- The First
World War ended 11th of March 1918. Germany had lost the war and
millions of men had died to the trenches, some of them as a result of a new
weapon, gas. The Treaty of Versailles was signed between the Central Powers and
Entente Powers in Versailles France during the June of 1919. The Entente Powers
dictated a hard peace agreements for Germany and these were suppose to prevent
Europe to slide ever again to such a devastating and horrible war. The German
nation and people were not the only ones who lost something in this peace
agreement. The pharmaceutical company Bayer lost its two most important trade
names and suffered huge financial losses.
- After the military situation in the west front had locked into trench warfare, different chemical plants in the Central Powers and in the Entente Powers, started to shift their attention to gasses that could be used to destroy the opposite force. During the First World War, Bayer started its co-operation with the chemical plants of BASF and Hoechst and together produced chlorine gas for the German army.
- This gas was
used for the first time against the French in the battle of Ypres in 1915. The
death from chlorine gas was horrible, as the chlorine destroyed it’s victims
lungs and the victim in practise died from slow suffocation, trying still to
grasp some air for his lungs. After the war, Bayer had to face the consequences
of its actions during the war and lost the rights to the trade names of Aspirin
and Heroin along with the patent rights, to USA. Additionally the Bayer
factories, which were located in USA, were sold to local investors. Most of the
foreign investments and ownerships had been also confiscated from Bayer and the
foreign markets were also out of the reach for the company after the war and in
1919, the sales figures for the Bayer, were only two thirds from what the
figures had been before the war. The revolution, which started in Russia, meant
also that the factories and other property that Bayer owned in Russia were
confiscated too. After the war, the whole German nation also drifted into the
most worst inflation of the worlds history and the year 1923, was the first year
for Bayer, when it was unable to give dividends to it’s investors.
- Bayer however survived from all of this and the close relationship which had started with different chemical plants during the war, was deepened during the 1920’s, until in 1925, Bayer merged with several other chemical plants into the infamous IG Farben Trust.
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