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In 1862 instrument maker Georg Michael Pfaff established a workshop for the manufacture of sewing machines in the town of Kaiserslautern; since that time the firm has grown to become one of Germany’s most prominent manufacturers of sewing machines and commercial textile machinery. By the 1890s the firm employed more than four hundred workers who produced more than 25,000 sewing machines annually, more than half of which were exported. Commercial sewing machines were first introduced in 1908, and by 1910 the firm had produced its one-millionth home sewing machine, which remains in the historical museum at Speyer to this day.

The death of the founder prompted the conversion of the firm to a joint-stock company, and the increased availability of capital thereby allowed the firm to survive the lean economic times following the Great War. By the middle 1920s the firm had recaptured its position as Germany’s largest exporter of sewing machines – in 1926 the factory employed more than 2,600 workers and was producing more than three hundred units per day. In 1936 the firm produced its three-millionth sewing machine.

This firm was founded in 1922 as a joint venture of the Vereinigte Glanzstoff-Fabriken AG and the NV Nederlandse Kunstzijde Unie Enka. Both partners were engaged in the manufacture of synthetic fibres and established the new firm to supply each of them with the machinery necessary to equip their factories, including yarn-spinning machines, textile machines and the necessary chemical pumps and processing machines. Works were established in the town of Barmen, near Wuppertal, in the Ruhr region, but subsequently relocated to larger quarters in the town of Lennep.

In 1930 the firm patented new technology which allowed it to introduce the double-strand thread machine on an industrial scale. In 1935 it patented precision spinning pumps that increased the output and quality of synthetic fibres produced through its methods, Viscose and Acetate.

Saxony has long been the center of Germany’s textile industry, and home to many of the machinery firms that provided the specialised equipment for spinning, weaving and finishing mills. The economic disruption following the Great War prompted many of these firms to band together for mutual support against foreign competition and to conserve financial capital. The Sächsischen Textilmaschinerie-Industrien of Chemnitz was the first and largest of such groups to emerge.

Formed in 1920 through the voluntary amalgamation of the firm of Karl Mayer, the Chemnitzer Spinnereimaschinenbau, the Chemnitzer Strickmaschinenfabrik and the Sächsischen Nadel und Platinenfabriken, the new enterprise was able to establish itself in a strong position to take advantage of the investment boom of the 1920s, as government financing made it possible for many textile firms to re-equip their mills. It was also well placed to fulfill export orders from firms in Asia and the Russian Federation.

In the 1930s the firm expanded, acquiring the loom works of Schmidt, Kranz und Compagnie at Nordhausen in 1933, and two years later it acquired the Erfurt Feinmechanische Werke, a manufacturer of precision machines for the textile and tobacco industries. In 1936 it purchased the Vesta sewing machine factory of Altenburg.


Subsidiaries of the firm include:

Chemnitzer Spinnereimaschinenbau AG, Chemnitz (textile spinning machines)
Chemnitzer Strickmaschinenfabrik AG, Chemnitz (textile machinery)
Erfurt Feinmechanische Werke AG, Erfurt (precision machinery)
Karl Mayer Textilmaschinenfabrik AG, Chemnitz (textile machinery)
Nordhäuser Maschinenbau AG, Nordhausen (automatic looms)
Sächsischen Nadel und Platinenfabriken AG, Chemnitz (industrial sewing machines)
Vesta Nähmaschinen-Werke AG, Altenburg (sewing machines)

This firm, located in the city of Arnstadt, was established in 1856 to undertake the manufacture of sewing and shoe-making machines, which remains its principle business to the present. Between 1905 and 1914 it also manufactured automobiles marketed under the name Loreley; in the wake of the Great War manufacture of automobiles was abandoned though production of spare parts continued until 1923. It presently employs some six hundred workers.