On April 1, 1871, August Thyssen founded Thyssen Compagnie (Thyssen & Co.) in Mülheim an der Ruhr together with his father Friedrich. This date laid the foundation for a successful industrial empire. The founding of the German Empire in 1871 triggered unprecedented economic opportunities.

August Thyssen was a brilliant entrepreneur and industrial pioneer with great foresight and a constant willingness to take risks. He combined prudent caution and sober calculation with creative strength, visionary courage, initiative, an awareness of problems, and a keen sense of interrelationships. On April 1, 1871, he acquired a farm in Mülheim-Styrum, on whose grounds he built a strip steel mill. We know that on April 19, 1871, August Thyssen petitioned the Royal District Court in Broich to enter the limited partnership operating since April 1 of that year under the name Thyssen & Co., based in Styrum in the rural municipality of Mülheim an der Ruhr, into the commercial register.

This was the starting position from which August Thyssen developed the major group that bore his name with far-reaching success, the enterprise through which he entered economic history as a creator and architect of a corporate group. In 1871, the mining union Gewerkschaft Hamborn, established in Bruckhausen on April 3, 1867, was renamed Gewerkschaft Deutscher Kaiser on November 3, 1871. In that same year, this union resolved to sink the Deutscher Kaiser 1 shaft, laying the foundation for Thyssen’s mining operations.

The beginnings were modest: in 1871, only 70 workers were employed in the forges and rolling mills in Mülheim; welding works were added later. After their father’s death, August Thyssen entered into a partnership with his younger brother Joseph in 1878.

From 1883 onward, August Thyssen acquired shares in the hard coal mine Gewerkschaft Deutscher Kaiser in Duisburg-Hamborn.

By 1891, this hard coal mine belonged to him entirely and formed the basis for his activities in Ruhr mining. To advance these operations, the specialist drilling and shaft construction department was founded in 1898.

The shaft construction department of Gewerkschaft Deutscher Kaiser during the sinking of Shaft 5, tubbing installation, between 1901 and 1909.

In 1903, August Thyssen acquired Landsberg Castle and moved in a year later after extensive expansion and renovation work. At the age of 60, he was looking for a new residence. By then, his house in Styrum was surrounded by industrial plants. “Landsberg is the only estate that can be reached by carriage from Mülheim. It also has good woodland and water. And the location in the hills is very much to my liking.” August Thyssen died at Landsberg in 1926 at the age of 84. In his will, he stipulated that the castle should remain in his family forever in the form of a foundation. In accordance with the will, his sons established the “August Thyssen Foundation Schloss Landsberg.” Built at the end of the 13th century, the castle lies on today’s boundary between Ratingen and Essen and now serves as a conference and meeting venue for the thyssenkrupp Group.

After the acquisition of Tiefbohr AG Lubisch, the drilling and shaft construction department was established in 1905 as an independent company, Bohr- und Schachtbau GmbH, in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Due to changing market conditions, it was dissolved again in 1909 and reintegrated into Gewerkschaft Deutscher Kaiser as the shaft construction department.

Forty years had passed, and the Mülheim works had grown into something gigantic: 7,000 workers and 800 employees worked there, and its products were distributed throughout the world. The further development of ground-freezing technology increasingly reinforced the reputation and importance of Thyssen’s shaft construction, especially freezing shaft construction. Between 1905 and 1911, eleven freezing shafts were completed or commissioned. In 1911, the shaft construction department received its first foreign order to construct two freezing shafts at the twin-shaft Zwartberg colliery in Belgium. A year later, an order followed from the Netherlands for the sinking of the two freezing shafts Oranje-Nassau 3 and 4.

August Thyssen at Landsberg Castle near Kettwig. This photograph was taken on the occasion of his 70th birthday on May 17, 1912.

After the outbreak of war in autumn 1939, all assets of the principal shareholder of Thyssen & Co AG, Fritz Thyssen, were confiscated and transferred to the Prussian state. In the absence of a relevant legal basis, the confiscation of his assets was justified at the time under the Law for the Prevention of Communist Activities, illustrating the broad scope for abuse of the law in the Third Reich.

The collapse in 1945 hit the company particularly hard, with the loss of 45% of its machines, equipment, and facilities, as well as 40% of its buildings. In the immediate postwar period, the vacuum also reduced the actual skilled workforce to just 150 men. This was decisively linked to the wide dispersal of a workforce numbering in the thousands across remote mining sites. The miners and company crews assigned there returned to their home operations only in part, and only after a considerable delay.

In this extremely difficult situation, Fritz Thyssen initiated proceedings under Law No. 59 for the restitution of the unlawfully expropriated assets—and thus also of the original Schachtbau Thyssen GmbH.

The postwar development, begun amidst ruins, could initially rely only marginally on employment opportunities in actual mining. The company therefore turned to non-mining work such as rubble clearing, demolition blasting, sealing a dam, and construction work to create housing, among other activities. All of these tasks were based on special skills familiar from the conventional field of mining specialist companies, namely drilling and blasting, loading, cementation, and brickwork. In this way, the extremely difficult immediate transition phase of reconstruction after the war was mastered.

