Alfred Teves
Alfred Teves (born January 27, 1868 in Trittau ; † November 5, 1953 in Blumberg ) was a German entrepreneur and namesake of the Alfred Teves company he founded in 1906 (later "Ate"), which over the decades grew from a small industrial agency developed into a large company in the automotive industry.
Life
Born in Schleswig-Holstein , after completing general schooling, he attended the seafaring school and acquired the helmsman's and captain's license . Teves went to sea on sailing and steam ships until he was 30, most recently as 2nd officer. He then worked for a few years at the bicycle manufacturer Adler in Frankfurt am Main , where he became the company's car seller in 1902, but also took part in car races.
In 1906 he started his own business as a sales representative for car accessories, in 1909 he founded the Mitteldeutsche Kühlerfabrik together with the engineer Matthäus Braun and in 1911 the Alfred Teves machine and armatures factory . Teves made a name for himself as a supplier to the automotive industry, which was growing rapidly during these years, and was soon able to count Audi , Wanderer and Hansa among his customers.
In the 1920s, the brand name ATE replaced the previous logo consisting of a piston ring, fist and hammer. Teves' factory was one of the first in Europe to produce hydraulic brake systems, and in 1926 the Adler Standard 6 was the first car on the continent to be fitted with an ATE Lockheed brake as standard . From 1936 onwards, Teves developed brakes specially tailored to motorsport, which were used in racing cars from Auto Union and Daimler-Benz . He was a military economic leader in the National Socialist German Reich .
During the Second World War, most of the main factory in Frankfurt and other plants in Frankfurt and Berlin were destroyed, and Teves practically had to start from scratch. Together with his sons Heinz and Ernst, he rebuilt the company in the post-war years, which had already reached its old size in 1948 with 3500 employees. When Teves died in 1953, there were five Teves plants in Germany, including the new plant in Gifhorn, which was built in 1948.
In 1967 Alfred Teves GmbH was taken over by the US company ITT . In 1998 the company was bought by Continental AG and renamed Continental Teves AG & Co. oHG .
Alfred Teves was also the namesake of a school in Gifhorn, Lower Saxony . On May 3, 1954 the school was occupied. The Alfred Teves School officially got its name in 1957 from the Teveswerk, the settlement of which the first rector and later Gifhorn mayor Wilhelm Thomas helped to promote . The school has been closed since June 2010, and the building is now used by the Fritz Reuter Realschule.
Honors
- 1953: Cross of Merit (Steckkreuz) of the Federal Republic of Germany
literature
- Ulrich Eisenbach: Teves, Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 26, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-428-11207-5 , p. 60 f. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- Homepage of Continental Teves AG & Co. oHG
- Documentation on the post-war period: Alfred Teves Maschinen- und Armaturenfabrik KG ( Memento from September 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Teves, Alfred. Hessian biography. (As of August 2, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jens Ulrich Heine: Names and Origin of the Wehrwirtschaftsführer des German Reich on January 1, 1942 , (1976), page 32, Federal Archives, Department of the Military Archives
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Teves, Alfred |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 27, 1868 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Trittau |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th November 1953 |
| Place of death | Blumberg |