Ernst Albert Naether
Ernst Albert Naether (born March 10, 1825 in Zeitz ; † November 5, 1894 in Bad Kissingen ) was a German entrepreneur and is considered the founder of the German stroller industry .
Training and start of the production of strollers
After an apprenticeship as a wheelwright in Naumburg an der Saale, Ernst Albert Naether set out on a journey from 1842 to 1845, following tradition . Returning to Zeitz in 1846, he took over his father Gotthelf Naether's wheelwright shop at Judengasse 2.
Naether soon began to produce chair wagons for children in addition to carriages and sleighs . Occasionally, he also made wooden underframes for pushchairs, for which the demand rose briskly. It is no longer possible to determine exactly when Naether first built a complete pull-out cart for toddlers in its own workshop. The first reference to this is found in the local press in 1850. What is certain, however, is that he offered pushchairs at the Leipzig trade fair in 1852 . With skill, he expanded his company. In the mid-1850s, he gave up building large carriages in favor of building prams. Zeitz strollers were sold all over Europe. Naether advertised his “reform pram” in six languages in newspaper advertisements. The Naether catalog from 1896 contains over 100 different models. After his death, Ernst Albert Naether was buried in the lower Johannisfriedhof in Zeitz. Through Naether's inventions and his entrepreneurial activity, the city of Zeitz acquired the reputation of the “city of prams” because there was no other city in Germany with a comparable concentration of pram manufacturers.
Expansion of the company and nationalization
In the period that followed, EA Naether developed into one of the most important pram factories in Germany. The two sons of the company founder, Albin and Richard Naether, managed the company since 1876. Until 1894 the production facilities were constantly expanded. In 1896 there were over 750 employees. The handicraft business developed into an industrial company specializing in prams, and in 1910 the company was converted into a stock corporation. Despite great competition, the company remained the largest and most successful in the industry until the Second World War.
In 1946 the company was expropriated and the production facilities, like those of other well-known companies, were transferred to VEB Zekiwa .
The house at Judenstrasse 2, in which Ernst Albert Naether founded the construction of prams, was demolished in January 1996, despite objections from the monument authority, due to its ailing state of construction. After extensive demolition measures after 1990, the large Naether factory facilities in Zeitz are only partially preserved, including the main building erected in 1908 with its distinctive facade facing the Zeitz Badstubenvorstadt. The history of the Zeitz pram industry is presented in the German Pram Museum in the Moritzburg in Zeitz.
monument
In 1916 the “Labor Memorial” was erected in Zeitz . It was dedicated to the industrialist and benefactor Ernst Albert Naether. The monument has not been preserved.
literature
Petrik Wittwika: From Zeitz into the world: strollers from EA Naether. A company and family history 1846–1946 . (Edited by Ernst-Albert Naether), Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle / Saale 2017, ISBN 978-3-95462-760-8
Web links
- Naether in the pram museum
- Zekiwa today ( memento of April 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) with company views of the Naether company
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Naether, Ernst Albert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur, founder of the German stroller industry |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 10, 1825 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Time |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 5, 1894 |
| Place of death | Time |