Schaub

G. Schaub Apparatebau-Gesellschaft mbH was a German manufacturer of electrical appliances that specialized primarily in the construction of tube receivers. The independence of the company, which was founded in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1921 and moved to Pforzheim in 1934, ended in 1940 when it was taken over by C. Lorenz, a subsidiary of the American International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT). The company initially continued to run independently with its “Schaub” brand. During the reconstruction in the post-war period, however, the departments of the parent company and subsidiary continued to grow together and in October 1954 G. Schaub Apparatebau was completely absorbed by C. Lorenz AG.

At the successor company Standard Elektrik Lorenz (SEL), founded in Stuttgart in 1958, the name “Schaub-Lorenz” was retained as a brand for entertainment electronics until 1979, and changed to ITT Schaub-Lorenz until the end of 1987 under the leadership of the group. After ITT had brought numerous holdings, including SEL, into the newly founded telecommunications group Alcatel NV, ITT-Audio-Video-Elektronik was sold to the Finnish Nokia at the beginning of 1988. The Schaub-Lorenz brand was no longer used by Nokia and after about 15 years it stopped producing consumer electronics to focus entirely on mobile telecommunications.

G. Schaub Apparatebau Logo

The later use of the brand, in recent years mainly for household appliances, goes back to the sale of the naming rights in 1999.

History

Founder years

In 1921 the inventor and electrical pioneer Georg von Schaub founded the G. Schaub Elektrizitätsgesellschaft mbH in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He himself took over the technical management of the company in order to produce detector receivers that he had developed himself in the first two years. These were simple devices for receiving the first radio broadcasts, which were broadcast with amplitude modulation over short, medium or long waves. Then he began to build receivers equipped with electron tubes.

From October 1925, Georg von Schaub changed the name of his company to G. Schaub Apparatebau-Gesellschaft mbH. He now produced radios in series, from 1928 the Superhet U 8 superimposed receiver and from 1932 a further developed version of the Superhet in model variants, the Super 33. This was equipped with shortwave parts. The business flourished and its total market share of 4.5% lifted the company into the league of major manufacturers. In the following two years, however, the share of sales with radio receivers (excluding people's receivers) fell again and reached around 3.3 percent in 1934/35.

Schaub Lorenz - Goldsuper W42 type 3079

In the middle of 1934, von Schaub changed his location and took up his seat in an abandoned machine shop in Pforzheim-Dillweißstein. In 1936 the city of Pforzheim became a partner. The previous director Rudolf Friedheim left the company and was able to emigrate. On April 1, 1936, the municipal building officer Kurt Hertenstein joined the company as sole managing director. In 1937 the company presented the "591Dyn", a visually convincing single-circuit straight-ahead receiver with excellent sound quality at the time, which was achieved with a dynamic loudspeaker, a negative feedback circuit in the audio amplifier and a spacious wooden housing. The "Super 229 II" as a follow-up product was named "Spitzkühler".

Loss of independence

In 1940 the Berlin-based C. Lorenz AG positioned itself and prepared to take over Schaub's highly productive apparatus construction company in order to advance the development and manufacture of radio receivers. The takeover played a role in the fact that Schaub's company was partly state-owned and that the power structure of the Third Reich, which was centralized in Berlin, could be easily influenced. Berlin demanded that the Wehrmacht be rearmed, which is why a merger of the two companies for arms production came in handy. From 1941 onwards, no more radio-technical devices were manufactured for civil use. It says, among other things, the standard G. Schaub GmbH in Pforzheim played a larger role in the production and further development of the devices for the X-procedure designed by Johannes Plendl on the basis of the Lorenz Landing System, which is used to improve the accuracy of the target approach, especially in the bombers of the Kampfgeschwader 100 "Wiking" was used. In the course of the Second World War, forced laborers were increasingly used in production as part of the so-called “deployment of foreigners”. The air raid on Pforzheim on February 23, 1945 almost completely destroyed the industrial site of Dillweißstein shortly before the end of the war. In the course of the Second World War, forced laborers were increasingly used in production as part of the so-called “deployment of foreigners”. The air raid on Pforzheim on February 23, 1945 almost completely destroyed the industrial site of Dillweißstein shortly before the end of the war. In the course of the Second World War, forced laborers were increasingly used in production as part of the so-called “deployment of foreigners”. The air raid on Pforzheim on February 23, 1945 almost completely destroyed the industrial site of Dillweißstein shortly before the end of the war.

