing this violet dye, which was commercially k nown as Perkin violet, in a tough struggle with the extraordinary difficulties that stood in the way of the factory

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production of this first synthetic dye due to the lack of all precursors. This first success, in connection with the benzene ring theory of Kekulès, which has also already been touched upon, gave a powerful impetus to research activity, and very soon other dyes of a similar nature appeared, yielding on animal fibers colorings of a splendor hitherto unattainable. The task of also dyeing vegetable fibers with the new products was solved about ten years later by the invention of the tannin mordant, to which Leverkusen added the catanol process in this century. The newly discovered aniline dyes were then produced in the dye houses themselves, u ntil special factories began producing them in the early 1960s. The majority of the factories forming today's I.G. owe their existence to this development. The oldest class of synthetic dyes, which were later grouped together as "basic dyes" according to t heir dyeing behavior, still occupy a considerable place in the dyeing and printing of vegetable and animal fibers. Basic dyes" are also used in tanning, paper manufacturing and for the production of lacquer paints. They are appropriate wherever fastness requirements may be deferred at the expense of color vividness.

The composition of alizarin, the dye of madder root, was elucidated by Graebe and Liebermann. This opened the way for its synthetic production from another product of coal tar, anthracene. The former Badische Anilin - & SodaFabrik, one of the parent plants of our I.G., was the first to start production.

The pure synthetic dye, which was therefore easier to use, replaced madder quite quickly. 2,000 years earlier, Dioscorides had written in his m edicinal theory: "The cultivation of madder is very advantageous, and great benefit accrues from it." Now madder was dethroned. The red pants of the French soldiers of that time, dyed with madder, tried in vain to stop the development that was damaging the madder cultivation of southern France in the same way that indigo had ruined the woad cultivation of central Germany in its day. In this field, too, the fundamental invention was quickly followed by others. After the red alizarin, other anthracene dyes so on followed, making the rest of the plant dyes superfluous. Dyeing with the alizarin dyes generally yields quite true tints, but it is somewhat tedious and relatively expensive because of the need for pickling with metal salts. The actual alizarin dyes hav e therefore increasingly taken a back seat, and other dyes have taken their place for higher fastness requirements, in which the formation of the color varnish is brought about in a bath. We are familiar here with metachromic dyes and rechroming dyes, whic h, however, do not cover the field exhaustively. In turquoise red dyeing, synthetic alizarin has simply taken the place of madder and preparations made from it. Despite the creation of naphthol red, which will be discussed shortly, the use of red alizarin is still significant.

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The discovery of diazo compounds by P. Semolina around 1860 brought about an extraordinary expansion of the tar dye field. In the following decade, the most prolific class of azo dyes emerged from the development of this invention.

These are, on the one hand, the acid azo dyes, including scarlet dyes, which put an end to the use of cochineal. On the other hand, and above all, the dyeing of vegetable and, more recently, synthetic fibers has benefited from the discovery of the so-called substantive dyes, which belong to the azo dyes and are drawn directly from saline baths onto the fiber. This is evident from the mere enumeration of the groups that fall into this category: ordinary substantive dyes, Sirius and Sirius light dy es (whose dyeings are characterized by special light fastness), benzoform dyes (whose wash fastness can be improved by post -treatment with formaldehyde), benzo true copper dyes (which undergo an improvement in both light and wash fastness by post -treatment with copper salts), diazo dyes (which are diazotized and developed after the actual dyeing process), and others.

The latter group already forms the transition to another type of azo dyes, namely to the insoluble azo dyes produced from the undyed component s on the vegetable fiber itself. From this group, whose introduction at the end of the last century was particularly merited by our Höchster Farbwerke, came the first competitor to Turkish red, the more inauthentic but much cheaper pararot. This, too, has now been superseded by Indra red, which is completely equivalent to Turkish red. It belongs to the group of Naphtol AS dyes, one of the latest achievements in the dye field, which are produced with the help of Naphtol AS invented at Griesheim -Elektron.

Naphtol AS and its derivatives, like pararot, belong to the group of developing dyes in which the dye is formed by coupling with so -called true bases or dyeing salts on the fiber. Due to their vividness, fastness and cheapness, naphtol AS dyeings have rapidl y gained acceptance in the textile industry all over the world. Initially mainly on red, Initially limited to red, scarlet, orange and bordo shades, the Naphtol AS class has been further developed over the years and today plays a very important role in dye ing and fabric printing. With the Variamin blue belonging to this class, the cotton dyeing and printing industries now produce untold millions of yards of apron and workwear fabrics annually.

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The "variamine blue article" is pushing indigo back more and more into those

countries that are still at a more primitive stage of development in terms of manufacturing. Naphtol AS dyes and the closely related Rapidecht, Rapidogen and Rapidazole dyes, which are closely related to these dyes, are particularly suitable for the production of lively and rich color tones which, to a large extent, satisfy the most stringent fastness requirements.

Immedial or sulfur dyes, which cannot be dissolved in water but become soluble in sulfur sodium, also belong to the field of dyes for vegetable fibers.

They are drawn directly from such baths onto the fibers and provide good lightfast and washfast dyeings. The importance of this class of sulfur dyes is evident, among o ther things, from the fact that the associated sulfur black has become the most widely used dye in the world. To simplify the dyeing process, these dyes have recently also been marketed in water -soluble form under the name "Immedialleuko dyes". Hydronic dy es, mainly blue dyes, which are widely used for dyeing work and professional clothing, form the transition to vat dyes.

From the foregoing we know that indigo, the oldest and until recently the most important of all dyes, was the only representative of the vat dyes among the vegetable dyes. This remained the case until the beginning of this century.

Among the tar dyes that had come onto the market up to that time, there were a number of blue dyes, each of which created its own field of application and thus caused a certain loss to indigo. But all these losses have always been compensated for by the increase in the demand for indigo as the remaining areas of use have grown, and the world demand has even increased from year to year. The European industrialized countries remained dependent on some tropical countries, mainly India, for the supply of this plant dye until the synthetic production of indigo was also successful.

However, this success of color chemistry did not fall into the lap of the German dye industry as a ripe fruit. After the great achievement of indigo synthesis, it took another 12 years of unremitting work and many inventions to carry out the industrial production, which was no less of a feat economically and technically, in the B.A.S.F. of the time. Only now did the increasingly uniform, pure and soon much cheaper synthetic product displace the plant product from the world market within a few years. Since, furthermore, during these years the application methods were also improved and simplified by the activities of the dye factories, indigo dyeing received another powerful boost.

But in this century the armies, especially the German one, introduced the field gray cloth instead of the blue uniforms, for which dyeing with indigo was prescribed; the cotton industry went more and more over to apparatus dyeing, whose special requirements the indigo could not fulfill. And finally, new dyes of greater fastness and more favorable dye ing properties were found, two o f

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which, hydron blue and variamine blue, with which we have already become acquainted.

We cannot leave indigo without taking a look at the indigoid dyes, which include, for example, the brilliant indigos and part of the algol and helindon dyes. In this context, the indigo sols should also be mentioned. These are vat dyes, namely those in water -soluble form. We owe their development to a reaction discovered after the war, by means of which all vat dyes, whether they are close to indigo or to the indanthre ne dyes, can be converted into water-soluble compounds, from which they are converted back on the fiber by acid oxidation into the original insoluble dye from which they originated. The indigoid dyes and indigo sols provide valuable services in dyeing and fabric printing for vivid shades of good fastness.

The I. G. comrades who have followed us so far will have seen one thing from the varied development of the history of dyeing: the constant endeavor to replace foreign products with domestic ones which, if possible, should have even better properties. In solving these tasks, which also led to the development of new, previously unknown dyes, it was possible, among other things, to achieve degrees of fastness that were previously unknown.

But what does fastn ess mean when we speak here of the substances with which man puts the colorfulness of his world at the service of his needs? The housewife knows what she is thinking of when she chooses for her summer dress, for her window curtains, for her tablecloths, a colorful fabric that suits her taste and the assigned purpose. Will the beautiful colors last? Are they safe from the bleaching power of the sun ?

Will they resist the necessary washing ? We introduced our general reflections with the words of Goethe: "By the colored reflection we have life!" And later he told us: "The eye needs the colors, like it needs the light.

Here, where we want to culminate our remarks in the most genuine dyes, which, a creation of our I.G., have become a world concept, in our indant hrene dyes, there may be one more word from his Theory of Colors: "Thus, when we consider the fleetingness and transience of brilliant color phenomena, we would have returned to the requirement of duration."

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Indanthrene dyes belong to the group of vat dyes which, as we have heard, are used in particular for dyeing cotton. Cotton, however, had become the most important type of fiber in recent decades, and therefore there was an urgent need for washfast and lightfast dyes for it in particular.

The systematic exploration of coal tar had led to the discovery of countless new colors, including many that met high standards of beauty and luminosity.

The entire industry was well supplied with good, durable colors for all possible purposes. But the textile indu stry was still waiting for a color scale that would enable dyeing that could really withstand the effects of washing and sunlight over the long term.

Decade after decade of strenuous research had to pass before the first indanthrene dye was found in 1901 b y Professor R. Bohn in Ludwigshafen. And this dye immediately attracted attention because of its hitherto unknown authenticity.

The self-evidence with which everyone today expects such fastness in indanthrene dyes no longer knows anything about the difficu lties that were associated not only with the discovery but also with the introduction of indanthrene dyes.

A great educational campaign had to be carried out in order to make everyone aware of the decisive advantages. Its success has helped to make indanth renecolored fabrics a true national commodity, for today one can probably no longer imagine any family or household that would want to do without indanthrene in some form. The colorful spring dresses, the cheerful color combinations in summer, which decor ate and dress the whole mood in Hans and garden, 'on the squares and streets, everywhere where people are, animate: all this is Indanthren.

All vegetable staple fibers, but also artificial silk and rayon (with restrictions also natural silk) can be dyed or printed with indanthrene dyes. With them, the highest degree of washfastness, lightfastness and weatherfastness achievable today can be achieved. Indanthrene dyes are therefore of great economic importance, above and beyond the benefits to the individual. The

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longer our fabrics remain serviceable, the fewer staple fibers will be needed, and the more likely it is that domestic production of The longer our fabrics remain usable, the fewer staple fibers will be needed, and the more likely it will be that the production of rayon and artificial silk will be able to meet demand without having to turn to foreign countries.

Both the simple clothes for the household or for the daily work, as well as delicately toned blouses or evening dresses, children's play an d summer suits, father's good shirts or his pajamas, the pretty colored underwear with their fragrant fabrics and delicate tints, bathrobes and beach suits: everything is Indanthren!

The soothing, exhilarating influence of pleasantly effective color combin ations also led to the general use of colorful decorative fabrics in the home. And whenever it is necessary to create a homely atmosphere, the inexhaustible choice of the indanthrene colored fabrics is used. In millions upon millions of homes and in every other type of space, indanthrene fabrics are used for decorating because their color beauty is preserved. Indanthrene: a fairy kingdom of the most glorious colors opens up from the brilliant red of fluttering flags to the deepest blue, from the most delica te green to the most diverse shades of brown, light yellow and rich violet. Hundreds of shades! Like a bright garland of flowers, the colorful splendor of indanthrene dyes runs through the whole of human life.

Indanthrene is a name that obliges. Whatever m ay be found, only the best representatives of their class are included in the series of Indanthren dyes.

Precisely prescribed authenticity tests must be carried out on individual dyes before they are given the honorary title of Indanthren. A special trade mark ensures that everyone - both the dyeing and the final consumer, the public knows with certainty that these games, fabrics and finished goods _ were really dyed or printed with indanthrene, When Ludwigshafen took up the popular indanthrene propaganda that was spreading throughout the© world in 1921, the first task was to find a trademark that would be clear and meaningful. The first task was to find a trademark that would be clear and meaningful. It was necessary to create a trademark that would capti vate the eye and remain in the memory of the observer through the originality of the idea and the form of execution, both in the black and white of the advertisements and in the color reproduction for posters, postcards and old labels. After a long period of design work, the Indanthren landmark shown here was created, which we can proudly call a world brand. It is a so -called speaking sign, which can be understood by all peoples even without words. The heavy orange column in an oval, representing an I (the initial letter of Indanthren), defies the rays of the sun and the pelting

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rain and thus symbolizes the resistance of Indanthren dyes to all influences of light, weather and washing. The indanthrene symbol has become a world symbol of the highest color fastness: Victory of the idea of quality!

At the Paris World Fair, Indanthren received the highest award, the "Grand Prix.

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Textile industry helper

The field of activity of I.G. within the textile industry extends not only to the use of dyestuffs, but also to all branches of finishing or processing of fibrous materials of any kind, from loose material to the finished yarn or piece. In addition to dyestuffs, a large number of auxiliaries are required in textile production, of which we also supply a considerable number. These products, like dyes, are absolutely necessary for the production of goods, and the result is a high quality of the goods produ ced with the help of these products. No fiber is used as nature supplies it. Before processing begins, the wool sweat must be removed from wool, the bast from raw silk, and the substan ces adhering to cotton and flax pectins, waxes and the like - must be removed if the valuable properties of the pure fiber are to be brought to bear. During this processing, the material is constantly loaded with new foreign substances to make it slippery, smooth and strong; it is boiled, for example, with spinning oils, sizing from pastes, fats and waxes, which must always be removed completely before the next finishing process - bleaching, dyeing or printing.

These diverse requirements have also led to the creation of a very diverse range of auxiliaries, which are the result o f many years of in -depth research into the processes involved and another important area of the I.G. production program.

Our Trilon, for example, is used to soften water, Nekal and Leonil are wetting agents; Igepon, Cyelanon and the Laventin brands are used as detergents,

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Emulphor to bring oils and fats into the finest emulsion. Soromine brands are used to produce a soft or crunchy handle on artificial silks. Appretans are used for finishing, and the latest relevant products are Igepale, which are very versatile in their action and application. Viveral and Biolase, which Kalle produces, are indispensable for desizing. This is only a small flower selection from a much larger bouquet.

Let us not forget our Eulan!

What good would the most valuable piece of clothing or equipment do our women if their woolen dresses, their winter fur or the pride of their house, their beds, carpets and upholstered furniture were once attacked by moths?

That they cannot protect themselves by however diligent knocking and. They have known for a long time from bitter experience that no matter how diligently they knock and brush, they cannot protect themselves, and how often the moth powders and pellets advertised to them are ineffective. For this really serious need, again our I. G. has provided a remedy. After long, careful observation of the living conditions of the moths and after countless trials, it has found the saving agent in Eulan. The manufacturer uses it already in the production of his goods to make wool, feathers, furs completely inedible for the moth caterpillars once and for all. They would rather starve to death than eat an item treated with Eulan. When shopping, however, it is essential to ensure that all goods susceptible to the pests bear the Eulan mark, the yellow hand in the black field! This is the only guarantee that the Eulan treatment has been carried out by an expert. Eulan also received a "Grand Prix" in Paris in 1937.

Also our Ramasit is already a clear concept for us I.G. comrades. Nobody likes to be rained on wet, thereby endangering his clothes or his health. Therefore, fabrics for raincoats and the like must be made rain -repellent. For health reasons, however, the fabric should still remain porous, i.e. permeable to air.

The effect of our Ramasit is bas ed on the fact that the absorbency of the individual fibers, without bonding with the others, is greatly reduced. The raindrops no longer adhere to the fabric, but simply roll off, while the air permeability does not change. But even if we were to extend o ur considerations many times over, we would not be able to exhaust all the areas in which I.G.'s research and the resulting products have been of help to the German economy. The textile industry in particular is so diverse that it seems like a maze once yo u set foot in it. Let us therefore pick out just one group of products that not everyone knows are also needed by the textile industry: I.G. waxes.

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These various waxes are used for waterproof impregnation of fabrics, as an additive to finishing compoun ds, in sizing for smoothing threads, for polishing and lustrating threads and cords. In addition, waxes of various types are used for a wide range of purposes, including beeswax, vegetable wax and montan waxes. They are indispensable in the production of s hoe polish, bean wax, candles, carbon and wax papers, and other important articles of daily use.

Germany, however, is poor in natural waxes, so we had to rely on foreign countries for this as well. But we do have large deposits of lignite, from which kerosene waxes and montan waxes are extracted. And from these raw materials, our chemical research now synthetically produces many types of wax, even "beeswax" with all the desired properties. Inventiveness and technology have helped us to overcome all shortage s in this area as well; today, we are even in a position to sell our surplus to foreign countries in exchange for other vital raw materials.

Our German tar dyes and textile auxiliaries have been shipped across countries and oceans for decades in their packaging bearing our world -famous trademarks and have been constantly checked by our fellow workers for consistent quality. As they serve us at home, they serve the dye works and households of the most distant peoples as heralds of German diligence.

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White gold

Power struggles, which were often fought in bloody wars, have always arisen over raw materials whose value seemed particularly great to a certain era.

Babylon, for example, fought a centuries -long battle with the Assyrians over a snowy fiber whose value at the time is best expressed by the name it bore: it was called "White Gold". This is not a legend. Rather, it has been handed down to us historically flawless through one of those ancient clay tablets that have been found and interpreted by ancient historians. This one tablet is about 2500 years old, which tells of the deeds and victories of Nebuchadnezzar and which for the first time refers to cotton as "white gold". As "White Gold", cotton continues to go through the histo ry of mankind, and even today it represents a "White Gold" for those countries whose soil and climate are suitable for the cultivation of cotton.

In the German climate and on German soil, however, cotton does not thrive.

Nevertheless, we too have "white gold", and this we owe in turn to German chemistry. It is no longer a natural product subject to the whims of nature,

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but a new textile fiber created by the spirit of man for the special use of man.

Germany's "white gold" is rayon, of which the "vistra " is the oldest representative.

Just as history can be divided into different periods: antiquity, the Middle Ages, modern times, so too can different periods be distinguished in the textile field, whereby the constantly changing needs of man have also plac ed changing demands on clothing. Thus, animal hair, wool, once took the place of animal fur, cotton took the place of linen. The invention of rayon and its perfection today once again represent such a historical period.

Of course, this is not to be underst ood in such a way that in such a development the older textile raw material would now disappear completely.

After all, the fur coat of today is only a descendant of the animal fur of the Stone Age people. Nor will wool, cotton and linen lose their raison d 'être because the era of rayon has now begun. The new textile raw material always displaces the old one only where it is better, cheaper and easier to procure.

The rayon is better and also cheaper compared to the wool. And the raw material from which the r ayon is made, wood, is available to us in Germany.

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It is extremely instructive for us I.G. comrades to take a brief look back at the evelopment of German textile requirements. In the days of Frederick the Great it was still the case that we not only met this demand in our own country, but were also able to sell wool to foreign countries. The rapid and steady increase in population and growing industrialization then forced us to import wool and cotton, so we had turned from a textile raw material exporting country into an importing country.

How hard we all felt this dependence on foreign countries during the war and first post -war years !

The time was truly ripe for our economists, chemists and technicians to set themselves the task of creating a domestic spun fiber to break the chains of such slavery.

And it is, as it were, a very subtle irony of fate that those very cotton and wool producing countries which today seem to be bothered by the introduction of rayon were themselves partly the cause of its creation. When the Entente was still able to impose its will on us at will after the unfortunate outcome of the World War, it also demanded that the Premnitz powder fact ory, then operated by Köln -Rottweil A.-G., be destroyed. A new field of activity therefore had to be found for the unemployed factory and its workers. And they found it, by starting to produce an artificial staple fiber from cellulose, i.e., by reverting t o the raw material wood.

However, attempts to create such a spun fiber had not been lacking before. We remember the staple fiber produced during the war, which, a child of pressing need, neither met the requirements for spinning into yarn nor the demands of use.

In the Premnitz plant, however, which today belongs to I.G., a really useful staple fiber was produced. It was called Vistra, a name whose origin spans past and future in the same way. The syllable vis comes from the telegram address of Köln -Rottweil A.-G. "Sivispacem" (after the Latin phrase: Si vis pacem para bellum, which means: "If you want peace, be prepared for war"). And the syllable tra from the telegram address of the

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Dynamit-Actiengesellschaft vorm. Alfred Nobel & Co. "Astra" (after th e other Latin word: Per aspera ad astra, which corresponds to our motto "Through night to light"). Vistrafiber was the forerunner and first representative of all other man-made staple fibers, which have been given the group name "rayon" since 1936. The bir thplace and cradle of rayon is therefore our Premnitz mill.

The invention of the Vistra alone was by no means enough. To push it through against a world of prejudice, against the blind self -interest of those who felt threatened by it, against the lead weight of seemingly unchanging habits, required tenacity and an unshakable belief in the achievement. In tireless pioneering work, I.G. experts showed spinners how to spin vistra on existing machines; weaving experts created weaving patterns especially sui ted to vistra; the major I.G. dyeing laboratories issued dyeing instructions. But...

But when all these questions seemed to be solved, there was still one seemingly insurmountable obstacle, and that was the price. As a result of the world economic crisis, the prices of natural textile raw materials on the world markets plummeted so rapidly and enormously during the start -up period that it was not possible to bring the prices of the new German staple fiber completely into line with this price level. As a re sult, further improvements and simplifications in the manufacturing process had to be found and implemented first, so that the price of staple fiber could be constantly reduced. Many inventions had a similar fate. When aluminum was found, the first gram of it was weighed in gold. As for vistra, in 1924 it cost

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RM. 5.50 per kilogram. Today, for the same quantity, one has to pay only RM. 1.45 to invest. And this means that one has thus come very close to the price of cotton and has already considerably un dercut the price of wool!

The implementation of the National Socialist economic program, which began with the seizure of power, resulted in an enormous increase in production for Vistra fiber and for the other rayon products manufactured by I.G., Cuprama, Aceta fiber and Lanusa, which we will discuss later in this report. The largest rayon plant in the world was built by I.G. in Wolfen; new plants of previously unimaginable dimensions and with previously unknown large -scale equipment are in operation there and in Premnitz. The daily production of vistrafiber at I.G. amounted to 115 tons in 1937. In addition, there were about 25 tons of aceta fiber, cuprama and lanusa. This resulted in 140 tons day after day. In 1938, however, 1.6. will achieve a daily output of about 150 tons in its rayon mills and an annual production of more than 50,000 tons. This will make it the largest of all the world's rayon producers. In economic terms, this means not only an annual saving of millions of foreign currency which previou sly had to leave the Reich for foreign textile raw materials, but also considerable amounts of foreign currency, since our Vistra is also an important export article as a raw material, as yarn and as finished goods.

Furthermore, the Wolfen mill is the firs t rayon mill to have its own pulp mill, in which German beech, which is otherwise mainly used as firewood, is processed. This, too, is an economically groundbreaking act in the field of self sufficiency in textiles. Until now, foreign spruce wood was used to produce the pulp from which the rayon is made, unless the finished pulp itself was purchased from abroad.

For the other I.G. rayon, cotton linters (the short seed hairs of cotton), i.e. an imported material, were partly used as the starting material. To day, we have also succeeded in obtaining beech wood for this purpose, and we are in the process of freeing ourselves from this import as well. Since this book is also intended to familiarize us I.G. comrades with the manufacturing processes of the products of our work, so that we ourselves know about them in our company, let us now take a look at the ways in which our pulp is made from our beech wood and our Vistra from our pulp.

The basic principle of production is as follows: All resins and inclusions, es pecially lignins, which give the wood its peculiar structure, must be dissolved from the wood. What remains is technically pure cellulose. The solid cellulose is transformed in the rayon mill by carbon disulfide and caustic soda into a liquid state, from w hich it is possible to give the new product the intended shape. This solution is called viscose. It is a

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viscous mass that is forced through tiny openings in the spinnerets into an acid bath, where it solidifies into fibers of any fineness or strength, depending on the size of the openings. These fibers are cut and crimped, ready for spinning in the spinning mills. This is because, unlike artificial silk, which consists of endlessly long threads and already leaves the factory as yarn, rayon is spun. This spinning of the cut and crimped fiber makes the yarn elastic, causes its fullness and gives it the ability to keep warm. Vistra, like all other I.G. rayon yarns, can be easily spun and processed on the various spinning machines for wool, cotton, silk or flax. In fact, there are special fiber types and presentations adapted to the different spinning machines and purposes.

Vistra and the other I.G. cellular wools can be spun into yarn on their own or blended with natural fibers during the spinning process. Compared to natural fibers, I.G. corrugated wools have the advantage of conditional purity and uniformity. Their quality is independent of weather and crop failure; their price is not affected by foreign exchange and stock market speculation.

