CHRISTMANN + PFEIFER turns 100 this year. Closely linked to the company's history is the solidarity of its employees. C + P is a family business in two senses of the word. Not only because the company has always remained in family hands. But also because entire families of employees have helped to write the success story.

Just one example, representative of many others: The Ditze family. Their history with the company began 60 years ago. Paul Ditze started working at CHRISTMANN + PFEIFER in 1965. Today, his two sons Dirk and Torsten and his granddaughter Jana are still working in the company.

The Starting Point

It all started rather by chance. Paul Ditze was born in Lower Saxony, trained as a Lathe Operator there and, at the age of 18 and with a great desire to travel the world, boarded a train to Frankfurt am Main. There he found work as a bridge builder at a steel construction company. One day, in the early 1960s, he is sent to a construction site in the central Hessian "Hinterland" for assembly work. He has to stay longer and falls in love with a young lady. Frankfurt is now passé.

A job is quickly found in his new home: There is a growing steel construction company in Breidenbach, for which he now assembles hall structures throughout Germany: CHRISTMANN + PFEIFER. The company has just been rebuilt after a devastating fire when he starts there.

In the 1960s, four of the couple's children were born, including Dirk and Torsten. For the children, it is a matter of fact that their father is on the road a lot for the company. “At the end of the 1970s, my father once took me for a walk to a construction site on the doorstep in Bad Laasphe and showed me around,” Dirk recalls one of the rare excursions into his father's world of work.

The Next Generation of Steel Workers

In 1982, Dirk himself followed in his father's footsteps and began his training as a Structural Steel Fitter at C + P. “Somehow it was the obvious thing to do.” A year later, his brother Torsten also started out in the training workshop. “With the aptitude test and the family affiliation, starting at CHRISTMANN + PFEIFER was a done deal. In fact, many other apprentices were also children of employees, that was just the way it was here at the time.” From then on, there were morning carpools in the VW Beetle to the training workshop. “The apprenticeship years really weren't master years,” he recalls. But the good atmosphere among the apprentices and colleagues made up for all the hardship - and still makes the work enjoyable today.

42 years after starting his apprenticeship, Torsten Ditze is still standing in the hall where he once began his training. He has experienced three Managing Directors and has worked in very different jobs: “At first I tacked and welded, then I went into the machine room, initially at the saw and drilling machine. Today I work on the plasma cutting machine.” He can also tell many of an anecdote. For example, the flood of 1984, when the only way to get into the hall flooded with water was via wooden planks.

One company, different career paths

And where are the family members today? Until father Paul retired in 2003, he worked in assembly. “We never actually met in our day-to-day work!” says Torsten Ditze. Since 2010, also the brothers do not meet often any more. Until then, Torsten and Dirk had worked together in production, with Dirk switching to work preparation in 2000. From 2010, he then headed up production at the plant in Erfurt, Thuringia, before moving on to Elster in Saxony-Anhalt. Dirk has been at the headquarters in Angelburg since 2019 and, as Project Manager, coordinates steel construction projects throughout the country, currently the construction of a BMW branch in Leipzig. What does he appreciate about his employer and his workplace? “There's just a good atmosphere here, people treat each other with respect!”

From grandfather to granddaughter

Dirk's daughter Jana began her training at C + P in the technical office in Angelburg as a Technical Draughtswoman in 2009, continuing the family tradition. “I always preferred building Playmobil houses to actually playing role-playing games with them,” she recalls.

During the three and a half years of training, she learns to draw in 2D. She briefly leaves the company again to complete her vocational baccalaureate, but then returns as a dual student and graduates as a Civil Engineer. She now works as a Civil Engineer and Panning Coordinator on the construction site, discusses the project with clients, drives projects forward during the tendering and planning phase and, as one of the interfaces, brings together individual services in the team. Today, planning is done in 3D and the building is constructed virtually in advance using BIM (Building Information Modeling).

And anyway: “It's amazing how the company has changed over the years. So exciting!”, the older generations in particular compare then and now. Relocations, plant expansions, new locations, new business areas: “You just automatically grow with it!”

Assembly, production, planning, project management: the Ditze family is also an example of how diverse the career opportunities in the company are. “I'd say we can confirm that it's a family atmosphere here,” all three generations of the Ditzes agree.