Wayss & Freytag will joint stock company
With assistance of Pfälzische Bank (Palatine Bank) the general partnership was changed into a joint-stock company, the Wayss & Freytag AG, on February 1, 1900. The share capital was 1.2 m marks (Reichsmark). The board of the JSC consisted of Conrad Freytag and his son-in-law Otto Meyer. G. A. Wayss became Chairman of the Supervisory Board and remained in this position until he finally left the company in 1903. His position in the supervisory board was then taken over by councillor of commerce Eßwein of Pfälzische Bank.
The newly founded company had to spend a lot of financial resources for the scientific research of monolithic reinforced concrete construction, since Hennebique’s theoretical approach and the practical construction details were not yet fully developed. Unfortunately, a building which was built by a licensee of Hennebique’s in Basel collapsed on August 28, 1901, so that confidence in the new construction method suffered extremely. Due to this, W&F ordered extensive experiments at the technical university of Stuttgart to intensify the knowledge of the elastic characteristics of steel and concrete. The scientific research into reinforced concrete construction was the work of a lifetime of the ingenious engineer Emil Mörsch.