By the time of Albert Boehringer's death in 1939, the company he
founded had grown to one employing 1,500 people. His two sons,
Albert and Ernst Boehringer, and his son-in-law, Julius Liebrecht,
took over the family business, having served on the company's Board
of Directors since the 1920s.
Research and development continued throughout the Second World
War but the production of organic acids was discontinued temporarily.
A number of new agents were introduced during and after the war.
Citric acid production resumed in 1946 and lactic acid production
was restarted in 1952 to run for a further 20 years.
By 1955, the general economic boom that came with reconstruction
had produced a fourfold increase in the company's workforce from
that of 1939. New and highly effective
drugs were introduced in the late fifties, forming the basis of
the established pillars of Boehringer Ingelheim's research
programmes: agents for the treatment of respiratory, cardiovascular
and gastrointestinal diseases.
The importance of foreign markets for a chemical/pharmaceutical
concern was recognised by the founder's second son, Dr Ernst
Boehringer. A home-based subsidiary had already been established in
1946 when the Thomae production unit in Biberach an der Riss
(Germany) was added to the Boehringer's two existing plants.
Subsidiaries in Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, France and Great
Britain followed.
Although expansion beyond Europe was via agencies initially, the
company began to build up its own sites around
the world and to make a number of acquisitions in both the
chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
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