Schaub Lorenz Olympic Radio Model Goldy 250

After the end of the war, the company had to start rebuilding with just 50 employees. The American occupation forces initially only allowed repair work on electrical units, but relaxed the conditions for an economic upswing in the following year. Schaub began to manufacture again and brought the two-circle model onto the market in addition to the pre-war range. The workforce rose to 800 by 1949. Lorenz, on the other hand, had to struggle with the Berlin blockade in West Berlin because freight traffic with the western occupation zones had been interrupted. The company had to switch to the restored Schaubs location in Pforzheim. From 1950 onwards it was exclusively produced there. In order to simplify the administration, the company relocated to Stuttgart. From 1952 the technical range of types of the two companies was dovetailed and the overall sales department was integrated into Schaub. The respective strengths could also be combined into common products. In the "console" designed by Schaub as a luxury cupboard from 1950 onwards, a radio device could be combined with a record player and a wire-sound device for recording music. C. Lorenz had been the market leader for wire-tone devices from the mid-1930s. Their technology was revived for a short time after the war because it was well developed in mass production and could be offered more cheaply than its successor, the tape recorder, which had actually been available for years.

As a further development of the magnetophone introduced by AEG in 1935, tape recorders were available in the mid-1950s at prices between 700 and 1500 DM, which today corresponds to around 1,800 to 3,800 EUR, adjusted for inflation.

Kurt Hertenstein left the company in mid-1954 after receiving an offer from Dutch Philips to take over the management of Deutsche Philips GmbH. On October 1, 1954, G. Schaub Apparatebau's business was taken over as a department in C. Lorenz AG.

Successor

From 1955, C. Lorenz produced entertainment electronics under the “Schaub-Lorenz” brand. The department in Pforzheim, which emerged from G. Schaub Apparatebau, contributed to the company's very good results in the 1955 financial year and reported both a considerable increase in sales and an improvement in the export share to 20 percent.

In 1958, the ITT subsidiaries C. Lorenz AG and Standard Elektrik AG, another company of the ITT group with a focus on communications technology, merged to form Standard Elektrik Lorenz AG (SEL) and the “Schaub-Apparatebau” department became part of the SEL segment “Radio, television, phono”. In May 1959, a new production plant was put into operation in Rastatt to relieve the Dillweißstein site. Until its closure in 1978, Rastatt was the central broadcasting plant for the Schaub-Lorenz brand, and later also for the Graetz brand. The traditional Graetz company was added to the group of companies in 1961 at the instigation of SEL CEO Hermann Abtmeyer with 13 production sites for the construction of televisions, radios, car radios, cassette recorders, world receivers and loudspeakers. In 1979, the division regained part of its independence as ITT Audio-Video-Electronics. Its control was relocated to its own headquarters in Pforzheim, which the parent company ITT was able to influence directly without going through the SEL in Stuttgart. The close integration with the SEL in the joint development and construction of components was retained, but was increasingly supplemented by international concert subsidiaries and partner companies of ITT in Europe and the Far East.

At the end of 1986 Standard Elektrik Lorenz was merged with the French Compagnie Générale d'Electricité (CGE) and its subsidiary Alcatel. Alcatel's focus solely on telecommunications and the realization that entertainment electronics were too small to be able to survive as a mass manufacturer against Asian competition on the world market led to the sale of the division under SEL board member Helmut Lohr in December 1987, at the beginning of 1988 the entertainment electronics already belonged to Nokia, traded as Nokia-Graetz GmbH from February 2nd, 1988 and continued to sell color televisions, video recorders and amplifiers under the brand name "ITT Nokia" for a few years until the Finnish parent company gave up the business focus entirely on cell phones.

The later use of the brand, for several years also in the spelling "SchaubLorenz", is no longer directly related to the former production. In 1999 the Italian General Trading SpA acquired the rights and revived the name for imported consumer electronics, but also for air conditioning and household appliances. Schaub Lorenz International GmbH in Vienna has been the owner of the trademark rights for several years. [15] In Germany today (as of 2016) Peter Kock from Moers uses the brand for the sale of household appliances through PKM GmbH & Co. KG, which he founded.

Referenced website: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Schaub_Apparatebau

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