Most people know cable cars from the mountains. There they are a popular means of transport for tourists to overcome large differences in altitude in a short time. The possible use of cable cars is also being discussed in some large cities, including South America – given the congested streets, they can be an alternative to traditional local public transport. But what many do not know: Originally, the transport of people did not play a role in the development of the first cable cars. Rather, it was about efficient and fast material transport.
A special exhibition in the German Petroleum Museum in Wietze in Lower Saxony is currently commemorating this. It is dedicated to what was once the world’s largest manufacturer of cable cars, Adolf Bleichert & Co. from Leipzig. The engineer and company founder Adolf Bleichert (1845 – 1901) constructed the first cable car with an industrial character, which from 1874 in Teutschenthal near Halle transported lignite from the mine for further processing – a distance of 740 meters was covered, several roads and roads were crossed . Back then, a locomotive set the cable car’s ropes in motion.
The first modern passenger cable car was originally only intended for material – the Kohlernbahn brought goods for a mountain hotel on the Kohlern near Bozen. After a short time, it was also used by staff and guests, although that was illegal, but initially hardly anyone cared about it. An Austrian company finally opened a regular passenger cable car up the mountain.
However, due to the bumpy course of the journey and the lack of braking devices, it was quickly closed by the responsible authorities for safety reasons – and so the Leipzig experts from Bleichert & Co. were commissioned with the new building. In 1913, a new system with a 1.6 kilometer long route went into operation, with cabins for up to 16 people.
Secret code for the engineers
The First World War, of all things, contributed to the economic breakthrough – Bleichert’s cable cars were suddenly in demand for the rapid transport of ammunition and other supplies to the front. In 1918, in one of his last official acts, the Saxon king awarded the company successors Max and Paul Bleichert the title of nobility with a coat of arms, which shows the Leipzig lion with a piece of cable car.
In 1924, Bleichert acquired patents from the Swiss engineer Luis Zuegg, who had discovered that ropes must be taut so that they are more resilient and durable. The Leipzig-based company kept its own developments secret from the competition with the help of a code book that required all engineers to communicate using encrypted messages.
In 1926, Bleichert & Co. completed Europe’s first high-alpine passenger cable car, which overcame a height difference of 1,500 meters over a length of three kilometers and led to the Zugspitze. The company knows its way around records: in Argentina it built the longest railway at 34 kilometers as early as 1902 and the highest at 3500 meters. It was used to carry silver and copper from the mountain, up to 40 tons per hour – that was more effective and safer than the previously usual transport with mules over slippery roads. Finally, the nine-kilometer-long Usambara Railway in Tanzania was built in 1910 as the world’s steepest cable car that transported wood. In New Caledonia, the longest overwater cable car led more than a kilometer into the sea, where ore was loaded onto ships. The company built both the northernmost (on Svalbard) and the southernmost (in Chile) cable car in the world and was active in 30 countries from Algeria and Australia to Ukraine and Hungary.
“Victims were never discussed”
In total, Bleichert & Co. produced 37 passenger, 630 military and 3500 material ropeways in Leipzig, Neuss and for foreign partners. One can only guess under what circumstances these systems were created in often inaccessible terrain. When the alpine cable cars were being built, employees at great heights were unprotected at work, as historical recordings from an MDR documentary about the Bleichert works show – the film and the exhibition leave open how many workers were injured in the process. “Victims were never discussed at Bleichert,” says Carsten Lauterbach, group leader for mountain railways at Dresden’s transport company and one of the exhibition organizers.
Instead, another sad chapter is at least hinted at. In the GDR the name Bleichert disappeared, the Leipzig plant became part of the state-owned VTA – the letters stand for Leipzig loading and transport facilities. Cable car production was not resumed, instead the company manufactured container handling systems for large ports around the world and had customers in more than 60 countries. After the fall of the Wall, there was no future for VTA, despite numerous international trade contacts, operations shut down in 1991 and the workforce was laid off. Today there are only two large cable car manufacturers in Italy and Austria; according to Lauterbach, no more cable cars are built in Germany.
A cable car was also used for oil production in Wietze in Lower Saxony from 1924 onwards.
(Photo: German Petroleum Museum)
Also in Wietze, where the first successful drilling for oil in Germany, from 1924 a tilting cable car made in Leipzig operated, which transported the sand from the oil well. If you want to ride a Bleichert cable car yourself, you should take the train to Predigtstuhl near Bad Reichenhall. It was put into operation in 1928, with a valley station at 474 meters and a mountain station at 1614 meters. Their characteristic twelve-sided light metal cabins still float up the mountain. Today it is considered to be the oldest original large cable suspension railway in the world.
The special exhibition on the Bleichert works is open until November 21st in German Petroleum Museum in Wietze to see from November 27th to May 31st, 2022 it will be in Upper Harz Mining Museum shown in Clausthal-Zellerfeld. The MDR has made a 45-minute film about the history of the Bleichert works, which can be found at www.mdr.de/entdecke/entdecke-bleichert-werke-100/html.