2026-07-30
Exactly 164 years ago, on 30 July 1862, the company Joseph Herzfeld & Carl Victorius Iron Foundry and Enamelling Works was established. Below is the text of an HV company brochure published in 1912 to mark the company’s 50th anniversary.
The company was founded in 1862 by Mr Joseph Herzfeld and Mr Carl Victorius. The former worked as a dispatcher at an iron wholesaler in Poznań, while the latter was the manager of a large timber company. Inspired by the nature of his work, Herzfeld conceived the idea of mass-producing cast-iron stove fittings for the eastern stove-making industry. This was an entirely innovative concept at the time, as customers had previously ordered castings for such components directly from Silesian or Pomeranian iron foundries and then commissioned small local locksmiths’ workshops to assemble them. Apart from being extremely inconvenient, this method also had the disadvantage that the precision and design of such stove fittings left much to be desired.
To put this plan into practice, the two men, united by a close friendship, joined forces and selected the Vistula River town of Grudziądz as the location for their new factory. Given the poorly developed railway connections in the east at that time, Grudziądz at least offered the advantage of good water transport links to Gdańsk and Königsberg, as well as all the way to Berlin. This guiding principle did indeed prove successful, and the considerable risk involved in founding the company, given the financial position of the two founders, could therefore be regarded as manageable. With the utmost care and energy, they developed and expanded the young enterprise step by step. In its early years, the company naturally still depended on purchasing foundry products from outside suppliers, but its financial position soon became stable enough for construction of its own foundry to begin. This would allow it to become independent of external influences and to tailor the quality of the castings more closely to the requirements of its own production. Starting up the new plant was not easy, however, because there was a shortage in the east of skilled moulders capable of producing such lightweight, mass-produced goods, and training the necessary workforce could only be carried out very slowly and at great expense.
Meanwhile, the technical development of the young company’s specialist products advanced significantly, and the company obtained an Imperial patent for an eccentric rotary latch for airtight stove doors—a design that gained remarkable popularity and became known throughout the stove-making industry as the “Grudziądz Patent Door.” As the iron foundry continued to expand, the product range was steadily broadened, gradually adding kitchen-stove plates and rings, grates, and support plates. Following the expansion of the assembly workshops and installation of the necessary lathes, the plant’s enterprising managers moved into the production of railway-carriage bushings and, after the establishment of the weights and measures office in Grudziądz, cast-iron weights, gradually introducing all kinds of industrial castings into production. In this way, the company expanded its customer base without difficulty, as the diversity of its products also gave smaller customers the opportunity to purchase from it. Delivery by rail was guaranteed.
In 1886, the company underwent a highly important and valuable expansion. After lengthy preliminary research and trials, an enamelling plant for cast-iron vessels was built—the first, and to this day the only one, in the four eastern provinces. This, however, presented the iron foundry with an extraordinarily difficult task, which was not easy to overcome in view of the complete lack of skilled labour. The company therefore decided to establish a special moulding shop in which young people who had completed school were systematically trained as moulders specialising in hollowware—an institution that proved exceptionally successful and continues to exist to this day. Once the labour shortage had been overcome in this way, this branch of production also enjoyed great and steadily increasing success, as did the manufacture of cast-iron windows, which began several years later and of which more than 70,000 are now produced annually.
In 1887, the two founders of the company, with the warmest support of a broad circle of friends and customers, celebrated the 25th anniversary of their business. Outwardly as modest as on the company’s first day, they were inwardly deeply satisfied with the success they had achieved through their own hard work.
Unfortunately, the joint work of the two friends was suddenly interrupted while the company was still developing further. Joseph Herzfeld was taken from his productive and successful life on 15 March 1898, after a very brief illness caused by influenza—far too soon for his faithful friend and partner, and far too soon for the grieving employees and subordinates. He was succeeded by his only son, Paul Herzfeld, who, after completing his technical studies, had worked in western iron foundries in order to prepare himself in practical terms to take over his father’s business. Several years earlier, Carl Victorius, who was appointed Royal Commercial Councillor in 1901, had also admitted his eldest son, Leo, into the company as a partner. In him they found an excellent worker and a dependable adviser for the company’s further development. Yet here too cruel fate did not spare them: on 1 April 1902, Leo Victorius died unexpectedly after a short illness, dealing a severe blow both to his father, with whom he had worked closely, and to the company itself. Carl Victorius appointed his youngest son, Richard, in his place. Richard had previously completed commercial studies in Berlin and practical training abroad at major banking institutions.
