The building was inaugurated in 1926 as the Laboratory for Colour and Textile Chemistry and home to the institute of the same name. The laboratory was founded in 1893 as the first university laboratory of its kind in Germany by RICHARD MÖHLAU (1857 - 1940), who headed it until 1911. HANS THEODOR BUCHERER (1869 - 1949) followed MÖHLAU as director of the laboratory from 1911 to 1913. Under the direction of WALTER KÖNIG (1878 - 1964) from 1913 to 1954, the institute developed into one of the world's leading institutions for research into synthetic dyes and their applications. KÖNIG's work on polymethine dyes was groundbreaking for the development of colour photography. The König-Bau was given the name König-Bau while he was still in office in 1953. 1926 saw the König-Bau become the home of the dye collection, whose oldest holdings date back to the middle of the 19th century. Systematic collecting for the purpose of research at the Institute of Colour and Textile Chemistry resulted in a unique collection that documents the development of synthetic dyes from the discovery of mauveine in 1856 to the present day.

Johann Friedrich Gmelin (1775 - 1804) came to Göttingen in 1775, initially as a full professor of philosophy. In 1778, he was appointed full professor at the Faculty of Medicine and held Göttingen's first nominal professorship for chemistry and pharmacy until his death. Göttingen was thus ahead of other universities in the establishment of specialised professorships in chemistry and the natural sciences. In 1781, the University of Göttingen was granted the funds to build a chemical laboratory. Plans for the building began in 1782 and construction began in 1783. Since then, the two-storey half-timbered building, known today as the "Wöhler House", has stood in Göttingen's Hospitalstraße. In its rooms, the important institute directors Friedrich Stromeyer (1776 - 1835), Friedrich Wöhler (1800 - 1882), Hans Hübner (1837 - 1884), Victor Meyer (1848 - 1897) and Otto Wallach (1847 - 1931), who succeeded Gmelin, developed Göttingen into a centre of modern chemical research and a world-class educational institution.

In 1668, Friedrich Jacob Merck, pharmacist, received the privilege from Landgrave Ludwig VI to run the pharmacy on Schloßgraben in Darmstadt. From today's perspective, this pharmacy is the nucleus of the Merck company, which celebrated its 350th anniversary in 2018. Now this pharmacy would have deserved our commemorative plaque "Historic Site of Chemistry" if it were still standing. Instead, the Pützer Tower received this honour. Since its construction in 1904, this tower has symbolised the continued existence of the Merck company, which at the time moved its premises to Frankfurter Strasse 250, away from the cramped area in Darmstadt's city centre. Outside the city centre, in the north of Darmstadt, space was created for the company's expansion. The Pützer Tower at the entrance to the plant is now an industrial monument and a well-guarded treasure of the Merck company. At the interface between the company and the public, it symbolises the importance of the company - for Darmstadt and for the world. In 350 years, Merck has advanced from a pharmacy in the desolate little landgraviate that was ravaged by the 30 Years' War to a listed global player - still family-run - and has remained loyal to Darmstadt. And Darmstadt gradually became the flourishing city of science that we know today. Friedrich Pützer (1871 - 1922), full professor of architecture at the TU Darmstadt from 1902 and later its rector, was one of the most influential architects of his time as a university teacher, monument conservator, urban planner and church builder. He became an important partner for the Merck company in the design of the new company premises. Of his ensemble of buildings, only the Pützer Tower remains today. The tower was not given a technical function within the chemical company, but was designed as a "health insurance, porter and civil servant residential building". If you realise that a building of the height of the Pützer Tower was something unheard of and completely new at the time, then it is easy to imagine that this tower fulfilled the function of a self-presentation of the company much more than it does today: imposing, towering, self-confident, hungry for the future.

2017 was an anniversary year for the GDCh. The first national chemical societies were founded across Europe in the 19th century. This was also the case in Germany. The German Chemical Society in Berlin was founded on 11 November 1867. The founding president was August Wilhelm von Hofmann and the founding location was the Gropius brothers' diorama. Reason enough to establish a "Historical Site of Chemistry" in Berlin in the anniversary year. Although the building of the diorama no longer exists, an exception was made to the rules of our "Historic Sites of Chemistry" programme and a commemorative plaque was erected elsewhere, not far from the former location of the diorama. If you are travelling to Berlin today, pay a visit to the square in front of the Humboldt University Library, in the immediate vicinity of Friedrichstrasse station. There, on the central light column, our plaque commemorates August Wilhelm von Hofmann and the founding of the German Chemical Society in November 1867. After the Second World War, chemists in Germany regrouped and gave their society a new name as a sign of a new beginning: since 1949, we have followed in the footsteps of the first chemical society as the German Chemical Society. Many buildings and monuments in Berlin fell victim to the Second World War. The diorama had to make way for the construction of the city railway as early as 1876. When you read our plaque on the light column in front of the Jakob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum in Berlin-Mitte, you are standing with your back to the tram line and thus very close to the place where the diorama once offered its visitors exciting experiences.