We have already mentioned earlier in the question of price the development which brought the price of our Vistra even below the wool price by improving the manufacturing process. However, I.G. was also intent on simplifying the spinning process. The machines designed for spinning wool and cotton must have devices associated with special operations that serve only to clean and lay the wool and cotton fibers in parallel. Since 1928, the I.G. has had a process that delivers the vistra not as fluff, but immediately as a spinning sliver. The spinning process is thus shortened and thus made cheaper, and we are also able to understand this spinning band with a crimp.

Why crimping? Well, crimping means increased heat protection and better crease resistance. With the production of Vistra fiber in 1920, a textile raw material was created that came closest to wool in terms of heat retention and crease resistance. In view of our climate, however, we wanted to possibly surpass the good properties of wool, but at the same time avoid t he disadvantages of wool: as is well known, wool does not tolerate boiling at all; if we are not careful, it shrinks in the wash and felts, and its durability is not particularly high compared to other textile raw materials.

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I.G. has also tackled and solved this problem by bringing out fibers specially designed for the wool industry. One of them is the Vistra - XT fiber. It was launched in 1934 and has been continuously improved since then. Apart from being more tear-resistant than wool, it no longer h as the smooth surface of normal rayon. normal rayon. Its strong crimp is maintained during processing, so that the garments made with it keep warmer and are more elastic than was previously possible with the use of rayon.

However, wool still has the very r emarkable property of being water repellent.

If you put wool in a container with water, it does not immediately soak up like cotton and sink, but it remains on the surface.

Achieving this property for rayon as well appealed to our chemists, and I. G. created the Vistra XT -h fiber. This fiber adds to the properties of the XT fiber that of being water repellent just like wool. Mind you, this is not the result of impregnation, which is lost over time; even when dyed, or even boiled in soap or soda, this valuab le property of the Vistra XT -h fiber is retained. Thus, with the invention of this fiber, a new great achievement has been achieved: the field of use of rayon has been extended to the entire wool field.

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But if we have talked so much about our Vistra, its many special types and characteristics, it is now time to talk about the other fibers produced by our I.G. which are suitable for wool spinning. fibers produced by our company.

Between Cologne and Düsseldorf lies the Dormagen plant, where since 1927 a part of the copper artificial silk known to all under the name "Bemberg artificial silk" has been produced. Since 1934, the particularly high quality Cuprama rayon has been produced there using the same process, and in future no longer from the cotton linters mentioned earlier, but from local beech pulp. In the Cuprama process, too, the cellulose is liquefied and then solidified in an acid bath after the stretch spinning pro cess. The name of the process already indicates that the fiber is further stretched and thus refined during spinning by drawing off. Wet or dry, this fiber exhibits the best durability, a peculiarly beautiful white hue, natural luster and good thermal properties. Incidentally, Cuprama fiber can be dyed directly into the spinning solution by adding the appropriate dye.

There are also special varieties of Cuprama, for example Cuprama -SK, which has intensive crimp, like good wool varieties, and is therefore preferred by the worsted and wool industries.

Then there is the acetate process. The I.G. plant in Berlin -Lichtenberg produced the first acetate artificial silk. The aceta fiber obtained by this process since 1934 has such a low specific gravity that it is lighter than wool.

When dry and wet, the strength of this fiber is even slightly better than that of the more common types of wool. It absorbs water only in limited quantities, which is why it is especially suitable for garments that must also be exposed to rain. When acetate fiber is mixed with wool or cotton, it has a peculiar color effect because it does not absorb the dyes acting on the other textile fibers.

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In technical terminology, these color mixtures are called "melanges". Finally, let's mention aceta stitch hair, a relatively strong single fiber used to create the well-known stitch hair effect in fabrics.

There is still the Lanusa fiber, for the production of which the I.G. has a specially protected process. It, too, is mainly used in the wool industry, since it can be spun either pure or together with wool to produce valuable yarns.

Its main advantages are a wool -like crimp, a beautiful matte sheen, a natural whiteness characteristic only of the finest wool qualities, and excellent stretch and wet strength. From the previous descriptions, we already know how these properties are noticeable in the final product. The fabrics in which this lanusa has been processed, like Vistra -XT and Cuprama-SK, have the full feel of wool, and you can crumple them as much as you like: they hardly crumple at all.

So these are the cellular wools of the I.G.: Vistra, Vistra -XT, Vistra-XT-h, Cuprama, Aceta fiber and Lanusa, and each of us I.G. comrades should memorize these names. All of them are brand names and, as s uch, are protected trademarks of our I.G., offering the consumer a guarantee of uniform quality of the fiber. Insofar as the finished product depends on the quality of the fiber, our names and marks also vouch for the fabrics and knitted fabrics made from it. From the greatly enlarged illustration inserted here, one can see how much purer and more uniform a vistra fabric is compared to a cotton fabric. Also, the wrinkle resistance we have been talking about is best illustrated pictorially. You can easily twist a wool knit fabric (blend of wool and vistra) tightly together: once you run your hand over it and it is smooth again!

For many years, the main use of rayon was for high -quality women's clothing. Especially the silk industry has used Vistra a lot together with artificial silk to make fashionable fabrics. Pure vistra or rayon fabrics are the muslins with their colorful, indanthrene-colored print patterns.

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Let's let the numbers speak for themselves in this area!

Last season, 51 million meters of these rayon muslins were produced, so that almost two meters are produced for every German woman!

The rayon is also processed by knitting mills. Jersey and knitted articles made from I.G. rayon are soft and pleasant to the skin and keep warm at the same t ime.

Washing is not difficult; V istra, Cuprama and Lanusa can even be boiled briefly.

Vistra to the homely decoration of our house: let's check once on the picture what can be there everything from Vistra and should be with the I.G. comrade gradually also from Vistra: the Boucle floor covering is likewise from Vistra like the carpet, the tablecloths, the furniture fabrics, the curtains and the wall covering. And it is mostly pure Vistra; only the cur tains and tablecloths have cotton or even linen incorporated.

But shouldn't this extensive fiber production program of our I.G. also have sought and secured its application possibilities in the technical field? The textile industry has recently been faced with extraordinary demands in the field of technical fabrics. If, however, our synthetic fibers are not substitutes, but products in their own right, in the manufacture of which chemists have learned from nature, but at the same time have avoided the disad vantages of natural products, then it is self -evident that the above question can be answered in the affirmative. Today, there are fire hoses made of Vistra with hemp, which become even more quickly leak-proof than pure hemp hoses; there are other hoses ma de of pure Vistra, which were subsequently impregnated with Buna, the synthetic rubber of the I.G. synthetic rubber, and can thus be described as a one hundred percent German product. Furthermore, our I.G. cellular wool is used to produce lubricating pads for railroad axles, drive belts, filter materials, carrying belts, felts and so much more that it would take far longer than the space available here to list them.

And once again, when one looks over this field of work of

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our I.G., the whole thing see ms so clear and therefore so simple in its essence that we want to remember here too how much serious and untiring work of the chemists, technicians and other I.G. comrades in the plants involved was and remains included in the result.

Let us also not forget the commercial comrade who had to gain entry for our fiber at the spinning mill, who supported weavers and knitters in the sale of their cellulose wool products through new designs and in general again and again, and the advertising expert who carried out the general education of our comrades about this revolutionary invention.

This educational work has not yet come to an end, and it will not find a final conclusion at all as long as our hands and brains are at work in the restless efforts of the I.G. to perfect even that which is already apparently perfect. But every I.G. comrade can participate in this enlightenment by first making use of these products of our work himself. He is also the most suitable, because he knows enough to correct the erroneous v iews about rayon that he may still encounter here and there. For example, the catchword "wood fiber" is still heard too often, spoken from the corners of one's mouth. No, comrades of the I.G.! Vistra is as little wood as sheep's wool could be called grass. Vistra comes from cellulose, certainly. But this cellulose is actually the basic material for all textiles. The sheep that eats grass and gives us the wool is, in the sense of our way of looking at things, just as much a chemical factory as our rayon mill, which supplies the fiber ready for spinning from the pulp of the beech wood. Vistra and wool, let's remember it well: they are two ways and one goal! The ways of creative man and nature to create a high quality raw material for our clothing and other tex tile needs.

This goal has been achieved by German spirit and German diligence with the Vistra of the I.G., the first and oldest rayon in the world.

Germany, too, has its "white gold" thanks to our Vistra, which has opened the door to a new textile epoch.

That the importance of this invention is also recognized

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by foreign countries is evident from the fact that the International Prize Jury of the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris awarded Vistra a "Grand Prix".

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Silky threads

The history of artificial silk dates back in its first beginnings to the 17th century. At that time, when chemical considerations tried to penetrate more and more into the processes of nature, it was obvious to also investigate the formation of textile fibers chemically and to carry out individual processes in the retort, as nature does. It was obvious to follow the processes of thread formation in the first place, which has occupied people the most, namely the spinning of natural silk. An attempt was ma de to eavesdrop on the secrets of the silkworm and to carry out the corresponding chemical processes. Just as the silkworm eats mulberry leaves, which it transforms in its body into a spinnable mass, and how it spins this mass into the highly valued thread s of silk, the chemists of that time also tried to bring mulberry leaves or similar substances into solution and to spin this solution into threads.

The incentive to do this was increased by the fact that it was hoped that the very precious natural silk, w hich in ancient Rome was weighed out with gold, could be produced in a much cheaper and more convenient way. The first to consider such a method, as far as we know, was the English scholar Robert Hooke, who in 1664 described a process for making a thread " very like silk".

Similar proposals were made in 1734 by the French naturalist Reaumur in his book "Histoire des insectes", in which he suggested using gum solutions, plant mucilage and the like as starting material and then imitating the spinning process of the silkworm by artificial means. The silkworm squeezes a tough sap (fibroin) out of narrow glands, which hardens immediately when exposed to air. By moving the head, the silkworm spins itself into the thread, which is produced from the two individual th reads of the glands, which are united by the silk glue (sericin). In this way, the cocoon is formed, in which the caterpillar undergoes its transformation into a butterfly.

It was therefore not only a question of finding a mass suitable for spinning a

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thread from it, but the spinning processes also had to be artificially imitated in some way. It is obvious that the means of the time were not yet sufficient to put such intricate chemical and technological processes into practice. The experiments of tha t time remained in their infancy, and only the idea as such had any effect for the future.

In the past 11/2 centuries, inventive minds appeared again and again, seeking solutions to this task. However, no one succeeded in overcoming the technical obstacles piled up until the end of the last century, in 1884, when Count Hilaire de Chardonnet, at the greatest sacrifice and with tenacious perseverance, gave the world a process that for the first time allowed the technical production of an artificial thread. H owever, this was not artificial real silk, but it was a thread made of regenerated cellulose. If at that time the name artificial silk appeared, this name did not correspond to the actual conditions, because it was not an artificial production of the silk. Although the name artificial silk has since become commonplace, it should not be forgotten that artificial silk has nothing to do with real silk, but has emerged as a new synthetic product alongside the well known textile fibers.

The production of artific ial silk in the world has experienced a great upswing in recent years. In 1913, 16 million kilograms of artificial silk were produced; by 1928, this figure had increased tenfold, and by 1936, it had reached around 450 million kilograms.

This development di d not stop in 1937.

In particular, the United States, Japan and Germany remarkably expanded their production of artificial silk.

Whereas around 3.5 million kilograms of artificial silk were produced in Germany before the war, annual production had risen to 50 million kilograms by 1936, so that artificial silk, along with rayon, now contributes quite significantly to meeting our demand for textile raw materials from domestic production.

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Comparative development between natural silks and Agfa artificial silks

So much about the overall development. And now to the production of artificial silk by I.G. itself. In 1921, Agfa had affiliated an artificial silk factory to its film factory in Wolfen, whose high -quality products were marketed under the name "Agfa artificial silks" and soon gained recognition at home and abroad. In 1925, Agfa was absorbed into I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft, and after I. G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft took over the artificial silk fa ctories of Köln -Rottweil A.-G. in 1926, the plants in Rottweil, Bobingen and Premnitz were organizationally attached to the Wolfen plant as headquarters. Subsequently, I.G.'s artificial silk production facilities were expanded by the new Dormagen plant and the founding of Aceta G.m.b.H. in Berlin-Lichtenberg by two additional plants, so that today I.G. produces artificial silk in a total of six factories.

Artificial silk is currently produced by three processes: the viscose process, the acetate process and the copper process.

I. G. is the only company in Germany that uses all three processes, namely: 1. in the Wolfen, Rottweil, Bobingen and Premnitz plants by the viscose process (production of "Agfa artificial silks"), 2. at the Berlin-Lichtenberg plant by t he acetate process (production of Aceta artificial silk), .

3. at the Dormagen mill by the copper -oxide-ammonia process (production of copper rayon).

Various reasons were decisive for the choice of location for the artificial silk mills in Wolfen, Rottweil , Bobingen, Premnitz, Lichtenberg and Dormagen. Of decisive importance were the coals needed to generate steam and electricity, which should be obtained as close to the plants as possible, or at least transported as cheaply as possible (waterway). As a res ult, some of the artificial silk plants were built in the immediate vicinity of the German lignite and hard coal areas where I.G. owned its own mines. Equally important, however, were the quantities of water available, with the nature of the water (e.g. its hardness, etc.) also playing a fundamental role.

The most important raw material for the production of artificial silk, cellulose, is supplied by the plant kingdom, and indeed all three processes use cellulose as a starting material; however, while the viscose silk factories process cellulose from spruce or beech wood, the acetate and copper artificial silk factories depend on linters, which are the short -fibered cotton waste.

In order to get an idea of the material consumption of a factory producing about 10,000 kilograms of viscose artificial silk per day, the following approximate average figures should be mentioned:

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To obtain the 12,500 kilograms of pulp required for 10000 kilograms of artificial silk, 75 cubic meters of wood are needed. 10,000 ki lograms of caustic soda and 4,000 kilograms of carbon disulfide are consumed to dissolve the pulp. In other words, a freight train of about 21 cars would be needed to bring in the raw material required for one week.

Half a million spinning bobbins must be in stock; many hundreds of thousands of twisting bobbins, disc bobbins, canettes, etc., made of wood, cardboard, light metal or other materials are at hand and are constantly being replenished.

The production of viscose artificial silk begins with the conv ersion of the pulp in caustic soda solution. The treatment of the pulp with caustic soda in the so called dipping presses is also called "mercerizing". After completion of the reaction, the pulp sheets soaked in caustic soda are pressed off and then pulverized in a defiberer to a fine crumbly mass. Carbon disulfide is allowed to act on the alkalized and pulped cellulose, the so -called alkali cellulose. A complicated chemical reaction takes place which converts the alkali cellulose into a new substance, the orange-colored xanthate; this is called "sulfidation".

The xanthate of cellulose is soluble in dilute sodium hydroxide solution, so it can be used to make a spinning solution. This brown, viscous solution of cellulose xanthate in dilute sodium hydroxide so lution is generally called viscose; it is from this that the whole process got its name.

The viscose is then pressed through absorbent cotton and filter cloths in filter presses so that dirt particles are retained by the filter cloth. The filtered spinning solution enters the spinning kettles and is fed from there through pipelines to the spinning machines. The yarn formation process takes place at the spinning machines. The viscose is fed in precisely metered quantities to the individual spinning positions of the machine, where it reaches the spinneret, which is immersed in the sulfuric acid and salt -containing spinning bath. When the spinning solution (viscose), which is under excess pressure, is forced through the spinneret and comes into contact with the spinning bath, the viscose is decomposed to form sulfurous gases and the pure cellulose is precipitated in thread form. The artificial silk thread is removed from the spinning bath and, in the bobbin spinning process, placed on a rotating aluminum bobbin covered with varnish. This rotating spinning bobbin regulates the thread take -off and allows a synthetic silk thread many thousands of meters long to be wound up. The acidic artificial silk thread is then freed from the adhering precipitating bath substanc es in hot water baths, then dried, twisted and brought into strand form.

These strands, which have a faint yellowish color, still have to be bleached, at

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the same time washing out the sulfur produced during thread formation and still present in the ar tificial silk. Bleaching is carried out in baths containing chlorine caustic or hydrogen peroxide.

The wet artificial silk strands are freed from excess water in centrifuges, dried in heated cabinets and then sorted. This describes the viscose process in broad outline.

The operation of the other two processes for the production of artificial silk is - briefly indicated - as follows: both processes start - as already mentioned - not from wood pulp, but from cotton waste, the so -called linters. Th ese linters are treated (beeched) with caustic soda and then bleached.

In the acetate process, the resulting pure cellulose is converted with acetic acid into so-called acetyl cel lulose (or cellulose acetate). Ac etyl cellulose is soluble in a mixture of ac etone alcohol. When this solution is forced through nozzles into a heated shaft, the low -boiling solvent mixture evaporates and a cellulose acetate thread is formed, which is wound onto bobbins. The acetate silk is untwisted from the spinning bobbins, then formed into strand shape and sorted.

In the copper process, the linters are transformed into a viscous mass in a mixture of copper oxide and ammonia (copper oxide ammonia).

This deep dark blue colored spinning solution is pressed through nozzles into water at the spinning machines; in the process, the cellulose is precipitated

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into thread form. The freshly spun thread is freed from adhering copper oxide ammonia and wound up in strand form . The strands are subjected to a short wash, dried and presorted .

After sorting, the finished artificial silk threads can be spooled in the finishing plants.

The presentation of the goods ready for shipment depends on the respective requirements of the processing industry. The latter can process the various artificial silks in strands, on conical cross -wound bobbins, cylindrical cross wound bobbins, disc bobbins, cannettes, etc.,

raw, bleached, sized, dyed. The produced artificial silk is constantly controlled. The artificial silk thread is subjected to microscopic, m echanical and dyeing tests to determine whether the strength of the thread (its titer), twist, tensile strength, elongation at break and absorption of dyes are sufficient to withstand subsequent requirements in weaving mills, knitting mills, dyeing mills, etc.

Naturally, questions and problems arise during the manufacture and processing of the artificial silk, and these are investigated in generously equipped scientific laboratories. These research facilities serve almost exclusively to improve the quality of the artificial silk, because only through further development and perfection can our artificial silks maintain the position they have achieved on domestic and foreign markets. Artificial

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silk, which only 50 years ago was a much admired curiosity, has today become an important textile raw material throughout the world and an indispensable part of the clothing industry.

In accordance with the various manufacturing processes, the artificial s ilk threads have special properties which are of decisive importance for processing on the machines of the processing industry and give the finished goods a certain character. Viscose artificial silk, which accounts for about 80 percent of artificial silk production, and to which "Agfa artificial silks" also belong, has proven itself excellently both in the field of large -scale consumption, in fabrics, underwear, stockings, and in the manufacture of technical products for the electrical, automotive industri es, etc.

In the case of aceta artificial silk, for example, the higher elasticity, low specific weight and softness of the thread play an essential role. For this reason, it is used primarily in the manufacture of particularly fine woven and knitted fabrics, especially in the creation of fashionable novelties. Copper artificial silk can be used to create fine -threaded special articles both in knitting and in the weaving and hosiery industries. I.G.'s artificial silk production program, which is inextricably linked with the Agfa name, meets all wishes and requirements, as does the rayon program. When our women bring home one of the beautiful woven or knitted fabrics made of artificial silk from their purchases, when we let it slip through our hands, we are pl eased to think that here, too, we are in many cases a product of the work of our comrades in Wolfen, Rottweil, Bo bingen, Premnitz, Berlin -Lichtenberg or Dormagen.

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Like the sea...

Cellulose, the starting material for artificial silk and rayon, is of almost unlimited versatility. Again and again, the chemists' and technicians' brainstorming succeeds in producing new, surprising replicas of nature.

There is the sponge, for example! The sea is its home; there, prefera bly on the coasts of the Mediterranean, it builds itself up from silicic acid, lime and proteins and supplies a highly valued cleaning agent for household and technical purposes. The structure of the sea sponge was researched so long and so thoroughly unti l it was possible to produce it artificially, from the same basic material as artificial silk and Vistra and by a similar process. The Agfa viscose sponge is also related to the above -mentioned materials in that, like them, it surpasses the properties of n atural sponges; the absorbency of the viscose sponge is considerably higher than that of sea sponges - in some cases many times higher. In contrast to natural sponges, viscose sponges can be boiled. However, the viscose sponge has another invaluable proper ty. It takes the place not only of the natural sponge, but also of the chamois leather. Hard when dry, the viscose sponge immediately swells in water by 40 to 50 percent of its volume. Irregularities as in the case of the sea sponge do not occur with

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it at all, of course; one is like the other, and they all have the advantage of smooth surfaces.

Viscose sponges are supplied in different pore sizes depending on their intended use: for household purposes, for personal hygiene, for sports and car, for photographic operations, for "school" blackboards and the like.

In the household, the Agfa viscose sponge provides valuable services to the housewife in window cleaning, dusting, cleaning porcelain, crystal, carpets and upholstered furniture.

The window, worked with it, becomes wet, clean, degreased and dry again in a very short time, since one side of the viscose sponge can be used for cleaning and the other for polishing.

In personal hygiene, the viscose sponge performs two tasks: in the wet state it washes, in the very wet -after squeezingit massages the skin.

In the case of toilet sponges, the ability to boil is essential from the point of view of health. It is in this respect that the viscose sponge proves its superiority over the sea sponge.

Like the sea , our I.G. builds its sponges. No! Better than the sea.

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Fragrant Chemistry

To anticipate: the headline is correct. We comrades from the I.G. are not easily taken aback, but did we really all know that the most beautiful fragrances come out of our retorts, conjured up by the art of synthesis?

When we bring our wives a perfume from a store for their birthday, or when we are surrounded by the fine scent of a soap, do we think of the fact that the I. G. has probably also been at work there ? In the field of chemical investigation of the scents of flowers and plants and their reproduction, our I.G. has worked with resounding success. Agfa began this w ork in the last decade of the last century. Today, the artificial fragrances are produced in various I.G. plants. And it is to these synthetic fragrances in general that we owe the unimagined rise that perfumery has taken. Their administrators mix, however, under strict secrecy of their individual recipes, the synthetic fragrances with natural fragrances of vegetable, but also animal origin, and what results are compositions with the often so foreign and seductive names, whereby they either have the pronoun ced character of flower scents or are fantasy scents.

The synthetic bases used for this purpose, of course, do not have such euphonious names. Let us hear some of them ourselves, which are of particular importance in the processing industry (soap and perfu me factories):

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Anthranilic acid methyl ester, benzaldehyde, benzyl acetate, benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, phenyl ethyl alcohol, terpineol, cinnamaldehyde, cinnamyl alcohol and lastly naphthyl methyl ketone.

By the way, the fragrance department of ou r Wolfen plant near Bitterfeld also produces compositions itself. There are, among others: Agfa White Lilac, Agfa Lily of the Valley, Agfa Red Rose, Agfa Belles Fleurs, Agfa Fougére. Agfa, on the other hand, does not supply ready -made perfumes of the kind you buy in stores. Since most fragrances are highly volatile and therefore need to be held, i.e. fixed, the fragrance department also supplies the appropriate fixatives.

The products vanillin and vanillose, which are also manufactured by I.G. in Wolfen and used by the chocolate and food industries, belong to the field of flavorings.

These flavorings, too, owe their chemical origin to nature, which provides us with vanillin in small crystals in the vanilla bean. The first attempts to reproduce this led research to the production of vanillin from clove oil. Today we are no longer dependent on this raw material, which comes from abroad, because we have the raw materials we need in our own country.

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Chemicals from A to Z

We could, and perhaps we should, begin this section of the book on the products of our work with a strictly scientific study of the groups that make up the "chemicals" that we sell under this collective term. In order to give a certain overview, it is necessary to give a list of the products handled by the Chemicals Sales Group.

Inorganic products Chlorine products, alkalis, chlorates Inorganic acids and their salts Phosphorus and phosphorus compounds Mineral colors Light metals Heavy metals, their alloys, acids and salts Inorganic tanning agents

Organic products Organic tannins Organic acids and salts Organic intermediates Solvents and plasticizers Cellulose esters and ethers Plastics, synthetic resins Vulcanization accelerators and antioxidants Buna

If we take a close look at the world that surrounds us in terms of chemicals, we will find to our surprise that among all the things we use every day there is almost none that does not have a smaller or larger proportion of chemicals in or on it, except that these are often not visibly prominent because they are a precursor or part of a utility product.

The child in the cradle, the merchant whom the motor truck takes from place to place, the grandfather who wants to read his newspaper in peace in his recliner, the diver in his rubber suit on the bottom of the sea, the aviator in the air, all of them could not lead their lives as they are accustomed to without the large number of products which our chemical sales distribute. But let's leave these examples and take a hike through the major industries to see where the chemicals actually are.

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Let's look down at ourselves and start with our clothes.

