Body factory N. Trutz
The car body factory N. Trutz was founded in 1871 by the car builder Nikolaus Trutz in Coburg as a carriage factory. It was one of the most important German carriage manufacturers. The company existed as a body factory for bus bodies until 1958.
Nikolaus Trutz was born on January 21, 1839 in Kuckau, Upper Lusatia, as the son of a Sorbian farmer. After finishing elementary school in Kuckau, he initially worked as a farmhand for a year. This was followed by an apprenticeship as a wheelwright in Kamenz and then, from 1857, a journeyman in Bautzen and Dresden . In 1861 Trutz went hiking to deepen his knowledge of building carriages . Among other things, he found a job in a large car factory in Aachen before he came to Paris in August 1862 without any language skills. After several years in various companies, Trutz became the first box carpenter in the prestigious Paris car factory Rothschild & Sohn. During this time, two cars designed by him were awarded at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867 . The aim of independence in Paris was prevented by the Franco-German War , which led to Trutz being expelled in August 1870.
After a long search, on June 1, 1871, Nikolaus Trutz finally acquired the small coach workshop of Andreas Müller at Steinweg 10 in the then royal seat of Coburg. After two years the business was relocated to Webergasse 33/35. It took about eight years for the company to develop into one of the leading German car manufacturers thanks to its quality work and luxury cars and for Trutz to be appointed purveyor to the court in Weimar and Coburg. In addition to a large number of German royal houses, the German imperial family were also supplied and carriages exported abroad.
At the end of the 1890s, the business expansion led to the construction of new workshops with a two-storey residential and administrative building on a 5000 square meter plot of land on the Sonntagsanger in Coburg. In 1901 a two-storey, representative sales and exhibition hall was added. In addition, on January 1, 1898, Nikolaus Trutz acquired the Josef Neuss Hofwagenfabrik for his eldest son Karl .
In the period between 1899 and 1909, 1,068 orders were processed; in 1906, an average of 15 carriages left the factory per month. Production comprised 20 percent of commercial vehicles such as milk and beer wagons, ambulances, hearses and horse buses. Since a delivery contract for mail cars from 1879, the main customer has been the Oberpostdirektion Erfurt with 170 cars, mostly country mail carriers. The remaining 80 percent of production were luxury carriages, especially the Landauer and Mylord types , but also horse-drawn sleighs . 70 wagons were exported to Mexico and 19 to Ecuador , and 200 vehicles were delivered to the Josef Neuss Hofwagenfabrik. 81 vehicles remained in the duchies of Saxe-Coburg and Saxe-Gotha .
Nikolaus Trutz was awarded the Knight's Cross, 2nd class of the Ernestine House Order, on August 6, 1896, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the company, and at the 30th anniversary he was appointed to the Council of Commerce . In 1909, Trutz, whose younger son Joseph, who had died earlier, should have taken over the company, sold the "First and Oldest Coburg Car Factory N. Trutz" with 40 employees at the time to the engineer Alexander Glasow (1879-1949), the son-in-law of a childhood friend. By then, over 3000 vehicles had been built. Trutz moved to Erfurt to live with his daughters and died in 1916.
On October 13, 1903, the company delivered its first automobile body to the Nürnberger Motorfahrzeuge-Fabrik Maurer-Union GmbH , which was followed by others until 1909. Finally, under Alexander Glasow, he finally entered the body shop for motor vehicles. A main customer for the wooden bus superstructures on the chassis of trucks was again the Erfurt Post Office from 1910 onwards. In 1911 the company showed its products at the Berlin Motor Show. The focus on bus superstructures followed in 1925. In the mid-1920s, Trutz produced the bodies for bus prototypes with a very low floor and doors for each row of seats as part of a study.
In 1928 the company presented its first bus body in rivetless steel construction at the International Motor Show in Berlin. Bus bodies received vehicles from MAN , Büssing and Henschel , among others . At that time, about 175 people were employed at Trutz, ten years later there were 400 people for military contracts. Between 1909 and 1931 around 2500 orders were processed.
The company, which existed until 1958, experienced its last heyday in the 1950s. In 1950, the production of double-deck superstructures for the Berlin transport company was resumed. The production also included bus bodies for municipal and private scheduled and travel services, luxury buses, double-decker buses, refrigerated vehicles, exhibition vehicles and other special constructions. Trutz had up to 450 employees at the time.
literature
- Ernst Eckerlein: From simple craftsman to founder of a global company in Coburg . In: Coborger Blattla , Coburg 1983.
- Nikolaus Trutz: From walking stick to automobile . Bonifacius-Druckerei, Paderborn 1914 ( digital copy from SLUB Dresden).
- Peter Wolf: The economy in Coburg and Gotha . In: A duchy and many crowns: Coburg in Bavaria and Europe . Catalog of the 1997 state exhibition, published by Michael Henke, House of Bavarian History, Augsburg 1997, ISBN 3-927233-56-0 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Peter Wolf: The economy in Coburg and Gotha. In: A duchy and many crowns, Coburg in Bavaria and Europe . Catalog of the 1997 state exhibition, p. 334
- ^ Jan Meškank : Truc, Mikławš . In: Nowy biografiski słownik k stawiznam a kulturje Serbow , Budyšin 1984, p. 574
- ^ Government Gazette for the Duchy of Coburg, August 16, 1871
- ^ Government Gazette for the Duchy of Coburg, August 8, 1896
- ^ Government Gazette for the Duchy of Coburg, June 6, 1901
- ^ Government Gazette for the Duchy of Coburg, November 3, 1909
- ^ Wolfgang H. Gebhardt: German omnibuses since 1895 . Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1996. ISBN 3-613-01555-2 , p. 11
- ↑ Werner Nahrungsmittellich: Urban geography of Coburg, spatial relationship and structural change in the Franconian-Thuringian border town. Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1961, p. 161