20th March 1947
Arthur Sauer

Arthur Sauer

Arthur Sauer (1874 - 1946) was a German chemist, entrepreneur and patron of the arts.

Arthur Sauer was born in April 1874 as the son of Kaspar Sauer, a member of the Schönborn chancellery and domain council, in Wiesentheid in Lower Franconia. He studied chemistry in nearby Würzburg from the winter semester of 1893/94 and received his doctorate in 1897 from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Würzburg. Before that, he was an assistant to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen for some time. The title of his dissertation was 'On isonitramines and their splitting into hyponitrous acid'.

Sauer, however, was drawn to chemical practice, so that in 1897 he moved to relatives in Bensheim on the Bergstrasse. In that year he also joined the company of the Worms pharmacist Rudolf Pizzala, which he took over just one year later. The money for this was provided to him by Wilhelm Euler, a paper manufacturer and politician from Bensheim.

In the same year he married Anna Maria Feigel (d. 1945), a daughter of a wine merchant family from Bensheim.

Before the First World War, Sauer ran for Friedrich Naumann's party in Bensheim and hoped to win a seat in the Reichstag. In the 1912 elections, however, he lost to the SPD candidate. Due to his age, he was spared from being called up for World War I. A further attempt to get into the Reichstag in 1920 failed, after which he scaled back his political involvement and concentrated on his travels, his literary work and his company.

In his literary and philosophical publications during the First World War, various echoes of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy can be recognised.

After the First World War, the economic development of his company was not initially favourable. For a short time, he even considered separating from it completely. However, the mid-1920s saw an upturn when production was switched to medicines and cosmetics under the brand name Fissan. Arthur Sauer initially changed the name of the company to Deutsche Milchwerke Dr. A. Sauer and became successful with the products of the Fissan brand. From 1924 onwards, the company therefore took the name Fissan-Werke.

In 1882, the Worms pharmacist Rudolf Pizzala began producing organic tonics, initially on a small scale with around six employees. In 1897, the chemist Arthur Sauer joined the company and took over the business in 1898. He specialised in milk preparations based on the chemical substance casein and named his company Deutsche Milchwerke Dr. A. Sauer. Expansion was achieved, among other things, by setting up branch plants - for example in Stockheim (Upper Hesse).

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Sauer made numerous trips to Egypt, North Africa, Italy, Spain, Portugal and South America. There he collected lasting artistic impressions that would influence his further structural and artistic developments in his company in Zwingenberg.

In 1927 he met Georg Fehleisen, a young architect who shared his love for modern architecture in the Bauhaus style as well as anthroposophical attitudes. From 1928 onwards, Fehleisen became the in-house architect for Arthur Sauer and his Fissan works.

In 1933/1934, Georg Fehleisen (1893–1936) built a small factory housing estate for workers and employees of Deutsche Milchwerke AG. The estate consists of seven individual houses. Four houses with a square floor plan are arranged symmetrically. Above is the villa of the works manager and at the same height, a little further north, is the smaller villa of the deputy works manager. The seventh building, a workers' house with a steep gable roof, is located to the northwest.

During the Nazi era, the complex was named 'Adolf Hitler Settlement' with the highest approval from Christmas 1933. Today, the houses are located on the Arthur Sauer site, named after the entrepreneur. The settlement is also a listed building.

Georg Fehleisen officially died on 30th November 1936 as a result of a car accident. Suspicions that this was a suicide could never be completely dispelled.

On 1st May 1937, the factory was named a National Socialist model company - and this continued until 1939, with the participating companies having to face the competition again and again. The 'golden flag' of the German Labor Front flew on the Fissan buildings.

After the occupation of Zwingenberg by American troops on 27th March 1945, the Fissan factory facilities and parts of the factory settlement as well as the Sauer villa were confiscated. The outsourced production was able to resume on 30th April 1945. After expropriation and denunciation proceedings, Arthur Sauer died on 29th November 1946 under unclear circumstances.

Source: Wikipedia

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