Heinrich Lanz AG

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Heinrich Lanz AG company logo
later company logo

The Heinrich Lanz AG in Mannheim was a German agricultural machinery manufacturer . The company and its LANZ brand were taken over by the American agricultural machinery manufacturer John Deere in 1956 .

history

1859 to 1918

Heinrich Lanz began selling and developing agricultural machines in 1859. After the entry of Heinrich Lanz in his father's business in Mannheim, the company imported agricultural machines like gin , fodder cutting machines and threshing machines and repaired them before their own production started. The first locomobile was manufactured in 1878 . They still had a standing boiler and a working pressure of 3.43  bar (= 2.5  atü ). This gave them 2.5 DIN HP (1.8 kW). Lanz also manufactured long straw presses and self-tie presses.

View of the Lanz works (around 1910)
Lanz threshing machine

Up to this point, Lanz machines had received over 70 awards at European exhibitions and over 70,000 units had been sold. After the range was expanded with a steam threshing machine operated by a locomobile , the still large proportion of imported goods , which mainly consisted of English threshing machines, subsequently fell more and more. The company became the largest agricultural machinery factory on the European continent and employed more than a thousand workers.

After the thousandth steam threshing machine set had been sold in 1885, all Lanz machines were given protective devices from 1887 to prevent accidents. This represented a pioneering achievement, which was followed between 1888 and 1899 by the constant expansion of the plant with the addition of additional products. The “Lanzsche Factory” was initially located in Mannheim's Schwetzingerstadt near the main train station . For reasons of space, it was relocated to the neighboring Lindenhof district from 1888 .

At the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 , Lanz was able to look back on forty years of history and was the largest manufacturer in the industry. So were

delivered. The 10,000th machine produced by Lanz had an output of 260 hp (191 kW) and could be overloaded up to 450 hp (330 kW).

Lanz steam engine from 1911 at the 12th Bulldog Meeting in Burkhardtsdorf

Two years later, locomotive technology was switched from saturated steam to superheated steam , which resulted in higher performance with lower consumption . Heinrich Lanz died on February 1, 1905, leaving behind a company with almost 3,000 workers, whose annual production was equivalent to 900 steam threshing sets and 1,400 locomobiles. His last wish was the production of street locomotives ( steam tractors ). His son Karl Lanz then took over the management of the company and achieved that by 1906 Lanz threshing machines were getting bigger and more powerful and were among the best in the world.

In the following year, more than 20,000 traction engines were built. A total of 550,000 machines had left the factory since 1859. Heinrich Lanz's last wish came true posthumously : The first Lanz street locomotives were delivered.

At the company's 50th anniversary in 1909, the number of 4,000 employees had already been exceeded. A year later, the world exhibition in Brussels followed, at which Lanz exhibited the world's largest locomobile, as in Paris , this time with a net power of 1000 hp (735 kW). The machine received three gold medals. An advertisement in 1913 advertised locomotives with "System Lentz" valve control.

In 1911, Lanz signed a contract with Johann Schütte for the construction of airships , which led to 22 airships that were produced under the company name Schütte-Lanz . In the same year, the rights to the self-propelled tiller System Köszegi were acquired, the production of which started the following year. The drive consisted of a four-cylinder gasoline engine with 70–80 hp (51–59 kW). This device has been further developed over several years. During the First World War from 1914 to 1918, the company lost many employees, so that at the end of the war, of the former 5000, only 3800 were left.

1918 to 1945

Lanz Bulldog D4016, built 1957-60, full diesel, 40 hp, displacement: 4,222 cm³, single-cylinder two-stroke medium-pressure engine
Old threshing machine powered by a Lanz Bulldog
Heinrich Lanz AG share for 1000 RM from 1925

A new era began in 1921: tractors with combustion engines were to replace the cumbersome steam engines. After the death of Karl Lanz in 1921 at the age of 48, the hitherto unknown engineer Fritz Huber presented a crude oil engine with 12 hp (8.8 kW) and glow-head ignition. This hot-head motor was the first Bulldog and ran on almost any fuel - from cheap crude oil to domestic vegetable oil. The "original Bulldog" followed in 1923 with the HP type, a Bulldog with all-wheel drive and articulated steering , a machine that was technically decades ahead of its time.