Large quantities of chemicals are needed to produce the various fabrics, such as rayon, rayon, etc., and we'll list some of them here: Caustic soda, chlorine, hydrochloric acid, caustic potash, bleaching lye, sulfuric acid, carbon disulfide, sodium sulfite, sodium sulfate, acetic acid, acetone, s ulfur sodium, formic acid, "Kronos" titanium white.

On our feet, our shoes: the leather, before being made into footwear, had to travel a long way through a wide variety of chemicals. The hides preserved with our Preventol, for example, must first be tanne d. In the soaking, liming, dehairing and pickling processes preceding the actual tanning, we already find our mollescale, caustic soda, sulfuric acid, sulfur sodium, sulfur barium, formic acid, glycolic acid. In the subsequent actual tanning, as far as min eral tanning for the production of upper leather, sports leather (soccer) and technical leather is concerned, our bichromates are used in combination with antichlorine and sulfurous acid for the chrome one -bath and two-bath tanning.

Chromium alum and ready -to-tan chromium salts (chromium lye, chromosal and chromium tanning salt) are also used for single -bath tanning. If the hides are to be used for the production of sole leather, saddlery leather, leather for furniture and car upholstery, they are tanned wi th vegetable tanning agents such as oak bark, spruce bark, chestnut and quebracho extracts. This process is followed by a fixation of the tanning agents in the leather with our fixative, so that the tanning agents cannot be washed out again. To the extract s, some of which are imported from abroad, our synthetic tanning agents, the tanigans, are added to improve the effect. They have now been developed to such an extent that, leaving their auxiliary role, they can become the main carrier of the tanning. Thes e new synthetic tanning agents will replace the natural vegetable tanning agents or can be mixed with them in any ratio, without any significant change in the existing process. With these synthetic tanning agents, which are based on German raw materials, i t is possible to obtain leathers of the same quality as those obtained with vegetable tanning agents, and even to improve some of the leather's properties considerably.

Above all, the new tanning agents permit more economical tanning. Also, in the processing of tanned hides to leather goods, including shoes, the range of chemicals encountered by the tanned hide to the finished leather is still supplemented by some products, such as phosphoric acid. For gluing the leather, Cohesan and Cosavult are used in th e manufacture of footwear or driving belts - Cohesan is also an excellent water -resistant adhesive for household use - while for the manufacture of leather dyes and varnishes, Collodium wool, "Kronos" titanium white, synthetic resins, solvents and softeners, as well as our drying agents, the soligens, are used.

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When we return to our home from the walk to the sites that create our clothes, on the road asphalted with our Dispersion Y, we will notice, through the "chemical glasses" once put on, that quite a lot of our company's products have been used on and in the house. Perhaps the exterior painting was done with iron oxide or chromium oxide paints; those who prefer white will have chosen titanium white or lithopone as pigments. As a paint binder for achieving weatherproof exterior as well as washable and wipe -resistant interior paints, anyone can make use of Membranit, which Uerdingen manufactures. However, those who do not like painting but have built their house with clinker bricks can be pleased if bar ium carbonate was used in the manufacture of these clinker bricks, because they can then be sure that the clinker bricks will not show any ugly white efflorescence later on. By the way, the most beautiful colors are conjured up in these clinkers with the h elp of I.G. Color Firing and I. G. Black Firing. If you can even see through the earth, you will find the foundation walls of your house painted with a black mass, our Aristogen or Asfluid, which keeps the moisture out of your house.

It cannot be the task of chemistry to displace the tried and tested building materials such as brick and cement; the joint work of civil engineers and chemists is aimed only at - generally speaking - utilizing chemical processes to produce building materials with special prope rties for specific purposes or to give existing building materials such special properties. This includes Iporit lightweight concrete, a concrete made porous with the help of our foaming agent, which is used for the construction of exterior and intermediat e walls as well as for the production of screed, dampens sound and makes cold and heat exchange more difficult. When painting the interior of our house, we encounter the previously mentioned products "Kronos" titanium white, lithopone, iron oxide paints, c hromium oxide paints, as well as cement blue.

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Membranite is also used, especially in the kitchen, bathroom and children's room. The window frames and doors are painted with a varnish, which again requires our chemicals, this time the synthetic resins, such as Alkydale, KM resins, as well as our drying agents. In carpentry, wood is glued with glue. But to make it, you need sulfuric acid, caustic soda, hydrochloric acid, sodium bisulfite, sodium fluoride, "Kronos" titanium white and our preservatives.

Large quantities of caustic soda, chlorine, chlorinated lime, bleaching lye, sulfuric acid, blanc fixe, chromium oxide, "Kronos" titanium white and tamol are sent to the paper mills for the production of wallpaper, as for the production of paper in general. Finally, varnishes are needed again for printing the wallpaper paper, and we supply the raw materials for their production.

The product range just mentioned, which is required for the manufacture of paper, must be further supplemented if w e go back to the basic product for paper, the pulp. If this is to be obtained from the various natural materials such as wood and linters, we need caustic soda, sodium sulfite, sodium sulfate, hydrochloric acid, our "daily bread" sulfuric acid, liquid chlo rine, chlorinated lime, sodium bisulfite and, in order to work safely with all these chemicals, containers that have been acid -proofed with our "Höchst" acid putty or Asplit acid putty.

Anyone who builds a house will want it to be protected against the risk of fire as far as possible. To achieve this, care will be taken during construction to ensure that the wood used is impregnated with our Intravan and Locron flame retardants - incidentally, a requirement of air -raid protection that has become a matter of course. In addition, the lucky homeowner will have fire extinguishers in the house, with the help of which he can quickly extinguish fires in the making. Such an extinguisher contains our carbon tetrachloride as an extinguishing agent. If, however, the flames are already spreading from the house and the fire department comes to the rescue, it relies in its hard work on our foam extinguishing agent Tutogen, with which the flames are smothered. The building timbers, however, should not only be protected against the danger of fire, but also against rotting. To achieve this, they are impregnated with our Basilite (as are pit timbers, railroad sleepers and telegraph poles). - Even the roof tiles cannot do without the chemical industry.

Like the clinkers and b ricks, they need treatment with barium carbonate to protect against efflorescence and can be given special tints with the help of I.G. coloring and black firing.

And the windows? We supply glass factories with sodium sulfate and potash, caustic soda, hydro fluoric acid and its salts, cryolite, barium carbonate, iron oxide red (as polishing red), blanc fixe, cadmium paints, chromium oxide, sulfur sodium, cobalt oxide, "Kronos" titanium white and phonolite.

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All the small parts in our rooms should be pleasi ng, such as the door fittings, the door and window handles and the like. If you want to achieve this, you can use our light metal hydronalium, which is produced in Bitterfeld, or our plastics. The chrome plating of the fittings with our chrome acid also ha s a beautiful effect, although this is currently encountering certain difficulties due to the scarcity of the raw material. Our Kaurit glue, a purely domestic product based on urea and formaldehyde, is used for gluing plywood panels, for example for panele d walls, ceilings, doors, and for waterproof gluing of veneers on furniture. Damaged parts of furniture are repaired with Ballit, a malleable wood. Our synthetic resins, such as plastopals, are used for the production of furniture varnishes and stains. Fur niture is sanded with our sandpaper. For the carpets, curtains and furniture upholstery, what has already been said about our clothes applies; they require the chemicals listed there during their manufacture, depending on the type of fabric. Incidentally, the owner of an apartment will see to it that, in addition to his carpets, curtains, and sofa cushions, there are also blackout fabrics in his apartment for air protection, made with the help of our plastic emulsions.

And now to nutrition. To create it is the task of Mother Nature, and only here and there it is necessary - apart from the commercial fertilizers - to use a chemical. Namely, where it is a question of preserving the products of our earth with our preservatives and protecting them against spoila ge. And if our cellar is not sufficient for cooling the food, then, where it is possible, an icebox will be set up, for the operation of which we supply refrigerants and for the production of which, in turn, varnishes are needed, which have our synthetic resins, such as Alkydale and KM resins, as their starting materials.

We also contribute to the maintenance and cleaning of the house and its contents: first of all, we manufacture cleaning agents such as floor polish, stain remover, metal polishes, furnitur e polishes, shoe polishes, shoe polishes, etc., which we use as raw materials for the production of our synthetic resins, such as Alkydale and KM resins, furniture polishes, shoe polish, shoe polish, etc. our solvents, extracting agents, especially carbon tetrachloride (carbon tetrachloride is an excellent agent for removing oil and grease stains) and grease splitter, then caustic soda, potash, oxalic acid, chromium oxide. If the housewife is not able to clean the clothes by herself, she sends them to the c hemical laundry, where they are cleaned from all dirt with our incombustible asord. We clean the stone floors in the house with our Siliron.

A large customer of our products is the soap industry; it processes caustic soda

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(for the production of hard soaps), caustic potash (for the production of soft soap and liquid soap), potash, sulfuric acid, antichlor, barium carbonate, chlorine liquid, chlorinated lime, bleaching lye, "Kronos" titanium white and carbon tetrachloride. The fat for soap industry used to be imported almost exclusively. Now fatty acid factories are under construction, producing fatty acid from kerosene obtained from German coal. Attention should also be drawn here to paradichlorobenzene; to the extent that upholstered furniture, carpets, other woolen products, furs and the like have not already been supplied mothproof by I.G.'s Eulan, it is an excellent means of protecting these items against moth damage. If we were to follow our chemicals to the last corner in our house, it could happen to us that the sun would set on them. But we still want to use the afternoon to continue our tour of the various industries. We pack the most necessary things into our small Vulcan fiber suitcase (chlorzinc, caustic soda, chlorine liquid and sulfuric acid were present during its manufacture) and walk with it to the car; before that we light a cigarette. Chemicals also play an important role in this small process, because our phosphorus red and phosphorus sesquisulfide, furthermore potassium chlorate, potas sium bichromate and sodium bichromate are used to produce the friction surface on the matchbox and the match head. Of course, we must not forget the chemicals used for the production of the paper glued to the matchbox and for the production of the glue.

The car, in turn, is a small showcase of chemicals. The car stands in front of us, beautifully painted. While our eyes rest on it, full of pleasure, the chemicals that were the inspiration for the production of the paint first appear: the wide range of our s olvents and plasticizers such as butyl acetate, solvent E 13, acetic ether, tricresyl phosphate, palatinate, our synthetic resins such as AW2 resin, KM resin, collodion wool and soligens. Modern painting with nitrocellulose and alkyd paints, which are appl ied by the so-called spraying method and dry very quickly, has kept pace with the rapid development of car construction. What flashes before our eyes on the car, such as windshield frames, radiator figures, radiator masks, bumpers, handles, fittings, turns out to be our hydrona lium, an aluminum-based alloy of the highest resistance to weathering. It has replaced heavy metals, which were mainly used for these purposes in the past and whose raw materials are mainly of foreign origin. At the Paris World's Fair , hydronalium received the highest

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award, the Grand Prix. Hydronalium's relative, electron metal, whose most important components are the electrochemically obtained metals magnesium and aluminum, is the lightest metallic material and makes it possible to produce components for machines of high strength with the lowest possible weight. The cry of modern technology is always "the battle of the dead load," and it becomes all the louder the faster machines and vehicles have to be moved, because otherwise t he applied driving energy is uselessly eaten up by the inert mass. No wonder that electron metal is found in the motor vehicle!

Depending on the design, various parts of the engine and transmission, which the average vehicle user hardly ever sees, are made of electron metal. The cylinder blocks contain our ferroalloys to refine the casting, as do the highly stressed automotive steels. - For the manufacture of the tires and rubber parts, into the tire and rubber factories went our synthetic rubber Buna, accompanied by our accelerators, anti -aging agents, carbon black, and a whole assortment of chemicals, such as Atznatron, Antichlor, Blanc fixe, cadmium paints, chromium oxide, iron oxide paints, "Kronos" titanium white, lithopone, sodium bisulfite, sodium sul fite, sulfur, sulfuric acid, carbon tetrachloride.

With a glance at the lamps filled with our noble gas argon and into the radiator, where we discover to our delight our antifreeze Glysantin, we finally climb into the car. No matter what we make ourselves comfortable on - leather seats, artificial leather seats or fabric upholstery - our chemicals have again played a part everywhere. As far as the leather is concerned, we ask you to look back and read what we wrote down about the visit to the tannery and leather factory. For the production of the artificial leather parts, our sulfuric acid, collodion wool, our softening agents, solvents, acronale and mowilite, titanium dioxide and lithopone were used. And as far as the fabric lining is concerned, let's take a quick mental trip back to the textile industry and look at the chemicals listed there as well. For the bonding in the car, our cosale has found use, for the production of the safety glass, depending on the process, our plastics, such as mowilithe and acr onale, but also our collodion wool, cellite, solvents and plasticizers. In the small amenities inside the car, such as ashtrays, cigar lighters, etc., we recognize our hydronalium and our plastics.

But now we have had enough of the chemicals on and in the car and drive to the area of plastics, which we want to visit in detail because of its importance.

On the way through the city, passing long rows of houses, we are pleased to

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find on all of them the chemicals that we have already seen on our own house .

When the last houses are behind us, dense beech, pine and spruce forest takes us in, and we stand in the middle of nature's chemical industry. Here it builds up from earth, air, water and sun the trees that provide us with the wood from which, with the h elp of our chemicals, in turn pulp, rayon, paper and clothing are obtained. But not only that: this chemical factory in the forest is also one of the suppliers of raw materials to the paint industry, so it also contributes its part to the beautification of our car. The cellulose, obtained from the wood of the trees, is the raw material for the nitrocellulose or collodion wool, which is mainly the film -forming part of the modern spray paints. The rosin from the conifers of the forest is also used to make the synthetic resins that are the binders in the varnish to make it dry hard and shiny. However, if we carbonize the wood of the beautiful trees, we get a whole range of other raw materials for the paint in our car. In this process, we obtain methanol and ace tic acid, for example. By esterifying alcohols with acetic acid, we obtain the solvents urgently needed for the production of nitrocellulose lacquer, the so -called methyl-containing solvents ethyl acetate, butyl acetate, and so on. However, this forest factory cannot supply enough to meet all the requirements; therefore, years ago our chemists started to get the mentioned products from other sources. They started from the dead forest, that is, from coal, and from water, and arrived at methanol and a whole s eries of other alcohols. From coal and lime they obtained calcium carbide, and from this they again produced acetic acid, ethyl alcohol and butanol (formerly obtained from the

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fermentation of corn and rye). This work has made it possible to produce all solvents in this way, that is, without having to attack the living forest. The use of acetic acid is not limited to the production of solvents; we have already heard of it in the production of artificial silk. Nor is methanol content with this small sphere of action, but has the right to be called one of the most important starting materials for the production of plastics; after all, it is from it that the formaldehyde is obtained which is important for the production of plastics, and of whic h we are reminded when we now open our vulcanized fiber case and unpack our Pollopas plates and Pollopas cups for the coffee break.

This brings us to the field of plastics. Chemists have worked hard to develop these new materials, and their work has borne fruit. Of the plastics, only synthetic horn, cellulose derivative compounds and, in particular, phenoplastics and aminoplastics in their versatile forms of appearance and processing were generally known. They had long since secured a wide range of applications. In addition, the chemical industry has recently been in a position to provide a further series of completely new products, which in many cases can be used in addition to the natural products or in their place to an increasing extent. These products a re based on raw materials that are available in sufficient quantities in Germany. As shown in the diagram attached to this book, "Plastics from lime and coal" (also called acetylene tree), the starting materials for most of these modern raw materials go ba ck to the natural products coal and lime. Despite the large number of applications already opened up with these new products, it can be stated that we are only at the beginning of their development, in the further course of which we will certainly have to reckon with new results.

By their very nature, the new plastics are thermoplastic materials, i.e. softly formable under heat, based on polymerization products which do not undergo any chemical change as a result of this forming process and can therefore be processed several times.

The main representatives of this new class of materials produced by I. G. are Igelite, Oppanole, Polystyrene and Luvican. Each of these materials has particularly high -quality and valuable chemical, mechanical and electrical properties and represents a valuable addition to the materials known to date.

Thus, they are not only suitable for replacing foreign exchange -bound or difficult-to-access raw materials, but they also open up entirely new forms of application.

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Plastics from lime and coal

The processing of these raw materials into finished products is generally carried out according to the manufacturing processes known in the plastics processing industry, in particular the pressing and injection molding processes, as well as the drawing, pressing and thermoforming processes commonly used in the hard and soft rubber industry. What is already being made from this today? Even in this list, we cannot be complete. Let's just pick out a few: - Piping and fittings that are particularly resistant to chemical stresses. In this respect, the plastics considered here have in some cases even surpassed previously known metals or metal alloys. Such pipes are used in the manufacture of beer lines, for th e transfer of distilled water, in dye works, bleach works, etc., and for the transfer of acids, alkalis and other agents in the chemical industry; they are also suitable for the general installation of water lines. These pipelines are complemented by the p ossibility of machining fittings, gate valves and other installation parts out of the solid from molded parts of these plastics.

- For the soft and hard rubber industry to replace and supplement rubber compounds for the production of molded articles of all kinds, such as hoses, seals, packings, profile material, sheet material and the like, which are characterized by good water and chemical resistance, high mechanical properties, low abrasion and practically unlimited aging.

- In the cable and wire industry for the production of electrically high -quality insulating and sheathing compounds of low specific weight, high chemical resistance, good resistance to cold and aging, and incombustibility, eliminating the need for tinning of the conductor and vulcanizati on of the finished wires.

-For finishing all kinds of textiles, such as the production of impregnated and laminated fabrics, which can undergo further processing by making up, doubling or embossing. These applications extend in particular to the manufacture of waterproof fabrics, oilcloth, upholstery materials, artificial leather, folding boat fabrics and the like.

- As a binder for the production of floor and wall covering materials, furthermore for the production of leather -like products instead of foreig n raw materials such as linseed oil and latex. Also, it should be noted here that it is used for the production of packaging materials, such as cans and boxes.

Close cooperation between the chemical and processing industries ensures the application of tech nical improvements and the further development of these novel products. The experience that develops in this way offers the possibility of opening up ever new areas of application and thus serving general progress.

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From the point of view of the nationa l economy, this both attractive and successful way of producing valuable new products from domestic raw materials and replacing foreign raw materials that consume foreign currency as well as adding them to the range of previously available raw materials represents a noteworthy contribution to the solution of the tasks set in the Four-Year Plan. Before leaving the forest, let's take a last look at this chemical factory. The conifers also supply the turpentine oil from which we obtain the synthetic camphor th at used to have to be imported in large quantities from Japan, and which is used in particular together with nitrocellulose, also a wood product, for the production of celluloid. The forest is over and fields and meadows lie open before us. On the small fa rm we have just passed, a green fodder silo has been erected. The silo itself was built with the help of our "Höchst" acid mastic, and the green fodder in the silo was mixed with Penthesta to keep it fresh and retain its nutritional value. - By the way, acid putty "Höchst" is an indispensable tool for lining all containers that are somehow subject to acid exposure. As we continue our journey, we pass a rubber factory that belongs to an industry in which chemistry has made a deep impact, especially in recent times.

With foresight and generosity, some of the parent plants now united within the I.G. began work on the technical synthesis of rubber, the main raw material of the rubber industry, more than thirty years ago. The first result was the so-called methyl rubber produced from dimethylbutadiene during the World War, which, however, still had certain deficiencies. In 1926, work was switched to a different starting material, butadiene, from which the types of bunas now on the market are obtained by polymeriz ation. I.G.'s task was to produce synthetically the natural product rubber with its unique properties, which had become an indispensable material for the automotive industry in particular. In Buna production, complicated reaction paths lead from carbide, whose basic materials are lime and coal, via acetylene and various intermediates to butadiene, from which the German synthetic rubber

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produced by polymerization is then obtained, known as Buna. I. G. produces four grades of Buna (Buna 85, Buna 115, B una S, Perbunan) with specific suitability for the various fields of application. The great future of synthetic rubber lies in the cultivation of special grades that are superior to natural rubber. The high regard in which I.G.'s achievements are held by i nternational experts can be seen from the fact that Buna was awarded the "Grand Prix" at the Paris World's Fair.

Today's production has met the expectations in terms of quality. We have also created new rubber -like products in the form of perdurenes, which , depending on their type, are resistant to gasoline, benzene and other hydrocarbons. They are used in special areas where natural rubber cannot be used at all.

We now continue our tour in a large omnibus, which we find designed and built with the same che micals as our private car, and arrive at the electrotechnical, radio, telephone and light bulb industries. It uses our plastics to a large extent. It also uses caustic potash, caustic soda, accumulator acid, sulfuric acid, formic acid, ammonium fluoride, a tramentol (for rust protection of fittings, apparatus and machine parts), chlorzinc (for dry batteries), hydrofluoric acid (as a matting agent for the internal matting of incandescent lamps), molybdenum metal chemically pure (for the production of tungsten wire holders for incandescent lamps), Iron powder (for the production of ground cores for pupin coils and iron cores for radio receivers), nibrene wax (for impregnating, insulating and potting purposes) and finally noble gases, which shine at us in red, g reen and blue colors and their compositions in the light advertising systems. It should be mentioned here that the Quarzlampen Gesellschaft, Hanau, with the help of a special glass manufactured by us, which is permeable to ultraviolet rays, builds the Alpi na home sun, which - used correctly - has the same beneficial effects on our health as the natural sun.

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In the neighboring watch industry, as well as in the manufacture of electricity meters and water meters, our synthetic gemstones are used as bearing stones.

Synthetic gemstones remain hidden to the eye, but they shine all the more beautifully in jewelry, especially as rubies, sapphires and spinels. Physically and chemicall y, they resemble natural stones, their models.

With this view into the jewelry industry we conclude our tour, in order to fly back now with the airplane. In the airplane we find the same products as in the private car and in the omnibus.

Here, where particular lightness is important, our electron metal, with its low specific weight of 1.8, has found an even greater application than in the automobile. In the case of aircraft, it is important to get the maximum performance out of the material. For this reaso n, we have found a much faster and more widespread application for our electron metal than in other industries. For example, the starting wheels, including the associated brake assembly, of almost all German and foreign aircraft are now electron castings.

The most highly stressed crankcases of aircraft engines with in -line arrangement of the cylinders are all made of electron metal; but every aircraft engine of other design is also equipped with numerous parts made of this material. The airframe, i.e. fusel age and wings, also features numerous parts, such as planking plates, struts of all kinds, made of electron metal in the form of forgings, profiles, and sheets, which are capable of bearing the high stresses involved in overcoming air resistance at speeds of several hundred kilometers per hour without placing a heavy load on the overall weight. Only in this way is it possible to keep a substantial part of the aircraft's load bearing capacity free for payload.

Happily landed, we take a seat in our car to dri ve home again. A strange bluish light shines at us from a work site on the streetcar tracks. There, rails are joined together by welding. One of the founding companies of the I.G., Chemische Fabrik Griesheim -Elektron, or its Autogen plant in Griesheim, played a decisive role in the development of autogenous welding and cutting, this new technique of autogenous metalworking, without which no metalworking company can be imagined today. Initially, the hydrogen

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produced in chlor-alkali electrolysis was ma de usable as a fuel gas for the operation of oxyacetylene welding torches (1903). The oxyacetylene cutting torch, which had become indispensable, was constructed from the process used in 1901 to pierce solidified iron masses of staggered blast furnace tapping holes with the aid of the oxygen jet. Today, the I. G. Autogen plant in Griesheim manufactures all the equipment used in autogenous metalworking, which has become world -famous under the "Griesogen" brand (welding and cutting torches, cutting machines, pressure reducing valves for all gases, equipment for autogenous surface hardening, as well as all accessories and additional material).

Factories spread all over the empire produce the necessary gases oxygen, hydrogen, acetylene .

Our round trip did not ta ke us everywhere where I. G. chemicals are used. If we had visited all the places where our chemicals are indispensable, we would have had to spend twice or three times as much time. For today, however, we will leave it at that. It has

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fulfilled its purpose if it has given its participants ideas and has awakened and retained in us fellow workers from the I. G. the joyful and proud feeling: on all paths of daily life we repeatedly encounter the products of our work created by all of us!

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In the fight against diseases One area of the products of our work is particularly rich in captivating history: the white field of the tireless struggle that our I.G. has waged and continues to wage in the medicinal field against the most treacherous enemies of the human race, diseases in their many thousands of forms.

But no area is also as serious and as full of responsibility as this one, since it concerns the health of our people and of mankind. Therefore, the hike that we I.G. comrades now want to undertake through this area cannot always be accompanied by just chatting words. No matter how we want to tackle the task, again and again its fateful E rnst looks over our shoulders. Also on this walk through our I.G. we take the proud feeling with us that we belong to the closer comradeship of all the men and women, who in the fight against the diseases the less slacken, the greater the successes are.

