Luchterhand & Freytag
Luchterhand & Freytag was a car body construction company founded in Berlin in 1899 and existing until 2012 .
history
The company was founded on August 1, 1899 by August Luchterhand in what was then (Berlin-) Rixdorf at Hermannstrasse 56/57. Luchterhand's brother-in-law Otto Freytag only joined the company as a partner after the company was founded .
With customers such as the C. Bolle dairy and, above all, breweries such as Kindl , Schultheiss and Löwenbrau, Luchterhand & Freytag quickly developed into a commercial vehicle specialist. There were also superstructures for post and ambulances on Hansa-Lloyd chassis and platform trucks on Bergmann chassis.
After the First World War , economic survival was ensured by the construction of all accident ambulances in the cities of Berlin and Stettin .
In 1925, a piece of land was acquired on Eresburgstrasse in Berlin-Tempelhof and workshop buildings were built on. In 1927 the company was relocated from Neukölln to where the company is still based today.
In 1931 Luchterhand & Freytag built a streamlined delivery van with front-wheel drive , also known as a Rumpler truck , on a Rumpler chassis for Ullstein Verlag . This was used to deliver the publisher's newspapers to Magdeburg and Dessau and the prestigious Baltic seaside resorts. The vehicle was powered on the front axle by a six-cylinder Maybach engine with 100 hp, the smaller wheels on the rear double axle only ran with it. The payload was 5 tons.
The body design came from Cucuel and Offelsmeyer. The original design envisaged a pure streamlined shape based on the Paul Jaray patent , but Rudolf Ullstein insisted on the angular roof shape. The engine was later exchanged for a 200 hp 12-cylinder Maybach engine. The vehicle was used until around 1942/1943, then was shut down and burned during one of the air raids on Berlin. According to information from Luchterhand & Freytag, there are no longer any original plans for the vehicle, as the entire company archive fell victim to a fire in the Second World War.
At the beginning of the 1930s, due to the further developed sound and projection technology, several “show” vehicles were created as special constructions for advertising purposes, which with built-in gramophones and screen projections offered a multimedia experience and attracted a lot of attention.
In 1934, after the National Socialist seizure of power for the Reichswehr, conversions of British off-road vehicles were produced for test purposes, and in 1936 Leni Riefenstahl's recording team produced the vehicle fleet for the Olympic Games in Berlin .
After the beginning of the Second World War , in addition to the development of prototypes, the body was built for military emergency vehicles, and with 250 employees the company reached the maximum number of employees. In 1943, in an air raid on Berlin, a large part of the plant and a number of the vehicles produced were destroyed.
After the end of the Second World War and the new beginning in post-war Berlin, Luchterhand & Freytag specialized in the sale of conversions or extensions in mobile homes or delivery vehicles.
On January 20, 2012, the company was bought by M-Color Karosserie Lackiererei GmbH and struck from the commercial register.
literature
- Museum for Transport and Technology (Ed.) / Ulrich Kubisch: Automobile from Berlin. Nicolai, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-87584-155-7 , pp. 158f. (Double-page spread) and pp. 162-164 (text).
- District Office Tempelhof (Ed.): From iron to pralines. The Tempelhof district and its industry. (Book accompanying the exhibition of the same name) Berlin 2000, page 193f.
Web links
- Luchterhand & Freytag homepage , accessed on June 30, 2013 (apparently only a copy of this Wikipedia article on the company's history)
Coordinates: 52 ° 28 ′ 2.1 " N , 13 ° 22 ′ 19.6" E