The field engine, a gasoline tractor with 38 HP (28 kW) frame construction, as well as the Felddank, the same tractor as the field engine, but with a vertically mounted 2-cylinder hot-head engine and 38 HP, as well as the Bulldog types HL and HP were in too expensive to manufacture between 1924 and 1929. Due to inflation and the global economic crisis, they were replaced by the more cost-effective Bulldog type HR (first HR2, later numbered up to HR8 ). This rear-wheel drive tractor, which was initially equipped with evaporative cooling and later with thermosiphon cooling , became a standard product from Lanz.

In addition to the Bulldog, steam engines were also developed and sold, for example. B. the 1922 presented PE 14 , which was available self-propelled and stationary. The PE 14 delivered around 14 hp with an operating weight of 6850 kg and drove a maximum of 6 km / h.

But the development of agricultural machinery also continued: in 1929 the Stahl-Lanz was presented, the first threshing machine in all-steel construction, which was followed in 1931 by the reciprocating straw press . With the Express Bulldog, Lanz equipped the hauliers with a powerful, high-speed transport tractor. Pneumatic tires were introduced and increasingly replaced elastic tires on the road, as well as iron tires that had been common up until then on the fields. In 1933 the first centrifugal potato harvester was presented. From 1934 caterpillar bulldogs were offered.

Most Lanz tractors had a detachable pulley which, in stationary operation, was used to drive a large number of additional devices (such as large grinder , threshing machine , wind sweeper , baler , hay and crop conveyor, forage harvester), stone breaker , (firewood) circular saw , water cone splitter , Workshop machines etc.) could be used. The Bulldog thus combined the advantages of a farm and tractor unit and a stationary drive motor for operating additional equipment.

In 1938 Lanz acquired the Hofherr-Schrantz-Clayton-Shattleworth (HSCS) company with plants in Vienna and Prague . In the years after the takeover, the Vienna factory was expanded to become the largest production facility for threshing machines in the Lanz Group. In 1943, large parts of the production area for arms production were confiscated. Accumulators for submarines and parts of the V2 rockets were built. After the war, the Vienna plant was first confiscated by the Russian army and then by the state of Austria .

From 1942 on Lanz was forbidden to sell tractors powered by liquid fuels. There are wood gas built -Traktoren. In World War II, about 90% of the lance-work were destroyed. But the ruins continued: Bulldogs were assembled from the parts that were still available and existing tractors and agricultural machinery repaired.

  • Lanz Bulldog D1906, built in 1955, 19 HP, displacement: 2256 cm³, "semi-diesel"

  • Lanz Bulldog D 8506, built in 1951, 35 HP, displacement: 10.3 liters, multi-fuel glow-head engine

  • Lanz Bulldog D1706, model year 1952–55, 17 HP, displacement: 2,256 cm³, "semi-diesel" glow head

  • Lanz Bulldog D7506 / 3, built in 1939, 25 HP, displacement: 4.7 liters, multi-fuel glow-head engine

  • Lanz Bulldog HL, built in 1928, 12 HP, displacement: 6234 cm³, (technical data in picture description)

  • Lanz Bulldog caterpillar D7567, 55 PS, displacement: 10.3 liters, built around 1940, multi-fuel glow head engine

1945 until it was taken over by John Deere

Lanz Alldog A 1806, built 1956– 60, 18 HP, displacement: 1250 cm³, two-cylinder four-stroke diesel engine
John Deere-Lanz AG share for DM 100 from 1963

Glow-head Lanz continued to be built between 1946 and 1951, but the end was looming in the course of the 1950s: the glow-head engine found it increasingly difficult to compete with the newly developed diesel engines and consumed too much fuel. The equipment carrier was presented as the LANZ system at the DLG in Hamburg in 1951 and only later offered as the Lanz Alldog . The system was revolutionary, but the engine adopted by TWN was immature. A more suitable motor from MWM was only installed late , but this could no longer prevent this technically upgraded system machine from remaining unsuccessful.