A history of diseases would be tantamount to a history of humanity in genera l.

But if one wants to and is allowed to call as remedies only those which still withstand a scientific criticism today, then there have been very few of them until the eighties of the last century. Terrible gaps have been torn again and again by epidemics and diseases in the human race, which stood helplessly

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before them and only after the natural abatement of the suffering found the hope of life again. Milestones of such destruction stand everywhere in the world. Just look at the pillars of plague an d cholera along the paths of the nations. How immense was once the mortality in infancy! How many women still die of childbed fever where modern hygiene has not yet reached!

Today, when night descends over the landscape of the Lower Rhine, a huge ring shines through the darkness between Cologne and Düsseldorf. Suddenly, within this glowing circle, the crossed name BAYER leaps glaringly out of the darkness into the light. For a while, the huge light sign stands clear and shining far into the night. Then it goes out for a few moments, only to flare up again. In the same way, the Bayer Cross lights up in all the world's major cities as a symbol of the company's willingness to help wherever people are ill and seeking healing.

If the number of people who die prem aturely from disease is steadily decreasing today, this success is due in no small part to the tremendous progress made in modern medicine. With its numerous tried -andtested remedies, Bayer is in the front line of the fighters against disease and pain. Ou r medicines, serums and vaccines, and our means of disinfection give the physician today the tools to make impossible the terrible disease losses of former times.

There is no more convincing proof of the progress of modern medical science than the calculated fact that the average age of humans has increased by almost 20 years in the last 40 years. Whatever other circumstances may have led to this result, drug research has in any case contributed decisively to the fact that fewer and fewer

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people are dying of infectious diseases today, and that more and more are able to spend their old age in good health. The entire pioneering development of modern medicine is inextricably linked to this drug research. Many previously unknown treatments are closely lin ked precisely to the discoveries made in our laboratories, the laboratories of the I.G.. A work on the progress of modern medicine would therefore have to return again and again to the achievements of our "Bayer" Pharmaceutical Department. Names such as Salvarsan, Germanin, Atebrin, Plasmochin, Campolon, Betaxin, and Prontosil have achieved world renown and significance. How many diseases are curable today that were considered incurable in the past!

In the past, legal letters and documents were given precio us seals as a sign of their binding force and as proof of their genuine origin. Even those signs which, as trademarks, identify the manufacturer, oblige and bind the manufacturer identified by the trademark. For medicines, however, the trademark is particu larly important, because their quality, efficacy and harmlessness, for which it is supposed to stand, are decisive for human health and well-being, and in many cases even for life and death. When a remedy bears the Bayer label, it is backed by the entire s um of research work carried out in our institutes, which are recognized throughout the world. Bayer's remedies are also important for the I.G.'s followers, because health is the highest good of life, the back -up in the struggle for existence. One look at t he package, at the Bayer cross, is enough to know that one is holding one of these high-quality preparations of the I.G. in one's hand.

In contrast to those who indiscriminately promise everything, our Bayer department, of course, does not want to and cann ot provide the sick with so called panaceas. The human organism is far too complicated for there not to be failures now and then, even with the most perfect method. But if a remedy helps the majority of patients, then the researcher can look back with satisfaction on his achievement. And just as proud can be the workers who have helped in the chemical production of the preparation or the necessary, often very numerous intermediates, just as those who give these medicines their final form. They have all cont ributed to the alleviation of human suffering.

We cannot list them all here, the products of our work in the field of medicines. Many of our remedies have become common property. Who among us has not felt the beneficial effects of aspirin or pyramidone fo r headaches, flu and discomfort?

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To prevent flu and other infectious diseases, our panflavin has been widely used. Those who suffer from constipation remember the good effect of Istizin.

For catarrh, Coryfin candies and Kresival cough syrup help us; equally well known are the refreshing and disinfecting Ortizone balls and Dontalol for daily oral and dental care. Aspirin is just as much a household word in the remotest corners of the earth as it is in Europe. But the woman in Cape Town, the cowboy in South America, the malay who can't read but still knows the trademark, they would all, if they asked for aspirin, reject a preparation that didn't bear the Bayer Cross. "Si es Bayer, es bueno," alr eady sounds like a proverb in South America and means, "If it's from Bayer, it's good!"

The verdict of patients is matched by the verdict of doctors around the world.

This is because most of our preparations are not home remedies, but only become a real blessing in the hands of the physician. Given the high standard of our research and manufacturing facilities, and the abundance of high quality remedies made available to physicians by Bayer, physicians will understand if, as a member of the large I.G. fami ly, one prefers Bayer preparations.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the "Bayer" Pharmaceutical Department. At a management meeting in February 1888, it was decided to set up a separate pharmaceutical business alongside the dyestuffs busi ness of the former Farbenfabriken vorm. Friedrich Bayer & Co. in Elberfeld, the company decided to set up its own pharmaceutical department. The invention by chemists Duisberg and Hinsberg of a new antipyretic and painkiller, which was initially produced i n quantities of 20 kilograms per day, opened up a new field of activity for the plant, the scope and effects of which could hardly have been foreseen at the time.

But because it is all too easy to take cultural achievements for granted, it is necessary, albeit briefly, to pay tribute to our I. G. plant.

The history of development must be explained to our I. G. comrades, because

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only it makes an evaluation of what has been achieved possible. Since we are only concerned with truly scientific findings, we can begin with the conditions at the beginning of the 19th century.

The organic chemist had turned to the study of herbal drugs at an early stage in order to obtain the actual active substances of the various medicinal herbs and to determine their chemical structure. He was particularly fascinated by opium, for example, which has other remarkable properties besides its analgesic effect. It was the pharmacist Sertürner who in 1804 discovered morphine in opium, which is obtained from the unripe fruits of the poppy, as the component to which the analgesic effect is due. Discoveries of a number of other effective bodies from various plants followed. From opium alone, about two dozen such alkaloids have been extracted to date, for example, the cough-relieving codeine and the anticonvulsant thebaine. But how was this latter recognized in its dangerous property?

Because humans cannot be used for such experiments! Here a likewise young science began, the "pharmacology", which studied the effect of individual medicines (pharmaceuticals) in the experiment primarily with frogs, mice and rats.

However, this also revealed that many plants known as medicinal herbs had no effect at all or had a completely different effect than that attributed to them, for example, by the vernacular.

Thus one learned to distinguish the false from the real, the true from the imaginary, and one also learned about the side effects of some remedies and their causes. Thus morphine, which for years was known as the only pain reliever to be u sed internally, is also a dangerous narcotic. Equally dangerous is the narcotic cocaine, which had to be resorted to for its local analgesic effect. The misuse of these preparations and the habit -forming associated with them have brought untold misery to m any people. The researcher therefore set out to find chemical bodies that could be used with the same healing value without the harmful side effects. In addition, many of these

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medicinal herbs and drugs, for example the expensive camphor, had to be procured from abroad. Therefore, efforts were made to synthesize the substances recognized as effective from simple existing basic substances. In all this research, the question had to be asked: Do the remedies provided by nature represent an ideal at all?

After all, the chemically active bodies of the plant are not given from the beginning to serve the sick person, but as protection and reserve substances for the plant itself, which in turn builds up these substances from the same basic substances that the chemist uses for his synthetic bodies. For the chemical processes in nature take place in some respects similarly to those in the chemist's test tube.

We will try to explain the importance of chemical synthesis and the resulting knowledge and conclusions in the field of remedies by means of the following three formulas. These are substances similar to each other, of which the one under I is found in the human organism, the other under III in the plant, while the one under II shows a body which does not occur in nature.

The chemist can, of course, also produce the two bodies I and III artificially, but that is not the point of this discussion.

One does not need to be a chemist to recognize that they are almost identical bodies which differ only insignificantl y. The one chemical compound (under I) is suprarenin, which is formed in the adrenal glands of man and is an extremely important gland substance (a hormone) important because man must inevitably perish if the adrenal glands fail.

Medicinally, this hormon e is used for various purposes, for example, to influence low blood pressure.

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The effect of this substance, however, is of too short duration and not entirely without danger, since a sudden increase in blood pressure can lead to heart trouble. The body shown in III, ephedrine, does not occur in the animal body, but in a plant, namely in Ephedra vulgaris. The ephedrine now acts like suprarenin on the blood pressure, but also excites the intest ines. So we have two healing substances preformed by nature, but which cannot be considered ideal medicinal substances because of their side effects. Chemical research now endeavored to produce a body which lay between these two natural remedies, and lo an d behold: this synthesized substance (formula II), the suprifen, showed itself to be more effective for the intended purpose than the two natural substances!

In research, however, it is not as simple as these formulas make it look. For the healing effects can seldom be read off from the chemical composition, so one can never predict with certainty what effect a small change in a chemical body will trigger. Another thing will have become clear to us from the above example, namely that the synthetic remedies cannot be "poisons". The task of the researcher is precisely to promote the healing value of a drug, but to exclude all harmful side effects as far as possible. Of course, the right dosage is also important. But one can also kill a person by too large qua ntities of common salt, just as one can expect the most serious damage if one drinks too much distilled water. Determining the correct dosage is therefore one of the main tasks in testing a drug. But the prescription for use, often found only after years of testing, provides complete assurance not only that the highest curative effect is established in the prescribed dosage, but also that all damage to the organism is excluded at these dosages.

The medicines produced in our plants have been widely used as painkillers, sleeping pills, circulatory remedies, wound remedies, medicines for stomach and intestinal diseases, disinfectants, and so on.

Proof of the quality of our remedies can also be derived from the fact that even such old preparations as phenacetin and antipyrine (which can now also celebrate their fiftieth anniversary) still have their significance in the medicinal

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treasure trove. There is hardly a pain reliever in the world that does not contain antipyrine, phenacetin, pyramidone or aspirin. T he many substitute preparations that spring up like mushrooms after the patents expire are further proof of the importance of our inventions.

However, nature has always remained our great teacher, and ever more thorough attempts have been made to penetrate the processes of the human organism and to uncover the secret forces that determine life. In the field of vitamins and hormones, our laboratories succeeded in synthesizing a number of these vital substances with the highest degree of accuracy. As a specia l achievement it should be mentioned here that recently, after determining the chemical composition of the antineuritic vitamin B ₂, we have also been able to produce it artificially.

The biological field also includes the work that led to the production of serums and vaccines, which are used primarily to treat or prevent devastating epidemics and communicable diseases. For this purpose, the pharmaceutical department "Bayer" has attached a special serum department to its production facilities, the world famous "Behringwerke" in Marburg. In addition, the results of research into chemotherapy opened up completely new avenues for combating various transmissible diseases and epidemics. The resulting preparations Salvarsan, Prontosil and others played a major role in spreading the Bayer name and those of the Elberfeld and Höchst production sites throughout the world.

Likewise, our tropical preparations have achieved world importance. Germany, the country without colonies, has contributed more to colonization by developing successful ways to combat tropical diseases than those countries that presume to be the exclusive masters of the tropics.

We also often encounter the remedies of the I. G. when we go to the dentist.

Today we no longer say "have to go", because thes e operating rooms no longer have the horror that was once the reason to visit them only at the last moment and thus often too late. This is also a merit of I. G. Our company's Novocain, which is used for local anesthesia, protects our nerves from the old t orture.

With the help of other dental products of I.G. the dentist today can do without the technical aids that used to come from abroad. For example, the "Bayer" dental department supplies an impression plaster that flakes off in hot water and, as an investment, pyrophan, which enables the casting of high -melting precious and non -precious metals. With Dontalol, an oral disinfectant has been created which effectively destroys all harmful germs and is particularly effective in the care of artificial dentures .

The experiences made with human preparations - remedies for humans - could

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not be transferred to veterinary medicine without further ado. Although some preparations, for exam ple Salvarsan and Bayer 205 (Na ganol), became important in veterinary med icine, new ways had to be sought for the treatment of most animal diseases. In Entozon, for example, we succeeded in creating a drug that is widely used in veterinary practice, among other things to combat the so -called yellow Galt, an epidemic of udder ca tarrh in cattle.

This has already brought us into the field of agriculture, where the Plant Protection Department " Bayer" is helping to protect our crops with its preparations against the many plant and animal pests that threaten them.

Our research facilit ies in Elberfeld, Höchst and Marburg have been expanded into institutes that have no equal in the world. They are headed by researchers whose names are known and respected far beyond Germany's borders. Many tasks are still waiting to be solved, there is no standstill, new findings are constantly forcing new questions and new research. A new remedy is always the result of thousands of trials with hundreds of compounds. Only when a preparation has passed all conceivable scientific tests is clinical testing in itiated. Therefore, years often pass before a new drug can be released to the public.

The "Bayer" Pharmaceutical Department of our I.G. is a place of the most serious work in the service of human health and welfare. What the scientist and the researcher fi nd or invent in the laboratory is manufactured in the large industrial plants in Leverkusen, Elberfeld, Höchst, Wolfen, Bitterfeld and in the Behringwerke Marburg. From the presentation of the individual preparations on a small scale, the fabrication on a large scale is carried out after all tests have been completed.

This is not just a step over a threshold either. Sometimes it is necessary to overcome the strangest difficulties. Let me give you an example: when we started the large -scale production of sul fonal, there was a small "catastrophe". The parent substance of Sulfonal is mercaptan, which is still perceived by our olfactory nerves in the most unimaginable dilutions. When

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we opened our sulfonal plants in Barmen in 1888, the city authorities received numerous complaints because we were "polluting the entire city with the terrible smell of cats. We then discharged the fumes into the Wupper River using caustic soda, which also retained the m excellently. The lower residents suspected that the "cat smell" they were now experiencing was caused by the wastewater from a dyeing plant. The dye works itself was innocent and yet also guilty, because its acidic wastewater actually released the mercap tan held in the caustic soda. The factory and the "stink doctors" were moved to Haan.

But there even the honey of the farmers should have taken on the "cat smell" because of us! The idea of a factory floating at sea had to be rejected because of its impracticability. Finally, they moved to the loneliness of the Lüneburg Heath, where a fire in 1904 completely destroyed the facilities. Today, thanks to advances in technology, no one can smell that we produce our sulfonal at the Leverkusen site.

Very different is the time period in which a preparation naturalizes. Often it happens slowly, sometimes surprisingly quickly. For example, when we launched our Prontosil on the market, we knew exactly what a valuable product we had once again added to the treasure tro ve of medicines. But despite all the preparations we had made, we did not have enough manufacturing equipment on hand to be able to satisfy the growing demand from all over the world immediately.

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The tablet factory in Leverkusen, which was purchased in 1928, is now already too small again, and another building is under construction. In Höchst, too, an extension building was handed over to the company. It should be noted, however, that in these buildings the drugs are only put into the form in which they will finally reach the doctor and the patient; these departments have nothing to do with the actual production of the substances.

But all important discoveries and inventions also need a commercial organization to find their way into the world. Bayer's global organization, which is organized down to the smallest detail and has more than 80 branches, has paved the way for Bayer's pharmaceuticals. The threads come together in Leverkusen, the headquarters of our I.G. Pharmaceuticals Division. Also in the commercial headquarters is a large staff of scientific administrators, physicians, dentists, veterinarians, pharmacists and chemists, who have the task of maintaining contact with the various Bayer laboratories of the I.G. and providing the individual branc hes and agencies with scientific documentation.

In this way, a lively whole is being built up in front of us, which creates a blessing for mankind and contributes to the enhancement of Germany's reputation and standing in the world.

After this general over view, it will be attractive for us I. G. comrades to hear more detailed information about the achievements of our company in the fight against diseases. Admittedly, these can only be individual excerpts. But they will lead us into the depths of the most im portant problems, precisely because they mostly concern preparations that are of importance only to physicians.

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Pain reliever The task of relieving pain was described by Hippocrates, the greatest healer of antiquity, as a task for the immor tal gods.

It was indeed not made easy for the physician in former times. In the introduction we already mentioned opium, morphine and cocaine; if we still mention ether and chloroform for anesthesia during operations, we have enumerated almost everything that was available on earth as a pain reliever when our works ventured to produce medicines. The first remedies that ever went out from our factories into the world, antipyrine and phenacetin, were pain relievers. But they were also good antipyretics. Antip yrine even owed its origin to the intention of making the only antipyretic available at that time, quinine, superfluous.

For years, antipyrine and phenacetin remained the leading antipyretics for fever and pain until our aspirin and pyramidone came along. For headaches and toothaches, these remedies quickly eliminate the painful conditions. If this success seems to us today as something self -evident, the older ones still know that it was different in former times. They certainly remember from their youth that their headache -stricken mother, her head wrapped in a cloth dipped in vinegar, sought relief in vain.

Fruitless one tormented oneself with the house remedies, if toothache should be scared away.

Old people who suffered a lot from headaches and toothaches in their youth and who can still tell us how their youth was embittered by these ailments, describe to us that it was a miracle for them when, suspicious of the many useless experiments so far, they experienced the disappearance of their headaches for t he first time with awake senses after taking antipyrine.

Our pain relievers then experienced certain reinforcements in Migränin, Trigemin, Gardan, Compral and Arantil. The advantage of these agents was not only the rapid elimination of

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pain, but above all they enabled the physician to limit the prescription of morphine. It was precisely this aspect that drove I.G. to continually improve the effect of its painkillers, until Novalgin was a preparation that doctors found could actually replace morphine in most cases.

Novalgin was found to be capable of replacing morphine in most cases, especially when injected to provide rapid relief in severe pain.

Consequently, attention soon turned to improving pain relief during surgery.

Methods of pain relief had alre ady been used in antiquity and the Middle Ages, but how imperfect they were! The war surgeons of Frederick the Great still had to work with their annealing irons, knives and saws without the use of an anesthetic; they could not take the pain of the wounded into consideration.

Finally, it was discovered by chance that the already known cocaine, applied locally, cancels the sensitivity to pain. But its general toxicity and addictive effect, which even surpasses morphine addiction in danger, set considerable limits to its use. A more useful substitute was therefore generally sought. It was not until 1890, with the discovery of anesthetics, that this question was put on a completely different footing. It was shown for the first time that the anesthetic effect of cocaine could also be produced by a chemically simpler, artificially manufactured non -toxic substance. However, anesthesin was difficult to dissolve, and so it was not yet a full substitute for cocaine. It was not until Novocain, again produced at one o f our plants, in Höchst, in 1906, that it met all the requirements that physicians had for an ideal nerve anesthetic. With the exception of pain anesthesia of the mucous membranes, where the lead of cocaine was only caught up by our pantocaine, novocaine has remained the generally accepted local anesthetic to this day. In any case,

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local anesthesia with Novocain is so perfect today that no one needs to postpone necessary minor procedures for fear of pain. Novocaine has also eliminated the pain of tooth extraction.

But it is not everyone's cup of tea to experience the individual phases of an operation with only local anesthesia while awake. Fear of the experience of the operation would still prevent many from undergoing the often life -saving operation if "charitable" chemistry, as it was called in the late Middle Ages, had not provided other general anesthetics (narcotics). The chloroform found by the German chemist v. Lie - big did have some side effects. Likewise, the ether still most commonly used today is not a completely ideal narcotic. For a long time, therefore, our laboratories have endeavored to research other means for general anesthesia. Their work has been crowned with success in this field as well. While the patient experiences chloroform and e ther anesthesia as an unpleasant procedure, he is completely protected from any mental excitement with the anesthetics invented by us.

It is worth noting that one of these narcotics is chemically related to sleeping pills. In this field, too, our works hav e done pioneering work. Today, the wide variety of sleeping pills created in our plants enables the physician to prescribe an appropriate Bayer drug depending on the nature of the sleep disorder.

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Chemotherapy What does chemotherapy actually mean ? - A large number of diseases, as we know, are caused by bacteria and other tiny organisms, whose penetration into the human organism causes serious damage. In order to be able to intervene here, one looked for chemical substances, which kill these living b eings in the organism, without causing damage to the organism itself. However, bacteria are living beings subject to the same laws of life as the cells of the human and animal organism, and so one can understand the enormous obstacles that stood in the way of this task. How difficult it was to find a useful wound disinfectant! Although carbolic acid and sublimate kill bacteria, they are also potent cytotoxins. In the past, therefore, carbolic water often did more harm than good, since together with the bact eria it partially destroyed the living tissue and thus significantly delayed wound healing. How much more difficult, however, was the task of attacking and destroying the smallest disease causing organisms, which settle, for example, in the liver, kidney, heart, brain and elsewhere, without at the same time affecting the organism. This question seemed simply insoluble until, with the introduction of salvarsan, we succeeded in producing a chemical body capable of destroying the pathogen of one of the most de vastating epidemics in the body. Our Salvarsan, the remedy for syphilis known all over the world, has made this horror of centuries a "dying disease".

However, the introduction of Salvarsan is also a prime example of how a new remedy can have a decisive in fluence on further research. Chemotherapeutic research also led to the development in our laboratories of the preparations Germanin (Bayer 205), Plasmochin and Atebrin, which will be discussed in detail in the section on tropical medicine, and more recentl y Prontosil and Uliron. The name Bayer is thus closely linked to the introduction and development of chemotherapy.

As all discoveries are time -bound, so is that of Salvarsan, because until 1905 not even the causative agent of syphilis was known. It was cle ar to every scientist that such a pathogen must be the cause of the epidemic - but which one? Not a year passed without a scientist claiming to have found the

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pathogen, until in March 1905 Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann really found it in the "Spirochaetapallida". Only now could unerring experiments be carried out. What a sensation and enthusiasm the introduction of salvarsan into medical practice then aroused can only be understood by those who know how tedious and incomplete the treatment opt ions for syphilis had been before.

Further chemotherapeutic research then led to the , .wound antiseptic" preparations trypaflavin and Rivanol.

Rivanol is also a reliable agent against amoebic dysentery, which is widespread in the tropics. For once, coinc idence played an important role in this finding.

A doctor from the Far East told us that he had used the remedy as an enema for amoebic dysentery and had observed a strikingly rapid improvement. We checked the information in our research facilities and fou nd that Rivanol not only kills the amoebae in the intestine, but also has an antispasmodic effect in the intestine.

Thus, not only could the pathogens be destroyed with Rivanol, but the painful intestinal spasms of this disease could also be influenced - an example, by the way, of how important it is for the I.G. to be in contact with all doctors in the world.

Until recently, the question of how to destroy streptococci entering the organism was unsolved. One such infection is the dreaded puerperal fever.

Only a few years ago, an important physician had to make the following confession in one of his works: "If one overlooks the entire field of streptococcal infections in humans, then one arrives at a still resigned attitude in every respect. Only the most int ensive joint work of all disciplines will perhaps bring progress, which is all the more urgent and desirable because streptococcal infections are diseases of public health importance."

Despite this general discouragement, however, our laboratories continued to work on the problem. In the course of many years of research, when testing dye compounds, we came across certain bodies which proved to be highly effective in streptococcal diseases; further development of these results then led to the discove ry of Prontosil. The number of more than 400 scientific papers published so far shows the importance attached to this discovery all over the world.

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Decline of syphilis due to neosalvarsan in a European country ( 1915-1933) 5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1915 16

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Recently the American press carried the news that the son of the President of the United States had b een saved from a dangerous streptococcal infection by a new chemical drug called Prontosil. The report concluded with a remark by the attending physician that, in his opinion, Prontosil had finally provided the cure for which medical science had been waiti ng for so long. The Association of German Chemists honored our scientists who had worked on this so important research by awarding them the Emil Fischer Memorial Medal. At the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937, Pron tosil was honored by the "Grand

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Prix", the highest award.

The other successes of chemotherapeutic research were in the field of tropical medicine.

Tropical Medicine

Just a few decades ago, the development of numerous tropical regions seemed hopeless because severe epidemics made life in these areas impossible. Even today, 700 million people fall ill and about 2 million die every year from one of these epidemics, malaria. The victims of another epidemic, sleeping sickness, are not as great because it is not so widespread in terms of territory.

But how devastating it can be in their areas, of it only one example: From the 40000 head counting population of one of the tribes in Uganda (Africa) 20 000 people were carried off by the sleeping sickness within two years. The Englishmen had to resettle the remaining 20000 natives immediately, if the whole tribe should not fall to the sure destruction. In 1914, the Njem tribe in Cameroon still numbered 12,000; in 1926, the official census found only 609 of them.

Sleeping sickness is caused by a parasite and spread by the tsetse fly. The last stage of this disease has given it its name. Its visible features are rapid physical and mental deterioration, emaciation literally down to the skeleton.

The sick eventually sink into days of sleep, soon t o be relieved by death.

