Hans Liebherr

Portrait of Hans Liebherr in Kaufbeuren station (2012)

Hans Liebherr (born April 1, 1915 in Kaufbeuren ; † October 7, 1993 in La Tour-de-Peilz , Canton of Vaud , Switzerland ) was a master builder , inventor and company founder of the construction machinery company Liebherr .

Life

Hans Liebherr was the son of the miller Wilhelm Liebherr, who died two years after Hans was born in the First World War . The mother Mathilde, née Arnold, married the builder Johann Sailer from Kirchdorf an der Iller in 1922 . Liebherr attended the local elementary school until 1928 . Originally, Liebherr wanted to become a pastry chef , but the stepfather forced the boy to learn his trade. Liebherr completed an apprenticeship in the construction business of his stepfather and passed the journeyman's examination in 1931. Between 1936 and 1938, after a short break from military service in 1934/35, Liebherr attended the master builder school in Biberach, passed the master builder examination in Ulm in 1938 and took over the management of his parents' business.

A year later he was drafted for military service in World War II. During the war Liebherr served in the Ulm Pioneer Battalion 101, which was subordinate to the 101st Light Infantry Division and fought under Army Group South in the German-Soviet War . Towards the end of the war he was wounded for the second time and finally transferred to a hospital near Vienna . After his recovery he made his way back home to Baden-Württemberg with other comrades.

He then took over his parents' construction business again, married and started a family: Hans junior was born in 1945, Willi in 1947, Markus in 1948, Isolde in 1949 and Hubert in 1950. It was during these years that Liebherr began to realize his ideas to simplify the heavy construction work. A challenge in 1948 was the order from the then Energie -versorgung Schwaben at the Illerkraftwerk Aitrach -Ferthofen. Remnants of the Illerbrücke, which had been bombed in World War II , were to be removed from the Iller with the help of underwater explosions . Liebherr and his workers solved the problem with explosives from old bombs.

Development of the first crane

Liebherr crane factory in Biberach

Large parts of Germany were being rebuilt in the post-war period. Hans Liebherr recognized the need for machines and tools for the construction industry and residential construction. The construction cranes up to 1945 were very similar to ship cranes and could only be used on large construction sites. With several locksmiths and blacksmiths, Hans Liebherr constructed the first mobile tower crane in 1949 , which was easy to assemble and suitable for smaller construction sites. This invention he filed on August 19, 1949 as "Wheeled tower crane" with the name TK 10 in the German Patent Office and founded the Hans Liebherr Maschinenfabrik. Shortly afterwards, crane production started and the construction business became a construction machinery manufacturer. The construction and commercial administration were initially housed in Kirchdorf in a wooden house measuring almost 100 m ² , half of which served as an apartment for the Liebherr family with their five small children.

Building a global corporation

In the early 1950s, gears were only available in limited quantities in Germany. However, these were required for the manufacture of gearboxes for crane production. That is why Hans Liebherr started his own production of gears in Kirchdorf in 1951 and built his first machine tools . 1954 followed the development of the first mobile hydraulic excavator L 300 on the continent, the serial production of which started in Kirchdorf in the same year. The manufacture of refrigerators began in Ochsenhausen in 1955, and one year later the manufacture of concrete mixing plants in Bad Schussenried .

In 1956, Liebherr relocated the headquarters of the expanding company to Biberach an der Riss , after the tower crane construction had been gradually relocated there since 1954. Since 1953, Hans Liebherr had been looking for a new location because the small farming village of Kirchdorf an der Iller was becoming scarce. A total of 32 cities applied for the location at that time. The city of Laupheim attracted millions with a state loan, Bad Schussenried wanted to give Liebherr the property and suspend the trade tax. Biberach's mayor Wilhelm Leger offered a plot of land of 1  DM / m² and a building cost subsidy of 400,000 DM and casually said that the Federal Ministry of Transport was planning the Danube-Lake Constance Canal , which was to lead from Ulm via Biberach to Friedrichshafen . Biberach was to become the central transshipment port for Upper Swabia. The investment decision was thus made. Only months later, all plans for this channel came to nothing.

In 1958 Hans Liebherr had the first foreign location built in Killarney (Ireland). A street there is named after him. Further production and sales companies were set up in South Africa, Austria, France, Switzerland and Great Britain. The product range of the group of companies was also expanded to include aircraft technology. In 1970 Liebherr ventured overseas. From 1976 he withdrew from operational business and concentrated on strategic corporate management.

Hans Liebherr also dedicated himself to building and operating hotels. At the end of the 1950s, he first built a guest house in the south-west of Ireland to accommodate customers from continental Europe. This gave rise to the idea of ​​building a hotel. In April 1981 he began to realize his vision of a hotel on the Seefeld Plateau in Telfs- Buchen. In four years of construction, he had the Interalpen-Hotel Tyrol built , which was then the largest hotel in the Alps. The group now owns six hotels in Ireland, Austria and Germany.

The parent company of the group is today Liebherr-International AG in Bulle (Switzerland), whose owners are exclusively members of the Liebherr family. The family business is run in the second generation by the siblings Isolde and Willi Liebherr, after Hubert, Hans and Markus Liebherr renounced their shares in the company. Since 2012, the first representatives of the third generation, Sophie Albrecht, Jan Liebherr, Patricia Rüf and Stéfanie Wohlfarth, have also been involved in the management of individual company areas.

