Company chronicle

From 1989 The dawn of a new era

New challenges in a re-unified Germany
As promising as the outlook for the location of today's Bundesdruckerei seemed to be at the end of the 19th century in the "newspaper district" of the young Reich capital, the more deserted and desolate the property appeared in the long years of the Cold War. Even true Berliners appeared to have forgotten that here, right in the former centre of a flourishing city, one of the city's longest-standing companies was still responsible for printing German banknotes, postage stamps and ID documents.

This did not change until implementation of a new overall urban development plan started at the beginning of the 1990s after German re-unification. Bundesdruckerei was part of this new development plan, along with the company's state-of-the-art industrial buildings for banknote production and the construction of a new, high-security vault never before seen in Europe.

For the first time in its long history at this location, the high-security "city in the city" deliberately embraced its urban surroundings. Bundesdruckerei's cosmopolitan philosophy and deep roots in Berlin's political and social landscape are perfectly expressed by the new buildings with their architectural design and language.

German re-unification brought with it new challenges for Bundesdruckerei. Demand for ID documents and banknotes grew enormously in 1990/91. In 1991 alone, the company delivered almost 15 million ID documents.

One year later, the foundation stone for a modern high-security company was laid. Together with Preussag AG, Bundesdruckerei founded UNIQA-Chipkartensysteme GmbH which in 1993 acquired ORGA-Kartensysteme GmbH in order to develop and sell advanced chip technologies and high-performance processor cards.