Here, too, it is our laboratories that can boast the great merit of having solved this problem. After years of effort, they succeeded in finding in Germanin (Bayer 205) a drug that destroys the pathogens of sleeping sickness in the blood. An expedition equipped by us proved that 80 percent of the inhabitants

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treated with Germanin could be cured. Much more important than the cure itself was the further finding that Germanin, given as a preventive, can also prevent further transm ission. The importance attached to the discovery of Germanin abroad is shown by the statement of the biologist Huxley of Oxford University, who wrote: "The discovery of the Germanin is probably much more valuable to the Allies than all the reparations."

Even more widespread than sleeping sickness is - as already mentioned malaria. Not infrequently, this epidemic h as had a decisive influence on world events. Although quinine, which is extracted from cinchona bark, has been known for 300 years, this remedy has not yet been able to really eradicate the disease. The healing effect of quinine on malaria is not perfect, and 50-70 percent of all malaria patients treated with quinine suffer relapses.

Again, it was our research facilities that broke completely new ground with the discovery of plasmochin and atebrin. The trials were particularly difficult here because the malaria pathogen undergoes different forms of development and because the agents used do not have the same effect on these different life forms of the same parasite. The malaria pathogens undergo both sexual and asexual reproduction in humans. It has now b een possible to find a remedy in atebrin against the asexual forms and in plasmochin against the sexual forms. Thus, today malaria can be cured in a very short time, within 5 -7 days, almost without relapses, while a thorough quinine cure requires 21 days

without achieving certain freedom from relapses. Moreover, quinine is a rather unpleasant drug not only because of its bitter taste, but also its well known side effects, such as ringing in the ears, flickering, sweating, nausea,

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vomiting, heart tro uble and many others, are disadvantages that do not attach to our remedies. Plasmochin and Atebrin, due to their safe action, are also reliable preventive agents against this most widespread tropical disease.

How it is possible to decontaminate whole areas by thorough treatment with atebrin or plasmochin can be seen from the table above.

While malaria covers almost the entire world, another tropical disease, kala azar (black disease), is confined mainly to India and China. The disease used to cause inevitab le death in 1%-2 years. It was considered incurable until it was discovered in 1913 that an antimony preparation, emetic tartar, could bring relief. Again, however, this tartar is not a harmless body and shows many unpleasant side effects. Moreover, such a cure takes several months, which makes a thorough treatment impossible with the still undeveloped insight of the natives. With the help of our Neostibosan it is now possible to limit the treatment to one week while avoiding all side effects. No less impor tant especially for Egypt - is a disease called "bilharzia", which still afflicts 10 million out of a population of 14 million. The importance for the country of our discovery of a remedy for this disease can be seen from the fact that the then King of Egypt, King Fuad, gave permission for the preparation to be called "Fuadin" after him.

Thus, a number of other important preparations could be listed, which were created in our works for the benefit of people living in the tropics. We comrades of the I.G. r ead with particular pride the following sentences in the book "Die Weltgeltung der deutschen Tropenmedizin" by Dr. Hauer: "If we juxtapose in thought the thrust and the lasting reach of all the wonderful remedies which German research has given to t he earth in the postwar period, we can say with. We can proudly say: We have succeeded in transforming the development of the tropical zones from the ground up, and we are on the eve of a beneficial hygienic revolution brought about by Germany! . . . "

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Vitamins and hormones Our plant has also made the very first chemical discovery in the latest field of medical research, in the area of hormones, and has thus also done pioneering work in this field. Not yet 40 years ago, in 1903, the recently deceased chemist Stolz succeeded in synthetically producing the first hormone of the adrenal gland, suprarenin, which we already mentioned on page 110. It is true that we always refer to hormone theory as a modern achievement. But fragments of this doctrine are as old as the history of mankind in general.

If today we eliminate diseases of the blood -forming organs with liver extract (Campolon), stop bleedings with certain organ extracts, recognize pregnancy from women's ham, the beginnings of such knowledge can be found already in the Pharaonic prehistoric times (around 1550 BC). The property of the hormone first produced by Stolz was also not unknown to folk medicine. Butchers knew that a bleeding hand injury would immediately stop if they dripped the freshly extracted press juice of the gland sitting on the kidney onto the bleeding wound. The great benefit of suprarenin was particularly evident in surgery. In the case of patients who were anemic or weakened by blood loss, the physician often had to forego a promising operation because he could not expect the patient to suffer further blood loss. Today, the addition of suprarenin to local anesthetics makes it possible to perform surgery with almost no blood loss.

Hormones - they "move" - as their Greek name says - and indeed they move the whole metabolism, the build -up and the breakdown, they move man in the great ups and downs of life, they drive him to maturity, they protect the nascent life, they guide the birth; youth and old age, the shape of man, his character, hi s happiness and his unhappiness are in close and immediate relationship to the hormones. Often their absence means illness, too much again robs life forces. Is not the lack of childbearing and many other disorders of women's life often due to the reduced f ormation of hormones? When insulin was not available, diabetes led to early death. If insulin is used correctly and this hormone is administered to the pancreas continuously, the diabetic behaves like a healthy person. The same is true of the liver extract Campolon.

Whoever is ill with malignant anemia must receive it - for only by the extract

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from the liver can he be saved.

No other field has recently been worked on so undauntedly and with such great success as that of hormone research. Only ten year s ago the physician had at his disposal, in the form of reliably acting hormones, only that of the adrenal glands, suprarenin, and a precisely adjusted extract from the posterior lobe of the brain gland (hypophysin). Everything else that was used as a medicine at that time were impure extracts or mostly dried glandular substances, for whose effectiveness no one could take responsibility. Today, however, some of these life -moving hormones can even be produced synthetically.

Vitamins are closely related to ho rmones. Bayer is also one of the leaders in vitamin research. We produce all the vitamins that have been recognized to date and have gained importance as medicines.

In some cases, our scientific laboratories have also been able to gain fundamental new insi ghts in this field of research and make them useful for practical medicine.

The clear realization that we need supplements to our food, which consists mainly of fat, protein, carbohydrates, salts and water, is only 25 years old.

The vitality of these substances was also expressed in the name: "vitamins", i.e. "amines for life"; and for life these substances, whose researched number is constantly growing, are absolutely necessary. The amounts of vitamins found in plants are by nature so different that i n case of illness one cannot rely at all on these variable quantities.

The doctor knows that nothing or not much can be achieved with vitamin -rich food once eye disorders, swelling in the mouth and bone changes have appeared in the wrongly nourished child. Then it is necessary to give pure vitamins, for example vitamin A preparation, when the cell cover of the skin and mucous membrane is no longer able to work.

This protection of the skin cover is also effective in the case of poorly healing wounds. Vitamin A is also valuable for accident prevention; the first manifestation of vitamin A deficiency leads to insufficient adaptation of the eye to darkness, in contrast to the healthy person who, stepping from light

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into darkness, still recognizes the objects and thus finds his way. To know this is important above all for the driver. If he has a vitamin A deficiency, it takes him an unnaturally long time to adapt to the dark.

This slowed adaptation, however, can have disastrous consequences, especially when blinded.

We can be particularly proud of the discovery of vitamin B₁: In Elberfeld, not only was the structure of this complicated substance discovered, but for the first time in the world, vitamin B₁, which until then had only been found in nature, was also obtained chemically. Initially, it was believed that this substance B ₁ (betaxin) was only used to cure the severe paralytic disease of the East Asian rice eaters - beriberi - but then it was discovered that it could also be used to treat inflammation of the nerves.

Vitamin C (Cantan), on the other hand, is something for the winter months, when the supply of this vitamin becomes insufficient because fresh fruit is difficult to obtain or the necessary vitamin C in the preserved and dried fruits is destro yed. Until now, in accordance with the old popular opinion that spring makes one tired, everyone has thought that the certain feeling of weakness in spring is a climatic change. Today we know better; spring tiredness is a vitamin C deficiency. A lot of vit amin C is also consumed in febrile infectious diseases; if it is lacking, healing is delayed.

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The English disease (rickets) used to cause deformities of the skull, chest and legs. The realization that this disease is due to a deficiency of vitamin D is still recent. Today it is possible to obtain this vitamin D in pure crystalline form.

Proper medical treatment with the deficient vitamin D now helps to prevent and eliminate this ancient folk evil.

Other vitamins are still being scientifically researched in our laboratories, but only when the research results are completely clear will the preparations obtained be allowed to find their way into medical practice.

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Sera and vaccines

In 1890, Robert Koch, the brilliant bacteriologist, discovered tuberculin, the production of which was taken over by our Höchst plant. This marked the beginning of a completely new field of work, which was soon to take on the highest significance with the diphtheria serum and tetanus serum discovered

by Emil von Behring. Emil von Behring, who lives on in history as the "savior of children," had discovered that the blood produces antidotes in the fight against the pathogens of various contagious diseases in the diseased organism. The overcoming of infectious diseases is therefore based on the victory of the antidotes over the bacteria or over the toxins produced by them.

Now, in the case of a large number of patients, this formation of antidotes is often insufficient, or severe damage to the organism occurs before the antidotes have formed in sufficient quantity. Behring thought the idea further, he injected the blood loaded with the antidote from animals that had survived diphtheria into other an imals suffering from diphtheria, and behold: the animals were quickly cured and also remained protected against diphtheria for some time. Careful experiments on children suffering from diphtheria proved the harmlessness of this method of treatment in human s as well. Serum treatment is therefore nothing more than fighting the disease with the same weapons that are created by nature in the organism itself, with multiplication of these weapons by the healing serum injected by the physician. The importance of d iphtheria serum in medicine is evident from the number of deaths before its discovery. Until 1894, about 40 -50000 children aged 1 -15 years died of diphtheria annually in Germany alone. After the introduction of

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diphtheria serum in 1894, this number was reduced to one -fifth in a short time, and a large proportion of these children could probably have been saved if they had all been treated with diphtheria serum in time. The earlier the serum is administered, the more certain are the prospects of a cure, even for the most severe diseases.

(Translation picture above: Decrease in diphtheria mortality in Prussia from 1875-1935 calculated per 100000 inhabitants (according to data from the Reich Statistical Office). )

At that time, an unimagined triumphant advance of the diphtheria serum began, and on this and similar basis a number of other sera were developed in our works, among others soon also the serum against tetanus. Emil von Behring was not satisfied with these successes, however; he also sought to solve the question: Couldn't diphtheria be prevented in a similar way to smallpox? His ultimate goal was to eradicate diphtheria altogether. In fact, by inoculating the body with the diphtheria -protective agent discovered by Behring, defensive substances are formed in the body that enable it to immediately intercept and render harmless the harmful diphtheria toxin formed after infection. Thus, as a result of vaccination, the body produces antidotes ahead of time, which it keeps ready for defense in case of danger.

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The experience gained in various countries of the world has confirmed the importance of this vaccination for the prevention of diphtheria. According to publications of the Reichsgesu ndheitsamt, in the vaccinated areas the morbidity rate of the vaccinated children in relation to the unvaccinated children is 1:6.4 and the mortality rate is even 1:29. The importance of vaccinations against epidemics The importance of vaccination against epidemics is clearly demonstrated by the adjacent graph of typhus mortality during the World War. But it is not only for humans that serum treatment has become an immeasurable blessing.

Many animal diseases can also be prevented and cured with appropriate serums and vaccines.

The economic damage caused by such epidemics in the past was often enormous. In 1890, for example, 13,000 animals in Baden alone contracted glanders from a herd of 400,000 pigs, of which just under 12 percent were gassed.

After the introduction of vaccination, however, only 816 animals fell ill in 1932 in the same district with a herd of 531,000 pigs.

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"Bayer" crop protection "We don't harvest what we sow, we always harvest what the pests leave." It would be hard to express the necessity and economic importance of crop protection more briefly, clearly and impressively. Only through planned pest control and well-considered plant health care is it possible to achieve the required maximum yields of our crops and to protect stocks from spoilage. The best seeds, the most correct soil cultivation, the most careful plant care and the most favorable weather conditions imaginable are of little use if pests and diseases are not controlled at the same time. If the often sensitively large crop losses and, in the case of stored stocks, the losses attributable to diseases and pests are to be reduced to a tolerable level, then the farmer, the gardener, the horticulturist and everyone in general, i.e. not only the producer but also the consumer, must take the necessary measures in good time with the right means. Today, pest control and plant protection are no longer a matter for individual professions, but a national duty of all people. According to estimates by the Biological Research Institute for Agriculture and Forestry in Berlin-Dahlem, our national wealth still loses more than 2 1/3 billion Reichsmark annually due to animal and plant pests! The damage caused by chemically controllable fungal diseases in cereals still amounts to abo ut 10 percent annually, or about 350 million Reichsmark. Bayer also entered into contact with agriculture with the seed dressing Uspulun. Although Uspulun has long since been superseded as a seed dressing for cereals by our Ceresan seed dressings, there wi ll be few German gardeners today who do not know about Uspulun. When it came on the market in 1915, it ushered in, as one German scientist put it, the modern history of seed dressings. The creation of the first German dry pickle, Uspulun dry pickle, was al so such a landmark. It was then the greatest reward for our researchers and for our plant protection department when the Official German Plant Protection Service, on the basis of several years of testing in our Ceresan, recognized the first universal dry dressing for rye, wheat, oats and barley. The dry dressing promoted the idea of dressing in agriculture to the greatest possible extent, especially since it was only through this that dressing became feasible on a cooperative basis.

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The loss caused ann ually by the grain weevil to stored grain is estimated at 100 million Reichsmark. With the officially approved Grodyl -Neu from our plant protection department, this pest can be controlled easily and safely. In stored grain, i.e. in the large grain silos, w hich often contain hundreds of tons of grain, it can be controlled with Areginal.

What hundreds of thousands of people manage day after day, year after year, is destroyed by the vast army of rats and mice. Zelio poison granules and Zelio poison paste saf ely kill these harmful rodents. Without planned pest control, German fruit growing in particular would be threatened by immeasurable damage.

Especially in viticulture the plant protection measures could prevail, where they brought the most beautiful succes ses.

After the implementation of modern pest control, the hectoliter yields of wine in Germany increased very significantly, in some cases by more than 50 percent. It is especially our research laboratory in Höchst that has been engaged in the production of these agents for orchards and vineyards for many years. Nosprasit, the agent against peronospora, hayworm and sourworm, is probably the best -known pest control agent in viticulture. With Nosprasit "0", caterpillars and fungal diseases can be controlled i n fruit growing in one operation with the simplest preparation of the spray broth. The Plant

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Protection Department has launched a whole range of other important pesticides, which are appreciated both at home and abroad.

When the Bayer Cross lit up over the Leverkusen plant for the first time in March 1933, an address was given to the invited guests which culminated in the following words: "I hope that you will retain an impression of the work that is being done here in Leverkusen, of the pro gressive spirit that animates all of us in our activities, and of the optimism by which we are all carried and which also finds expression in the Bayer Cross, an optimism borne of the confident hope that through work and earnest creation a better age will dawn for Germany, too."

This optimism has found its fulfillment in the new Germany through our leader Adolf Hitler!

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Design with light!

Next to the coffee cup is a letter with a colorful foreign stamp: finally the comrade on his vacation trip has found time to think and write to us who stayed at home! Well, he didn't exactly strain himself with the pen. There are only a few lines full of cordiality. But in return, a few photos are enclosed with the broadcast. There he sits, in th e circle of his companions, smoking a dark cigar, and behind him the sea spreads out! If he comes to us so bodily, what should he write there for a long time! We smile understandingly to ourselves, and suddenly our ear hears a very fine sound. We look up. Too late! Our boo is standing there, with his camera in his hand, it has already happened, had been snapped unnoticed. We had just made such a friendly face, and that had to be recorded!

That's what's going on today with photography. No fuss is made about it, the boy can do it just as well as the adult. Only in old jokesheets there is still a strange figure of a man under a huge black cloth; his hooded head ended in a strange trunk, which consisted of an unassembled camera and its widely protruding lens. An d it is worthwhile to reflect on this development, in which once again one of the departments of the I.G., the photographic department of Agfa, played such a decisive role. A development that extends from the carefully guarded daguerrotype of our grandpare nts on our living room wall to the Agfa box that our boy received from us for his good school report. In between, there are only a few meters in our room. But how many years, how many experiences, how much energy, disappointments and successes!

Daguerre, after whose first usable method for photography those old family pictures are called, still had to sit his people stiffly in front of painted

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backgrounds, he had to support their heads, which had been moved into half profile, with laboriously hidden iron rods and levers, so that they would not wobble. Then he pulled his curtains back and forth in front of the glass walls of the studio, above and to the side, and finally he disappeared behind t he black cloth, took a long look, adjusted his object again, pulled the curtains once more, and God willing, it was finally time to remove the lens cap. The exposure then took quite some time, because people didn't know anything about snapshots back then. But as cumbersome as that was - and as cumbersome as it was afterwards when developing and copying! - something was already happening back then: people were creating with light.

Photography means nothing other than "writing with light. Those old daguerrotypes bear the signature of their time, the writing of a ponderous, bourgeois tranquility, so that one wonders what the people of that time would have done with one of our modern cameras if they had been available back then.

Capturing the moment . . . only t he poets dreamed of it back then, and the poets are always ahead of their time.

It took the twentieth century for people to learn to think and see more naturally again, and out of this seeing they also discovered the new values of life that photography cou ld offer them. The professional photographic studio was by no means eliminated, but suddenly the so -called "amateur" was also involved, so called because he made pictures with light as a hobby, not for a living. They both moved along quite different paths. Above all, however, the amateur had only become possible because the camera had leapt light -footed down from the rigid tripod of the studio and into his hand. Expressed in this way, it is admittedly only partly correct. The first cameras for amateurs were still quite unwieldy, and today we would probably all refuse to pack such a box in our backpacks when we set out on our hikes. After all, the basics were in place. And it could be said even then, though not without a certain sophistry: Who photographs, ha s more from the life!

To make this sentence a self -evident truth, comprehensible to all and graspable by all, remained, of course, an achievement only of our new and newest time, which has managed to make the divine light surrounding us accessible to all p eople as a formative moment. In order for it to be able to do this, the diligence and genius of the people had to create the prerequisites, and these were: the recording apparatus, the camera, had to fulfill its duty with reliability and simplicity, and ev erything else that belonged to photography, the recording material, plate or film, the paper for the positive prints to be obtained from the negative, the possibility of enlargements, the developer and fixing material, all this had to be coordinated in pri ce and

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quality in such a way that it became a real national treasure, accessible to all.

When the photographic department of our Agfa set about solving these tasks, such a far-reaching goal was, in addition to the familiar basis of photography, entirely new territory, a completely new task, and one that could also fail.

Agfa solved the task. It also solved it industrially by taking all the problems arising from photography, which are technically on different levels, as an inseparable whole and un iting the three production sites for photography in one hand: the plant where the cameras are manufactured, the plant for the recording material and the plant for the photographic papers.

The story of how Agfa for the first time gave the broadest strata of our people a camera that fulfilled the prerequisites for the real popularization of amateur photography - the Agfa box camera - deserves to be told again. It also shows how the generosity and imagination of the businessman can promote technical progress in this field. Agfa had expected to sell about 300,000 box cameras when it launched its famous campaign in 1932. Six hundred thousand were demanded in the rush of the first few weeks. And in a very short time, this figure rose to over one million! So every seventieth German owns an Agfa box machine!

How did this come about? The German was offered this Agfa box for the price of four marks, but whoever wanted it had to fulfill a certain condition. On our one-mark pieces, under the eagle, there is a letter indicating the place of minting. The letter A, f or example, indicates the Berlin mint. Agfa now required that the candidate for an Agfa box put four one -mark pieces on the table, two of which had to show the mint mark A, one the mint mark G, and the fourth an F. The mint mark A was the letter of the min t. Lined up correctly, these letters from our brand name AGFA. It was not for nothing that the inherent joy of ingenuity was counted on. Young people, in particular, participated at that time with a real zeal. And the success that mattered was that over a million Agfa box owners were accepted into the great photographic community, the community of those who create with light. The Agfa -Box is one of the many products of our camera factory in Munich (when it was founded and registered, they still wrote camera with a C). The spirit of man, the hand of man and the machine invented by man work together here in a meaningful way. In addition to the precision equipment, there are machines of gigantic dimensions that punch the main shape of the camera body out of the raw material with a pressure of over a hundred thousand kilograms. They are the giant brothers of those other instruments which are small and dainty and perform precision measurements down to ₁/₁₀₀₀ millimeter. The most essential part of our camera, howev er, is the lens, this eye, whose unwaveringness and sensitivity are crucial. Months of work in the optical calculation office precede

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the construction of a new lens. Its execution in the technical manufacturing process is no small miracle. First, the raw optical glass arriving at the factory in large blocks is cut into flat discs by circular discs whose cutting tools are studded with teeth made of diamonds. These are placed on top of each other, cemented together and ground. Taken apart again, they are given their initial, rough lens shape on the hand grinder. In this way, they are cemented onto mushroom-shaped metal bodies and now move into the polishing machines. In order to achieve the carefully calculated curvature and the final high gloss, these machines have to give their all in terms of precision. But this is by no means enough. Forty control points must agree with the individual lens before this optical eye, this lens, is sent to its intended use. In this way, many, many cameras from our Agfa cam era factory in Munich have come onto the market in recent years. The cradle of the Agfa Billy series, which has become world famous, is also located there.

The cheapest Agfa Box apparatuses are the Box 94 and the Trolix. In the middle price range we find t he three Billy-Record apparatuses, which are called Billy Record 8.8, Billy-Record 7.7 and Billy-Record 6.3 according to their largest aperture width. Their recording format is 6x9. They are equipped with reliable automatic shutters and Igestar lenses, whi ch are anastigmats specially made by our camera factory. The top of this series is formed by the particularly fast Agfa-Billy-Record 4.5 with the Anastigmat Apotar 4.5 and the precise Prontor II shutter with built -in self-timer. If you want to go even high er, you can opt for the Billy-Com-pure (6x9 format) or the Billy -Optima (7.5 x 10.5 format).

Agfa achieved particular success with its new Agfa -Karat 35 mm camera. Karat is the unit of weight for precious stones; the camera indeed deserves this name, because despite its cheap price, it has all the advantages of the high quality, modern 35 mm cameras. Resting jewelry in its leather case, it springs open, called, automatically ready to take the picture, double shots are made technically impossible, and its le ns, the Agfa-Anastigmat-IgestarF: 6.3 or the Agfa-Solinar F: 3.5 gives excellent pictures of captivating sharpness with extraordinary depth of field, which can stand any magnification. Just as the famous Agfa box brought amateur photography to the widest s trata of the population, so the Karat is called upon today to win countless new friends for 35 mm photography.

The light with which the photographer creates brings life to the still image, but it is the wish of many to capture the movement itself with this photography. For the amateur, the only option is narrow film photography.

And Agfa was a pioneer in this field as well.

Cine films are known in the 16 -mm and 8-mm formats. 16 mm equipment from our Munich plant for recording purposes is the Agfa Movex 30 a nd the Agfa

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Movex 12. For playback, we manufacture a range of cine film projectors, from the Movector Record to the Movector Billy and the Movector Super 16, which can also be used to play back sound cine films. For 8mm cine films, the Agfa Movex 8 is the newest and most modern recording device; the Agfa Movector 8 is used for playback. The price range of both is so favorable that they have been given the task of making the idea of cine film more and more popular.

Various Agfa cine cameras have been so well received by experts that they were awarded the "Grand Prix" at the last Paris World's Fair. But now to our films!

Our Agfa film factory is located in Wolfen in the district of Bitterfeld, and it is, to say the least, th e largest film production facility in Europe. It would fill pages and pages if we wanted to list all the products that originate there from the work of our I. G. comrades. Let us therefore deal here only with the product which, like our Agfa camera, must b e relied upon if we are to achieve good photographic results, i.e. with our films, especially since they occupy the first place in the production in Wolfen.

What is the reason for the extraordinary success of Agfa isochrome and isopan films? In itself, th e entire roll and 35 mm film production has reached a very high level of quality today. But if Agfa roll and 35mm film occupies a special place in the opinion of consumers, which is expressed in the increasing demand for this product and the unwavering loy alty to it, then this is due to a fact that is basically as simple as it is conclusive: our photographic department has not developed certain properties of its films to the detriment of other properties, but rather has always remained concerned with bringi ng all the properties that are important for a film into harmony with one another and maintaining them. Thus, at the same time, the general speed has been increased, the color sensitivity has been enhanced, the freedom from light has been made more perfect ; above all, however, the Agfa films have reached a degree of fine-grain quality that was previously hardly thought possible.

