Paulus Heylandt (left) in his Berlin laboratory, approx. 1935. In front on the right is a cutaway model of the transport tank for liquid air, which he developed. |
The crisis after the collapse of the financial markets in October 1929 eventually hit the Linde Company with full force in 1931: In Department A (refrigeration machines), sales collapsed to less than 60 percent of the previous year, and again in 1932 to around one third. Layoffs and reduced hours were unavoidable. Orders also failed to materialize in Department B in the second half of 1931. In order to avoid job cuts on a larger scale, the Höllriegelskreuth workshops were staffed in two shifts of just 26 hours per week - with corresponding wage cuts. |
The planned celebration to mark Richard Linde's anniversary with the company "was called off in view of the dark times," he wrote in a letter to his sisters. The order book for gas liquefaction and separation was also quite weak in 1932
The technical gases branch also suffered from the general economic crisis. Sales of oxygen and acetylene dropped so far that staff had to be cut and the oxygen plant in Mülheim an der Ruhr had to be temporarily shut down altogether. Thanks to such restrictions and with "the greatest possible frugality" (Annual Report 1932) facilities engineering as well as the oxygen and acetylene plants were able to achieve a "somewhat satisfactory profit."
At Maschinenfabrik Sürth and Güldner Motoren-Gesellschaft, however, losses could not be prevented. In the 1932 Annual Report, the Executive Board reported that of all the plants in the company, Department C (Maschinenfabrik Sürth) was "worst affected by the crisis." "Despite all efforts to economize" the ongoing costs could not be earned back.
When Carl von Linde died in 1934 at the age of 92, the worst of the post-war Great Depression was already over. Thanks to the economic boom of 1933 both in Germany and abroad, as well as the support of the employment-creation schemes of the National Socialist Party in power at that time, the company entered a new period of growth - albeit under the conditions of the increasing war economy.