Gustav Hiller

Two-wheeler phenomenon

Karl Gustav Hiller (born March 30, 1863 in Zittau , † September 18, 1913 in Zittau) was a German designer and entrepreneur . In 1888 he founded a machine factory in Zittau, thereby laying the foundation for what would later become VEB Robur-Werke Zittau .

Life

Gustav Hiller, who was born in Zittau in 1863 as the son of a local master carpenter , did a commercial apprenticeship in a trimmings factory . After work he tinkered with improving the production of the thread balls (pompons) made in this factory. At the same time, he developed other small machines and household appliances. After he sold some patents to manufacturers, but reserved the distribution, he founded the company Gustav Hiller from the patent income in 1888 .

While the production of high wheels was booming in Germany , Gustav Hiller recognized the technical advantage of low wheels on a trip to Great Britain. He succeeded in concluding an exclusive contract with the Rover company for the exclusive sale of their bicycles in Germany. When he got home, he began to work on improving this type of bicycle. He bought himself as a partner in the locksmiths Müller & Preußger . Shortly afterwards, sales exceeded the possibilities of the locksmith's workshop and he built a factory.

As an expression of the technical advantage of his bicycles, he called his company Phenomenon Bicycle Works . From 1898 he was the sole owner of this company, whose production facilities he had significantly expanded from 1901. In this context, he renamed his company in Phenomenon-Fahrradwerke Gustav Hiller . In 1906, the catalog included six models of women's, men's, road and track racing bicycles.

The trend towards motorization did not go unnoticed by Gustav Hiller either. The work of Gottlieb Daimler , Wilhelm Maybach and Carl Benz led to the motor vehicle in 1886 and thus laid the foundations for the motorization of road traffic. Hiller began developing motorcycles around 1900 based on the bicycle technology available to him.

From 1910 the construction of four-wheeled passenger motorcycles began. Gustav Hiller died in 1913. A year later, under the management of his brother-in-law, the plant was converted into a GmbH under the name Gustav Hiller GmbH . In 1916 it was converted into a stock corporation under the name Phenomen-Werke Gustav Hiller AG . Gustav Hiller's son Rudolf Hiller (1894–1972) took over the technical management of the company after the First World War.

literature

• Herbert Pönicke:  Hiller, Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 153 f. ( Digitized version ).