Through a fundamental and groundbreaking improvement in emulsion technology, we have also succeeded in achieving the properties th at were previously only peculiar to double -layer films, i.e. exposure latitude, general sensitivity, gradation, etc., with only one layer. The immense advantages of such a "fine-layer film" lie first of all in its perfect fine -grain quality with the highest resolving power, but also in its faster processing, which is one third shorter than with double-layer films.

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However, these Isochrom and Isopan films are only part of the production of our Agfa film factory, which also produces many other types of film. Among other things, this is where Agfacolor film comes from, which works according to the German color film process.

Many photo amateurs have been fulfilled the old dream of obtaining images in the colors of nature in the simplest way. Many preconditions had to be created by the research work of our Agfa laboratories in order to achieve a truly satisfactory result.

Agfacolor film has the following structure: three extremely fine, differ ently light-sensitive layers are cast one on top of the other on the usual, hardly inflammable, transparent film base, which are adjusted in such a way that the uppermost layer captures the blue, the following layer the green and the lowermost layer the re d portion of the light rays striking the picture. Every occurring color tone can be broken down into these three basic colors. An ordinary development process now first produces an ordinary black -and-white negative in the three layers. Through a so -called reverse development process in a special developer, this (triple) negative is chemically transformed into a positive. At the same time, however, the new color image is created: from the above-mentioned three layer substances, three different basic dyes (ye llow, purple, blue-green; i.e. the complementary colors to blue, green, red) are simultaneously created by chemical combination with the developing substance wherever black image silver is developed in the second developer. If all the black silver is now dissolved out of the film by a silver solution bath, then the pure, natural-colored image remains in greatest luminosity, clearly visible to the naked eye, most beautiful in effect when projected onto a white wall. Thus, when the Agfacolor film was shown to a larger public for the first time in October 1936, a German daily newspaper could write, among other things: "You would want to call what happened a miracle if you hadn't seen it all yourself."

And the international jury at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris must have been under the same impression when it awarded this German color film the highest distinction, the "Grand Prix. The most important thing about our color photographic

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process is that everything is as simple as in black -and-white photography.

Shooting and reproduction are done with any ordinary apparatus and without any additional equipment. From the Agfacolor positives, it is also possible to obtain black-and-white negatives for contact printing or enlargements. But Agfacolor film also benefits printing technology, since even the small color images are suitable for making separations for chemigraphy, offset and gravure printing.

The scope of Agfa's activities in the production of a wide variety of films for professional, medical, techni cal, scientific and other purposes is almost immense. Film, invented by the spirit of man and created by the hand of man, sometimes reveals to us secrets of nature that the human eye alone can no longer grasp. Thus there are Agfa special films and plates f or the photography of the stars far.

Other films, in turn, are used to record the most microscopic of living creatures. For medical science, X -rays have become an indispensable tool. The importance of good aerial photography need only be hinted at. Agfa al so created films particularly suitable for this field. It also supplies the printing industry with the films and plates it needs. Finally, the production of all types of cine film occupies a special place.

And then there's the vast field of motion picture s, which are provided in massive quantities to the film industry. The manifold tasks of cinematographic practice also place diverse demands on our film material.

Agfa supplies the right picture and sound negative and copy material for every purpose. Our Agfa is the largest producer of raw cine film in Europe. With its products, sic has substantially promoted cinematographic progress in all fields. In this context, it is not without charm to remember that the use of film as recording material was initially reserved for

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professional cinematography, and that it was only later that films were also given to amateurs instead of plates. In color photography today, it seems to be the other way around. Color photography, which is already familiar to amateurs, has not yet become established in feature film production. There are technical reasons for this. The feature film producer can only pay attention to color shots when they are copyable. With the new color film and color photographic processes, however, color copies are not yet possible at the moment. But the fact that the amateur is already taking such an active part in the technical progress of color photography at this stage will also advance these things; the amateur is thus becoming a real pioneer of progress here.

And -what about the photographic papers? If photography is to be a pleasure, they must be just as reliable as our good camera and our good film. In this area, too, no plant has greater experience than our Agfa. Th e birthplace of Agfa photographic papers is the Leverkusen plant. Just as we devote the greatest professional experience, the most serious scientific research and the most up-to-date technical equipment to the photographic material, we also place the highe st demands on these products of our work. Without a good photographic paper there is no perfect picture. The various types of Agfa artificial light and developing papers differ in light sensitivity and processing from the so-called daylight papers, which a re known to be copied out and not developed. There is a constant exchange of experience between Agfa's three production plants: the Camerawerk in Munich, the Filmfabrik Wolfen and the Photopapierfabrik in Leverkusen. Agfa owes its undisputed leading positi on in the photographic field to their consistent cooperation and the strictest concentration in scientific, technical and commercial matters. Anyone who has ever been abroad has found that the name "Agfa" has the same good reputation there as it does here. Like the remedies and other products of our I.G., the Agfa products in the tropics, in faraway Asia or wherever else in the world bear witness to German workmanship and the diligence of our I.G. employees. In all five continents, specialty stores sell our Agfa films, Agfa cameras, Agfa chemicals for development, and use Agfa papers for their prints and enlargements. Therefore, when researchers prepare their trips to unknown countries, their equipment does not lack our Agfa material. They take our Agfa film s, cameras, chemicals and papers with them on their trips because they prove themselves under all conditions of climate and weather, and because all over the world, in the smallest and most distant human settlements, Agfa material can be bought in the same condition and quality and with the same precisely known properties.

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Agfa has won millions of friends for the large community of photographers all over the world; it is wooing millions more with the convincing evidence of the quality of its products.

Photography has tasks to fulfill that extend beyond the present. The history of our time is written not least by photography and film. Shots of contemporary events give film its highest purpose: it becomes a historical document!

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The handle in

the air

There is an estate in the Palatinate where the owner and tenant never lasted long. No matter how hard you tried, you never got anywhere. No matter how many methods of cultivation were used in the past, it did not work out. The climatic conditions were so unfavorable, the soil so poor. It was a sandy soil, poor and infertile, and it lacked the most necessary moisture, because it belongs to an arid region, over which the precipitation in some years is distributed in a par ticularly unfavorable way. Thus, owners and tenants came and went, who actually became happy only on the day of their lives, when they completed the handover to the new successor.

But for a good twenty years now, this coming and going on this estate has finally stopped. The last buyer, who took it over in 1917, still holds it today, and it is probably certain that he will not give it up again tomorrow or the day after. For since he took over the cultivation there, a strange change has taken place with that barren and unfriendly soil. The harvests of grain and potatoes have doubled. The meager meadows have become fat dairy pastures, outstripping the former yield by a factor of five or six. In summer, the cows grazing on these pastures milk up to 10,000 liters of milk per hectare, whereas otherwise only 3,000 to 4,000 liters are expected on good pastures.

There are also other surprising observations to be made on this farm. At all times of the year, one hardly sees an empty field there. Once a main crop is harvested, the soil is immediately tilled with a catch crop, which is harvested to make way for the next main crop. Two harvests in one year on the same area! The cattle can be fed with fresh green fodder until the winter. The costly

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winter feeding other wise takes 200 days, on our farm only 120 to 150 days at the most. In spite of all this, the soil does not become poorer, it is not exhausted, but improves from year to year. Have we told a fairy tale, or what is the name of this farm, and who has transformed it in this way?

Some of our I.G. comrades will already have guessed what we are describing. It is the "Limburgerhof", a company of our I.G., which is also known beyond the German borders, and which has the task to test the usefulness and effect of the technically produced commercial fertilizers (we do not want to fall into the mistake of calling them "artificial fertilizers"!) brought out by the I.G. and to show by its own practical example what even the meager soil of our fatherland is able to yield, i f it is fertilized and worked properly. The tireless educational work of our government has shown what is at stake when we struggle ceaselessly to make our German soil as productive as possible. For the nutrition of each German we have only 45 acres of agricultural land at our disposal; the French have twice that and the Russians even eight times that! 45 acres, that is a rectangle 100 meters long and 45 meters wide, and this small area must not only supply the food needs of a national for an entire year, i t must also cover a substantial portion of the raw materials for clothing!

All of us who have started to deal with plants, whether we have been lucky enough to own a piece of garden or whether we cultivate potted flowers between our windows and on our balcony, have certainly had to learn a lot before we found out that watering alone is not enough. Very soon we were confronted with the difficult question of fertilization, and very soon we knew that there is not only one type of fertilization, and that on e can also make mistakes when fertilizing. Then we perhaps once went out into the open country and watched how the farmer does it, because he must know it well.

There we saw him once putting manure or compost into the ground; but then he spread something e lse on the ground and hoed it in that looked like salt.

These were the commercial fertilizers 1 But why do you think they fertilize in this double way ? Manure and compost (which are the so -called "commercial fertilizers") both originated from decaying pla nt and animal matter. Their most important task is to provide the soil with the indispensable humus substances to keep it loose and crumbly and to give food to the important soil bacteria.

However, the high crop yields that we must strive for because of th e scarcity of the space available to us can only be achieved if the soil is also supplied

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with the necessary nutrients. Year after year, the plants suck these nutrients out of the soil as they grow, and without human intervention, the soil would soon be completely depleted. Farm fertilizers also contain such plant nutrients, to be sure. But their quantity is out of all proportion to what we have to demand from our harvests today.

Chemical research has discovered that we do not have to rely solely on the slow and unreliable decomposition of manure. If the important plant nutrients are added to the soil in the form of commercial fertilizers, an ever'faster and greater effect can be achieved. Besides lime, which mainly improves the soil, the most important of these plant nutrients are nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. These so -called core nutrients are the basis of the technically produced commercial fertilizers (once again, comrades of th e I.G., not: artificial fertilizers!). They contain the nutrients in a pure and concentrated form, but they are the same nutrients into which the manure gradually decomposes in the soil.

Among the plant nutrients, nitrogen salts are of increased importance .

Nitrogen is the decisive component of the most important bodily substance of all living organisms, protein. Without protein, however, and therefore without nitrogen, no life is conceivable! In addition, nitrogen is also the plant nutrient that has been proven to increase crop yields the fastest and most effectively.

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It has therefore been christened the "engine of plant growth".

When we speak of nitrogen in fertilization, we always mean - it should be noted here - its salts. In itself, nitrogen is a gas that makes up about 80% of the air around us. Plants, however, can generally only use this nitrogen to build up proteins if it is bound to other chemical substances. We distinguish between two main forms of nitrogen compounds, namely the ammonia salts, in which the nitrogen is bound to hydrogen, and the nitric salts, in which it is bound to oxygen.

We may well assume that every I.G. comrade knows how the problem of producing nitrogenous fertilizers from German raw materials was solved, namely by tapping the raw material air, which the I.G. succeeded in doing in a unique way. This exploitation of the air remains a feat of historical significance for the German chemical industry.

Before I.G., i.e. the former Badische Anilin - und Soda-Fabrik (B.A.S.F.) Ludwigshafen, started to produce nitrogen fertilizers, only the sulfuric acid ammonia was produced for fertilizing purposes in Germany, which was a by product of the degassing of hard coal in the coking plants and gas works.

However, the quantities produced we re tied to the annual volume of coke that could be sold, so that this domestic nitrogen fertilizer was unable to meet the constantly growing demand of German agriculture. The gaps were filled by imports of sodium nitrate extracted from deposits in Chile, k nown as Chile saltpetre. Before the war, about half of Germany's nitrogen requirements had to be brought in from abroad. This meant, however, that part of our food supply had become dependent on foreign supplies. In addition, we know that munitions product ion is closely linked to saltpeter. For these reasons, the B.A.S.F. began research at the beginning of our century on the utilization of nitrogen in the air for these purposes. The happy solution of this difficult task is primarily the achievement of the p resent Chairman of the Supervisory Board of our I.G., Privy Councillor Prof. Dr. Carl Bosch.

By the I.G. process, nitrogen and hydrogen are directly combined to form ammonia, and by another process the ammonia thus obtained can be converted into nitric aci d. Ammonia and nitric acid are also used for numerous technical and chemical purposes, but most of them are processed into fertilizer salts, the ammonia and nitric salts. Of course, it was not as simple as it sounds. The greatest demands had to be made on the inventiveness of our chemists and engineers, on the technical skills of our foremen and on the dedication of all our plant colleagues, until the technical production of ammonia was no longer significantly more difficult to carry out than other processes in large-scale chemical industry, if it has trained, reliable and enthusiastic employees.

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Today, our nitrogen salts are produced on the largest scale in our Oppau ammonia plant near Ludwigshafen am Rhein and in the Merseburg ammonia plant, the world-famous Leunawerk.

Apart from air, the raw materials for the production of ammonia are only water and coal. In large gas generators, coal is gasified with steam and air.

The resulting raw gases are purified in specially de veloped processes and converted to a mixture of pure nitrogen and hydrogen. In order to combine these two to form ammonia, they must be subjected to quite extraordinary conditions. They have to be brought to high pressure and high temperatures at the same time, and here, too, the combination takes place only when so called catalysts are present as mediators. The process takes place in huge steel furnaces containing the catalysts.

Both nitrogen plants are of enormous dimensions. Most of the coal for the Oppau plant comes in the form of hard coal or coke from the mines belonging to I. G. in the Rhenish -Westphalian coal region, and this by water. Our Merseburg plant has its own large lignite mines with corresponding conveyor systems. The Oppau unloading facilit ies with their overhead conveyors are over ten kilometers long. The hourly gas production of the plant would be sufficient to supply a city of 100,000 inhabitants with gas for two full days. In Leuna, the gas quantities are even much larger. A total of abo ut 650 million cubic meters of the raw material air are extracted from the atmosphere in Germany every year. Don't worry that we will run out of air as a result of this; this quantity is only equivalent to a cube with an edge length of 865 meters!

The entire process of ammonia production takes place day and night without any interruption and happens so quickly that we can find the nitrogen in the surrounding air in the white fertilizer salt in the large warehouses just a few hours later. The plants are char acterized by their obvious absence of people.

Even the products are not visible in the working process, because it is a matter of processing gases. Invisible and inaudible are the chemical processes, the conversion of the enormous forces. There are, of cou rse, useful measuring and control devices everywhere. Their meticulous observation is the task of our I. G. comrades there, on whose unconditional reliability and accuracy the proper course of production depends.

The products obtained there only become vis ible when the finished fertilizer salts flow over conveyor belts into the large warehouses, the silos. In these vast halls, the fertilizer salt piles up into small mountains. In terms of their nutrient effect, the ammonia and nitric salts are quite similar . However, the ammonia salts have a slow and lasting effect, since they must first be transformed into saltpeter by bacterial activity in the soil. In contrast, the nitric salts act immediately as ready plant food.

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However, the I.G.'s drive for progre ss did not stop at the production of these nitrogen fertilizers, which had already been introduced. Using new processes, other ammonia and nitric salts could also be obtained. The combination of the two nitrogen forms mentioned above into one fertilizer pr oved to be particularly successful.

These are ammonium sulfate nitrate (Leuna -Montan) and calcium ammonium nitrate. It is known that in dry weather the saltpeter fertilizer is most effective, in wet weather the ammonia fertilizer.

However, the weather conditions cannot always be predicted with certainty. The combination of both forms of action therefore largely eliminated the risk of weathering and thus ensured the best nitrogen effect in any case.

Another remarkable new creation was BASF urea. Urea, which is found in the urine of humans and animals, has been used to supply nitrogen to the soil since time immemorial, when people did not yet know what nitrogen was and what it meant for plant nutrition. Although we can now produce it economically by chemical means, we have succeeded in producing a product of animal metabolism on demand. Recently, urea has been marketed as lime urea in a mixture with carbonic acid lime.

Since lime serves to improve the soil and thus also the fertilizing effect, and since it also plays an important role as a plant nutrient, it was obvious to add lime to the fertilizers themselves in certain cases. Lime -containing nitrogen fertilizers therefore represented an important step forward in further increasing the nitrogen effect.

In addition to the lime urea already mentioned, these include lime ammonia, lime ammonium nitrate and lime nitrate. In calcium nitrate, however, the lime has not been added subsequently, but is bound directly as a lime salt. This also applies to other fertilizer s that contain other core nutrients in addition to nitrogen, e.g. nitrogen lime phosphate, which was only launched on the market the year before last and contains phosphoric acid in addition to nitrogen and lime.

Fertilizers with all three core nutrients a re called complete fertilizers. These

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include our Nitrophoska and the complete garden fertilizer Hakaphos Neu. These complete fertilizers not only increase the nitrogen effect, but also facilitate the work of fertilizing, because a single spreading is enough; they also save work and prevent mistakes in mixing as well as gross fertilizing mistakes in general.

In addition to their good effect, fertilizers must be storable and easy to spread. This depends on their external properties. The introduction of I.G. granular fertilizer forms, which are easier to handle, do not generate dust and do not stick to the green parts of the plants when spread, represents a major step forward in this area.

In the course of time, the systematic approach of I.G. has created a selection of high quality nitrogen fertilizers that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. At the same time, the prices for fertilizer nitrogen have been voluntarily reduced by I.G. from year to year as a result of constant improvements in manufacturing processes, which means a corresponding reduction in the burden on German agriculture. In 1936, German farmers had to pay only 55 percent of the pre -war price for fertilizer nitrogen. Since the Reich government's decree of March 1937, this percentage has even dropped to 40.

The Agricultural Experiment Station built on the grounds of Limburgerhof can be described as the great natural laboratory that tests all our commercial fertilizers before they reach the farmer's hands.

Everything that is some how related to nutrition and the care of agricultural crops is worked on here. On carefully collected different types of soil, preparatory and final tests are carried out on a wide variety of

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plants. Very important are the ongoing studies on the ext ent to which the various fertilization methods influence the quality of the crop products, i.e. their taste, digestibility and shelf life. And it is precisely on this question that we want to dwell for a moment, comrades of the I.G. In spite of all enligh tenment it still happens that on this or that weekly market a vegetable stand appears in front of our housewives who are shopping there, which tries to sell its goods to gullible people or people caught in old prejudices by claiming that they are "not fert ilized with artificial fertilizers".

There is a mysterious whisper going around that the food grown using commercial fertilizers is of poorer quality, if not even harmful to health.

Without any knowledge of the deeper connections it is claimed that the technically produced fertilizers are chemical poisons and thus poison the soil and also the plants. On the Limburgerhof and also elsewhere, taste and shelf life tests have repeatedly been carried out, whereby the officially appointed testers were asked to che ck the dishes in front of them for their palatability and other properties. They knew that the vegetables in one dish came from a field not fertilized with commercial fertilizer, and that the vegetables in the other were fertilized with nitrogen and other commercial fertilizers. But they did not know which belonged to one variety or the other. Never did the supporters of the theory that the vegetables fertilized with commercial fertilizers should taste worse find their prejudice confirmed. Nor could it be otherwise, for all such assertions are either a malicious speculation or a superstition difficult to eradicate. So far, no one has been able to provide any proof of their correctness. And if we leave our taste buds aside and prefer to rely on the accuracy o f scientific investigations, these have, however,

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provided proof, namely that when commercial fertilizers are used correctly, the quality of the food is never deteriorated, but mostly improved.

Furthermore, the experiments, which have been going on f or decades, have shown perfectly that if commercial fertilizers are not applied, the crop yields - let us only think of the war - have decreased more and more. Why else would our authorities have demanded and promoted an increased application of commercial fertilizers to our fields by all means.

Our nitrogen fertilizers are sold by the Nitrogen Syndicate in Berlin through distributors and cooperatives. Our nitrogen production plants are also in direct contact with the consumers and thus exchange useful expe riences with them. The I.G. has its own agricultural advice centers, because it wants to advise the farmer on a case -by-case basis which type of our commercial fertilizers is most suitable for the soil, which is never the same everywhere, and for the vario us crops. Nitrogen fertilizers must be applied correctly, and just as, for example, the horse needs a different feed than the horse, so the rye requires a different diet than the potato. Professional training and experience are just as indispensable if the desired success is to come, as is continued instruction and advice to the consumers themselves. Thus, the purely commercial relationship of our company with the consumers of our commercial fertilizers becomes one of mutual trust.

The continuous research w ork of our production plants shows that the whole field of commercial fertilizer use is still in a lively state of development. In cooperation with the Reichsnährstand, our advisory services carry out numerous fertilizer trials every year to test the effec t of our fertilizers on the most diverse types of soil in our country and under the most varied climatic and economic conditions.

The successful "grip on the air" has eliminated all dependencies and barriers that previously threatened the German nitrogen s upply. The former monopoly of Chilean saltpeter, for which we had to send 170 million marks abroad as recently as 1913, has finally been broken. What's more, Germany has even become an exporting country for nitrogen salts and now plays a leading role in the world nitrogen industry. Without our synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, our national economy would be more dependent on foreign countries in this area than ever before, given the increase in consumption, quite apart from the fact that with today's large dem and for saltpeter, the German farmer would probably have to pay even more dearly for Chile saltpeter than before the war.

It is easy to calculate what this would mean for our cost of living. And let's look back once again to the years of the World War. The supplies of Chilean saltpeter were soon completely tied up by the increasingly severe enemy blockade. Only by making nitric acid obtained from atmospheric nitrogen

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available to the army administration was it possible to procure the necessary ammunition.

The extent to which the use of commercial fertilizers has increased crop yields is best illuminated by officially audited statistics. According to these, from 1880 to 1934, i.e. since the general introduction of commercial fertilizers, our harvests have roughly doubled. For example, rye yields have risen from 9.5 quintals per hectare to 17.4 quintals, and potato yields from 79.2 quintals to 160 quintals. This increase in yields, along with other agricultural measures, is largely attributable to the use of commercial fertilizers. The fact that among these, nitrogen fertilization is of decisive importance was demonstrated by the sharp decline in harvests during the nitrogen -poor times of the war and the first post-war years. And if we want to look beyond o ur national borders for further evidence, the countries with the highest nitrogen consumption also achieve the highest crop yields there, as is evident from Holland and Belgium.

Thanks to our nitrogen industry, we have come a long way in recent years toward achieving food freedom. Today, we can already cover our needs for plant foods (bread grain, potatoes, sugar) from our own production. There are still some gaps in the production of protein (meat, milk, cheese) and fats. In our climate, we consume th ese nutrients mostly in the form of animal products, which has turned this question into a feed question. In fact, the value of a feed for meat and milk production is measured by the level of its protein content. However, the basic condition for the produc tion of fodder

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protein is the sufficient supply of nitrogen to the fodder plant, because this is the actual protein producer! The protein question is therefore a nitrogen question! Through increased and appropriate nitrogen fertilization, the production of protein fodder on our meadows and pastures could be doubled.

The experimental results of our Limburgerhof, which we described at the beginning, speak eloquently for this. However, nitrogen fertilization is of equal importance for intercropping, where it is important to produce as much forage with as high a protein content as quickly as possible under relatively unfavorable growing conditions. Increased nitrogen fertilization has just as beneficial an effect on the cultivation of nitrogen -hungry oil plants as it does on the production of fattening feed for the multiplication of animal fats, No one will be able to deny the decisive role that nitrogen plays in solving Germany's food problem in the area of plant nutrients. In agriculture, nitrogen virtually determines the extent of all plant and animal production.

Accordingly, our production battle cannot be carried out without an adequate supply of nitrogen.

However, Germany can never lack sufficient quantities of nitrogen fertilizer after "reaching into the air". We produce it from domestic raw materials, with domestic energy and manpower in any required quantity and type. We comrades of the I.G., however, may take justified satisfaction in the fact that it was our works that created the prerequisi tes for this and that we are called upon to continue to keep this weapon ready for the fatherland.

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Nitrogen where you do not suspect him

Nitrogen and agriculture - we have already become acquainted with the "grip on the air" in the relevant section of this book; we know how, by our comrades in Oppau and Leuna, the nitrogen of the air is converted into compounds in which it is used for fertilizers. It has already been indicated that it is not only used for this purpose, but for numerous other purposes in the field of chemistry, technology and daily life in general. We come here into the area of "nitrogen technical". In the first place, these are the same nitrogen compounds that are used for fertilizing purposes, but they are transformed into products by various processes in which it is often difficult to recognize the connection with nitrogen. On the other hand, it is precisely the field of technical nitrogen that expresses most clearly how closely and how deeply the products of I.G. are l inked to the necessities of everyday life.

If, following the example of the I.G. and taking advantage of the experience it has gained, most of the industrialized countries have today created their own atmospheric nitrogen plants, this has been done not lea st for reasons of national security. We have already read that nitric acid is the basic material for the production of explosives. In an emergency, no one wants to be dependent on foreign supplies of a product whose failure would decisively impair the striking power of the armies. But not only in war, but also in peace, explosives are of the utmost importance as explosives, whether they help the miner to tap the treasures of the earth, or whether they serve to pave the way for the construction of railroads, motor roads, etc., or to blast the valuable natural stones for our buildings out of the rock. The tamed power, which rests in the explosives, becomes a valuable helper for man.