When Hans Liebherr died in 1993, the company employed 15,000 people in 46 companies and had an annual turnover of over DM 4 billion. The group of companies now has more than 39,000 employees in over 130 companies. In 2013 total sales amounted to around € 9 billion.

Honors

• Honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Aachen (1964)
• Honorary Senator of the Universities of Karlsruhe (1974) and Tübingen (1984)
• Honorary citizen of the communities Kirchdorf an der Iller (1975), Biberach an der Riß (1975) and Bischofshofen (1984)
• Decoration of honor of the states of Tyrol (1985) and Salzburg (1985)
• Large Federal Cross of Merit , 1986
• State medal for special services to the Bavarian economy , 1986
• Induction into the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) Hall of Fame, 2010

family tree

The following family tree shows the Liebherr line.

Hans Liebherr (1915–1993)

Hans Liebherr Jr. (* 1945)

Willi Liebherr (* 1947)

Markus Liebherr (1948-2010)

Isolde Liebherr (* 1949)

Hubert Liebherr (* 1950)

Christina Liebherr (* 1979)

daughter

son

Jan Wilhelm Liebherr (* 1976)

Sophie Desirée Albrecht-Liebherr (* 1980)

Stephen Albrecht

Philipp Johannes Liebherr (* 1985)

Madeleine Marie Vitinis-Liebherr (* 1983)

William Paul-Edouard Liebherr (* 1991)

Charlotte Alice Mathilde Liebherr (* 1991)

Katharina Liebherr (* 1976/77)

Stéfanie Wohlfarth (* 1979)

Patricia Rüf (* 1981)

Johanna Platt (* 1985)

Wilhelmina Albrecht (* 2015)

Noah Liebherr (* 1999/00)

literature

• Hans Liebherr in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Liebherr family grave (2008)

Commons : Hans Liebherr  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Official website of the company
• Special exhibition 2005: Liebherr - Cranes & More in Biberach an der Riss
• Liebherr - Cranes & More in Biberach an der Riß - Opening speech by museum director Frank Brunecker (PDF; 70 kB)
• Liebherr family

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Gerold Dobler: Dr.-Ing. Eh Hans Liebherr, from Kaufbeurer miller's boy to entrepreneur and inventor . In: Kaufbeurer history sheets . Volume 18, No. 6, 2009, pp. 201-202.
2. ↑ The simple recipes of Hans Liebherr . In: Die Zeit , No. 43/1974
3. ↑ ^{a b} Burkhard Riering (Ed.): Swabian Pioneers. From the workshop to the global company . Biberacher Verlagsdruckerei, Biberach 2012. 1st edition (Hans Liebherr - The construction machine pioneer) Here: pp. 9–10. - 2nd edition, 2013, ISBN 9783943391169 . Online to p. 11 ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. freely available. 
4. ↑ Frank Brunecker (Ed.): Liebherr - Cranes + more. Biberacher Verlag-Druckerei, Biberach 2005, ISBN 3-933614-19-8 , p. 14.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Official website of the company
6. ↑ Schwäbische Zeitung : Allgäu and Oberschwaben - birth of the crane giants: Patents Idea carries 60 years  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated August 19, 2009, accessed January 25, 2010.  
7. ↑ Burkhard Riering (Ed.): Swabian Pioneers. From the workshop to the global company . 2nd edition, Biberacher Verlagsdruckerei, Biberach 2013. ISBN 9783943391169 . About 103 p. (With section: Hans Liebherr - Der Baumaschinenpionier p. 8-17.) Here: Introduction p. 6. - Online to p. 11 ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was used automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. freely available. 
8. ↑ Note. The wooden house is now in a large workshop. "Hans Liebherr built it with his own hands shortly after the Second World War."
9. ↑ Frank Brunecker (Ed.): Liebherr - Cranes + more. Biberacher Verlags-Druckerei, Biberach 2005, ISBN 3-933614-19-8 , pp. 17-26.
10. ^ Liebherr - Cranes & More in Biberach an der Riß - opening speech by museum director Frank Brunecker
11. ^ Construction of the hotel in Tyrol
12. ^ Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) Hall of Fame, Dr. Hans Liebherr ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 20, 2014. 
13. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Pirmin Schilliger: Liebherr: excavators for billionaires. In: Handelszeitung . Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland , June 29, 2011, accessed on November 21, 2019 . 
14. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hans Liebherr part à Monaco. In: La Gruyère . November 23, 2000, accessed November 21, 2019 (French). 
15. ↑ Peter Jegen: Almost everything under control. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 19, 2007, accessed on November 21, 2019 . 
16. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Simon Knecht: Agreement. (PDF) Obersiggenthal municipality , April 1, 2019, accessed on November 21, 2019 . 
17. ↑ ^{a b c d} Liebherr family. In: Handelszeitung . Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland , November 2018, accessed on November 21, 2019 . 
18. ↑ ^{a b} Katharina Liebherr. In: Handelszeitung . Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland , November 2018, accessed on November 21, 2019 . 
19. ↑ Stéfanie Wohlfarth (lic. Oec. Publ.). In: liebherr.com. Liebherr , accessed on November 21, 2019 . 
20. ↑ Patricia Rüf (lic. Oec. Publ./B. Eng.). In: liebherr.com. Liebherr , accessed on November 21, 2019 . 
21. ↑ Baptisms. (PDF) In: Horizons. June 14, 2015, p. 22 , accessed November 21, 2019 .