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The Askania Works was founded in 1871 by Carl Bamberg, son of a watchmaker and protégé of Carl Zeiss, in the Berlin suburb of Friedenau. Bamberg’s intent was to supply high-quality precision devices for navigation, astronomy and scientific research. Carl Bamberg, the founder, dies in 1892 but his family carried on the work of the firm. By 1914 the firm produced a wide variety of instruments including submarine compasses, submarine periscopes, pressure gauges for high-altitude balloons, motion picture cameras and projectors and other geophysical devices.

In 1921 the firm of Carl Bamberg merged with the Centralwerkstatt Dessau to form the Askania Works, and expanded its product line into aircraft instruments, aerial navigation devices, night-flying equipment and stereoscopic cameras for aerial survey work. As the international situation permitted, the firm also resumed the manufacture of gyrocompasses and rangefinders for naval warships.

In 1938 the firm founded a subsidiary in Überlingen, Bodenseewerk AG to undertake developmental work under contract for the Air Ministry, and, from 1939, the Defence Ministry. Details of the work performed by this subsidiary have not been disclosed.


Subsidiaries of the firm include:

Bodenseewerk AG, Überlingen (developmental work)

The firm was founded in 1923 as Radiotelefon und Apparatefabrik Ideal, a produced of head phones for wireless sets. The founders insisted on manufacturing a high quality product and marked those head phones that passed its quality control tests with a blue test seal. Soon consumers were asking only for head phones marked with “the blue point” and in 1924 the firm adopted “Blaupunkt” as the brand name for its products. The name was formally adopted for the firm in 1938.

In addition to its head phones – used for home and commercial wireless – the firm marketed electron tubes under the designations Ampladyn, Heliodyn and Superdyn, and eventually marketed its own wireless sets. In 1932 it introduced the Autosuper AS-5, the first European automobile wireless set. A luxury article priced at more than 450 Reichsmarks the AS-5 receiver operated on the medium and long wave lengths, and became the entrée for the firm to branch out into wireless sets for other motor vehicles – including tanks for the German Heer.

At the present time the firm employs 2,600 workers at its main factory in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, with a secondary factory at Hildesheim. Its products include wireless sets for home, commercial, military and aviation use, electron tubes for specialist applications, condensers and other materials for telecommunications.

Carl Lorenz, a Hannoverian-born German technician and entrepreneur joined the Berlin-based firm Telegraphenbauanstalt und Pendeluhrenfabrik Wilhelm Horn in 1878; two years later the firm had become known as Horn und Lorenz in recognition of the contributions made by Lorenz to the firm’s line of telegraphs and other electro-mechanical equipment used on the Prussian railways. Upon the death of Carl Lorenz in 1889 his brother, Alfred Lorenz, took charge of the expanding firm which emerged as a joint stock company.

In the 1920s the firm entered into technical exchange agreements with the American International Telephone and Telegraph Company, and expanded its line of products to include such teletypewriters, teleprinters, cryptological equipment, wireless transmitters, receivers and transceivers – the latter including wireless radio-telegraphs for aircraft use – and was developing the blind landing approach and aerial navigation equipment for which its name was to become synonymous. The firm’s principal works was located in Berlin-Tempelhof, and in 1930 employed more than 2,700 workers.

The firm continued to enjoy a high volume of sales during the 1930s, licensing its blind-landing equipment to many nations across Europe. In 1936 in acquired the shares of the Süddeutsche Telefon Apparate, Kabel und Drahtwerke AG of Nürnberg, and transferred to that facility production of commercial wireless sets and the new broadcast television receiver. In 1940 it acquired the works of the Schaub Apparatebau Gesellschaft of Pforzheim-Dillweißenstein to provide additional factory space for the production of Decimeter-Telegraphy equipment on behalf of the Luftwaffe.

