From the 1830s onward, factory-based sugar production from beets developed into an important economic factor in some German states and triggered fundamental industrialization processes. The loess soils between the Mulde and Saale rivers in Anhalt offered excellent growing conditions for sugar beets, which were processed in numerous sugar factories in the region.

As many as 44 sugar factories were established in Anhalt between 1811 and 1879, most of them in the districts of Bernburg and Köthen. The first factories were founded by merchants and landowners as a sideline to their agricultural businesses. Some of these factories were able to hold their own on the market for a long time, but quite a few lasted only a few years. One of these was the “Anhaltische Privilegierte Zucker-Raffinerie an der Elbe” (Anhalt Privileged Sugar Refinery on the Elbe), founded in Roßlau in 1837, which had to cease operations as early as 1844. The development of the Roßlau sugar factory exemplifies the many difficulties faced by the pioneers of the early sugar factories In general, however, the sugar industry was a very successful and rapidly growing branch of industry. The sugar industry was associated with modern technical developments and numerous innovations in agribusiness, mechanical engineering, the chemical industry, and food and beverage production. It played a major role, and this finding may be surprising from today’s perspective, in the fact that at the end of the 19th century our region was one of the areas in the German Empire where industrialization was most advanced. However, the sugar industry also had a great social impact.

These complex interrelationships are examined for the first time in the exhibition Zucker aus Rüben – Ein “Kraftstoff” der Moderne (Sugar from Beets – A Modern “Fuel”) using numerous objects, models, graphics, photos and film footage for Anhalt.The occasion for the exhibition is the founding of the Dessauer Zucker-Raffinerie AG 150 years ago, on June 14, 1871. The company was founded here in order to transfer the cost-effective process of sugar production by molasses desugaring using strontium compounds, developed by the chemist Max Fleischer and his son Dr. Emil Fleischer, into industrial practice. Molasses desugaring in technical processes had not yet been achieved. At the Dessau sugar refinery, sugar could be extracted from molasses on an industrial scale for the first time using Fleischers’ novel strontian process, with excellent results. A number of favorable conditions played a role in the decision to locate the plant in Dessau: fast and favorable access to the nearby lignite deposits in Anhalt and in the Bitterfeld area as well as to the raw material molasses, good transport links via the railroad and via the Elbe as a waterway, sufficient resources of molasses in the vicinity, and an overall very positive industrial settlement climate in the Duchy of Anhalt and in its capital and royal seat. This is also supported by the relocation of a sugar refinery from Cologne to the village of Alten west of Dessau by Rheinischer Aktien-Verein für Zuckerindustrie in 1889, which existed there until 1932.The Dessau sugar refinery developed into the most important industrial settlement of the food industry in the Anhalt capital and royal seat of Dessau and one of the forerunners of the large-scale chemical industry that emerged in Germany at the end of the 19th century. In its development, the company benefited from intensive and successful in-house research work to utilize all the substances contained in molasses as comprehensively as possible, as well as from modern technical and process engineering developments. It was also at the cutting edge of social policy. Thus, the main part of the exhibition is also devoted to the 150-year development of the Dessau sugar refinery. The founding contexts are explained, as are the production expansions of the Dessau Sugar Refinery up to 1945 based on its own research and process developments, the development of the Strontian and Potash Factory Roßlau, the continuation of the company as VEB Gärungschemie Dessau after the Second World War, the decline of the company in the context of deindustrialization in Dessau-Roßlau after 1990 up to the activities of today’s Gärungschemie Dessau GmbH.

Other sections of the exhibition present some of the 44 sugar factories in Anhalt, the development of sugar beet cultivation from the 19th century to the present day and its mechanization, automation and digitalization, and the further processing of the large quantities of low-cost beet sugar produced in the refineries in the small and medium-sized companies in the food and luxury food industry, such as in the city’s confectioneries.

Also shown is the great and varied influence that the sugar industry gained on politics, society, culture, health and everyday life of the people by means of its economic power, as a significant taxpayer and through the low-cost production of beet sugar. Thus, the directors of the Dessau Sugar Refinery were able, on the one hand, to exert considerable influence on political decisions in the city due to their exceptional economic position and, on the other hand, to become involved in the city’s society through numerous foundations. Directors of the Dessau sugar refinery such as Dr. Hermann Reichardt, Eduard Krüger and Emil Venator were among the most important Dessau personalities and patrons of their time. Shortly after 1900, the sugar refineries also provided an impetus for the vocational training of women with the establishment of the technical school for the sugar industry in Dessau. Sugar beet cultivation and the operation of the sugar factories were associated with a considerable migration of labor.