From 1952 Bulldogs were offered with a revised glow-head engine, initially also as a multi-fuel engine, then increasingly as a "semi-diesel". This engine version is therefore often equated with the designation: "half diesel" engine, but was initially continued to be called a hot-head engine by Lanz. The intermediate type between the hot-bulb and diesel engine, also known as the medium-pressure engine, achieved very good consumption values, but the problem of the jarring, restless single-cylinder engine remained. Acceptance among farmers fell due to the multi-cylinder, smooth-running diesel tractors of the competition.

The 150,000 Bulldog was delivered in 1953, and the first self-propelled combine harvester, the MD240S, was offered a year later . The last large bulldog from the HR range was also offered with a medium-pressure engine in the same year. From 1955, the engines of the Bulldogs were advertised by Lanz as "LANZ diesel engines", as were the "half diesel" engines built from 1952. The last design of the Lanz engines are now called "full diesel" engines. They were also equipped with a cylinder that was mounted horizontally and operated according to the two-stroke process . The cylinder head was largely uncooled.

After 200,000 Bulldogs had been built, in 1956 Süddeutsche Bank, a forerunner of Deutsche Bank , sold its 51% majority stake in Heinrich Lanz AG for 115% or a total of DM 21.114 million to the US company John Deere & Company , which owns the location Mannheim expanded into its European headquarters. In 1957 the last Bulldog design, the D4016 with 40 HP (29 kW) was presented. In 1958 the Lanzsche house paint scheme changed from blue-red to green-yellow from John Deere, and the first modern multi-cylinder diesel tractor was developed. In 1960 Heinrich Lanz AG Mannheim was renamed John Deere-Lanz AG . In Mannheim, Bulldog production ended in 1960 with the introduction of the John Deere LANZ 300 and 500 tractors with four-cylinder diesel engines. At Lanz Iberica in Getafe , Spain , Bulldogs were made until 1962. The John Deere (Lanz) tractors gradually replaced the entire Bulldog series; large models were initially imported from the USA . Machines from the Mannheim and Zweibrücken plants continued to bear the "John Deere-LANZ" logo for a few years. The use of the brand name “Lanz” ended with the payment of the last Lanz shareholders in 1967. In the course of this, the company name “John Deere-Lanz AG” was renamed “John Deere Werke Mannheim, branch of Deere & Company”. The John Deere-Lanz Verwaltungs-AG was limited from then on the rental of the Mannheim plant at John Deere & Co. At the General Meeting on 22 August 2011, it was finally decided, the remaining shareholders of the John Deere-Lanz Verwaltungs-Aktiengesellschaft against payment of 638.24 euros per share zwangsabzufinden .

