Hellmuth Butenuth
Hellmuth Butenuth (born February 19, 1898 in Dortmund ; † August 20, 1990 in Berlin ) was a German mechanical engineer , automobile manufacturer , racing driver and entrepreneur.
Life
After graduating from high school, Butenuth studied at the Technical University of Hanover from 1920 . As early as 1923 he founded his own company together with Karl Pollich and Fidelis Böhler , Butenuth Fahrzeugwerke AG ( Bufag ) , which was bought by Hanomag that same year . The three young entrepreneurs switched to Hanomag, Butenuth as a test engineer. In 1923 he developed the small car Hanomag 2/10 PS, later called Kommissbrot .
In the years that followed, Butenuth himself took part in numerous car races and long-distance drives to demonstrate the capabilities of the small car. Among other things, he took part in the opening race of the Nürburgring on June 19, 1927 with a Hanomag 2/10 PS and drove the 12 laps or 340.8 km on the total distance in 5: 36: 19.4 hours. In the same year he won the field hill climb in the racing car class up to 500 cc.
Sales were positive, and 15,000 cars were sold in the 1920s. At the end of the 1920s, Butenuth rose to become technical director and in 1933 head of Hanomag's general agency for Berlin and Brandenburg . To this end, he set up branches in Berlin-Wilmersdorf and Berlin-Halensee .
During World War II equipped Butenuth vehicles from Ford with steam engines from. After the war, he continued this development in the Berliner Dampfmotoren Gesellschaft founded in 1946 , which existed until 1952. The engine used by Butenuth was a steam engine whose boiler could be fired with coke or coal .
After the currency reform , Butenuth founded the company Econom in Berlin-Spandau in 1948 . The construction of the plant in Berlin-Haselhorst was funded by the Marshall Plan . The aim of the company was the production of inexpensive trucks with high tractive power . Production rose from initially one to two vehicles per month to twelve vehicles per month in 1952. In the following period of the economic miracle , Butenuth could no longer compete with the mass manufacturers and closed the company in 1954.
Butenuth later ran a Ford dealership in Berlin-Spandau for many years .
Honors and offices
Hellmuth Butenuth had been a board member of Deutsche Verkehrswacht since 1961 , in 1968 he received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon and in 1974 the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class. In 1978 Hellmuth Butenuth was awarded the Ernst Reuter plaque . From 1959 to 1964 Butenuth was chairman of the Association of the Motor Vehicle Crafts in Berlin and a member of the board of the Central Association of the Motor Vehicle Crafts. He was a member of the German Automobile Club since 1955 as sports director, vice president and then president and honorary president.
literature
- Halwart Schrader: Hellmuth Butenuth and his automobiles. In: Automobil und Motorrad Chronik , issue 10/1978, pp. 17-19.
- Immo Sievers: Savings miracle once an export hit . In: Berliner Zeitung of January 2, 1995.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Historien und Histörchen (34): The three from the gas station . November 15, 2016, auto-medienportal.net, accessed November 18, 2016.
- ↑ Volker Schindler, Immo Sievers (ed.): Research for the car of tomorrow . Springer, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3540741503 , p. 70.
- ↑ Hellmuth Butenuth on feldbergrennen.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Butenuth, Hellmuth |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German mechanical engineer and entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 19, 1898 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dortmund |
| DATE OF DEATH | 20th August 1990 |
| Place of death | Berlin |