Benedikt Ketterer's sons

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Benedikt Ketterer Sons GmbH & Co. KG
legal form GmbH & Co. KG
founding 1832
Seat Furtwangen , Germany
management Odin Jäger, managing director
Number of employees 212
Branch mechanical engineering
Website www.ketterer.de

The Benedikt Ketterer Söhne GmbH & Co. KG has its headquarters in Furtwangen in a factory building of the 1898th

Benedikt Ketterer

Benedikt Ketterer (1805–1871) came from Langenbach and appeared as a "watch packer" in Furtwangen at the beginning of the 1840s. He regularly bought small quantities of "Ührle" and "Wekerle" from local watchmakers and sold them on, mainly to dealers in England. As a taxable trader, however, he did not appear in Furtwangen until 1845 under the name "wooden watch maker". In the same year he bought a semi-detached house in today's Bregstrasse, "75 shoes long, 85 shoes wide", in which he set up a "mechanical workshop" with several hydro-powered machines.

The company manufactured Black Forest clocks before increasingly turning to the production of gas clocks in the 1850s . Until around 1880, mainly spring-driven regulators left the Ketterer factory.

Felix Ketterer

Benedikt Ketterer's eldest son Felix (1847–1911) continued to run the company from 1871, initially together with his mother Klara, and expanded regulator production. At the beginning of the 1870s, he set up a second workshop in a house on Straßberg. Among other things, it was used to manufacture regulators.

In 1874 Felix Ketterer hired 35 new workers. Both companies together, now called Benedikt Ketterer Söhne, now recorded a total of 100 workers and apprentices. It was produced based on a division of labor. For the regulator production, three workers turned the wheels, two "screwed frames", one was responsible for making the pendulums, another for the barrels, and another for "assembling" the parts.

In 1873, under Felix Ketterer, the "watch manufacture" department merged with several smaller companies to form the "watch factory Furtwangen", later called Baduf.

Gas and water meters

In 1890 the actual watch production at Ketterer ended. Rather, the company's focus early on was on the manufacture of watch-related products, namely gas and water meters . In doing so, the company entered uncharted territory not only for Furtwangen, but for the entire industry in the Black Forest. In the first half of the 19th century, the first gas works were built in the larger cities, producing and distributing coal gas for street lighting. After the middle of the century, companies and households gradually found their way into the public gas network. The demand for gas meters grew quickly. Efforts to introduce their manufacture in the Black Forest, which seemed "such a suitable occupation" for the local watchmaker, initially failed, although the demand for gas clocks increased enormously "and the earnings in producing them at least seemed to be better than in ordinary watchmaking". Benedikt Ketterer devoted himself to this promising company as early as 1851. In the following year, 20 gas meters from his workshop in Freiburg were in use, where the first gas station was established in 1850. On the occasion of the introduction of the new branch of industry in the Black Forest, the Baden Ministry of the Interior awarded him a silver medal "for promoting agriculture, trade and commerce".

A few decades later, Felix Ketterer also had water meters made - and from around 1900, additional electricity meters . Municipal waterworks throughout the German Empire ordered various meters from the "First Badische Wassermesserfabrik", as the company at the Breg was now called, including the "Ketterer vane water meter", which is available as a dry and wet meter ( the moving parts of the counter run in the water). Towards the end of the 19th century, the first gas meters, which released a certain amount of gas against a coin, hung in the apartments. Benedikt Ketterer Söhne developed various switching devices for such machines and in 1912 brought the "self-collecting gas seller" onto the market under patent number 250800.

After a few years, the capacity of a water motor was no longer sufficient to supply the machines in the factory with sufficient electricity. Felix Ketterer bought the "Rote Mühle" at the fork in the road to Katzensteig in 1890 and had a turbine house built there. Up to the workshops in Bregstrasse, around 1100 meters had to be bridged with an electrical cable.

However, so far there has been little experience in the region with the construction and operation of overhead lines. The Baden authorities initially considered the planned facility to be very dangerous. Conductor wires were stretched from the mill over the mountain at the cemetery to Bregstrasse, held by 27 poles.

In the autumn of 1890, however, the connected machines "really started to move, and the workshops shone in the brightest electric light".

In 1898, when Benedikt Ketterer and Sons and 142 employees were among the five largest companies in Furtwangen, today's factory building was built. A mobile steam engine, a locomobile, and later a stationary 100-horsepower steam engine also provided power for several hundred machines.

From 1893 the company was able to benefit from the railway connection to Donaueschingen. Wagons with raw materials stopped right outside the factory door. For the crucible foundry built in a separate building in 1896, Ruhr coke was obtained from a dealer in Ludwigshafen. Every Tuesday was watering day. Among other things, the Ketterer company manufactured wheels, nuts and spindles made of brass and bronze.

Oskar Ketterer

After 1911, Oskar Ketterer ran the company together with his brother-in-law Ernst Hepting. Later Emil Jäger, also a brother-in-law of Ketterer and from 1923 to 1946 head of the watchmaking school in Furtwangen, became managing director. In the 1920s he gave impulses in the direction of radio technology, which other watch manufacturers, for example Baduf, also turned to during this time. Individual components of Ketterer's counters such as dials and gears initially recalled the regulator production of yore.

The transmission technology company continues under the management of the Jäger family.

Products

  • Height adjustments for office and workshop workplaces
  • Gear for sun protection (large umbrellas, roller shutters, blinds, awnings)
  • Special gear for mechanical engineering
  • Electric drives for doors in vehicle construction and in clean room technology
  • Gear wheels, spindles, turned parts
  • Accessories (spindle nuts, cranks, crank rods, connecting rods)
  • Brushless DC motors (direct drives, wheel hub drives, special motors)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annual financial statements as of December 31, 2018 in the electronic Federal Gazette