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Standard-Metallwerke GmbH, Published 1999. Hardcover, 148 pp.; 29 cm; text in German; First Edition (1. Auflage); illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, reproductions of period advertising, engravings and document facsimiles.
In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Blue cloth boards, gilt SWW logo and company name on front cover, gilt logo on spine; mild shelf wear to edges. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket (photograph of tube ends on blue ground) shows a half-inch tear at top edge near front fold, a few small nicks and light creasing along edges, and some fading to spine panel. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Company history of Standard-Metallwerke, Werl, issued for its 80th anniversary. Founded 28 June 1919 as Standard Separator GmbH, maker of milk centrifuges, butter churns and bicycles; after 1945 the British military administration barred centrifuge production and the firm turned to water meters and then seamless drawn aluminum, copper and brass tubing (ballpoint refill and antenna tubes, automotive tubing, hydraulic tubing for the F-4 Phantom). Chapters cover the Sauerland wire-drawing trade, 1920s-30s advertising and trade fairs, wartime armaments work and the foreign and forced laborers (Ostarbeiter) housed in barracks beside the works, the 19 April 1944 air raid on Werl, and postwar growth under Dr. Horst Ulmke, including a 1962 visit by Ludwig Erhard. Obens later published a separate study of the firm's wartime forced laborers (Wir hatten viel Hunger, 2003). Contents: Widmung; Vorwort; "Da ist's, wo meine Wiege stand"; Das Mutterwerk; Die Anfange; Die Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit; Generationswechsel; Die Zeit der Krisen in der Welt; Die Zeit des Bewahrens; Auf zu neuen Ufern; Ausblick; Danksagung