In the new century, the company continued to develop rapidly, making it necessary to purchase several large neighbouring properties in order to accommodate substantial expansion. To supply the individual workshops with electrical power despite the greatly enlarged factory site, the first step was the construction of a modern three-phase power station. After a large new foundry hall had been built, a new casting-cleaning department was created and equipped with several modern sandblasting machines. Its dust-extraction system was implemented in exemplary fashion for the benefit of the workers and served as a model for many other new facilities. A comprehensive reconstruction of the enamelling works and a complete modernisation of the existing furnace-charging installation brought this important period of the company’s development to a close.
Shortly before all these new facilities were completed, Carl Victorius, the company’s last surviving co-founder, died on 1 February 1906. He had devoted all his labour and care to the company until his final breath. The company’s two sole owners, Paul Herzfeld and Richard Victorius, now had to attend to the internal development of the new plant, of which only the external framework had so far been completed. First, a new office building was erected at the factory entrance, designed in accordance with modern principles of lighting and ventilation. Its upper floors housed urgently needed new warehouses required for the greatly increased production of tiled-stove fittings. In the foundry, work began on constructing a comprehensive hydraulic-press system for the hydraulic moulding machines that were planned for installation. For this purpose, a study visit was arranged to the most important manufacturing plants engaged in this type of mass moulding. The visit resulted in the purchase of a large number of new moulding machines, followed by the installation of specialised hydraulically operated moulding machines designed by the company itself. The expansion of the iron foundry was completed with the installation of a large automated moulding-sand preparation line, based on the principle that the use of flawless moulding sand is a fundamental requirement for high-quality castings.
After the workshops for producing industrial castings and cast-iron hollowware had been expanded, the plant’s enterprising managers, as expected, began adding entirely new products to the manufacturing programme, unrelated to these areas of activity. They proceeded from the assumption that a plant producing sewer fittings and drainage pipes for municipal sewer systems would be essential in the east, where cities were either building such systems or preparing to do so. Guided by this idea, the company initially undertook the construction of a small drainage-pipe foundry in the new section of the Grudziądz works. When the new production department quickly proved profitable, plans were drawn up for a large, entirely new factory designed specifically for manufacturing these products.
Unfortunately, this proved impossible on the site of the existing works because the plant had gradually become surrounded by urban development. There was also no urgently needed railway loading area for these products and insufficient space for extensive storage facilities. With heavy hearts, the decision was made to divide the works, and at the beginning of 1911 the company purchased a site of 125,000 square metres in Mniszek, alongside the Grudziądz–Toruń railway line, which appeared particularly suitable for the purpose. Construction of the new plant continued with great enthusiasm, and by October 1911 it was ready for operation, with the first casting from the new iron furnace being processed. The plant itself was built to the latest standards. The foundry hall alone, exceptionally well lit and ventilated by numerous skylights, covers an area of approximately 5,000 square metres. To develop a pool of skilled industrial workers in a place previously inhabited only by rural labourers, a special workers’ settlement was established. There, residents are provided at an exceptionally low price with a two-room dwelling with a kitchen, a stable, and approximately one hectare of land. To give even those unfamiliar with the area an understanding of the scale and output of the works, it should be noted that the Grudziądz plant employs around 600 people and produces an average of 1,200 hundredweights of iron per day. The Mniszek plant, which is of course still in the process of development, employs around 300 people and produces 500 hundredweights of castings per day.
The company employs around 50 commercial and technical staff. Its products are sold throughout the eastern provinces, as well as in central Germany, Saxony, and Bavaria. Exports are substantial, with European and Asian Russia forming the company’s largest export market.
