Schichau-Werke - Recent History

Recent History

At the end of the war the original factory sites went into Polish ownership with the loss of East Prussia to Poland and the Soviet Union. They no longer build locomotives, instead building ships, wagons, and boilers. The Schichau shipyard at Danzig was included into the Lenin shipyard in 1950 and, in 1980, attracted world-wide media coverage as a result of protests led by the Solidarność trades union.

In early 1945 a floating dock was transferred to Flender Werke in Lübeck, in March the same year Hermann Noë, the chief executive, and some employees fled Danzig with uncompleted ships to Bremerhaven. In April Noë founded there a new company named F. Schichau Aktiengesellschaft, however, the uncompleted rumps and u-boats, tugged from Danzig, could not be finished anymore. With employees from the old premises machinery, agricultural engines, locomotives and trams were repaired after the war. Furthermore Schichau developed a new welding torch with a photo-electric steering. After on 26 May 1951 the western Allies lifted the ban on shipbuilding in West Germany Schichau reopened its shipyard in Bremerhaven. In 1953 Schichau was restituted its floating dock which had been taken as a British reparation in the meantime.

Schichau was later merged into the Schichau Seebeck Shipyard Company, which went into bankruptcy in 1996 following the demise of Bremer Vulkan. Its successor company was the SSW Schichau Seebeck Shipyard, closed down on 31 July 2009, based at Bremerhaven.