Although the title of this book hints at a more scandalous story of brewers converting from beer to the production of V2 rockets, Stefan Wedrac examines the broader history of a brewery from its founding in the mid-nineteenth century through to its final takeover by the Heineken concern in 2004. Particular attention is paid to the Nazi period and the question of how the firm came to be the site of a forced labour facility, but Wedrac also develops a strong sense of the role of the Zipf brewery in a small and rural region of northern Austria. Throughout the text, Wedrac emphasizes the close connection between the development of the Zipf brewery and the changes sweeping the production of beer in Austria more generally while also sketching what might be considered a microhistory of the region through beer.
Founded in 1842–1844, the brewery was soon acquired by the Schaup family that would lead the firm (more or less) until its inclusion in larger corporate conglomerates beginning in 1969. Wedrac describes an industry and enterprise engaged in an almost relentless drive to expand and modernize beer production in the nineteenth century, especially through electrification. This and the happy proximity to one of the main rail lines of the empire from the 1860s resulted in the annual production of 12.5 million liters (125,000 hectoliters) of beer at Zipf by 1900.
Although the heirs of Franz Schaup retained a majority of shares and operated as a syndicate within the firm into the post-1918 period, Zipf followed the path of similar firms when it recapitalized in 1921 by combining with an investment bank (the Österreichische Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe) and another brewery (Gösser) as Brauerei Zipf AG before taking over the Wörgl brewery in the Tyrol as production expanded to 225,000 hectoliters by 1929 before declining in the worsening economic conditions of the 1930s.
Although Wedrac does not detail, or perhaps have acess to, the internal discussions that might have occurred during the transition, the brewery appears to have greeted the Anschluss and the arrival of National Socialism with some degree of optimism. Indeed, the combination of the promise of economic recovery and the official protection from the larger German brewing industry raised the possibility of recovery, and Zipf raised employee wages in the summer of 1938 as production ramped up once more. However, the promise of a revived brewing sector was relatively short-lived as the war resulted in increasing labour, transport, and raw-materials shortages as production was shifted to more critical products. After peaking in the 1940–1941 brewing year, beer production (and increasingly, beer strength) declined throughout the war. By the beginning of 1945, Zipf was unable to brew beer at all and was scrambling even to save their live yeast from going bad.
Wedrac describes the relationship between the Zipf brewery and the NSDAP as one that ran hot and cold. On the one hand, the board of directors was overtaken by men loyal to the Nazis at the expense of the remaining heirs of the Schaup family in the fall of 1938. On the other hand, shortly afterwards the representatives of the original family group were able to balance the leadership of the firm between directors who looked to the family and those aligned with the NSDAP. The brewery also increased contributions to Nazi causes, opened land attached to the brewery for “settlement,” and exploited connections to the party to secure sales to the army and the SS.
More disturbingly, by the fall of 1943, the Nazi state began construction of facilities to produce V2 rockets at the Zipf brewery. As a site with extensive cellars, close to rail transport, and sufficiently out of the way, Zipf made an ideal production site. The conversion required up to 2,300 forced labourers in the attached concentration camp, 30% of whom died in the process.
Wedrac follows the account of the Nazi and war years with a briefer account of the postwar period, much of which is focused on the lengthy process of disentangling the brewery from the organization responsible for rocket production, Betrieb Schlier, and compensation for the damage caused by exploding rockets, among other things, which was not fully concluded until 1957.
The book concludes with a personal postscript that mixes a discussion of the relationship between the brewery, the town, and the Nazi past, and a discussion of the author's connection with Zipf through his grandfather Alois Lenz, a longtime employee of the brewery and a committed National Socialist. In some ways, this is an unusual addition for a German academic text. However, this kind of relationship in a quiet region of Austria that became so important during the Nazi period is the greatest strength of the book. This relatively closed world draws out some of the ongoing conflicts that blossomed in the Nazi period. The tenuous assertions about the ownership of Zipf in the 1920s, for instance, are echoed in the local authorities’ concern about the racial background of the matriarch of the family (despite the fact that she had died in 1875). The director favoured by Nazi officials to lead the firm in 1938 likewise comes back to haunt the brewery after the family representatives had reasserted themselves.
These relationships extend to the town of Zipf itself in the book. Starting with Franz Schaup in the nineteenth century, the leaders of the Zipf brewery played a prominent role in the life of the town and the surrounding region, and the brewery facilities acted as an important meeting place for activities like a workers’ choir in the 1920s and as a preferred watering hole for NSDAP functionaries during the war. Although the town itself was inconveniently evacuated during rocket tests, the presence of the V2 program likely spared the region from Allied bombing. This role played by the brewery may help to explain the postwar conflict over the legacy of the concentration camp and the rocket facility.
At the same time, Wedrac might have engaged explicitly with the question of business leaders’ “room for maneuver” during the Nazi period. To a large extent, the book suggests that the concentration camp and the V2 facility were essentially forced on an unwilling brewery, which resented the commandeering of its facilities and increasingly frequent accidents. However, ongoing attempts to woo the regime, the prevalence of NSDAP members or supporters in the firm, the association of the firm with the Dolfuβ regime, and the firm's use of prisoner labour throughout both world wars suggests that the situation may be more complex. The decision to send a case of beer to Wernher von Braun to celebrate the moon landing in 1969 also suggests that the company directors did not want to distance themselves from this work quite as much as they seemed. Examining the Zipf brewery in the context of this longstanding debate in German and Nazi business history would bring more focus to the book and help to clarify the continued importance of business history and microhistory during the Nazi period.
