Johann Lemmerz

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Johann Lemmerz Primary School

Johann Lemmerz (born January 10, 1878 in Königswinter ; † August 2, 1952 there ) was a German designer and entrepreneur .

Life

In 1904 Johann Lemmerz had founded a production company together with his two brothers Franz and Simon. This company produced a two-seater vehicle with a De-Dion engine as a drive, which had successfully mastered a reliability drive in the Eifel in 1905. By the end of 1905 they had sold 20 of them. Since the sales forecast for the vehicle did not seem interesting to them, they then tried boat building, mechanical engineering and ultimately wheel rim manufacture.

From 1907 to 1914 the brothers built passenger ferries , excursion boats and motor yachts as the Oberkassel Lemmerz & Co boatyard .

With the beginning of the war, the focus was on the delivery of metal components and the company was renamed Rheinische Metall- und Motorboot-Industrie Lemmerz & Cie KG .

In 1919, in the absence of car tires, he and his brothers re-founded what would later become Lemmerz-Werk GmbH , which produced rims and car wheels, in Königswinter . In 1921 he presented a standardized range of rims and a new range of disc wheels at the German Motor Show in Berlin. In 1923 his two brothers went into business for themselves and he ran the business as a car rim rolling mill and wheel factory Lemmerz & Cie. away. The presentation at the automobile fair meant that from 1924 the company received the order to equip the Opel Laubfrosch with disk wheels and thus became the main supplier of the Opel company . From 1929 onwards the delivery to other countries followed, which meant that the company survived the global economic crisis without any problems. The USA and the Soviet Union in particular were sales markets for the company.

From 1935, his son Paul Lemmerz took over the technical management of the company . The company was already the third largest German wheel manufacturer after Kronprinz and Hering .

During the Second World War, the factory in Königswinter was badly damaged and in 1944 production was relocated to Ingelbach and Wunsiedel . After the end of the Second World War, Johann Lemmerz handed the company over to his son Paul.

In 1997 the company merged with the American Hayes Wheels International to form Hayes Lemmerz , the world's largest manufacturer of motor vehicle wheels. Since the takeover in 2012 by the agricultural machinery holding Iochpe-Maxion → Maxion Wheels .

Johann Lemmerz had been a member of the city council of Königswinter since 1930 and was made an honorary citizen in 1950 . The primary school in the old town of Königswinter, for which he donated the property, is named after him.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Vierhaus: Kraatz - Menges . Walter de Gruyter, 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-094027-5 , p. 345 ( google.de [accessed October 7, 2018]).
  2. ↑ on the company history of Maxion Wheels (accessed October 21, 2014)
personal data
SURNAME Lemmerz, Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German designer and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigswinter
DATE OF DEATH 2nd August 1952
Place of death Koenigswinter