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| 'My' building, C660 is the high rise in the upper right centre. |
It was my first view of the famous "Tower and Bridge". Designed by Peter Behrens it is Industrial Architecture the like of which I'd never seen before!
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| From inside the factory looking back towards Tor Ost and the Höchst township |
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| From the gate looking towards C660 |
Founded in 1863 by the time I got there this was a site of around 30,000 people and the company employed about 180,000 worldwide. It is now broken up, sold off and the site is an industrial park.
However, the stylish tower and bridge still exists and inside is spectacular
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| Inside the tower |
The tower was a feature of the company logo in my era, but it wasn't always that way, and just having updated our own company logo I was interested in the developments.
In 1863 the company was Theerfarbenfabrik Meister Lucius & Co becoming Farbwerke Meister Lucius & Brüning in 1865 and then Farbwerke vorm. Meister Lucius & Brüning AG in 1880
The oldest logo I have found so far is from 1887:
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| 1887 Lion with MLB in shield |
Farbwerke Hoechst (Hoechst Colour Works) seems to have been a 'shorthand' for the plant used from that time on. Some of the dyestuff labels that were used at the time were real works of art and such that survive today are collector's items.
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| Dyestuff label from around 1901-still featuring the lion and shield |
By 1923 a new logo had been adopted:
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| 1923 ML&B logo |
However by 1925 the ML&B companies had become part of the 'in'famous IG Farben and was known as IG-Farbenindustrie AG, pharmazeutische Abteilung, Verkaufsstelle Höchst and began using this logo.
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| 1925-1951 during the IG Farben times |
Post the liquidation of IG Farben in 1952 a logo designer decided to pick up on the Tower and Bridge designed by Behrens and opened in 1924 to form an 'H' for Hoechst.
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| 1952 logo |
This logo was further modified in 1966 by boxing it in - and there was still plenty of company literature around in my time featuring that logo!
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| 1966 - boxed in, but still basically consistant |
The logo was updated again in 1974 and was the standard throughout most of my time there.
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| 1974 - another update, but with a link to it's predecessor |
By the time of the next update in 1997, the world and the markets were rapidly changing and this was the last representation of Hoechst
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| 1997 - the year before the end (of pigments); but still some links and consistency |
Hoechst pigments were sold to Clariant, itself a spin-off out of Sandoz AG and the logo changed, and then changed again...
The lower of these is still current and that brings to the end of this brief trot through the evolution of a logo.
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