The Maschinenbauanstalt Übigau was a German engineering firm based in the present-day district of Übigau in the city of Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

History

In 1836 an engineering establishment was set up directly south of Übigau House (Schloss Übigau) by high school professor,
Andreas Schubert, which in 1837 built the first Saxon passenger steamship, the Königin Maria as well as the first German-built locomotive, the Saxonia

Saxonia (locomotive)

The locomotive Saxonia was operated by the Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company and was the first practical working steam locomotive built in Germany. Its name means Saxony in Latin.- History :...

. The production of locomotives was stopped in 1840 after a second unit Phoenix, however the production of steam boilers continued.

In 1863 the Schlick'sche shipyard

Shipyard

Shipyards and dockyards are places which repair and build ships. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance and basing activities than shipyards, which are sometimes associated more with initial...

emerged here, a company that from 1877 as Kette A.G. became the most important German inland shipyard for barge

Barge

A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods. Some barges are not self-propelled and need to be towed by tugboats or pushed by towboats...

s and passenger ship

Passenger ship

A passenger ship is a ship whose primary function is to carry passengers. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freighters once common on the seas in which the transport of passengers is...

s. In 1892 it was joined by the shipbuilding research department of TU Dresden and by 1920 the Dresdner Maschinenfabrik und Schiffswerft Übigau had 1,500 employees. Apart from ships it also made boilers, large engines and dredgers. By 1930, when it had to close for 5 years as a result of the worldwide economic crisis, it had delivered 1,400 ships from its slipways to places as far away as Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 and South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

.

In 1945 the firm was totally destroyed; it later reformed as VEB Dampfkesselbau Übigau, building boiler systems for large ships until the 1990s, and vehicle cranes

Crane (machine)

A crane is a type of machine, generally equipped with a hoist, wire ropes or chains, and sheaves, that can be used both to lift and lower materials and to move them horizontally. It uses one or more simple machines to create mechanical advantage and thus move loads beyond the normal capability of...

 as well from its privatisation in 1990 until its insolvency

Insolvency

Insolvency means the inability to pay one's debts as they fall due. Usually used to refer to a business, insolvency refers to the inability of a company to pay off its debts.Business insolvency is defined in two different ways:...

 in 2001 . The yard had its own shipping berth with 48 steamers and cargo ships.

External links

• Übigau Shipyard 1863-2001, photos and passenger steamer Dresden in 1926
• There is an English-language German railway forum at Railways of Germany