In 1817, Goethe noted in the "Zeugnisse amtlicher Tätigkeit": "After Göttling's death, Serenissimus acquired his estate of apparatus and books, which was placed in Döbereiner's hands, also considerably increased with French glassware and other tools required by modern chemistry. A laboratory was built, a house and garden purchased for spacious living quarters and freer handling of dangerous objects." in: Georg Schwedt, Goethe as a Chemist, Springer, Heidelberg 1998, p. 146

On 10 July 2015, the GDCh and the University of Marburg invite you to the unveiling of the commemorative plaque "Historic Site of Chemistry" in Marburg. Johannes Hartmann (1568 - 1631) was appointed "Professor Publicus Chymiatriae" at the then still young University of Marburg by Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel, the scholar, and set up the world's first "Laboratorium Chymicum Publicum". He taught there until 1621, when he moved to Kassel as personal physician to the Hessian landgraves. The University of Marburg began in three secularised churches. Hartmann's laboratory was located in the Franciscan monastery founded in 1234, also known as the Barefoot Monastery. The buildings of the former Franciscan monastery, which have belonged to the university since 1528, are only partially preserved in their medieval structure today; the "Institute of Sports Science and Motology" of the Philipps University of Marburg at Barfüßer-Straße 1 rises above some of the surviving foundation walls. At the time, chemistry existed at universities only as an auxiliary science to medicine. Hartmann's trainees were therefore medical students. Chymiatry refers to the part of chemistry that is committed to medicine. The students were able to listen to lectures on chymiatry and at the same time prepare chymiatric formulations in the laboratory, thus practising practical chemistry and drug production. His laboratory diary from 1609, written in Latin, provides a vivid insight into Hartmann's work.

On 9 May 2014, the Old Chemical Institute in Bonn - where Friedrich August Kekulé began his work in 1867 and where he lived, taught and researched until his death - was included in the GDCh programme "Historic Sites of Chemistry". You can also download the invitation flyer. Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz (1829 - 1896) was a German chemist and natural scientist who laid the foundations for the modern structural theory of organic chemistry. His daydream, which is said to have led him to his benzene theory and the benzene ring and which he described in his speech at the 1890 Benzene Festival in Berlin, is famous.

Following the oxo-synthesis (hydroformylation) discovered by Otto Roelen in 1938, over twelve million tonnes of so-called oxo-alcohols are produced in Oberhausen-Holten and around the world every year. Many chemists are at least aware of his discovery, but only a few know the inventor. On 24 September 2013, the GDCh and the OXEA will honour the groundbreaking work of Otto Roelen (1897 - 1993) in the field of hydroformylation (oxo synthesis). This discovery (a reaction of olefins with carbon monoxide and hydrogen) was groundbreaking for the production of aldehydes and their derivatives (carboxylic acids and alcohols) from fossil raw materials. The Fischer-Tropsch process (production of hydrocarbons from carbon monoxide and hydrogen), which was first industrially practised at the Ruhrchemie plant, and the large-scale production of high-molecular polyethylene using the process developed by Karl Ziegler (1898 - 1973) are also honoured. The age of industrially used homogeneous catalysis began with the application of oxo-synthesis and Ziegler polymerisation.

