Reappraisal and review of a formative century

Leonhard Moll was a true entrepreneur with courage and vision. On 1 October 1894, at the age of 24, he founded the construction firm Leonhard Moll and developed innovations to mechanise heavy manual processes. His goods lifts gave the young company significant cost advantages, driving rapid growth. Working on public commissions, the firm realised a number of prominent buildings, including the main building with its atrium at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Schwabing Hospital and the city’s wholesale market halls.

Moll also embraces the use of state-of-the-art machinery in civil engineering, with equipment designed on the basis of his own ideas. Before long, the company is commissioned beyond the borders of Bavaria, including to execute key construction sections for the canalisation of the River Main and on the Rhine–Herne Canal.

With the outbreak of the First World War, construction activity came to a standstill, above all owing to war-related staff shortages. In the 1920s, however, the Moll construction company continued to grow despite the global economic crisis, driven by major public contracts in power plant and hydraulic engineering as well as road construction. At the beginning of the decade, for the 3.2 million cubic metres of earth to be moved for the river Inn side canal at Töging, the company deployed 44 narrow-gauge locomotives and 566 tipping wagons – all owned by the firm itself.

During these years, the company was also able to realise further landmark buildings, including the BMW production halls and the Deutsches Museum. By the mid-1920s, its workforce already numbered 3,000 employees. Related business areas such as a sawmill, a gravel works and a brickworks had by then also been added to the company. In 1929, Moll founded LM Betonwerke and, with the production of concrete railway sleepers, laid the foundations for its industrial activities.

The projects in the 1930s, such as the Isar Bridge in Tölz as Germany's first tarred road surface, the Ludwig Bridge in Munich and Munich-Riem Airport, show how strongly the company had established itself. In 1939, Leonhard Moll founded a company provident fund for the employees of his company. It helps in emergencies and still pays company pensions today.

The era of National Socialism also marked the beginning of a dark chapter for the company. On 8 June 1938, the Supreme Building Authority of the Bavarian State Ministry informed the representatives of the Jewish Community as a "Führer order" that the main synagogue had to be demolished. On the orders of the City of Munich, the construction company Leonhard Moll carried out the demolition.

Despite the short deadline for the demolition and blasting work, the construction company Leonhard Moll made it possible for the new organ, which had been sold by the Jewish community to the Archbishop's Ordinariate at cost price, to be removed. At the request of the Jewish community, Moll secured the copper box containing the founding documents from the foundation stone. Today it is once again in the possession of the Jewish Community for Munich and Upper Bavaria. As late as 1931, the construction company Leonhard Moll carried out the carpentry work on the ceiling above the prayer hall during the construction of the "Synagogue of the Eastern Jews" in Reichenbachstraße.

Even before the Second World War, the construction industry was integrated into the wartime economic system of the Organisation Todt - OT for short. This put an end to free entrepreneurial decision-making. Like all German construction companies, Leonhard Moll was assigned construction projects, labour - forced labour at the end of the war -, energy and building materials that were important to the war effort.

From mid-1944, these construction projects included the semi-underground production facilities for the first Me 262 jet fighter at Kaufering near Landsberg, which were carried out by the construction companies Dyckerhoff & Widmann, Held & Francke, Philipp Holzmann, Leonhard Moll, Karl Stöhr and Wayss & Freitag. This armaments project of the OT-Einsatzgruppe has left its mark on the history of the German construction industry right up to the present day.

The role of the Moll construction company during the Nazi regime is currently being analysed in detail by the independent Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte e.V. in Frankfurt am Main. The results of the comprehensive study should be available at the beginning of 2027 and will then also be summarised here.

Like all other so-called war-relevant companies, the Leonhard Moll company is placed under the control of the military government in 1945. The company founder, Kommerzienrat Leonhard Moll, dies in October 1945, but his three sons Hermann, Leonhard and Heinz Moll are able to take possession of the construction company again at the turn of the year 1948/49. They split the management of the various divisions (building construction, civil engineering, road construction, concrete works and timber works) between them.