A few words should also be devoted to the company’s welfare arrangements and other special institutions. First, there is a company health-insurance fund, established long before such funds were introduced by law. Mention should also be made of the employee support fund, created in memory of the company’s founders, which provides monthly benefits to more than 30 people and has proved exceptionally helpful. In 1902, many years before social policy turned its attention to the welfare of private-sector employees, the company established its own pension fund for salaried staff, guaranteeing numerous employees a worry-free retirement or, in the event of premature incapacity for work, an adequate pension. This fund, to which a widows’ and orphans’ pension fund was added through a capital donation from the heirs of the late Royal Commercial Councillor Carl Victorius, possesses steadily increasing capital, which already amounts to more than 125,000 marks today. Finally, mention should be made of the excellently equipped bathing facilities, which offer bathing and laundry services completely free of charge, the large and comfortable workers’ canteen, and the free coffee service.
Relations between the company and its employees have always been excellent and trouble-free. Many employees have already celebrated 25, 30, and 40 years of service with the company. Most of the company’s staff have likewise worked at the factory for many years and have made a significant contribution to its development and success. Particular mention should be made of the company’s three authorised representatives: Mr Fritz Huhn, Mr Georg Frommer, and Mr Ernst Seydler, the first of whom has worked for the company for almost 35 years. The master craftsman responsible for the tool stores, Mr Karl Koschare, can boast an even longer period of service, having exercised technical supervision over this important department for around 40 years and still performing his duties in excellent health.
Fifty years have passed since the company was founded—50 years of hard and fruitful work in cooperation with loyal and devoted employees! At the end of this period, everyone will look back with satisfaction on the successes of the past years, remembering the cordial understanding that has always united them with the founders and the company’s present owners. May the company, supported by faithful and dedicated work, continue to develop steadily and bring lasting honour to its founders and to eastern industry!
Source: https://www.facebook.com/kochamgrudziadz
164 Years of Hydro-Vacuum S.A. History – From an Iron Foundry to Modern Pumping Systems
Exactly 164 years ago, on 30 July 1862, the company Joseph Herzfeld & Carl Victorius Iron Foundry and Enamelling Works was established. Below is the text of an HV company brochure published in 1912 to mark the company’s 50th anniversary.
The company was founded in 1862 by Mr Joseph Herzfeld and Mr Carl Victorius. The former worked as a dispatcher at an iron wholesaler in Poznań, while the latter was the manager of a large timber company. Inspired by the nature of his work, Herzfeld conceived the idea of mass-producing cast-iron stove fittings for the eastern stove-making industry. This was an entirely innovative concept at the time, as customers had previously ordered castings for such components directly from Silesian or Pomeranian iron foundries and then commissioned small local locksmiths’ workshops to assemble them. Apart from being extremely inconvenient, this method also had the disadvantage that the precision and design of such stove fittings left much to be desired.
To put this plan into practice, the two men, united by a close friendship, joined forces and selected the Vistula River town of Grudziądz as the location for their new factory. Given the poorly developed railway connections in the east at that time, Grudziądz at least offered the advantage of good water transport links to Gdańsk and Königsberg, as well as all the way to Berlin. This guiding principle did indeed prove successful, and the considerable risk involved in founding the company, given the financial position of the two founders, could therefore be regarded as manageable. With the utmost care and energy, they developed and expanded the young enterprise step by step. In its early years, the company naturally still depended on purchasing foundry products from outside suppliers, but its financial position soon became stable enough for construction of its own foundry to begin. This would allow it to become independent of external influences and to tailor the quality of the castings more closely to the requirements of its own production. Starting up the new plant was not easy, however, because there was a shortage in the east of skilled moulders capable of producing such lightweight, mass-produced goods, and training the necessary workforce could only be carried out very slowly and at great expense.
