Gasolin AG
Gasolin AG was a German oil company from 1920 to 1971 (trading under this name from 1926); it ran its own chain of petrol stations.
Gasolin was founded on 23 March 1920 as Olea Mineralölwerke AG in Frankfurt, taking over the Deutsche Schmiermittel GmbH (German lubricant company).
After the untimely death of Hugo Stinnes in 1924, his heirs were unable to form a viable company, so the conglomerate was divided up the following year.
In April 1925, Oleawerke and the incorporated oil works with their refinery in Dollbergen were spun off into a subsidiary and renamed Hugo Stinnes-Riebeck Oel-AG, based in Halle (Saale).
In 1925/1926 BASF and Standard Oil of New Jersey (today ExxonMobil) decided to cooperate in the production of synthetic petrol from brown-coal (lignite), and to build up Hugo Stinnes-Riebeck Oel-AG as their sales company in Germany; both would participate in it directly.
The distribution syndicate of the AMV supplied unbranded petrol on provision of a fuel pass or purchase certificate.
[5] In 1943 Gasolin had sales offices in Berlin, Breslau, Dortmund, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart as well as in Vienna.
To replace them, work began in August 1944 at Lohmen (Saxony) in connection with Dachs VII, creating an underground tunnel in the sandstone leading to two shafts in the quarry of the Alte Poste.
Above ground, the small distillation plants, Ovens 19-22, were immediately built, and in 1944 began to produce gasoline using crude oil from the Vienna Basin near Zistersdorf, which arrived by train in tanker wagons.
Thus, at the time of the end of the war in 1945, the shares of Deutsche Gasolin AG found themselves in the Soviet sector of Berlin.
Although Gasolin became an independent petrol station company in the west (registered in Berlin-Charlottenburg) with the loss of its ownership in the east due to the unbundling of I.G.
Due to the Securities Adjustment Act of 1 October 1949, Gasolin's shares were declared invalid and replaced by a collective certificate.
Farben offered for sale 41% of the shares, with capital value amounting to 13.2 million Deutschmarks, the current share-holding of A. Riebeck'sche Montanwerke AG, following dealing amongst the shareholders.
In return for the write-off of a $2.4 million Gasolin debt from the 1930s, Esso and Shell also agreed to sell their stake in the package.
Although Caltex could have paid the dollar debt, the idea of a further loss of the German market to foreign investors did not appeal to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
However, Wintershall and DEA prevailed as German mineral oil producers, and took over the 91% majority of shares in Deutsche Gasolin AG in July at a ratio of 65:35.
[7] After taking over 50% of Rheinpreußen AG für Bergbau und Chemie (Mining and Chemicals) in 1959, DEA withdrew from BV-Aral in 1960.
In 1961, the 100% member companies in the BV-Aral association decided to market their various products (fuels and lubricants) under the common brand-name Aral.
The red and white Gasolin brand and the AG survived until August 1971 when they were merged with the Wintershall subsidiary Aral, which is now part of BP.
Subsequently, Gasolin in Austria was nationalised and taken over by Austrian Mineral Oil Administration (ÖMV, today OMV), founded in 1956, the Soviet Union receiving compensation.
The property in the other three sectors was handed over directly by the Allies to Austria as the new owner, as a result of the Austrian nationalization laws in 1946.
[10] An inflationary advertising hype spread from the USA to Germany around 1954, bringing petrol nicknames and chemical super-additives.
Gasolin's best-known slogan was "Take your time, not a life", which appeared on signs fixed on the back of trucks.
"), with a new little Gasolin-man figure; this appeared in full-page black-and-white newspaper advertisements, and in colour in tips-booklets produced from 1969 in cooperation with the Hamburg painter and commercial graphic artist, Bruno Bergner [de].