With the chemical laboratory Fresenius Wiesbaden, which was opened by Carl Remigius Fresenius in 1848, the GDCh honoured the twelfth "Historical Site of Chemistry" on 18 July 2013 in Wiesbaden, thereby paying tribute to the beginnings of analytical chemistry. When Carl Remigius Fresenius was born in Frankfurt am Main on 28 December 1818, Frankfurt was a free city. His grandfather was a pastor in Frankfurt and, worth mentioning, Goethe's baptismal priest, his father a lawyer. C.R. Fresenius marks the beginning of a generation-spanning tradition of chemists in the Fresenius family. Becoming a chemist and leading the laboratory into the future is a task that many family members of subsequent generations have taken on to this day. C.F. Fresenius conducted his first chemical experiments in his parents' garden shed, joined the Stein'sche Apotheke in Frankfurt as an apprentice and studied chemistry and natural sciences in Bonn in 1840. And he was already publishing. The first edition of his "Anleitung zur Qualitativen Analyse" (Guide to Qualitative Analysis) is published. The year 1842 sees Fresenius as a state assistant at the university laboratory in Giessen and he completes his doctorate with - Justus Liebig! In 1844, when he was just 26 years old, he was a private lecturer in Giessen and a year later, in 1845, he was appointed professor at the Duchy of Nassau Agricultural Institute at Hof Geisberg near Wiesbaden. He marries and moves to Wiesbaden. With his wife Charlotte Rumpf, he had three sons and four daughters. Two of his sons, Theodor Wilhelm and Remigius Heinrich Fresenius, would later continue his laboratory. His great entrepreneurial idea was to found his own modern chemical laboratory, which would eliminate and fill the obstacles and gaps in the further development of the chemical sciences that he recognised at the time. The development of modern analytics took root in his laboratory - founded and characterised by C.R. Fresenius to this day. He acquired the building at Kapellenstraße 11 in Wiesbaden for the purposes of his project at his own expense and was not deterred by the turmoil of the March Revolution of 1848. With the approval of the Duchy of Nassau Ministry, he opened his laboratory on 1 May 1848 with five students and one assistant. The institute grew and a few years later there were 38 students and three assistants. In 1863, he also founded the Pharmaceutical Teaching Institute and in 1862 the Journal of Analytical Chemistry, which continues to this day under the name "Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry". In 1876/77 he organised the systematic training of food chemists in his laboratory, and in 1884 a bacteriology department was opened. From 1895, it became possible to prepare for the food chemist's examination in the Wiesbaden laboratory. C. R. Fresenius, the chemist, teacher, publicist and entrepreneur, had many of the later founders of the emerging chemical industry among his students. Here, too, he had a formative influence. His active life came to an end in 1897, when he died, leaving his descendants to ensure the company's continued development - through the ages to the present day. The GDCh has been honouring C. R. Fresenius with the Fresenius Award for special achievements in the field of analytical chemistry since 1961.

On 1 October 2012, the GDCh honoured the place of work of Friedrich von Heyden, Hermann Kolbe (Aspirin), Richard Seifert (Odol) and especially Richard Müller (Silicone) in 01445 Radebeul, Meißner Str. 35 (formerly Salicylic Acid Factory Dr. F. v. Heyden) Over 130 years ago, Dr. Friedrich von Heyden produced a synthetic active pharmaceutical ingredient for the first time on a technical scale - salicylic acid. He is therefore regarded as one of the founders of the modern pharmaceutical industry. A chemical factory was built in the village of Radebeul near Dresden to manufacture the substance. The old production and administration building, where Arevipharma GmbH is currently based, is a listed building. The chemist Schmitt, together with his students Richard Seifert and Friedrich von Heyden, improved the salicylic acid synthesis (Kolbe-Schmitt reaction) introduced by Hermann Kolbe. Kolbe's son Carl Kolbe, also a chemist, took over the management in 1884 and the factory from its founder in 1885. His daughter Johanna married the chemist Ernst von Meyer (University of Leipzig, later TH Dresden), who was also closely associated with the factory. After the death of Hermann Kolbe, who was a partner and scientific Head of v. Heyden's salicylic acid factory in Radebeul, Schmitt took over his duties. He was also one of the co-founders of the German Chemical Society, to whose Board he was elected in 1896. After attending the G.E. Lessing Gymnasium in Döbeln, Richard Müller studied chemistry at the University of Leipzig, where he gained his doctorate in 1931. He then worked as a laboratory manager at Chemische Fabrik v. Heyden in Radebeul from 1933. During his research there, he succeeded in 1941 in the technical production of methylchlorosilanes, which are the starting products for the production of silicones. Parallel to him, the American chemist Eugene G. Rochow developed the same process. As both carried out their development independently of each other, this process is now known as the Müller-Rochow synthesis. Müller played a key role in the reconstruction of the chemical industry in Radebeul after the end of the Second World War. In 1951, he received the National Prize of the GDR. In 1952, he became Head of VEB Silikon-Chemie in Nünchritz, a spin-off branch of Chemische Fabrik von Heyden, and in 1953 Scientific Director of the entire plant. He demonstrated his civil courage during the uprising of the Seventeenth of June 1953, when he was the spokesman for the workforce of the now state-owned Chemische Fabrik von Heyden. From 1954 to 1972, Müller taught as Head of the Institute for Silicone and Fluorocarbon Chemistry at the Technical University of Dresden, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1992.