The topics and contents of the exhibition are supplemented and deepened by six scholarly essays appearing in the volume accompanying the exhibition presented here. These contributions illuminate the development of sugar as a commodity from a luxury good to a mass product in connection with the feedback and interactions of the colonial expansion of European powers, introduce the chemists Max and Emil Fleischer and their special role in the founding of the Dessau sugar refinery, and provide an overview, undertaken for the first time, of sugar beet cultivation as well as the emergence and development of the 44 sugar factories and sugar refineries in Anhalt. The essays look at 150 years of corporate development from Dessauer Zucker-Raffinerie AG to Gärungschemie Dessau GmbH and give a very detailed idea of how the Dessau sugar refinery, as the main production site for the pesticide Zyklon B, became part of the machinery of the National Socialists’ inhumane extermination policy with its use for the mass murder of people, especially Jewish men, women and children from all over Europe. Finally, in the essay section, numerous aspects of the social and cultural-historical influence of the local sugar production on Dessau-Roßlau and its inhabitants are presented under the keyword “Sweet City”. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the authors of these contributions Anja Bel (Cologne), Karin Weigt (Dessau-Roßlau), Jana Müller (Dessau-Roßlau) and Dr. Bernhard Post (Weimar). Karin Weigt from the Museum für Stadtgeschichte Dessau wrote the majority of the object descriptions for the exhibition and the catalog in addition to her technical contribution. I was also allowed to contribute to the catalog section, and finally, some object descriptions also came from Dr. Timm Karisch (Museum für Naturkunde und Vorgeschichte Dessau) and Jana Müller. For this, too, I would like to express my sincere thanks. I am very pleased that the Dessau-Roßlau City Archive and the Dessau Museum of City History are jointly and comprehensively taking a look at this successful chapter in the economic history of Dessau and Anhalt and the associated impulses and complex social contexts in the exhibition and in the accompanying volume Sugar from Beets – a “Fuel” of Modernity. This made it possible to turn an exhibition idea into reality that I had been carrying around with me for several years and for which I was soon able to inspire Ms. Weigt as well. The longer we thought together about a sugar exhibition, the more extensive and multi-layered the subject areas and content became that could have been included in such an exposition. In implementing the ideas, we eventually had to discard a number of topics and many objects that would have definitely had their rightful place in the exhibition.

In the process, surprising findings and connections came to light that one often does not associate with the sugar industry at first glance. I will mention just a few keywords here: gamma owl, Pommritzer Rodepflug, migration, vocational training for women, sugar hammer, Coelestin, brigade book, feed yeast and barium. The exhibition also addresses unpleasant historical truths such as the misuse of Zyklon B. Originally, we wanted to open our exhibition in the special exhibition room of the Museum of City History Dessau in the Johannbau. This was not possible because the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau has to continue using its interim space there due to problems with the air conditioning in the new exhibition rooms at Schloss Georgium. I am all the more pleased that we are able to use the special exhibition room of the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie in the Orangery at Georgium Palace. I would like to thank the team of the Gemäldegalerie around Mr. Ruben Rebmann very much for this and for their manifold help. Like most exhibitions, ours also lives from numerous loans from near and far. All private and institutional lenders cannot be listed here. I would like to mention just a few of them here: the German Agricultural Museum in Stuttgart-Hohenheim, the Stiftung Technikmuseum in Berlin, the Pfeifer & Langen company in Cologne, the Gärungschemie Dessau GmbH and Dessbo Sweet & Biscuit GmbH in Dessau-Roßlau, the Saxony-Anhalt State Archives (in particular Mrs. Anke Boeck), the Thuringia State Archives, the Weimar State Archives, Noni Reissinger from Leverkusen, Detlef Güth and Ernst Steinsberger from Dessau-Roßlau. I would like to thank all the lenders mentioned here, and also all those whom I could not name here! A big thank you also goes to the companies who helped to realize our ideas for the exhibition design and exhibition technology.

The exhibition was generously supported financially by numerous partners and thus made possible in the first place. We received particularly generous financial support from the state of Saxony-Anhalt within the framework of cultural promotion as well as from Lotto-Toto GmbH Saxony-Anhalt. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to the many companies and private partners from Dessau-Roßlau and far beyond who helped to close any remaining funding gaps. Particular mention should be made in this regard of DESSBO Sweet & Biskuit GmbH, senexis GmbH, Gärungschemie Dessau GmbH and DHW Deutsche Hydrierwerke GmbH Rodleben, Pfeifer & Langen Industrie und Handels-KG in Cologne and KWS Saat SE und Co KGaA Einbeck, which supported the exhibition not only with their financial commitment but also with loans. At the same time, I am very pleased that our city also provided the necessary funds in the budget. So many colleagues from the city archives, the museums of the city and the cultural office, so many helpers and idea providers, have contributed to the preparation, construction and realization of the exhibition, to the preparation of the accompanying volume as well as to the offers of the accompanying program that I unfortunately cannot name them all here. Please forgive me. I thank them all very much! But I would like to mention two names: Anita and Sven Hertel. To Anita Hertel we owe the naturalistic sugar beet replica with which the exhibition starts. Sven Hertel was at the same time designer, motor, assembler, navigator and driver during the preparation of the exhibition.

They all made it possible that with the exhibition Sugar from Beets – a “Fuel” of Modernity we can give an insight into the economic potential that Dessau-Roßlau had and still has, if it is raised confidently. Through technical and social innovations, the sugar industry made new employment possible in rural areas and transformed Dessau, Roßlau and large parts of Anhalt into a region that was highly developed industrially and was not abandoned by skilled workers and families, but sought out. I am sure that the exhibition and the accompanying volume will offer many moments of wonder, of remembrance and rediscovery, of reflection as well as great insight, and not only in this respect.