The firm was founded in January 1923 by the brothers Siegmund and David Ludwig as Radiofrequenz GmbH, occupying facilities in the mechanical workshop of defunct firm of Grüttner und Lütgert Berlin-Friedenau. Initially the firm manufactured components for commercial wireless receivers, electron tubes, loud-speakers and resistors. In 1924 further production facilities were acquired in Berlin-Steglitz, and the firm acquired the solder-making facilities of Eudarit-Pressgut GmbH. In 1926 the firm produced the first of its own line of wireless receivers, the Ortsempfänger OE333. In 1927 the noted physicist Manfred von Ardenne became associated with the firm.

In 1929 the firm entered into a partnership with Fernseh AG to develop the technology of broadcast television, with Von Ardenne demonstrating such a system in 1931. In 1933 the Ludwig brothers sold their interests in the firm to a group of outside investors led by Von Ardenne, who then took charge as managing director while retaining control of product development. With increased financial strength the firm was able to begin the production of television transmitting and receiving equipment and was also able to obtain contracts with the Heer and the Luftwaffe for the manufacture of wireless transmitters of varied sort.

In 1938 the firm purchased the works of Peter Grassmann Metallwarenfabrik AG in Berlin-Fichtenau and re-equipped it for the production of wireless transmitters and receivers under contract to the Heer. With the acquisition of a third factory the total employment rose to 2,000 workers, including more than 200 engaged in new product research.

The firm was founded in 1903 pursuant to an Imperial decree that ordered the formation of Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie System Telefunken which brought together the wireless telegraph interests of the firm Siemens und Halske and the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft. The joint firm had Georg Graf von Arco as its first technical director and produced the excellent wireless communication equipment used by the Imperial German Army and Navy during the Great War. Following that conflict the firm moved quickly into the production of wireless transmitters and receivers for commercial use.

Taking advantage of the postwar boom in broadcast wireless and television the firm produced a wide variety of tubes employed in amplification of radio waves, and marketed its own brand of wireless receivers for the home market. It was one of the first German firms to manufacture television receivers using technology licenced from Fernseh AG. It also developed some of the earliest equipment for the national Decimeter Telegraphy air warning network.

At the present time the firm operates five factories in the area of Berlin:

Berlin-Charlottenburg for high-frequency engineering for defence purposes
Berlin-Kreuzberg for commercial and defence wireless sets
Berlin-Reinickendorf for high-frequency engineering for defence purposes
Berlin-Schöneberg for long-distance communications technology
Berlin-Zehlendorf for television broadcast and receiving equipment

The firm of August Schwer und Söhne, watchmakers, was founded in 1856 in the town of Triberg in the Black Forest region of Baden. In the latter portion of the Nineteenth Century it established a reputation for the manufacture of reliable precision watches and timekeeping equipment, and, in the early Twentieth Century, became involved in the manufacture of time fuzes for artillery shells. The end of the Great War saw the end of such military business, and the firm re-directed its efforts towards the new and expanding field of wireless communication. The firm was reorganised on a joint-stock basis, fresh capital was obtained and the current corporate style adopted in 1923.

In that year the firm began the manufacture of components for wireless transmitters and receivers, which proved successful. Production of transformers for wireless applications began in 1925, and in 1926 the firm began to offer wireless enthusiasts complete kits for wireless receivers. In the following year the firm introduced the first of its fully-assembled wireless receivers. While the firm’s output was small compared with the likes of Siemens or Telefunken, its products were of high precision. This led the firm to develop and manufacture laboratory instruments, such as oscilloscopes, in addition to its wireless equipment.

This firm was founded in October 1904 by the engineers Franz Joseph Koch and Karl August Sterzel to manufacture specialised scientific equipment and instruments. It manufactured transformers, X-Ray machines, instrument transformers and custom laboratory equipment. By 1940 more than thirty different types of X-Ray equipment had been developed and manufactured by the firm, and production had exceeded more than twelve thousand complete units. Production of transformers had in 1922 been relocated to a branch factory in Dresden-Mickten. In 1937 it acquired the firm of Franz Küstner, another Dresden manufacturer of scientific and medical apparatus.

