Illustration of Union chemical plant

Graphics from the second half of the 19th century reproduced in books on trade and industry showed industrial plants in perspective, with extensive buildings. This type of illustration is a print from 1899 made in heliogravure technique, i.e., photographic transfer of an image onto a metal plate, created by Otto Schmeling and a photographic company Gerhardt & Schmeling, which operated in Szczecin at today's Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego Street (Breitestraβe). The work adorned a publication issued by the Berlin publishing house Eckstein's Biographischer Verlag and showed four views of plants belonging to the chemical products factory Chemische Fabrik Union in Szczecin. The fertilizer plant was founded in 1872 by the Szczecin entrepreneur and philanthropist Johannes Quistorp (1822-1899) in Glinki, near the northern city district of Stolzenhagen. It stretched over an area of 127,000 m2, had its own railway sidings and tankers for transporting sulphuric acid. At that time, it took over, among others, the network of factories in Klaipeda, Königsberg and a factory near Berlin. By the outbreak of World War I, it had been one of the largest factories in Germany. During the Second World War, the Union factory produced ammunition and weapons. The factory was rebuilt after the war and today operates as Fosfan S.A.

Małgorzata Peszko