Draft:Kori (Unternehmen)

H. Kori GmbH was a Berlin-based company specializing in air heating construction that existed from 1887 to 2012.

Founding
The company was founded in 1887 in Berlin by the engineer Heinrich Kori (February 21, 1860 - June 26, 1938) at Dennewitzstrasse 35 in Berlin. He became known for his Kori waste incineration furnaces and Calorifiers for air heating, which were particularly used in church buildings.

Geschäftszweige and Products
H. Kori GmbH was initially specialized in incinerators for the disposal of animal carcasses. Gradually, the company's activities expanded to the construction of facilities for the incineration of all kinds of waste and crematoriums.

Involvement in the Holocaust
During the Holocaust Kori delivered, Muck like the company J. A. Topf & Söhne in Erfurt, cremation ovens for the extermination process of the concentration camp victims in the gas chambers of the concentration and death camps. Kori initially mainly provided transportable cremation ovens, which were later walled in (or permanently installed), but Kori also built permanently constructed crematorium ovens in the camps. While the Topf & Söhne company increased the number of cremation chambers in its ovens, Kori consistently produced single muffle ovens.

Among other things, Kori installed crematorium ovens in the concentration camps Bergen-Belsen, Blechhammer, Dachau, Ebensee, Flossenbürg, Groß-Rosen, Hersbruck, Majdanek, Mauthausen, Melk, Mittelbau-Dora, Natzweiler-Struthof, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Trzebinia and Vught. Kori also supplied a transportable cremation oven for the Buchenwald concentration camp, while the stationary ovens there came from the Topf & Söhne company. Kori crematorium ovens were also located in the Pirna-Sonnenstein and Hartheim Death camps. The Kori company is mentioned at the Topf & Söhne memorial site.

After the Second World War
After the Second World War, Kori continued its business activities.

Around 1975 the business areas in which Kori operated included church and large-scale heating systems, central heating and ventilation systems, incineration furnaces for waste of all types, garbage disposal systems and combustion systems. Since the company premises needed to be renovated, the company moved to Berlin-Neukölln, Rudower Straße 122, in 1976, where it continued to produce until around 2003.

After production ceased, Kori continued to exist as a company for nine years. The assetless company was dissolved in 2012 by the Charlottenburg District Court (Berlin) and removed from the commercial register.

Since 2011 Engaged citizens have been vying to create a memorial to Kori. In 2019, the then SPD-run district office wrote that research still needed to be done. The office of the district mayor Jörn Oltmann (Greens), who has been in office since November 2021, wrote that “remembrance work is very important” to the office. When it comes to Kori, they want to wait for further research “in order to be able to provide joint advice based on sound knowledge”. Then there would be a symposium, “democratic voting processes” and possibly an art competition. One employee wrote that only after all this could “the erection of a memorial plaque/memorial be considered.”