This concern was organised in January 1933 by the engineers Paul Günther Erbslöh and Hans Karl von Willisen at the behest of Rudolf Kühnholds, director of the Kriegsmarine’s communications research department. In 1932 the two had proposed to the Kriegsmarine development of an apparatus to detect ships through the reflection of radio waves. The firm was able to demonstrate a prototype to the Kriegsmarine staff in September 1934, and the firm subsequently received contracts for electronic detection devices and other high-frequency equipment.

Based in the city of Kiel, this firm was established in 1926 to undertake the manufacture of echo-sounding apparatus and similar nautical equipment, including pitometers and fathometers. It cooperated with the Kriegsmarine in the development of hydrophones and anti-submarine detection equipment. It presently is a major supplier of electronic equipment to the Kriegsmarine and the navies of friendly nations.

In 1889 the engineers Max Körting and Wilhelm Mathiesen founded in Leipzig a firm for the production of electric arc lamps, Bogenlampenfabrik Körting und Mathiesen. In the years prior to the Great War the firm was Germany’s largest manufacturer of road and street lamps; with the coming of peace the firm diversified into the production of induction coils and power supply units for wireless units. In 1925 the electrical engineer Gerhard Dietz joined the firm and it embarked on the development of new products, including transformers, load amplifiers and dynamic loud speakers.

In 1932 the firm introduced the first of a line of wireless receivers, which it rapidly expanded in to include super heterodyne receivers; by 1933 the firm had taken a six-percent share of the German market for wireless receivers and was exporting its products to several nations abroad. In 1935 the firm introduced wireless receivers for the automotive industry, and by 1938 it was employing more than three thousand workers producing wireless receivers for motor vehicle and aviation use, as well as a wide range of components and wireless valves.

This firm was founded in 1923 to undertake the manufacture and sale of sound reproduction equipment and wireless components. In 1926 the firm produced a rectified power supply which could convert household electric current to the direct current required by wireless receivers. The production of high-quality turntables for phonograph recording was begun in 1930, and two years later the firm began production of high-end phonographs for consumer use. In 1936 the firm entered the market for military wireless equipment by constructing D.T. equipment under subcontract; it followed this with the manufacture of wireless receivers and transmitters for the Heer. In addition to the manufacture of D.T. equipment, microphones, amplifiers, power supplies, turntables and speakers, the firm produces wireless valves on a large scale.

This electro-technical firm was founded in 1921 by engineer Max Braun for the manufacture of components for the expanding wireless broadcasting industry. A complete broadcast receiver set was introduced for sale in 1923, and in 1932 the firm introduced the first combination set that featured both a wireless receiver and a record player in a single compact unit. The firm prospered on the sale of its combination sets, which were the size and weight of a small piece of luggage, and quite portable. In 1939 output was proceeding at the rate of three hundred units per week. In addition the firm continued to manufacture components for other electronic equipment, air navigation equipment to designs supplied by the Defence Ministry as well as a proprietary line of pocket torches. In 1940, the firm moved to new and larger facilities at Kronberg im Taunus.

This factory was established in 1919 as Wohleber und Compangie in Wien-Trattnerhof. It manufactured components for wireless transmitters and receivers and in 1924 marketed its first complete wireless receiver under the brand name “Radiola”. The firm adopted its current corporate style in 1926 upon becoming a joint stock company.

It presently manufactures receivers and transmitting equipment for the civil market and produces a variety of wireless electronic equipment under contract to the Defence Ministry.

This works had been founded in 1914 as a branch of the Zeiss concern to manufacture optical equipment for the Imperial and Royal Army; following the collapse of the Hapsburg Monarchy in 1917 it stood empty for some time until the works was acquired by the Schrack concern by whom it was re-equipped to manufacture valves for wireless broadcasting and reception. The current corporate style was adopted in 1922.