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If we were somewhat familiar with the use of nitric acid and thus of nitrogen for the production of explosives, it is perhaps more surprising to learn of other uses of nitric acid.

Who of us, when visiting a movie theater, suspects that the films rolling in front of him are made of nitrocellulose and that this, too, was produced with the help of nitric acid! The chemist knows how to combine cellulose, as obtained from wood, cotton fibers and similar natural materials, with nitric acid in varying amounts. If the proportion of nitric acid is large, t he result is a product that belongs to the category of gunpowder and explosives; if it is only small, we are dealing with substances that are used in the manufacture of films and varnishes and in the production of celluloid, which we are all familiar with in our children's dolls and numerous other everyday objects.

But things get even more colorful when nitrous oxide is used, more colorful in the truest sense of the word; for the colors of our clothes, shoes, umbrellas, wallpaper and the beautiful colored papers, in short: the infinitely varied play of colors in life would be inconceivable without nitrous oxide. There is hardly any organic dye without nitrogen. While we are on the subject of colors, the colorful play of lights in fireworks should not be forgotten. Potassium nitrate plays an important role in the manufacture of fireworks.

It is an astonishing fact that the preservation of meat, which is based on the inhibition of the development of fission fungi, can be achieved with potassium nitrate and sod ium nitrate. while these salts, as we have seen elsewhere, are of particular value for increasing the growth of plants.

Hardly known is the use of nitrogen salts for inflating rubber balls. Who knows that a mixture of sodium nitrite and ammonia salts is us ed in their manufacture, which react with each other to release gaseous nitrogen, thus giving the balls their hardness!

In baths of molten potash and sodium nitrate, a great many steel tools and machine parts made of steel are brought to the right degree o f hardness.

For its part, nitric acid is used by the metalworking industry for pickling and

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for producing special shades of color on metal objects. Nitric salts, in turn, are used to brighten glass. It is impossible to see the nitrogen treatment on t he glass panes through which sunlight enters the room.

The metal filament in the incandescent lamp owes its increased resistance to the nitrogenous sodium nitrite with which it is hardened.

In addition to nitric nitrogen, ammoniacal nitrogen also plays a major role in shaping our lives through technology. Just think of the ice cream stands crowded by our children in the summer. To produce his goods, the ice cream man has to resort to artificial ice produced with the help of ammonia refrigeration machines. And this is the same ice that cools our beer, wine, and sodas in the hot season, while also keeping endless amounts of delicate foods from spoiling.

Ammonia is also necessary for the production of the artificial silk that provides our women and girls with their fragrant summer dresses. And how often do our women come into contact with I.G. nitrogen products in their domestic activities?

When they wash and scrub and clean, they cannot do it without soda. It is contained in soap as well as in washing powder. Today, however, soda ash is only produced using ammonia, which consists of 80 percent nitrogen. To remove dirt and grime, our women turn to ammonia. The comrade in the ammonia factory knows that this ammonia is nothing more than a solution of ammonia in water.

Where else do we encounter technical nitrogen? Dry batteries, such as those we use for flashlights and portable radios, generate the desired electric current by the action of ammonia on carbon and zinc cylinders. And when the plumber wants to solder, he prepares his soldering iron by stripping it with an ammonia stone.

Who of us suspects that in the transformation of raw animal hides into the leather for our shoes, suitcases and bags, among many other chemicals, nitrogen in the form of ammonium chlorid e is also used. And another surprise for many: the fragrant, crispy Christmas baked goods that mother baked at home, or that lure us from the confectioner's windows, have risen so beautifully because staghorn salt, also called ABC drive, was stirred into the dough. But staghorn salt consists of ammonia and carbonic acid. And

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our daily bread is baked with yeast, which is also a valuable protein food for pets. In yeast factories, this yeast is grown in sugar solutions; but sugar alone is not sufficient for its growth. Ammonium sulfate and diammonium phosphate are offered to it as nutrients.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the beautiful unbreakable cups, plates, mugs and spoons made of plastic pollopas. A main basic material of these durable masses is ure a, which consists almost half of nitrogen.

Nitrogen, the invisible one, created out of thin air by German inventiveness, it accompanies us on all our life paths as a hardly known faithful companion!

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Solid coal liquid power

To have boldly broken the iron ring of Germany's dependence on foreign natural oil deposits is the unrivaled feat of German chemistry and, within it, of the I.G.; a step whose world -political consequences need no special elaboration here.

The miracle of this deed remains incomprehensible even to those who come to Leuna from all over the world to see the fact for themselves. They stand in front of the sight glasses of the distillation plant and watch the arm -thick jets of Leuna gasoline flowing past in a mazement and contemplation, after they had just encountered the coal trucks that had brought the raw material from the nearby mines. Germans invented the gasoline and diesel engine: they laid the foundation for a tremendous development that fundamentally r eshaped the entire transportation system. The bridging of space, the utilization of time have succeeded in an undreamt -of way due to the increase in speed owed to the engines. And Germans created the Leuna plant, which was once written that it deserved to be included among the wonders of the world.

We make gasoline from coal, because our oil reserves are modest compared to our consumption, but our reserves of lignite and hard coal amount to hundreds of billions of tons and will therefore last for many centu ries to come!

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But those who today still have the most productive sources of oil and who at that time even mocked us because we wanted to have our gasoline, while they were ready to give us theirs for good money, they cannot get out of their worries, because the time limit set for their wealth is much, much shorter!

Coal is probably the most important raw material made available to man, it is solar power embedded in the soil, originating from the plant life of long past times, which may lie for the bro wn coal about 30 million years, for the hard coal even more than ten times longer back. Hardly anything remained of the original chemical compounds. Pulp "and wood pulp were completely transformed. But as original substances, all types of coal contain carb on, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur. More than 300 million tons of hard coal and lignite are mined in Germany every year. Most of it is used to generate heat, gas, steam and electric power. The tars extracted from this coal in smelters and coking pla nts are broken down again into numerous substances that have become endlessly important for our paints, medicines and other things. In the mines in the Rhineland and Westphalia, in Saxony and Upper Silesia, it is necessary to go deep into the earth to extract the hard coal, while the lignite on the Rhine and in Central Germany can usually be extracted by surface mining. Huge excavators can be seen incessantly picking up the valuable material. Unmissably long trains, one after the other, bring the treasures of the deep to all parts of the country.

The task set to German chemists was to produce liquid fuels economically and in sufficient quantities from the abundant German raw material coal. They had to find a way to extract the small molecules of oil and gaso line from the huge molecules of coal compounds. So what does gasoline consist of? Analysis answers this question: about 15 percent hydrogen and 85 percent carbon. The types of carbon available to us, however, rarely contain more than five percent hydrogen. The chemist must therefore know how to add hydrogen, the lightest of all gases, to the fragments that are formed when the coal is split by heat and pressure. This hydrogen can be obtained from water vapor with the help of coal in gas generators.

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When the I. G., initially in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, tackled the question of fuel production from coal, there was already the high -pressure furnace of our nitrogen process, which was immune to high temperatures of around 500 degrees and to high pressures of 200 atmospheres and had also proven its reliability in the production of methanol from carbon oxide and hydrogen. But it again required difficult work on the part of chemists, engineers, and physicists to convert these massive active steel chambers into coal and gasoline furnaces, such as those in our Leuna and other plants today. They have stood the test of time. As with ammonia and methanol, however, chemistry did another piece of work. Pressure and heat alone are not enough to turn coal and hydrogen into gasoline. In order to break down the smallest particles of coal in the right way and, with the help of the refining hydrogen, to produce hydrocarbons from them for engines, mediating forces are s till needed. To have found these mediators is one of the most outstanding merits of the research facilities of the 1.6., especially in Oppau -Ludwigshafen. With foreign words they are called contacts (touchers) or catalysts (triggers). Their peculiarity is that they cause material transformations without changing themselves substantially. Of course, all kinds of laws are already known, but many things are still so mysterious that they can only be interpreted by unprovable assumptions.

Various primary substan ces, especially metals in all kinds of compounds and forms, can be used as catalysts.

Derived from the Greek-Latin word for hydrogen, hydrogenium, this I. G. process has been called hydrogenation, whereby the importance of hydrogen should be emphasized mor e than in the often heard designation coal liquefaction.

It is hardly possible to describe these things in more detail without getting into the field of chemical and technical terms, which is completely confusing for the layman. Let us now take a closer look at the work processes in which our Leuna comrades are involved, each in his own position.

Dried coal with a mediator is first rubbed with heavy oil (boiling point over 300 degrees) to form a coal slurry. In the furnaces of the first stage, the middle oil is produced first, which is separated from the ash and heavy oil. This middle

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oil (boiling point 200 to 300 degrees) travels in vapor form through the second-stage gasoline furnaces, which are filled with lumpy catalyst, and is largely converted i nto light hydrocarbons. The presence of abundant quantities of hydrogen, a high pressure of several hundred atmospheres, a temperature around 500 degrees, and the appropriate contacts must work together in both types of high -pressure furnaces. Equipment fo r distillation, purification, gas processing, storage and shipping are also part of the extensive hydrogenation operation.

Fortunately, in the course of development it has been possible to convert 97 percent of the coal's carbon into liquid and gaseous hyd rocarbons by means of this I.G. process; furthermore, there is no waste whatsoever, since all unusable oils and gases are always reprocessed in the chemical cycle. The main product is gasoline, the well -known Leuna gasoline, which was first produced in the huge Leuna plant. Who would have believed that it is possible to produce a gasoline from coal that is not a "substitute", but is quite similar in essence to gasoline from crude oil!

The I.G. process is also nimble enough to produce other, heavier oils, s uch as light oil, diesel oil and fuel oil. I.G. has also been particularly fortunate in its efforts to produce high -quality lubricating oils. Particularly light hydrocarbons form our starting agent "Supralin," which has helped many a motorist out of his winter troubles. It is squirted from the tube into the carburetor to produce a mixture that is immediately ignitable even in the severest cold.

The odorless "bonalin", the fuel in tubes for our lighters, also comes from our hydrogenation plants.

It burns with a completely soot-free flame.

Today, we see the products of our Leuna plant more and more frequently in the heavy trucks we encounter on the highway. On their flanks, they usually visibly carry the steel cylinders with Leuna propellant gas.

Soft yet powe rful

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combustion without residues, a high calorific value and high anti -knock properties are the special advantages of this propellant.

The Leuna propellant is again a suitable mixture of the gases "propane" and "butane" produced in the high -pressure process. It can be liquefied under relatively low pressure and filled into steel cylinders. Propane has also become a popular gas for household and small business use, providing convenience wherever no gas plant has yet reached with its pipelines.

Our hydrogenation process thus provides fuel for all engines that run on oils, gasoline or gases, thus fulfilling important functions within our national economy. Under the constant control of our Leuna plant colleagues, Leuna gasoline, to which alcohol has been added in accordance with today's regulations, is marketed under this name in consistently excellent condition, or as a Leuna mixture that still contains benzene and is intended for engines with high compression. Incidentally, according to official instruct ions, methanol (methyl alcohol) is used for a large part of the alcohol, which is also produced in Leuna by hydrogenation of carbon oxide using a high -pressure process and offers similar advantages to ethyl alcohol. Incidentally, this methanol is also the starting material for the production of formaldehyde and thus also the basic material for synthetic resins.

The raw materials for hydrogenation are not only hard coal and lignite, but also their tars, as well as the heavy parts of crude oil that come from petroleum distillations.

On the basis of the preliminary work carried out in Ludwigshafen, the enormous plant was built in our Leuna, which is rightly the envy of Germany throughout the world. Here, the process was developed further and further in restless cooperation between chemists, technicians and plant workers. Leuna is the largest chemical plant in the world, producing nitrogen, gasoline and methanol in huge quantities. Is it still surprising to hear that the water consumption of this one plant is as great as that of the Reich capital, that the amount of gas produced there daily would be enough for Greater Berlin for eight days, and that the sulfur extracted during gas production covers a considerable part of German consumption! And again it is the cas e that today,

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when even the enormousness of this work has almost become a matter of course, the difficult beginnings, which demanded an immense sense of responsibility, are all too easily forgotten. The pioneering work of the I.G. in the field of hydrogenation was initially met with strong prejudice. But the leading men continued it undeterred, using all the means at their disposal, so that today the hydrogenation of the I.G. can be described as the most successful process based on the longest experien ce.

What changes this has brought about! Only a few years ago, we were depressed by our great dependence on foreign countries for fuel. The leader of the new Germany clearly recognized the necessity of securing the means of advancement for the fatherland in this area as well, calling for the purposeful continuation of this work by German chemists soon after the seizure of power.

In addition to Leuna, new plants were and still are being built, drawing on the experience of the I.G. and producing gasoline and oil from German raw materials. The time has come near when we will no longer be at the mercy of other nations in possession of the rich oil fields. Moreover, it must be pointed out here that the reserves of these countries will run out one day. According to our knowledge, this can be expected in a few decades. With foresight and driven by its own need, German chemical research opened up new territory when it conjured up liquid power from solid coal and created from native soil what others had achieved with little effort. In addition, however, valuable pioneering work was done for all peoples of the world who will also make use of this type of fuel production from coal in later times.

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From glass-clear" Cellophane" and other pulp products

Directly on the banks of the Rhine, in Wiesbaden -Biebrich, lies the factory of the Kalle company, which belongs to the I. G.. That is, only we I.G. comrades are allowed to speak of it so succinctly. T he exact name is: Kalle & Co. Aktiengesellschaft. But in the family we don't always call each other by all our first and last names. This plant on the Rhine has its own history within the history of I.G. It began, like the other parent plants, with the pro duction of synthetic colors, then pharmaceutical products were added, and then, when the merger of the German tar color factories into I.G. Farbenindustrie took place in 1926, all of this had to be abandoned at once, so to speak, and something completely n ew had to be started. There was no shortage of hours

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full of worries. But in the end, this hard struggle resulted in something that can certainly no longer be described as a stopgap solution. Rather, it is a prime example of how the most creative impu lses often spring from hardship.

Today, the clouds of that time of transition have long since disappeared. The view of the employees of Kalle goes upstream to the towers and bridges of the happy, golden Mainz, downstream beckons the realms of the blessed R hine and Wine Valley. In an unusually happy way, the busy work mixes here with the beauty of nature. The Rhine is not only our most beautiful river full of travel romance and joie de vivre, its economic importance is just as well known as its castles and i ts wines.

This unique blend of beauty and practicality of the landscape in which the plant of our I.G. comrades at Kalle is located has also had a mysterious effect on the local product, which is at the forefront of Kalle production and which we encounter most often in our daily lives. the product of the work there, which stands at the top of the Kalle production and which we encounter most often in our daily life. Its legally protected name is "Cellophane".

There will be no one among us through whose hands this cellophane has not passed.

Perhaps he did not always know that it was Cellophane.

For we encounter it in many forms and it is not always what we are accustomed to thinking when we say "cellophane".

Capable of change, it comes into our house one way, the next the next; it meets us on the way, on our travels at home and in the world. It is a material that stimulates the imagination like no other, useful and modest, distinguished and unapproachable, as the case may be.

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However, before we set out to observe this quick -change artist in its manifold transformations, we have to ask ourselves, in order to be properly informed in our I.G. house, what this strange material is actually made of and how our workmates at Kalle's produce it. And the first answer sounds relatively simple to us: cellophane is also made of wood. Of course, we in chemistry also know that this does not mean a process similar to that which produces a piece of furniture from the h and of a carpenter. No, cellophane, like the other cellulose products with which we are familiar, is obtained by dissolving the cellulose contained in the suitable wood material in viscose and then making this "spun" material insoluble again. In just one s entence is thus said what is the result of long research work and the closest cooperation of all the followers involved in the manufacturing process. So this is the cellophane, this something that is transparent like glass and yet is not glass, that is waf er-thin and yet tough.

Where do we encounter this cellophane, first of all in our profession? In Höchst and Leverkusen, for example, we know it as a protective cover for pharmaceuticals. Agfa's viscose sponges are protected from dust and dirt, as are the spools of artificial silk. In some of our factories, even the bags for the week's pay are made of cellophane.

And now even in our daily lives, if we just look around, we can encounter this cellophane of ours at every turn. Our women seal their jelly jars with preserving cellophane, which does not allow air and allows an eye inspection of the contents at any time. It is important that cellophane closes without string: it is pulled over the jar when slightly moistened and then shrinks smoothly.

In the closet, our suits, coats and dresses hang well stored and neatly arranged in the cellophane bag, which in this case, as they say, kills two birds with one stone. Its airtight closure prevents the dreaded moth butterflies from laying eggs, from which the voraciou s moth caterpillars later hatch. And if the winter coat is already protected against such an attack by the moth repellent Eulan from I.G., the cellophane bag still protects against the finest dust. Cellophane is also used for the irreplaceable adhesive str ip on our desk, which we use to rivet torn invoices and other important papers back together. We do not even need to moisten this strip, it is dry -adhesive and air-tight, so that it also provides us with the most useful services when properly sealing cans and boxes.

Over the last few years, our women have noticed a remarkable change in the stores where they do their various grocery shopping. What used to be packed in opaque paper now offers itself, as it were, with the transparency of cellophane packaging, and one knows from the outset what one is getting for one's good money. All things that require special care for reasons of

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cleanliness, hygiene or preservation of value, chocolate, baked goods, coffee, fruit, pasta, cigars, cigarettes, soap, remedies , laundry and a thousand other things, they lie before us clean, appetizing and clearly arranged when they are packed in cellophane cellophane. We have already become so accustomed to this new type of packaging that we almost become suspicious I missing it . An old proverb could be a contemporary change today.

Over the last few years, our women have noticed a remarkable change in the stores where they do their various grocery shopping. What used to be packed in opaque paper now offers itself, as it were, wit h the transparency of cellophane packaging, and one knows from the outset what one is getting for one's good money. All things that require special care for reasons of cleanliness, hygiene or conservation of value, chocolate, baked goods, coffee, fruit, pasta, cigars, cigarettes, soap, remedies, laundry and a thousand other things, they lie before us clean, appetizing and clear when packed in Cellophane. We have already become so accustomed to this new type of packaging that we almost become suspicious when we miss it. An old saying could be given a contemporary makeover today. You still don't like to buy a cat in a bag, unless that bag is made of cellophane. But because we have all learned to think economically, we must also know that cellophane packaging helps to conserve the important raw material cellulose. Cellophane is wafer thin; another packaging material - cellulose is also needed for paper production - would not be nearly as resistant in this thinness. But if this cellophane is such an appetizing wr apping for goods, then it is only a small step to the wrapping of one of our most important foods, namely the so -called sausage pellet. If it is technically possible, why should not this sausage pellet also be made of the same crystal -clear, hygienic skin ? Kalle has made it technically possible, and so indeed today the sausage pellet is also made of cellophane. Here the national economist reminds us immediately of the many millions, which we had to let wander so far for our sausage intestine supply abroad. But apart from that - although it is crucially important - if we free ourselves from the convenience of a tradition: isn't it really a fine thing, the tasteless, pure and really appetizing sausage skin, which no longer allows any memory of any intestine? The sausage casing made of cellophane can be cooked and smoked in exactly the same way; the sausage stored in it tastes stronger and fuller, because no spice or meat aroma can cook out through the skin into the sausage broth. On the other hand, the smoke f rom the smokehouse is eagerly absorbed by the cellophane sausage skin and passed on to the sausage stuffing, giving the sausage a splendid, pithy smoked flavor.

Not everyone today is able to slaughter his fat pig according to the old custom.

But those who are able to do so know that they always had to buy other intestines from somewhere in order to process them into sausage. Where did

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they come from? One cleaned them and washed them, in order to chase this thought away.

Today you write a postcard to Kalle. Kalle knows what it takes.

The "house battle pack" comes into t he house, and what is in it can be consumed immediately without cumbersome ceremonies. But the quick change artist Cellophan manages quite other things. A bold leap from the sausage pelt to the big evening dress, from the home slaughter to the field of fashion! Cellophane doesn't mind at all. In any case, our women have worn many a "straw hat", of which they had no idea that the straw came from Kalle's factory and that this straw, in turn , was used to save and that this straw, in turn, has taken the place of the vegetable braids previously imported from the tropics. In many high -quality fabrics, the special effect is due to cellophane.

The so-called "wire hair effect" - our women know exactly what that means in costume, coat and dress fabrics consists of cellophane in its special processing into "fliro", which is considered one of the most precious textile fibers in the world. In this list, which is by no means exhaustive, let us not forget "cellometal", in which cellophane is insolubly bonded to a metal foil, thus protecting it from oxidation. It is used to make gold - and silver-colored belts that retain their luster unalterably. In Paris, during the World's Fair, visitors from all over t he world admired, not without reason, that piece of magnificent black velvet, whose magical glittering effect was due to the interwoven cellophane threads, and which was awarded a silver medal.

This delightful material cellophane, of course, has an equally delightful cognate. A related material is used to make the "Flaka" and "Bika" capsules, which are slipped over the necks of bottles when wet and then cling so tightly when dry that they can only be removed by tearing. Can there be a better guarantee for the bottle contents ?

There is also a fine wire mesh embedded in cellulose called "Bicella". It serves as a translucent protective wall for the worker at the lathe.

As a partition between livestock and poultry house, it is very appreciated. For air protecti on, the non-flammable Bicella air protection blue has great importance.

Again and again from the same source comes the "Ozaphan" film. It is a ready illustrated film made by Kalle and is the basis for the inexpensive popular film for home cinema, affordabl e for all. Without sensitive silver layer, it will never "rain" even with the most frequent use. Absolutely harmless, it can be put in the hands of any child. Many things are offered with it to many. As the concert hall or the opera through radio and recor ds, so through Ozaphan the cinema comes into every home.

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But this is by no means the end of what the Kalle company brings to the market.

First of all, there is the well -known light tracing paper "Ozalid", the production of which today represents one of the most important branches of Kalle's production. Precisely because it is not so well known to the general public, it is worthwhile to go into it in more detail here. Whenever a new factory is built, a skyscraper, a stadi um, a highway, an ocean liner, a locomotive or an airplane, it always starts with an architect's, engineer's or artist's plan. Yes, if in a house only a wall is moved, a workshop is added, or if we ourselves build a small house outside the city, then also here an exact drawing, which contains all details, is the basis. The drawing is now created as an original on the drawing board of the engineer or architect; it is drawn in pencil or ink. However, the same drawing is needed from many places. For example, w hen building a house, the builder needs a copy, the client wants to know the details, the bricklayer needs the same drawing to build the walls, the carpenter needs the same drawing to install the doors and windows, the building inspector needs the same dra wing for his files, and so on. And it is the same with machine drawings, which must always be available in numerous copies in the various departments of a machine factory.

The basis, however, is always the drawing board original, which is only available in one copy. The drawing board original is drawn on transparent paper, and now the technique has the task of reproducing this original in the simplest and cheapest way possible for the various places interested in the drawing.

This is where the Ozalid ligh t tracing paper comes in. It is a paper coated with a yellowish, light sensitive layer. If the transparent original drawing is placed on the light tracing paper and the whole thing is placed in the sun or under an arc lamp, the light rays bleach out the dy e. Only where the light rays are prevented from passing through the line drawing of the original does the light -sensitive layer remain. If the exposed tracing is then placed in a box with ammonia vapor, the yellowish lines

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protected from the light ray s acquire a clearly visible brown, black or blue color. But the ammonia vapor has a second property: it then makes these dark lines light-resistant. After this development in the ammonia vapor, the tracing is easily legible and light -resistant, a faithful copy of the drawing board drawing. This process can be repeated as often as desired, and thus the technician can easily obtain from the one original all the many prints he needs to build a house or find a machine. But this Ozalid paper is not only used for purely technical purposes.

Ozalid is also at work in the typing pools of patent attorneys, in commercial establishments, to save the tedious work of transcribing. Most business letters today are written on such translucent paper that they can be exposed a nd reproduced directly on light tracing paper, just like a drawing.

In the case of letters on thick paper or originals written on two sides, one helps oneself by producing an intermediate original by photographic means but the result is always a faithfu l reproduction of the original with all its details. It speaks volumes for the progressiveness of the Reichspatentamt in Berlin when they print patent specifications and drawings on translucent paper from which ozalid copies can be made without further ado.

Even in advertising today, Ozalid paper has become a sought -after tool when it comes to obtaining a small number of posters or pictures without great expense.

However, the Kalle factory has other inventions to offer, namely a series of products that are becoming more and more important, especially today, under special raw material conditions.

