| Industry | Shipbuilding |
|---|---|
| Fate | Member of Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG from 1926 to 1945 |
| Founded | November 8, 1843[1] |
| Defunct | 1983 |
| Headquarters | Bremen, Germany |
| Products | Passenger ships Merchant ships War ships Steam turbines Exhaust steam turbines Ship Gear Boxes Diesel engines Steam engines |
Aktien-Gesellschaft Weser (or AG Weser) was one of the great German shipbuilding companies, located at the Weser River in Bremen. Founded in 1873 it was finally closed in 1983. Altogether, AG Weser built about 1400 ships of different types, including many war ships. AG Weser was leading company in Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG, a cooperation of eight German shipbuilding companies from 1926 to 1945.
AG Weser was founded on November 8, 1843 as the Eisengiesserei und Maschinenfabrik Waltjen und Leonhard,[2] becoming Waltjen & Co in 1849 this firm only started very slowly in ship building with primarily steamboats. On March 26, 1873 the activities and firm became the AG Weser and the very first important order came from the Kaiserliche Marine. Between 1875 and 1881 eleven gunboats were built.
After this order the construction was again mainly for civil use. Halfway through the eighties a serious dredging was done on the Weser River, again making Bremen an important harbour. Just before the turn of the century the harbour grew very heavily. This was also the moment at which the AG Weser decided to buy new grounds at Gröpelingen where there were constructed five new slips. In 1904 everything was ready at the new location and Bremen was abandoned for further ship construction. New installations followed and between 1905 and 1914 no fewer than 40 passenger and merchant ships were constructed on the new wharf.
In 1912 Raimondo Lorenzo D'Equevilley, who worked before at the Germaniawerft in Kiel, was asked by the AG Weser to construct a new U-boat. As they now had their own engineers they immediately became part of the U-boat program of the Kaiserliche Marine.
The first U-boats constructed were UB I series. Later also UC I, UB II and UC II series were constructed at AG Weser. By 1917 most of the work went into the construction of the UB III. Later three UC III were ordered also but never got finished. During World War I, AG Weser launched a total of 96 U-boats.
In 1926, AG Weser merged with 7 other shipyards to form Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG. The facilities at Bremen produced World War II ships and U-boats, with the target still called AG Weser during the Bombing of Bremen in World War II. The shipyard closed on December 31, 1983.