Meanwhile, the technical development of the young company’s specialist products advanced significantly, and the company obtained an Imperial patent for an eccentric rotary latch for airtight stove doors—a design that gained remarkable popularity and became known throughout the stove-making industry as the “Grudziądz Patent Door.” As the iron foundry continued to expand, the product range was steadily broadened, gradually adding kitchen-stove plates and rings, grates, and support plates. Following the expansion of the assembly workshops and installation of the necessary lathes, the plant’s enterprising managers moved into the production of railway-carriage bushings and, after the establishment of the weights and measures office in Grudziądz, cast-iron weights, gradually introducing all kinds of industrial castings into production. In this way, the company expanded its customer base without difficulty, as the diversity of its products also gave smaller customers the opportunity to purchase from it. Delivery by rail was guaranteed.
In 1886, the company underwent a highly important and valuable expansion. After lengthy preliminary research and trials, an enamelling plant for cast-iron vessels was built—the first, and to this day the only one, in the four eastern provinces. This, however, presented the iron foundry with an extraordinarily difficult task, which was not easy to overcome in view of the complete lack of skilled labour. The company therefore decided to establish a special moulding shop in which young people who had completed school were systematically trained as moulders specialising in hollowware—an institution that proved exceptionally successful and continues to exist to this day. Once the labour shortage had been overcome in this way, this branch of production also enjoyed great and steadily increasing success, as did the manufacture of cast-iron windows, which began several years later and of which more than 70,000 are now produced annually.
In 1887, the two founders of the company, with the warmest support of a broad circle of friends and customers, celebrated the 25th anniversary of their business. Outwardly as modest as on the company’s first day, they were inwardly deeply satisfied with the success they had achieved through their own hard work.
Unfortunately, the joint work of the two friends was suddenly interrupted while the company was still developing further. Joseph Herzfeld was taken from his productive and successful life on 15 March 1898, after a very brief illness caused by influenza—far too soon for his faithful friend and partner, and far too soon for the grieving employees and subordinates. He was succeeded by his only son, Paul Herzfeld, who, after completing his technical studies, had worked in western iron foundries in order to prepare himself in practical terms to take over his father’s business. Several years earlier, Carl Victorius, who was appointed Royal Commercial Councillor in 1901, had also admitted his eldest son, Leo, into the company as a partner. In him they found an excellent worker and a dependable adviser for the company’s further development. Yet here too cruel fate did not spare them: on 1 April 1902, Leo Victorius died unexpectedly after a short illness, dealing a severe blow both to his father, with whom he had worked closely, and to the company itself. Carl Victorius appointed his youngest son, Richard, in his place. Richard had previously completed commercial studies in Berlin and practical training abroad at major banking institutions.
In the new century, the company continued to develop rapidly, making it necessary to purchase several large neighbouring properties in order to accommodate substantial expansion. To supply the individual workshops with electrical power despite the greatly enlarged factory site, the first step was the construction of a modern three-phase power station. After a large new foundry hall had been built, a new casting-cleaning department was created and equipped with several modern sandblasting machines. Its dust-extraction system was implemented in exemplary fashion for the benefit of the workers and served as a model for many other new facilities. A comprehensive reconstruction of the enamelling works and a complete modernisation of the existing furnace-charging installation brought this important period of the company’s development to a close.
Shortly before all these new facilities were completed, Carl Victorius, the company’s last surviving co-founder, died on 1 February 1906. He had devoted all his labour and care to the company until his final breath. The company’s two sole owners, Paul Herzfeld and Richard Victorius, now had to attend to the internal development of the new plant, of which only the external framework had so far been completed. First, a new office building was erected at the factory entrance, designed in accordance with modern principles of lighting and ventilation. Its upper floors housed urgently needed new warehouses required for the greatly increased production of tiled-stove fittings. In the foundry, work began on constructing a comprehensive hydraulic-press system for the hydraulic moulding machines that were planned for installation. For this purpose, a study visit was arranged to the most important manufacturing plants engaged in this type of mass moulding. The visit resulted in the purchase of a large number of new moulding machines, followed by the installation of specialised hydraulically operated moulding machines designed by the company itself. The expansion of the iron foundry was completed with the installation of a large automated moulding-sand preparation line, based on the principle that the use of flawless moulding sand is a fundamental requirement for high-quality castings.