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (* 30 March 1811 in Göttingen; † 16 August 1899 in Heidelberg) was a German chemist. Together with Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, he developed spectral analysis, which can be used to detect chemical elements in a highly specific manner. He perfected the Bunsen burner named after him and invented the Bunsen element and the Bunsen photometer. In 1852, Bunsen took over the chair from Leopold Gmelin at the University of Heidelberg. Here, too, he was given a new laboratory (with an official residence). Using nitric acid, he succeeded in producing pure metals such as chromium, magnesium, aluminium, manganese, sodium, barium, calcium and lithium by electrolysis. In his collaboration with Sir Henry Roscoe from 1852 onwards, the light-induced formation of hydrogen chloride from hydrogen and chlorine was investigated. After seven years, Bunsen broke off his collaboration with Roscoe in 1859 and worked with Kirchhoff on the spectral analysis of chemical elements. Spectroscopy was used to analyse the characteristic spectral lines when chemical substances were heated in flames. For this purpose, Bunsen perfected a special gas burner, which had previously been invented by Michael Faraday and was later to be called Bunsen's burner. Bunsen and Kirchhoff discovered the alkali metals caesium and rubidium in 1860/61 by analysing the spectrum of Dürkheim mineral water. Their studies also made it possible to explain the Fraunhofer lines and thus lay one of the most important foundations for modern astronomy.

The Wolfen film factory is of great importance as a "historical site of chemistry", as production initially began here in 1910 with cinema films. The Wolfen film factory developed into the largest film factory in Europe by the mid-1920s. Today's museum was established in 1993 in a former casting house. Visitors can see the entire production process of a photographic film using original machines at the original location. The most outstanding object is the original casting machine on which the world's first multi-layer colour film (Agfacolor-Neu) was produced in 1936. The combination of historical production site and extensive archive is unique in the world.

Honouring the place where Ernst Beckmann and other famous Leipzig scientists worked On 15 May 2009, the GDCh and the Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy at Leipzig University paid tribute to the pioneering work of Ernst Beckmann (1853-1923) in physical and synthetic organic chemistry.

Max Planck Institute for Coal Research Mülheim/Ruhr On 8 May 2008, the GDCh and the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim an der Ruhr honoured the pioneering work of Karl Ziegler (1898-1973) in the field of organic and organometallic chemistry and chemical catalysis. The patent applied for in 1953 for the production of high-molecular polyethylene at normal pressure and room temperature using "organometallic mixed catalysts" made from aluminium alkyl and transition metal compounds triggered a stormy development in the large-scale production of polyolefins, which are used in a wide range of applications as inexpensive plastics. To this day, research and development in the field of "Ziegler chemistry" has retained the greatest economic and technical significance. Karl Ziegler was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1963 together with Giulio Natta, who elucidated the stereochemistry of the polymerisation of propylene with Ziegler catalysts. Karl Ziegler was co-founder of the GDCh in 1946 and its first president until 1951. The GDCh awards the Karl Ziegler Award, donated by his daughter, Dr Marianne Witte, as well as the Karl Ziegler Young Scientist Award.

Old Chemical Institute of the Philipps University of Marburg Hans Meerwein (1879 - 1965) carried out fundamental work in the field of synthetic and mechanistic organic chemistry in this building. The discovery of the intermediate occurrence of carbenium ions was groundbreaking for the understanding of the course of organic chemical reactions. Many of the reactions he investigated bear his name today, such as the Wagner-Meerwein rearrangement. Hans Fischer, Adolf Butenandt, Otto Hahn, Karl Ziegler and Georg Wittig, who later won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, also worked here as students and young scientists. Programme of the festive event on 1.9.2006.

Country house "Energie" in Großbothen near Leipzig Wilhelm Ostwald (1853 - 1932) was one of the most important chemists of his time, whose name is still associated with many concepts today. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909 for his work in the field of catalysis, chemical equilibrium and reaction rates, i.e. the foundation of physical chemistry.

Old Chemical Institute of the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of Clemens Winkler (1838-1904), the Old Chemical Institute of the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg was included in the "Historical Sites of Chemistry" programme. The corresponding event took place on 20/21 October 2004 in Freiberg. Clemens Winkler was Professor of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the Freiberg Mining Academy from 1873 to 1902, where he discovered the element germanium in 1886, among other things.

Liebig Museum Giessen As one of the GDCh events for the Year of Chemistry 2003, the former Liebig laboratory and current Liebig Museum was included in the GDCh programme "Historical Sites of Chemistry" during the week of celebrations to mark the 200th birthday of Justus von Liebig on Friday, 16 May 2003. Justus von Liebig (1803 - 1873) designed and set up the first modern university laboratory for chemistry in this building. He founded the experimentally orientated study of chemistry here and taught and researched from 1824 to 1852. Together with his students, he carried out pioneering and ground-breaking work in the fields of analytical, organic, agricultural and physiological chemistry during this period.

Institute of Nuclear Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Unveiling of a commemorative plaque in memory of the joint work of Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann. On 22 February 2002, the 100th birthday of Fritz Straßmann, the GDCh honoured the joint work of Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann. They led to the discovery and interpretation of nuclear fission in 1938. At a festive event at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, where Straßmann taught and researched from 1946 to 1970, the commemorative plaque "Historic Sites of Science" was unveiled - the second of its kind in Germany. The Institute of Nuclear Chemistry at Mainz University has set up a dedicated website for this purpose.