Egbert von Lepel

Hans Felix Egbert von Lepel (born September 30, 1881 in Neuendorf auf Usedom , † April 7, 1941 in New York ) was a German radio technician.

family

Egbert von Lepel was the youngest of nine children of the landlord Felix von Lepel (1817-1891), whose goods were on the Usedomer peninsula of Gnitz . In 1909 he married Elisabeth Döhnert (1887–1937) in Berlin and they had a son - Jürgen-Heinz Felix Egbert von Lepel (1910–1981).

Education and career

Nothing is known about school education and studies. He did his military service with the Uhlans - 2nd Pomeranian Uhlan Regiment No. 9 in Demmin, which he finished as Rittmeister of the reserve. He then worked as an electrical engineer. From 1904 he was employed by Telefunken , whose technical director was Georg Graf von Arco . As an assembly engineer, he initially worked on equipping the Russian Baltic Sea fleet with wireless telephony stations, was an instructor for their marines and accompanied the fleet in this role as far as Madagascar .

Back in Germany he worked on extinguishing spark technology , which, as a system of radio technology, allowed the construction of transmitters with sharper tuning and greater transmission ranges. Due to differences with Graf Arco, he left Telefunken and in 1907 received patent 232174 for the " device for generating rapid electrical oscillations from direct and alternating current ". He was able to win a patent dispute with Graf Arco and Telefunken, whom he accused of plagiarism in his extinguishing spark system.

In 1908 Egbert von Lepel founded together with Major General a. D. Freiherrn von Gayl established the Berlin- based wireless telegraphy system von Lepel with test stations in Reinickendorf and Braunschweig . He cooperated with the Viennese physicist Walter Burstyn who, like Lepel, was employed by Telefunken until 1906.

From 1913 Egbert von Lepel worked with an airship and telegraph battalion on the construction of the central radio station for the Imperial Army on the Funkerberg near Königs Wusterhausen , which was put into operation in 1915. During the First World War he served as an officer. At the beginning of 1917 he was assigned to the High Command of the 1st Army on the Western Front in Rethel near Reims to lead the radio troops there. He was particularly committed to the first experiments with tube transmitters that made small, portable radio systems possible. He worked with Hans Bredow , who in civil life was one of the two managing directors of Telefunken alongside Georg Graf von Arco. In order to determine the tuning, antenna design and range of the tube transmitters, Lepel, Bredow and Alexander Meißner sent messages and music during breaks in the fighting, which could be heard in trenches using detector receivers . Although Lepel and his staff thus negotiated the disapproval of the military leadership, they were able to gain important knowledge for broadcast technology.

The main radio station of the army broadcast the first German radio broadcast on December 22, 1920. On January 7, 1926, the German station went into operation there, the international station identifier LP for the name Lepel .

After the First World War, Egbert von Lepel successfully continued his company. In New York he founded the Lepel high frequency works . After his death in 1941, the Lepel High Frequency Laboratories were continued by his son Jürgen-Heinz von Lepel.

literature

• Historisch-Genealogisches Handbuch des Familie v. Lepel (Lepell). Developed by Andreas Hansert and Oskar Matthias Frhr on the basis of family history sources. v. Lepel with the assistance of Klaus Bernhard Frhr. v. Lepel and Herbert Stoyan. German Family Archives, Volume 151, Verlag Degener & Co., owner Manfred Dreiss, Insingen 2008, page 188, ISBN 978-3-7686-5201-8
• Jürgen Schröder: A “genius inventor”: Egbert von Lepel - the famous radio pioneer from the island of Usedom. In: Heimatkurier. Supplement to Nordkurier , November 12, 2007, page 27

Web links

• Egbert von Lepel ( memento from September 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the German Society for Post and Telecommunications History