The reconstruction of devastated cities and infrastructure is what defines the post-war years. In Munich, a city in ruins with up to 7.5 million cubic metres of rubble, the great “Rama dama” – the clearing of the debris – begins. On narrow-gauge tracks, Moll construction locomotives haul tipping wagons loaded with rubble to the city’s man-made mounds. At the same time, from October 1944 onwards, Moll locomotives with converted tipping wagons run through the city in place of the destroyed tram system. The people of Munich nickname them the “Bockerlbahn”. One of these locomotives can now be seen in the transport section of the Deutsches Museum. The company also carries out repair and restoration works at the Deutsches Museum, the Munich Residenz and Ludwig Maximilian University.

During the early years of the economic boom, buildings were constructed that continue to shape Munich’s cityscape to this day and are now regarded as architectural “classics”: among them the new entrance hall of Munich Central Station, the so-called Maxburg on Lenbachplatz, the headquarters of Bavarian Broadcasting (Bayerischer Rundfunk) and the Consulate General of the United States. Beyond the borders of the Bavarian capital, the company also secured major civil engineering contracts – including the Inn river power stations, the canalisation of the Moselle and the construction of extensive sections of the federal motorways.

At the end of the 1960s, the founder's grandsons, Dr Hans, Gerhard and Franz Moll, take over the management of the company. Moll is now involved in the construction of the sports facilities for the Olympic Games in Munich and in the construction of large sections of the suburban and underground railway network. Moll is also involved in building the underground railway network in Vienna and under the Alster in Hamburg under the most difficult technical conditions. At the beginning of the 1970s, the company establishes business contacts in Saudi Arabia. Moll builds several large cement works, five gas turbine power plants and 50 transformer stations for the electricity supply there.

In Munich, the company is involved in almost all the major construction projects of the coming years - from the Hypo-Hochhaus to the Neue Pinakothek, from the major Munich Franz-Josef-Strauß Airport to the workshops of the Bavarian State Opera and the University of Film and Television. At the end of the 1980s, the construction branches of Leonhard Moll GmbH & Co. KG in Munich, Chemnitz and Frankfurt am Main were reorganised into independent construction companies. In 1994, the construction group is incorporated into Leonhard Moll AG.

To mark the company's 100th anniversary in 1994, Leonhard Moll foundations are set up at the Technical University and the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich with assets totalling DM 1 million. Each year, they award four scholarships to Eastern European and Israeli students who are supported by Moll during their stay in Munich. In 1997, Leonhard Moll AG transfers its construction activities to the Austrian Bau Holding AG.

In the new century, the Moll Group significantly expands its industrial involvement. In 1978, it had already acquired the company Keimfarben, which has been producing natural and breathable mineral-based paints for indoor and outdoor use since 1878, as a second industrial pillar alongside the production of railway concrete sleepers that had existed since the end of the 1920s. Due to their durability and colour guarantee, Keimfarben products are valued worldwide and are used for sophisticated and prominent buildings.

In 2015, a comparatively young company is integrated into the Moll Group: TechnoPhysik Group. It produces microfibre boards and moulded parts and vermiculite products at four locations in Germany, Slovenia and Austria as natural-based and asbestos-free solutions for heating technology and fire protection in household appliances and for the electrical and gas heating industry. From the mid-teens, acquisitions and the establishment of new plants also took place in the existing business division of Leonhard Moll Betonwerke, which expanded rapidly with a total of ten new locations in five countries (UK, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia) and extended its market leadership in the production of concrete sleepers internationally.

The comprehensive expertise we have built up over the years in all areas of building construction and civil engineering as well as ancillary construction trades has also resulted in our current expertise in the property sector. As a founding member of Munich's largest municipal housing association in 1928, we now develop, maintain and manage our own and third-party property under the umbrella of Moll Immobilien.