1843-1865

A very important anniversary will be celebrated in Berndorf on 25 May: on this day in 1843, Alexander Schoeller and Alfred Krupp signed a partnership deed to establish a metal goods factory, which would be erected in Berndorf soon afterwards. Schoeller, a Prussian wholesaler based in Vienna, agreed to invest a portion of his considerable fortune; German manufacturer Krupp wanted to add a new business to the industrial group founded by his father in Essen in the Rhineland.

Two events that took place in the preceding years laid the foundations for the establishment of the company. Firstly, Alfred Krupp had developed the spoon roller, cast in steel, permitting faster, cheaper production of spoons and forks. Secondly, Austria – which had retained a highly traditional agricultural economy – finally made the leap to steam power, much later than other European countries. At the time that Krupp developed his spoon roller, Austria’s first steam railway began operating: the Kaiser Ferdinand North Railway ran from Floridsdorf, in Vienna, to Wagram.
Schoeller and Krupp would surely never have ventured to establish a factory in the farming settlement of Berndorf, with just 300 inhabitants, but for this key development in the country’s industrialisation. With the laying of the foundation stone for the factory on 16 September 1843, they opened a new chapter in the industrial history of Austria: the construction of the country’s first fully steam-powered manufacturing operation, in Berndorf.