After the workshops for producing industrial castings and cast-iron hollowware had been expanded, the plant’s enterprising managers, as expected, began adding entirely new products to the manufacturing programme, unrelated to these areas of activity. They proceeded from the assumption that a plant producing sewer fittings and drainage pipes for municipal sewer systems would be essential in the east, where cities were either building such systems or preparing to do so. Guided by this idea, the company initially undertook the construction of a small drainage-pipe foundry in the new section of the Grudziądz works. When the new production department quickly proved profitable, plans were drawn up for a large, entirely new factory designed specifically for manufacturing these products.
Unfortunately, this proved impossible on the site of the existing works because the plant had gradually become surrounded by urban development. There was also no urgently needed railway loading area for these products and insufficient space for extensive storage facilities. With heavy hearts, the decision was made to divide the works, and at the beginning of 1911 the company purchased a site of 125,000 square metres in Mniszek, alongside the Grudziądz–Toruń railway line, which appeared particularly suitable for the purpose. Construction of the new plant continued with great enthusiasm, and by October 1911 it was ready for operation, with the first casting from the new iron furnace being processed. The plant itself was built to the latest standards. The foundry hall alone, exceptionally well lit and ventilated by numerous skylights, covers an area of approximately 5,000 square metres. To develop a pool of skilled industrial workers in a place previously inhabited only by rural labourers, a special workers’ settlement was established. There, residents are provided at an exceptionally low price with a two-room dwelling with a kitchen, a stable, and approximately one hectare of land. To give even those unfamiliar with the area an understanding of the scale and output of the works, it should be noted that the Grudziądz plant employs around 600 people and produces an average of 1,200 hundredweights of iron per day. The Mniszek plant, which is of course still in the process of development, employs around 300 people and produces 500 hundredweights of castings per day.
The company employs around 50 commercial and technical staff. Its products are sold throughout the eastern provinces, as well as in central Germany, Saxony, and Bavaria. Exports are substantial, with European and Asian Russia forming the company’s largest export market.
A few words should also be devoted to the company’s welfare arrangements and other special institutions. First, there is a company health-insurance fund, established long before such funds were introduced by law. Mention should also be made of the employee support fund, created in memory of the company’s founders, which provides monthly benefits to more than 30 people and has proved exceptionally helpful. In 1902, many years before social policy turned its attention to the welfare of private-sector employees, the company established its own pension fund for salaried staff, guaranteeing numerous employees a worry-free retirement or, in the event of premature incapacity for work, an adequate pension. This fund, to which a widows’ and orphans’ pension fund was added through a capital donation from the heirs of the late Royal Commercial Councillor Carl Victorius, possesses steadily increasing capital, which already amounts to more than 125,000 marks today. Finally, mention should be made of the excellently equipped bathing facilities, which offer bathing and laundry services completely free of charge, the large and comfortable workers’ canteen, and the free coffee service.
Relations between the company and its employees have always been excellent and trouble-free. Many employees have already celebrated 25, 30, and 40 years of service with the company. Most of the company’s staff have likewise worked at the factory for many years and have made a significant contribution to its development and success. Particular mention should be made of the company’s three authorised representatives: Mr Fritz Huhn, Mr Georg Frommer, and Mr Ernst Seydler, the first of whom has worked for the company for almost 35 years. The master craftsman responsible for the tool stores, Mr Karl Koschare, can boast an even longer period of service, having exercised technical supervision over this important department for around 40 years and still performing his duties in excellent health.
Fifty years have passed since the company was founded—50 years of hard and fruitful work in cooperation with loyal and devoted employees! At the end of this period, everyone will look back with satisfaction on the successes of the past years, remembering the cordial understanding that has always united them with the founders and the company’s present owners. May the company, supported by faithful and dedicated work, continue to develop steadily and bring lasting honour to its founders and to eastern industry!
Source: https://www.facebook.com/kochamgrudziadz