See also

Web links

Commons : Heinrich Lanz AG  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikibooks: Tractor Lexicon: Lanz  - learning and teaching materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Awards for Lanz & Cie. Mannheim at the exhibition in Strasbourg: 4 × gold, 5 × silver and 3 × bronze , practical journal for agriculture, horticulture and home economics, 1866, Bibliothèque nationale de France (archive).
  2. ^ Advertisement from Heinrich Lanz Mannheim , on p. 37 in Der Bautechniker of February 21, 1913, Austrian National Library (archive).
  3. ↑ Lanz Bulldog: The world's first crude oil tractor, the "Bulldog" ( Memento from August 28, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) available from Lanz Bulldog Homepage , www.lanz-bulldog-homepage.de , accessed: February 8, 2018 (archive) ( Memento of March 16, 2019 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ↑ Lanz Bulldog: Fuel overview. available at Lanz Bulldog Homepage , www.lanz-bulldog-homepage.de , accessed: February 8, 2018 (archive) ( Memento from February 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ).
  5. ↑ Section through a LANZ Bulldog. , available at Lanz Bulldog Homepage , www.lanz-bulldog-homepage.de , accessed: February 8, 2018 (archive) ( Memento from March 20, 2019 in the Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ Lanz Bulldog: Systematic overview of the Lanz types of glow-head Bulldogs from 1921–1945. available at Lanz Bulldog Homepage , www.lanz-bulldog-homepage.de , accessed: February 8, 2018 (archive) ( Memento from July 4, 2018 in the Internet Archive ).
  7. ^ Lanz Bulldog: Collection of LANZ glow head bulldog brochures. Number of brochures: 228, available from Lanz Bulldog Homepage , www.lanz-bulldog-homepage.de , accessed: February 8, 2018 (archive) ( Memento from August 18, 2018 in the Internet Archive ).
  8. ↑ Stationary operation of additional devices by means of a transmission belt over the pulley of the Lanz Bulldog: Lanz: Bauer & Arbeiter. Magazine 1938, issue 3 page 5 (PDF, 16 pages, approx. 4 MB), ( Memento from March 26, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) Lanz: Bauer & Arbeiter. Zeitschrift 1938, Issue 2 page 6 (PDF, 16 pages, about 4 MB) ( Memento of March 23, 2019 Internet Archive ) image 1, image 2 , image 3, Figure 4, Figure 5, Figure 6, (Source: Lanz Bulldog Homepage , www.lanz-bulldog-homepage.de), Image 7, Image 8, (Source: fahrzeugbilder.de ), Image 9 (Source: Colorful afternoon with threshing machine. Schaumburger Nachrichten of: March 17th, 2013 ), Lanz-Bulldog with mobile grinder (source: willi-winsen.de ), circular saw with transmission drive (source: Wikipedia ) , crusher cracks hardest field stones. Kieler Nachrichten from: August 20, 2012 (archive) ( Memento from March 23, 2019 in the web archive archive.today ).
  9. ↑ Excerpt from the book: "The Year of the Young Farmer - Part II - Machines and Devices" by Johannes Knecht from 1952. ( Memento from May 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) From: schlepperfreunde-nordbaden.de.
  10. ↑ LANZ Bauern-Bulldog - The great helper: In the struggle for the freedom of food for the German people, work faster and more effectively, achieve more and better. LANZ company magazine from 1938 (PDF, 24 pages, 2.2 MB). At: www.lanz-bulldog-homepage.de, accessed on: August 8, 2016 (archive). ( Memento from August 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Kurt Häffner, Lanz - Cool Bulldogs from 1928 to 1942 , Franckh-Kosmos-Verlag Stuttgart, 2001, page 23
  12. ^ Kurt Häffner, Lanz - company chronicle, steam engines, gasoline tractors, evaporator bulldogs from 1859 to 1929 , Franckh-Kosmos-Verlag Stuttgart, 2001, page 58
  13. ↑ Lanz glow head technology. ( Memento from March 23, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) LANZ-Bulldog-Club-Holstein eV, archived: March 23, 2019.
  14. ↑ The economical Lanz Bulldog. ( Memento from August 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Further development of the glow-head motor. VDI-Nachrichten special edition from November 15, 1952 (PDF, 4 pages, 2.1 MB).
  15. ↑ Patent DE938688 : Hot-head motor. Registered on February 2, 1956 , published on May 31, 1952 , applicant: Heinrich Lanz AG, inventor: Anton Lentz. ‌
  16. ↑ Description of the engine in the Lanz Bulldog D 5006 (direct-injection glow-head "semi-diesel" engine). (Archive). ( Memento from May 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ↑ VDA : Heinrich Lanz Werk Mannheim - Type D 6007. Group 15, No. 450 (direct-injection hot-bulb "full diesel" engine). ( Memento from August 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Frankfurt am Main, April 1956 (PDF 156 kB, archived on: August 3, 2016).
  18. ↑ Description of the engine in the Lanz Bulldog D 5006 (direct-injection glow-head "semi-diesel" engine). (Archive). ( Memento from May 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ Lanz semi-diesel technology. ( Memento from May 17, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) LANZ-Bulldog-Club-Holstein eV, lbch.de, archived: March 23, 2019.
  20. ↑ LANZ Bulldog Diesel ... like the best marine diesel engines ( Memento from May 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, 1 page, 234 kB).
  21. ↑ Der Spiegel: LANZ TRACTORS under the American flag. Retrieved on August 25, 2012 (PDF, 2 pages, 288 kB). ( Memento from August 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  22. ^ A b Alfons Weinfurtner: History of John Deere-Lanz AG. Archived from the original on January 2, 2017 ; Retrieved August 25, 2012 .