Here we have "Glutolin", a material which, like cellophane, originated in German wood and which serves the master painter as a binder for his glue paints, while the upholsterer uses it as a paste for sticking wallpaper. In technical terms, Glutolin is a cellulose glue or cellulose paste, and Kalle is credited with having converted the cellulose into a water-soluble form in this product. Painters and upholsterers appre ciate this new German material because it helps them to save linseed oil, to simplify or refine old painting techniques, and to eliminate the need for flour paste in wallpapering. Significant quantities of rye and wheat flour are thus freed up

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for food by Glutolin. But we also enjoy the beautiful, bright colors and the long durability of Glutolin paint.

A close relative of Glutolin is the cellulose adhesive "Glutofix", which we find in the store in the neat blue-yellow tubes and tins.

Glutofix is cons idered to be a particularly clean adhesive, and when we glue something with it at home or in the office, we not only notice its good adhesive strength, but we are also surprised that we do not get sticky fingers with Glutofix.

Today, Glutofix is used by bo okbinders to bind books, to draw maps and plans on linen, to glue paper to cardboard, by the bag industry to make paper bags and pouches, and by many other industries. Yes, even in cigar production, the wrappers and cigar heads are nowadays glued with Glut ofix in order to save the foreign tragacanth.

Finally, we introduce to our I.G. comrades the youngest child of the numerous family of cellulose derivatives: the noble finish "Tylose". Our women are familiar with the problem of roughened sleeve and collar e dges on our garments. Men's shirts pre -treated with Tylose - you can wash them as often as you like - have lost this unpleasant and costly property forever. And since we are talking about textiles, let's mention the Kalle products "Biolase" and "Viveral", two desizing agents with special properties. We have already read about the desizing agents in the color chapter of this book.

So this is what has become of the Kalle & Co. work program since it joined the big I.G. family. During the years of the upswing, the workforce there has doubled. In the company logo, the two "L "s rise so high that they give the impression of tall chimneys. They are symbols of industrious work that does honor to the fatherland and makes German workmanship known throughout the worl d. In the summer of 1938, Kalle & Co. will be able to look back on its 75th anniversary. At that

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time, the new five -story administration building will be inaugurated, which stretches for more than 100 meters along the banks of the Rhine.

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Our operating community

"This is the great expression of the sense of community of our people and thus of a white and high inner reason, millions have the same feeling: we belong together, then we are everything! Torn apart we are nothing!"

-Adolf Hitler

If the title of this book is "Products of Our Work", then in the preceding descriptions of the fields of activity of the I. G. and its indissoluble interweaving with the vital needs of our people, the creative German man and woman has already spoken out again and again, as if of his or her own accord, the people's comrade and the people's woman, from whose hands and brains the threads flow from everywhere, which together form the artistic fabric.

Have you, workmate, once seen how a single thread of our vistra is spun out of the infinitely many spinning holes of the spinning shower from just as many starting threads and how a starting thread consisting of such a multiplicity is nevertheless again only a part of that thread which is finally processed to some fabric? So it is with our work within the I. G., the comparison patches on all of us, no matter where we stand and what work is assigned to us. Those who bear the supreme responsibility can bear it onl y because they can rely on each individual member of our entourage; and the individual member has bread and work and, what is more important, pleasure in work and bread, because the management of the company successfully fights for and defends the position of our I.G. on the domestic market and in the world every day anew. Just as in a large family the parents are proud of their children, the children of their parents, so it is with us.

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In the previous sections, we have reported factually about the prod ucts of our work, without forgetting the people, and we have also occasionally brought counts that give us information about everything that is produced within our company. And there will be many things among them which we did not know yet and which now fi ll us with new pride. But here, where we want to talk about our company community, it is a much different conversation. A conversation among ourselves, as if we were really all sitting around a table and talking about our very own things. Such conversation s, of course, go back and forth, touch on an object, leave it and take it up again later in a different context. However, it is not possible to put it down in writing in this way; a certain order must be brought into it, even if the warmth of the tone, wit h which these things are basically meant and should therefore also be described, should suffer somewhat because of this. All measures for the realization of the company community, no matter how perfect they may be and even stand without comparison, run the risk, soberly counted, of remaining, according to the letter, things of organization, which stand in a certain relation to the material possibilities of a factory. And there is one more thing: so far, this book has endeavored to build a bridge between the diversity of the processes within our company and the unity of the individual working in it at some point.

You, comrade from Leuna, should know what your comrade in Leverkusen is doing and what it is good for that he is doing it; and you, comrade from Ludwigshafen, should also know about the work of your comrade in Premnitz.

And all of us should also know what all other members of the I.G. are doing.

But if the heading above this section is: "Our company community", then these are things that not only conc ern us all in the same way, in which we all have the same share, but they should also be known to us all in the same way. So why write about it?

Well, this discussion about our company community cannot be missing in this book for the simple reason that eve rything preceding would be incomprehensible and meaningless without its culmination in the topic of this last section about the "products of our work". We have prefaced it with the words of Adolf Hitler, not only because they set out in unalterable clarity the decisive content of what follows. They also stand above our discussion because - irrespective of the fact that a number of measures had already been implemented before the upheaval, which becomes clear enough from the historical account of I.G.'s comp any social policy - the conclusion, the final line of march inwardly and outwardly, only runs from the day on which Adolf Hitler became the leader of the German nation. Ultimately, however, because, as Adolf Hitler in his speeches so often endeavors to edu cate the German people to understand the present and the future through an admonishing

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remembrance of the past, it must not be forgotten in our case either that in the fundamental things before January 1933 it was not always so self -evident as we now and then take it for granted.

How difficult it was at that time for those companies and entrepreneurs who rejected the class struggle not only for moral reasons, but also out of the realization that something fruitful can only come from joint work, not fro m mutual fighting, to create in their factories what today is called a company community. The founders and later managers of the plants of the German tar dyes industry, which merged in 1925 to form I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft, always endeavored to give expression to this realization.

However, this will to community had to fight against the efforts of the class struggle workers' experience of the time. The fact that it nevertheless made progress is testified to not only by the numerous institutio ns from the field of company social work from the past decade, but also by the successes of the German tar dye industry from all world markets. For if there had not been a feeling of togetherness among the thousands and thousands of chemical workers, the pioneering technical and economic work of the chemical industry would never have reached its goal. It was only with a following that was basically filled with the idea of community work that the great inventors, technicians and chewers were able to lead the se plants to their outstanding national and international importance in a short time.

How completely different the issues are today: the human being has been moved to the center of the companies, the company community is not only in fact but also legally t he basis of the social structure today. The company community from one side, the family community from the other side, they are the strong pillars of the national community demanded and created by the Führer. Establishing, strengthening and deepening the c ompany community is the task of company social policy. The extent of this task, as far as the I.G. is concerned, is self -evident if you write down the number 126,000. This is the round number of our inner circle. This closer group comprises the plants of the actual I.G. with the exception of the mines, but including Ammoniakwerk Merseburg G. m. b. H., Leuna -Werke, Kalle & Co. Aktiengesellschaft, Wiesbaden-Biebrich and Aktiengesellschaft für Stickstoffdünger, Knapsack.

What it means becomes clear when you co nsider the following: the rest of the I. G. community includes the family members of our followers, as well as almost 26,000 former retired workers and their surviving dependents, and finally also the followers of our mines and the companies associated wit h them. All in all, this adds up to a number almost equal to the population of Greater Frankfurt, the ninth -largest municipality in Germany. Or to put it another way: every 120th German is a member of this community ! The leaders of the factories, the stor e stewards in the store stewards' councils, are faced

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with the task of reducing this enormous number to the common denominator of the factory community, of forging it, nurturing it and deepening it; This means that they must also imbue the entirety of the measures of company social policy with the spirit that is necessary to make them appear to the followers not as an institution of cold calculation or of a patriarchal welfare that has long since disappeared, but as the embodiment of the entrepreneur's duty of care, which, according to the Labor Code, together with the follower's duty of loyalty, must form the basis for every healthy company community.

It is precisely here, in the store s tewards' councils and in the company's social advisory board, which is appointed to solve joint sociopolitical tasks for the entire company, that the core of the social change actually becomes apparent: in the past, in the works councils, the representativ es of the interests of the followers stood opposite the plant manager as the representative of the interests of the company; well -intentioned attempts by our plant managers to break into this system were only partially successful. The antagonisms developed into hard, tough battles between the two associations over wages and other entitlements under the collective agreement. Today's Council of Confidence is not only the organ of the company community, but also the external and internal embodiment of the grea t idea on which it is based: the leader of the company, solely responsible for decision -making in all areas, consults comradely with followers who, for their part, are not guardians of the interests of individual groups of followers, but, like the leader o f the company, are only bearers of the interests of the entire followers.

The new work rules replace the soberly enumerated instructions and prohibitions of the former work rules with a law of genuine and living company community uniting leaders and follow ers. Our communal celebrations of today, which take place on national occasions or to honor the company's jubilarians, or even to bring the leader and the followers of individual companies closer together, were generally unknown before. The company outings, comradeship evenings, plant events of an entertaining, educational or other cultural nature complete the circle of external elements of the plant community. In addition, there is the bond that the organization of the German Labor Front weaves around the company's followers, with the company chairman as the person politically responsible for the community, assisted by the DAF stewards with the same functions for the individual company.

And it is within the framework of this community that factory life take s place, determined primarily by the work tasks of the individual, but everywhere noticeably interspersed with those measures of the company which in their totality represent its company social policy.

I.G. can claim that the total amount it invests in ful filling social tasks is

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unlikely to be exceeded by any other company in Germany or the world. But even the sum of these millions would remain only what is called an "expense" if the social work of the plant managers, the store stewards and the DAF stewards were not able, on the basis of this expense, to win the full confidence of each individual follower, to ignite and preserve the feeling of his attachment to the plant, so that all of us, comrades of I.G., on the way to the workplace, in front of the machines and in front of the writing desk, in Germany and outside in the world, always and everywhere with the fanaticism exemplified under Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, convincedly join in the words and act accordingly: "We belong together, then we are everything ! Torn apart, we are nothing!"

We have already indicated the numerical extent of the total following of our I.G. plants, including the subsidiaries most closely associated with them.

The current peak reached by our workforce in the course of the economic reconstruction, after the number of employees had reached a low of 62576 in the dark year of 1922, is made up of 125,000 workers. The result of the labor battle, the fight against unemployment, which the I.G. successfully carried out through the developmen t and expansion of new productions, through an extensive work program in the field of plant renewal and repair, was an increase in the number of workers by 106 percent, the number of employees by 55 percent. Since the beginning of the labor battle, March 2 1, 1922, about 51,000 comrades have newly joined our community.

The diversity of our productions is reflected in the diverse composition of our followers, as the following figures, calculated as of July 1, 1927, show. There are with us: in the employment r elationship Chemist and physicist 2274 Graduate engineers and architects 792 Technicians 227 other acedemics 1905 commercial employees 11713 foremen and assistant foremen 3602 laboratory assistants 1270 other employees 2107

in the employment relationship Craftsman 22992 Auxiliary craftsmen 2092 Engineers and stokers 4368 Lab technicians 6022 Operational workers 54531 Other workers 873 Apprentice craftsmen 1421

And so the number of our community members increases by another 250,000 when we can state that 85 percent of our workers and 87 percent of our employees are married. The average age of our blue -collar workers is 35.5 and that of our white -collar workers 39.4 years, proof that even older colleagues can count on permanent employment with the I.G.. On January 1, 1938, almost 8,000 of them had been with the company for twenty -five years or more.

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Huge sums of wages and salaries pass through the imprest accounts of our plants: 278417024 Reichsmark in 1936, and in 1937, after short -time work had been completely overcome, they rose to around 330 million Reichsmark for the workforce, which also continued to grow strongly in terms of numbers.

Every working day, therefore, more than one million Reichsmark in wages are raised within the framework of the I. G. operating community. The basis for wage determination is formed by the wage and salary scales that apply as collective bargaining regulations. However, these only represent the lower limit of remuneration and are generally only applied to workmates who still have to learn and prove themselves. On de.. Tariffs, apart from the social allowances paid at the various plants under different aspects, the wages and salaries actually paid are based on performance and the particular working conditions. Under these circumstances, on the overall average of workers and employees, incomes are much higher than those provided for in the tariffs.

However, this performance -related pay does not take into account one aspect that is so important for the formation of a sense o f community: loyalty to the company. For the year 1925, therefore, the I.G. made its first attempt to take account of this loyalty by means of a special one -time annual bonus and, at the same time, to solve the often discussed but practically still unresol ved question of the participation of the members in the company profits. Since then, our members with an income of up to RM 7200 have been receiving a voluntary annual bonus dependent on business results, which in its new form has had the effect of a consi derable increase in income, especially for the lower income groups.

This annual bonus is calculated on the basis of various factors: a basic amount of RM 25 is supplemented by surcharges based on seniority and the previous year's dividend; the last surchar ge is particularly high for incomes of up to RM 3,600. This annual bonus, which is now paid immediately after the end of the fiscal year, i.e. at the beginning of January of the following year, amounted to 13.5 million Reich marks for 1937. The individual p remiums ranged from about RM 35 for a one-year period of service to RM 420, an amount equivalent to the recipient's earnings for about two months. The average amount of the annual premium in 1937, for a total of 99600 recipients per capita, was RM. 135,30.

In addition, it is a nice custom to honor the idea of company loyalty by giving a notable anniversary gift.

We have already mentioned that the difficult period of short -time work is fortunately behind us. When the economic crisis hit our plants in 1929, w e were able to keep 12,000 colleagues at work because the other members of the workforce agreed to stretch their hours by introducing the 40 -hour week.

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When the resurgence came, we initially held on to the shortened workweek to enable the reemployment of a corresponding number of unemployed comrades. In the meantime, however, despite the rehiring of tens of thousands, we have also been able to return to the normal working hours of 48 hours per week almost everywhere, thus restoring full earnings to almost the entire following.

Where, as in our case, with regard to the great national economic expenses, the demands on each employee must be stretched high, there it is necessary, however, that the body and mind be given sufficient leave at regular intervals.

With regard to vacation regulations, the I.G. has already deviated considerably from the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement in favor of the employees; and even after a n ew collective bargaining agreement on vacation for the chemical industry has recently been implemented, we can see that the rates for the vacation of our I.G. employees are in some cases considerably higher.

For I.G., the question of vocational training i n all areas is not limited to the village training of future skilled workers in the various branches of the trades, which is mostly carried out in our own apprentice workshops and apprentice schools in close cooperation with the vocational schools, and not only to our numerous commercial apprentices, who, trained in all areas of the sales business, will later sell our products at home and abroad, but also to the extremely difficult question of creating suitable junior staff for our laboratories and chemical plants. The best experiences have been made with the methods of special training for individual workplaces, which have been practiced at the I. G. for decades. Without them, the great successes that are undeniably behind us would not have been possible. I n the future, too, this question will therefore have to be dealt with most carefully and, in particular, the new generation of highly qualified auxiliary personnel in our scientific

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laboratories will have to be trained and supervised according to our tried and tested methods. The I.G. is not only concerned about our young people from the point of view of training; they should grow up healthy, full of character and masculine.

And so the training manager, the plant doctor and the plant sports director join hands in leading the plant youth. Whoever sees them in the workshop, on the sports field, in the recreational camp, is delighted with this new type of young German worker, who, before he is put to work, is tested according to tried and tested psychotech nical methods; for today it is more important than ever that the right man gets to the right post.

What is the environment in which the work of the thousands of us who perform our daily work duties in the I.G. plants takes place? So many products, so many productions! The same variety as we have been able to show in the previous sections can also be found in the production plants. Everywhere, however, we feel an eager effort to design these sites in such a way that the work is no longer perceived as a burd en. We know that the production sites of the chemical industry have the prejudice of being particularly dangerous, dirty and unpleasant. We do not doubt that the origin of this prejudice has actually had documents in the past. But all the efforts in the field of construction and hygiene, which can be summarized under the keyword "beauty and health of the workplace", have led to the fact that wherever new production facilities have been built or old factories have been modernized and put on a healthy basis, working in our factories is generally no longer more dangerous or unpleasant, but rather easier and more pleasant than in some other factories. This is proven by the constantly falling number of illnesses and accidents, by the dwindling number of industrial occupational diseases, and by every visit to the clean, well -lit, well-ventilated factories, where the production process can take place in equipment that is usually completely air tight and thus harmless to human health.

Of course, human inadequacy, car elessness and inexperience still result in accidents and occupational illnesses. But what can be done to prevent them by technical and psychological means is being done

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in our plants: safety engineers, accident commissions, work -shoe attendants and accident confidants are working together with the state and employers' liability insurance association supervisory bodies. Accident prevention pictures, an accident corner in the plant newspaper, competitions to keep the plants accident-free, all these are means that will lead to the avoidance of avoidable dangers the longer they last.

The extensive factory medical and industrial hygiene facilities at our plants have set themselves the task of preventing illness in working life within the framework of gener al health management at the plant. Today, it is a matter of preventing illness, whether it is general or a result of the company's activities, but beyond that, it is part of the company's social policy to keep the workers in the company healthy, even to ma ke them healthier. We know our factory doctors, our outpatient clinics with their medical assistants and nurses, with their X-ray and dental stations, with their baths and massage facilities. Many of us know the convalescent homes located in healthy areas in all parts of the Fatherland in the Belgian countryside, in the Taunus, in the Thuringian Forest, in the Palatinate and in the Black Forest, where not only our sick workmates are soon restored to fitness for work, but also our factory workers are strengthened in such a way that they can withstand the damaging influences of factory work that may be present; our wives and children are also nursed or kept healthy there. At many of our plants, health care begins with infants and young children; there are mate rnity homes, crèches, milk kitchens, kindergartens, factory schools, home economics schools and the like. The company health care in our factories also works to ensure that during sufficiently long and properly distributed work breaks there is the possibil ity of taking an adequate lunch in the factories' dining facilities and dining rooms at the lowest possible price. The factory doctors also cooperate in the

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management of the factory sports, in the selection of settlers and - above all - in the recruitment of our workmates. For it is precisely here, in the establishment of an employment relationship that obligates one to high performance, that the principle must be followed that each person is placed only in the position that he is best able to f ill according to his physical conditions. Anything else would be a reckless waste of German manpower.

In keeping with the meaning of the word "company community," the company's concern is not limited to events that are directly related to work, to the workplace, and that take place during working hours. Families are also affected, because in the individual, work and family cannot be separated at all, but are inextricably intertwined. All of us I. G. comrades, in front of our vise, in our laboratory, at our filter press, in front of our desk, we are also linked by thousands of threads to things that lie outside our sphere of work, and among these things our families occupy an almost exclusive, very first place. The fate of the family, whether it is doing well , whether it is suffering from illness or hardship, this follows us all the way to our workplace. So if, for example, our factory welfare helps us to ease our concern for the family's hardship, then we will be all the more joyful and all the more successfu l in our work.

It is precisely this interweaving of the fate of work and the fate of life and the merging of comradely entrepreneurial care within and outside the working group that give rise to the close emotional ties that are so necessary as the basis of a genuine working community. This overlapping of the two circles is particularly noticeable in two areas: first, where the family fate of the fellow worker takes place, in the home, and second, in the care of the fellow worker and his family after he lea ves the work process. The leader of the enterprise cannot be indifferent to how and where the follower lives with his family.

Those who live in the poorest, most unhealthy, most economically oppressive conditions also face the most serious threat to their working fate. For this reason, we have known for many decades that the plants of the I.G. have a plant housing welfare system that either provides us with healthy, good, cheap plant housing close to the plant or supports its own or other non -profit housing societies for the purpose of housing construction, or, as has recently happened, is strongly involved in the National Socialist Stammarbeiter Kleinsiedlungswerk. The fact that the various plants of our J.G. today have a total of more than 24,000 company -owned or company-subsidized apartments, including almost 3,000 housing estates for core workers, and that every fifth family of our employees lives in such an apartment, and that new housing estates and apartment blocks are built every year at a cos t of several million Reichsmark, demonstrates the extent to which our company's support is directed precisely at this area, which is so far removed from the actual

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workplace. There, in the new settlements, where work on one's own land represents a leisure activity of a very special kind, where a new efficient generation is growing up in healthy, strong and cheerful children, where thousands of German workers are once again connected with their native soil, we only really understan d why the Fuehrer and his co -workers are working with such great emphasis on the implementation of the National Socialist settlement work, on the creation of a kind of "hereditary farm" for the German worker!

And how was it in the past and how is it still today for many people at the moment when premature invalidity or even an early death abruptly ends the working life, the income from work ceases at a time when the children are still small and the woman is not able to ensure the maintenance of the family through her own work? Certainly, the benefits of the rich social security system intervene, but it has also suffered from inflation, and is only able to provide the most necessary support. To say at this moment: You no longer provide me with anything, you h ave left the employment relationship, you are finished for me, that was only possible in a time and with an entrepreneur who saw human labor only as a commodity and paid for it as long as it was delivered. In the context of the company community, for our I .G. plants not only since today, but for decades, the community lasts longer than the employment relationship itself. Those who have served us faithfully can rely on our company to provide adequate benefits for their disabled colleagues and their families or surviving dependents. This company old -age and survivors' provision takes the form of pension funds, pension plans and pension funds. Each of us knows them, our old veterans of work, most of whom are still spending their twilight years in the immediate and wider vicinity of their former place of work; it is they from whom one most often hears the high song of the company's loyalty in return for loyalty in the Arber. If we take them all together, these former workmates, their widows and orphans, then it is the enormous group of around 25,000 pensioners whose retirement and fate in life is based on the loyalty and care of our company that goes beyond the employment relationship. More than 20 million Reichsmark are paid out to them every year, either directl y by I.G. or from the pension funds, and millions of euros are set aside in plant reserves and invested in pension fund assets to safeguard our future.

But since we are giving an account of all these things here, we must also speak of an area that cannot b e missing in the circle of such care measures.

Admittedly, it is rather difficult to find the right name for it: "plant education", "plant culture care", all this has an all too lively and not always correctly perceived connotation. We mean efforts that do not concern work, not the home, not the pension, not the body, but that are intended to enable us all to

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meet in National Socialist comradeship in the most varied fields, including the spiritual sphere. In our free time we can not only cultivate our garden, not only do sports, not only go hiking, traveling and walking. There are so many goods of culture, spirit and art, which are not easy to reach as an individual even today. And all the facilities that the plants have created for this purpose help us, whether it is our plant newspaper "From Plant to Plant", which is one of the most important tools in the construction of our company community, the numerous plant libraries and reading rooms, the plant events, whether it is our large symphony concerts or the performances of neighboring theaters, films, the performances of play groups, "Silent Hours of Music", poetry evenings, lectures; There is also the activity in communities for the cultivation of music, chess, painting and so much more, as it has grown for many years in our individual works, adapted to the local conditions, and as it has recently been fertilized and organized in the events of the organization "Strength through Joy". All these efforts have the same goal as the German Volksbildngswerk, an d it is remarkable that all the measures taken by one of our plants in this field have recently led to its official recognition as the first company folk education center.

And now, finally, the question that may often move us: what means does our I.G. use for all these things that we have called the measures of the company's social policy? Enormous sums, certainly!

In addition, there are actually also the millions for the creation of our workplaces. But let us take the amounts which, in addition to wages an d salaries, flow to our workforce as social insurance contributions or as expenditures in the field of company pension schemes or finally in the individual measures in the field of housing, social enterprises and factory welfare, and let us also add the an nual bonus, which is not actually a component of current income: all this amounted to almost 80 million Reichsmark in 1936. For every 100 RM. Wages and salaries accounted for another RM. 23.60, or RM. 786.30 in general social expenses must be added to each individual income paid in the I. G. We have mentioned these figures last, because already at the beginning we spoke about the fact that it does not depend on these millions alone. What matters is the spirit that fills the measures for which these millions are used, the spirit of the true company community.

We have come to the end of our discussion about our company community and thus of our book about the products of our work. It has not been able to enumerate everything down to the last detail, but it has also gone into depth, especially when we investigated the reasons why today, and for many years already, our company in particular has been concerned with so many things

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which, at first glance, seem to be far different from its outwardly recognizable purpose of existence, namely the production of all the important and beautiful things which have been presented in the preceding articles; but we comrades of the I.G. have well understood: our products and their production are a safe purpose of our compan y, but they are not an end in themselves. Just as the production of our I.G. is directed by the need for these products, just as nothing is produced that man does not need, so this production itself is set to be nothing without the people who work in it. A nd again also these people would be nothing, we would be nothing, comrades of the I.G., without that which binds and unites us all, without the ser vice which we, by serving our I.G., render for our fatherland !

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