In 1961, Focke Wulf, Weserflug and Hamburger Flugzeugbau had joined forces in the Entwicklungsring Nord (ERNO) to develop rockets, and the merger mentioned above was a natural outcome of this alliance.
In 1981 VFW was taken over by Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), which in its turn was taken over by in 1989 by DASA. Afterwards the descendant of ERNO was active as the space infrastructure division of Astrium contributing parts to the European Ariane launcher system, and to the International Space Station. In June 2003, it became part of EADS Space Transportation.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump