Wintershall Dea company archive to be preserved for the future
- Wintershall Dea is handing over archive material to the Hessian Economic Archive in Darmstadt and other archives and museums
- The archives contain more than 130 years of the company history of Wintershall Dea and its predecessor companies
- Historical treasures such as Wintershall’s oldest document from 1894 will thus be preserved for posterity
Kassel. After more than 130 years, Wintershall Dea is writing the final chapter of its company history. But unlike the company, the historical documents that tell this story will be permanently preserved, because Wintershall Dea GmbH is handing over its extensive corporate archive to the Hessian Economic Archive in Darmstadt and other archives and museums.
Since the sale of the majority of the business to Harbour Energy in September 2024, Wintershall Dea’s core tasks have been to manage and dispose of the remaining assets and to responsibly prepare and implement its final closure. That also includes the relocation the Corporate Archive, which documents the more than 130 years of company history of Wintershall Dea and its predecessor companies. The archive is currently located at the company headquarters in Kassel and is being prepared for relocation in mid-March 2025.
“As a company, we bear responsibility: we have shaped the history of the natural gas and oil industry in Germany for over 130 years. Although Wintershall Dea’s company history will end in the foreseeable future, the responsibility remains. That is why we want to ensure that the historical documents are passed on to archives and museums and are thus permanently preserved for posterity,” says Stefan Schnell, Chairman of the Management Board of Wintershall Dea GmbH.
The Hessian Economic Archive (“Hessisches Wirtschaftsarchiv”) in Darmstadt will in future be the central point of contact for questions about Wintershall Dea’s company history. “From a historical perspective, the Group’s two original companies were pioneers in many aspects of the German energy sector with global connections. When we talk about the energy transition today, it is extremely important to know where we came from and how people used to think about constantly changing energy markets and the supply of energy to the state, industry and households. That applies to the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, but also to its involvement with the radical, anti-democratic autarky plans of National Socialism,” says Adjunct Professor Ingo Köhler, Managing Director of the Hessian Economic Archive. “We at the Hessian Economic Archive are therefore grateful that the company is giving us all of its historical documents without any reservation. As a non-profit, freely accessible archive, we can at least preserve the history of Wintershall Dea and very soon make the many unique company documents available to researchers and all interested parties via our online research tool Arcinsys.”
The main collection of Wintershall Dea’s Corporate Archive comprises around 200 shelf metres of historical documents, including minutes, annual reports, employee magazines, publications, as well as photos and films. Special documents such as the oldest known Wintershall document from 1894, DEA’s very first ledger from 1899 and a letter of thanks with the original signatures of the trapped miners to the DEA director of drilling and head of the rescue shaft during the “Miracle of Lengede” in 1963 are also part of the company archive.
Wintershall Dea’s technical image archive, historical library collection and larger exhibits will be added to the collection at the German Petroleum Museum in Wietze. “The German Petroleum Museum, which was already able to take over petroleum geological and drilling technology documents and the photo archive of the former Wietze mineral oil works decades ago, is delighted at the prospect of supplementing its library and archive with this donation. In this day and age, such an opportunity tends to be rare,” says Dr Stephan Lütgert, Director of the German Petroleum Museum in Wietze.
Other special collections such as historical photos of the company headquarters in Kassel, historical journals and duplicates have already been transferred to specialist museums and archives, while other transfers still lie ahead. Among the recipients are the Kassel City Archive, the Rhenish-Westphalian Economic Archive Foundation in Cologne (RWWA), the Hanseatic Economic Archive Foundation in Hamburg and the German Museum of Technology (“Deutsches Technikmuseum”) in Berlin.
Research into the company’s history began in 2017
Wintershall Dea began intensive research into the history of its predecessor companies in the run-up to Wintershall’s 125th anniversary in 2019. The Business History Society (“Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte”, GUG) was commissioned to carry out basic research into the activities of Wintershall and DEA during the National Socialist period. These investigations led, among other things, to the publication of two studies: “Expansion at all costs: Studies on the Wintershall AG between crisis and war 1929–1945” (2020) and “Fueling the Second World War. Deutsche Erdöl AG, 1933–1945” (2024).
During the research project, it became clear that neither Wintershall nor DEA had a systematically organised historical company archive. As a result, from 2021, Wintershall Dea initiated the establishment of a professional company archive at the Kassel site by the Business History Society (GUG). It served as the company’s central historical memory and was also open to researchers.
Once the Corporate Archive has been handed over to the archives and museums, the historical documents in the respective institutions are expected to be accessible to researchers and interested parties from summer 2025.
About Wintershall Dea
The energy company Wintershall Dea can look back on a long history. Its final chapter is now being written. With effect from 3 September 2024, the majority of the company’s former E&P and CCS assets and licences were sold and transferred to Harbour Energy. The remaining assets of Wintershall Dea include the stakes in the joint ventures Wintershall AG in Libya and Wintershall Noordzee B.V. in the Southern North Sea as well as the shares in Nord Stream and the joint ventures in Russia. Wintershall Dea’s tasks now include restructuring the company, managing and disposing of the remaining assets and responsibly implementing the company’s final closure. Wintershall Dea is owned by BASF and LetterOne.
More information on the Internet at www.wintershalldea.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
