Location Göppingen.
A town full of history and future
LEONHARD WEISS is at home in many countries – wherever the construction sites are. Just like its founder, Leonhard Weiss, who spent much of his young life as a traveller at the end of the 19th century, always pitching his tent with his family wherever the railway network was being expanded. But there was one place where he finally put down roots. Where he raised a family and bought land for his business to grow and prosper. The heart of LEONHARD WEISS beats for and in this place. In 2003, the company underlined this with the construction of a new administration building on Fabrikstraße in Göppingen – in the form of an angular 'W', as used by the company founder in his logo.
The history of the Göppingen site actually begins in Karlstraße in Göppingen. From there, Leonhard Weiß ran his business from a rented flat. It was not until 1921 that he bought a disused gravel pit at the Göppingen-Boll railway crossing and filled it in. Step by step, the LEONHARD WEISS site was built on Fabrikstrasse, part of which was named after the founder 110 years later.
The site as it looks today is the result of a joint effort. Of all the people who have put their heart and soul into it.
In 1924, Leonhard Weiß builds a residential and office building. His children play among the construction machines, his wife Ottilie plants a vegetable garden and runs a small farm, which helps them to survive the lean times of the economic crisis and inflation. After the war, the company grows rapidly. LEONHARD WEISS builds a new office building and acquires further plots of land on which warehouses and social buildings are erected from the 1980s onwards. After the organisational merger of the Crailsheim and Göppingen sites in 1998, LEONHARD WEISS built new administration buildings at the main sites. First in Satteldorf in 2001, then in Göppingen in 2003.
The new administration building marks the beginning of the next chapter in the history of the Göppingen site. The 3,600 square meters of office space provide workspace for 280 employees who were previously spread across three locations. The building was constructed in-house in just 13 months: demolition of the disused factory building began in the summer of 2002, the topping-out ceremony was held in April 2003, and the employees moved into the modern office building at the end of November 2003
For us, an investment in the site is always a long-term investment in the future. A future in which our future employees can also develop and experience the joy of building.
And the story continues: in 2018, a new central technical building will be built on the LEONHARD WEISS site, followed by a new formwork hall with an office building in 2023. In 2024, construction will begin on a new multi-storey car park for employees, and in 2025 a new wing will be added to the administration building. LEONHARD WEISS is investing a total of around 40 million euros in its founding location.
The heart of LEONHARD WEISS is in Göppingen, where the Fils river rushes past on one side and the Deutsche Bahn trains on the other. The place that tells of past generations and the future of the LW family.