The firm introduced its first wireless receiver for domestic use in 1935, and since 1937 it has been engaged in manufacturing wireless apparatus under contract to the Defence Ministry for use in ships and aircraft.

The firm was founded in 1898 in Hannover by the German-American Emil Berliner and his brother Josef to manufacture gramophone records, and later, phonograph records. In 1915 the firm acquired the Leipziger Musikwerke ’Beka’, a competitor, and moved its corporate offices fro Hannover to Berlin. Following a reorganisation in the wake of the Great War, in which the firm of Siemens und Halske came to be the largest stockholder, the firm acquired the firm of Carl Lindström, which manufactured phonograph records under the Electrola label. Through the Lindström firm it also acquired control of the General Phonograph Corporation, an American manufacturer of phonograph records which marketed its product under the Okeh label.

Presently phonograph records are produced under the Deutsche Grammophon (chiefly classical music), Beka (regional specialties) and Electrola (popular) labels, in addition to the activities of the General Phonograph Corporation.

The entrepreneur Christian Steidinger and his older brother Josef opened in 1900 a workshop for the production of clock components in the town of St. Georgen in the Schwarzwald. By 1907 their workshop was employing twenty-five workers, manufacturing both clock components and the mechanisms of gramophones. In 1927 the firm developed a combination spring drive and electro-motor as a mechanism for phonograph turntables, which it marketed under the name “Dual”. In addition to selling the combination drives to other firms, the Steidinger works began the manufacture of phonograph turntables under that same name.

Turntables manufactured by the firm have established a reputation for quality across the nation and are widely exported; mechanisms of its design and manufacture are incorporated into turntables manufactured by several other German firms. At the present time the firm employs some fifteen-hundred workers at its facility in St. Georgen and in sales agencies in the major cities of Germany.

In 1892 Johann Kapsch founded in Wien a workshop for the manufacture of precision mechanical equipment, some of which was sold to the Imperial and Royal Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. The firm was organised as a joint stock company in 1916. With the development of electrical engineering the firm expanded its product range to include electro-chemical items such as batteries and condensers. In 1923 the firm marketed its first wireless broadcast receiver, and subsequently manufactured a wide range of telegraph, telephone and wireless equipment for the Austrian home market. In 1930 the firm carried out the first demonstration of broadcast television, though marketing of such equipment would not proceed for many years.

In the 1930s the firm expanded its business toward the southeastern Europe, establishing strategic partnerships with local manufacturing firms in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. It presently employs some seven hundred workers at its factory in Wien.

The Siedle firm was founded in 1750, in Neukirch, as a foundry, manufacturing bells, weights and cast parts for watch and clock making. In 1870 the firm relocated to Furtwangen and adopted its present name. By 1885 demand for its output of watch and clock parts had declined and to replace them the firm began the production of telegraphy equipment; from 1900 it also produced telephone sets and accessories. In the period following the Great War it concentrated its efforts on the manufacture of internal telephone systems for large industrial clients. In 1935 came its innovative breakthrough with the marketing of the “Portavox” door loud-speaker system, the first of its kind. Since then the “Portavox” has become the firm’s principal product, installed in many industrial establishments, commercial buildings and apartment blocks.

This firm was founded in 1901 to undertake the development and manufacture of a wide variety of scientific instruments and precision electrical test equipment including: voltmeters, ammeters, ohmmeters, phase meters, frequency analyzers, insulation testers, galvanometers, precision resistors, capacitors and bridges. The firm holds sixty-eight and fifty-six foreign patents in the field of electric and electronic test equipment. The firm’s factory at Frankfurt factories in Königstrasse, Clemensstrasse, Wildunger Strasse, Falkstrasse and Leipziger Strasse cover nearly thirteen-thousand square meters of floor space, and employ more than seven hundred workers.