In this way, the diverse field of underground construction, long cultivated by competing companies, was for the first time taken up and systematically developed by Schachtbau Thyssen. According to customary industry terminology, this included the deepening of shafts, the driving of loading points, chambers, headings, and crosscuts, the construction of sumps, raises, and brake inclines, as well as cutting through and similar work. Projects of this kind had already been carried out during the era of Gewerkschaft Deutscher Kaiser by the mining department’s own personnel.

To intensify international mining activities, the company began to establish an overseas organization. Representative of the many later companies and branches abroad was Thyssen Shaft Sinking Company Ltd. (later TGB), founded in May 1954 with share capital of £2,000 in London and Llanelly, Wales.

EMSCHER AUFBEREITUNG GMBH was founded in Duisburg on January 24, 1957 by notarial deed by THYSSEN & Co. AG and SCHACHTBAU THYSSEN GMBH. For more than 60 years, EMSCHER AUFBEREITUNG GMBH has been active in the grinding and drying of pulverized coal (Pulverized Coal Injection = PCI). By operating six milling and drying plants at its Duisburg site, the company has acquired extensive expertise in the wide variety of process sequences, especially in connection with the different grades of steam coal and petroleum coke.

Foundation of AUG. PAPE GMBH & CO: Today’s TS BAU GMBH emerged from the merger of AUG. PAPE GMBH & Co, BAU-UNION Riesa GmbH & Co, PAPE BAU-UNION GMBH, Proterra GmbH, and Thyssen Schachtbau Rohrtechnik GmbH. In 2000, the company was simply renamed TS BAU GMBH. With its current locations in Jena (Thuringia) and Riesa (Saxony), it has been active since the early 1990s in all major economic regions of both the old and the new federal states. In addition to turnkey building and industrial construction, its range of services includes landfill construction, road, rail, and civil engineering works, demolition with construction waste recycling, mining specialist services, pipeline construction, trenchless pipe laying, and the rehabilitation of water pipelines and sewer systems using specialized methods. In these fields, our construction company offers comprehensive expertise for the execution of all construction projects.

With the founding of DIG DEUTSCHE INNENBAU GMBH, the company sought to counter the general decline in hard coal mining by moving more strongly into other fields of activity and, through diversification, to create a balance in sales and earnings. At the time of its founding, DIG’s business purpose was the planning and execution of interior construction work, especially acoustic, plastering, and stucco work, combined with the installation of partition walls. Owing to particularly favorable circumstances, the company immediately had managers and a core team of specialists in the new field of interior construction.

Renamed THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU GMBH: the internationalization and the main focus of the company’s activities were ultimately documented once again by renaming the company THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU GMBH.

Head office at Ruhrstraße 1 in Mülheim an der Ruhr from 1976 to 2008.

A major project for THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU began in 1986 with the sinking of Gorleben Shafts 1 and 2 at the Gorleben exploration mine, continuing through to the repository-suitable sealing of exploration boreholes. To investigate the Gorleben salt dome with regard to its suitability as a final disposal site for all types of radioactive waste, Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Bau und Betrieb von Endlagern für Abfallstoffe mbH (DBE), based in Peine, had been conducting a geoscientific exploration program since 1979. DBE had been commissioned by the Federal Republic of Germany—represented by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), Salzgitter—as a so-called third party under Section 9a(3) of the Atomic Energy Act to plan, construct, and operate federal facilities for the final disposal of radioactive waste. After an intensive surface exploration phase, the underground investigation program began with the sinking of the two shafts Gorleben 1—between 1986 and 1997—and Gorleben 2—between 1989 and 1995—located about 400 m apart. This was followed by the driving of underground mine workings and the execution of an underground exploration drilling program. The freezing boreholes of both shafts have since been sealed for the long term for a possible repository operation. The repository-suitable sealing of the underground exploration boreholes marked TS’s final activity at the Gorleben mine.

As part of the comprehensive and necessary strategic measures within the THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU Group, mechanical engineering in Mülheim was one of the first operational divisions to complete its organizational and accounting-related separation and align itself with the market. The company, operating thereafter under the name TS Technologie + Service GmbH, created the basis for positive business development through its expanded external customer base. The task of the new company was its economic and market-strategic realignment. Its numerous service areas—such as pipe and plant construction, repair, machining technology, assembly, crane and gate technology, electrical engineering, and engineering—are available as individual or complete solutions. For customers from sectors including power plant and metallurgical engineering, mechanical engineering, mining, and the aggregates industry, the company manufactures a wide variety of steel structures, plant components, and machines. A high-performance machinery fleet across around 7,600 m² of production space, with crane capacities for individual loads of up to 100 t, enables the production of voluminous and heavy constructions.

The year 2004 marked another milestone in the group’s economic history: entry into the Russian mining market was decided as a strategic move. Russia is not only the largest and most resource-rich country on earth; it is also one of the world’s largest growth markets. The country’s ambitious goal of doubling its economic output within the next eight to ten years opened up promising prospects for foreign companies as well. In order to participate in this growth-oriented and entrepreneurially attractive Russian market, THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU GMBH established a representative office in Moscow in 2004, both as an entry point and in preparation for future business activities. The representative office is intended to make a lasting contribution to facilitating and intensifying contact with the Russian economy. To improve business operations on both sides, Shakhtspetsstroi and THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU GMBH concluded a cooperation agreement in 2004. Following a further strengthening of business relations, the joint activities were to be expanded step by step.

Shaft sinking north of the Arctic Circle: after three years of tendering and negotiations, THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU GMBH received the order in September 2007 from OJSC MMC NORILSK NICKEL (MMC Norilsk Nickel) for the “Design, construction, and assembly of the ventilation shaft complex WS-10, Skalistij Mine” for the ore mining complex in Norilsk on the Taimyr Peninsula, a Siberian region north of the Arctic Circle. The Norilsk mining district lies in central Siberia in the Arctic region, east of the Yenisei River. Because of the permanently extreme icy temperatures, the permafrost soil in these latitudes thaws only briefly in the two summer months to a depth of no more than 6 m. The Norilsk mining region contains very rich ore bodies from which mainly nickel, copper, and platinum are extracted. The WS-10 ventilation shaft is likewise planned above a very rich ore body and forms part of the newly developed “Skalistij” mine complex, whose deposit has been intended to secure ore extraction from the Norilsk mining region for decades from the end of 2015 onward. Work on sinking the production shaft SKS-1, located around 1,500 m from the WS-10 site, was also to begin in the near future, and we won that contract as well. The contract volume awarded to THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU GMBH as general contractor ultimately comprises the construction of two complete mining installations. These two contracts were to mark the beginning of numerous follow-up contracts with renowned customers in the raw materials industry in the Russian Federation.

With OOO Thyssen Mining Construction East, the first wholly owned subsidiary in Russia was founded in 2008. Initially, TMCE was mainly responsible for the import and export of machines and equipment. The company now independently carries out a wide range of mining works in Russia.

Sinking of the first freezing shaft “Gremyachinsky” for EuroChem: on May 29, 2008, the Russian mineral and chemical company MCC EuroChem OJSC from Moscow commissioned THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU GMBH to sink the approximately 1,180 m deep production shaft of the “Gremyachinsky potash deposit.” The potash mine of the Gremyachinsky deposit is located in the Kotelnikovo district of the Volgograd region in Russia, about 170 km southwest of the city of Volgograd and about 20 km northeast of the regional center Kotelnikovo. In the future, the mine facilities are expected to have a production capacity of 2.3 million tonnes of potassium chloride per year. Potash is an extremely important and strategic raw material. In the coming years, global productivity will continue to have to increase in order to meet demand, especially for agricultural products.

Acquisition of TOO SCHACHTBAU Kazakhstan in Khromtau: the aim was, together with our partner SCHACHTBAU NORDHAUSEN GmbH, to offer all kinds of mining specialist services in Kazakhstan. The planned services focus on shaft sinking, shaft lining, and shaft reconstruction. In addition, other projects such as tunnel driving and crosscuts are among the core tasks.

Acquisition of OLKO-Maschinentechnik GmbH: since its establishment in 1989, OLKO-Maschinentechnik has been one of the driving forces in the field of shaft construction and hoisting technology. The company is primarily active, both nationally and internationally, in heavy mechanical engineering for mining operations and in special-purpose machinery. It is also a leader in the construction of hoisting machines, shaft sinking winches, and building materials technology. The strategic rationale for acquiring the company was to be able to offer all mining activities within the group from a single source in the future. The development of its own products (e.g. vehicle-mounted shaft winches, pontoon dredgers, and hoist brakes) also opened access to international markets such as China, Turkmenistan, Russia, and the USA.

OOO Thyssen Schachtbau EuroChem Bohren, TEB, Kotelnikovo: the company was established jointly with EuroChem to carry out all drilling projects for EuroChem in Russia.

THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU HOLDING GMBH manages and coordinates the business activities of the THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU Group in Germany and abroad through its central service functions such as finance and accounting, human resources, IT, purchasing, controlling, legal affairs, and organization. Today, the group is divided into the four business areas Mining Technology, Construction, Production, and Facility Management and currently employs more than 2,200 people. To this day, the traditional company remains family-owned, with Claudio L. Graf Zichy-Thyssen serving as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU.

The management of the Thyssen & Co. Group is in the hands of Group CEO Michael Klein.

More interesting contracts at home and abroad are to follow in the coming decades. The aim is to continue operating in the market with full commitment and success. Miners are accustomed to mastering change and taking on new challenges. Geology demands these qualities every day and has had a lasting influence on the way we act. We are used to dealing with difficult situations and finding new solutions. This has been true for the past 150 years and will remain true in the future.