The Göppingen site.
A gravel pit and a big dream.
An abandoned site behind the Göppingen-Boll railway viaduct, a depleted gravel pit, was acquired at a favourable price. This was where the dream of the successful construction company LEONHARD WEISS was to come true.
Immediately after his return from the First World War, Leonhard Weiß was able to secure his first major contracts. But economic times were hard, inflation was rising and when there was no work, there was little food for the family. Nevertheless, Leonhard Weiss continues to draw strength and joy from his projects. He invested every penny he earned in his company, and in 1921 he finally bought the depleted gravel pit in Göppingen.
Here, Leonhard Weiss literally laid the foundations for the future. He laid a siding in the middle of the pit and had the overburden delivered by rail. Everything had to be unloaded by hand and filled in metre by metre until the site was level. Later, Leonhard Weiss built a house and business premises next to a shed using simple means. In 1924, the Weiss family, which by then had five children, moved to the factory site. Ottilie Weiss planted vegetable plots and soon the little children were joined by a few farm animals in the yard.
As LEONHARD WEISS grew in the 1930s, and especially with the economic boom from 1955, the appearance of the site changed. Construction sheds were built to house machinery and tools, and in the 1950s the first administration building was erected to accommodate the growing number of employees. With mechanisation, construction machines such as wheel loaders, tracked rollers, vibrating rollers or the first asphalting machine, which stands next to the company building and makes the walls of the offices vibrate, took up more and more space on the site.
Despite a number of economic crises, the company continued to develop successfully over the following decades, a trend that was also reflected at the Göppingen site. A milestone is the new building for 280 employees, built in 2003, which had to be expanded in 2015. The modern central technology building was also inaugurated in 2018.
A multi-storey car park for employees will be built in 2024/2025, and the construction of a further wing in 2025 will create numerous new workplaces for a modern, yellow office world in the administration building on Leonhard-Weiss-Straße. The disused gravel pit is now one of the two modern headquarters of one of Europe's leading construction companies. A company in which more than 7,200 people live the joy of building every day and turn it into successful projects. Even Leonhard Weiss would hardly have dared to dream of such a thing.