Erwin Aders

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Erwin Paul Aders (born May 7, 1881 in Düsseldorf ; † January 6, 1974 in Dillenburg ) was a German mechanical engineer , commercial vehicle designer and chief designer at Henschel & Sohn during the Second World War .

Life

Aders studied mechanical engineering at the TH Aachen from 1901 to 1906 . After working as chief designer at WA Th. Müller Straßenzug-Gesellschaft mbH in Berlin-Steglitz, he was a designer for motorized plows at Büssing from 1912 to 1913 . In 1914 he moved to the central design office of the Swiss company Saurer in Arbon . During the First World War he served in the motor vehicle troop, from 1917 he worked in the design office of Joseph Vollmer , where he was involved in the development of the armored cars A7V and LK II . From 1919 to 1926 he worked as head of constructionMAN in Nuremberg and developed the commercial vehicle program there . From 1926 to 1929 he worked for the Vogtland machine factory (Vomag) in Plauen . From 1929 to 1931 he was head of design at Mercedes-Benz in Gaggenau .

In 1933 Erwin Aders completed his habilitation at RWTH Aachen University on the subject of motor vehicle rear axles. From February 8, 1933 to March 31, 1935 he was a lecturer there as a lecturer in automotive engineering. In the summer of 1934 he had already taken a leave of absence from the Aachen University until he left the faculty, as he worked for Mecano GmbH in Frankfurt from 1934 to 1936 .

From 1936 to 1945 he was chief designer for the heavy tanks Tiger I and Tiger II at Henschel & Sohn. For Henschel he worked as a consultant for tanks, locomotives and road construction machines until 1960. Among other things, after the establishment of the Bundeswehr, together with the engineers Josef Lehr and Karl Pollich as well as the former Lieutenant General and Head of Office Panzer in the Heereswaffenamt , Wilhelm Philipps , he was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Defense for an expert opinion on the procurement of the HS 30 armored personnel carrier, the State Secretary Josef Rust did not wait to make his procurement decision any more than a corresponding troop trial.

Aders' memoirs, recorded in 1945 but previously unpublished, about his time as responsible for the construction of the Tiger tanks are cited as a source in numerous publications on the tank models.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aders, Erwin Paul. Officer personnel files 38049 in the Bavarian Main State Archives , accessed on May 30, 2020.
  2. ↑ Walter J. Spielberger: The armored fighting vehicle Tiger and its varieties . With scale sketches by Hilary L. Doyle (=  military vehicles . Extended volume 7 ). 6th edition. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-87943-456-5 , p. 8–9 ( archive.org ).
  3. ↑ a b c d Wilfried Lochte, Martin Diener, Horst Hausen (ed.): Performance and way: To the history of MAN commercial vehicle construction . Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-93490-2 , pp. 329 ( digitized version in Google book search).
  4. ↑ Aders, Erwin. In: Alma Mater Aquensis, special volume 1870-1995, pp. 71 ff. RWTH Aachen.
  5. ^ Ulrich Kalkmann: The Technical University of Aachen in the Third Reich (1933-1945) (=  Aachen studies on technology and society . Volume 4 ). Verlag Mainz, Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-86130-181-4 (602 pages, limited preview in the Google book search).
  6. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: The huge German "King Tiger" was a wrong path. In: welt.de . July 7, 2014, accessed May 30, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Affair / HS 30. The Unfinished . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1967, p. 60-81 ( online ).
  8. ↑ Christian Kleinschmidt: Curiosities of economic, corporate and technical history: miniatures of a "happy science" . Klartext, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-969-1 , p. 203 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
personal data
SURNAME Aders, Erwin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aders, Erwin Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mechanical engineer, commercial vehicle designer and chief designer at Henschel & Sohn during the Second World War
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1974
Place of death Dillenburg