Ludwig Kathe & Son

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Ludwig Kathe & Sohn was a German vehicle construction company in Halle (Saale) that manufactured bodies for passenger cars and bodies for buses and trucks .

It goes back to a wheelwright workshop founded by Ludwig Kathe in Halle in 1833 for the manufacture of carriages. Ludwig Kathe took on his son Adolf Kathe as a partner at the beginning of 1865, and since then the company has been called Ludwig Kathe & Sohn . In the third generation, Alfred Kathe later managed the company, who also emerged as a racing driver on the early Horch cars and was friends with August Horch .

In 1907 the company was the first German bodybuilder to offer a sedan body that was closed on all sides . In 1911 a new factory was put into operation on Berliner Strasse in Diemitz (a district of Halle since 1950), and in the same year 300 people were employed. In the first half of the 1920s, a branch was opened in Chemnitz , which proves the intensive cooperation with the West Saxon automotive industry ( Audi , DKW , Horch and Wanderer - combined as Auto-Union in 1932 ). At that time the company had around 600 employees.

In the 1930s, the focus of production seems to have shifted to superstructures for buses, trucks and special vehicles.

The company existed under its own name until 1948 and then merged into the IFA - Karosseriewerke Halle . During this time, the former Kathe works created bodies for the Wartburg 311 / 312 Combi and the Wartburg 353 Tourist .

literature

  • Werner Oswald : German Cars 1920–1945. 4th edition, Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-87943-519-7 , p. 513.
  • Ralf JF Kieselbach: Technique of elegance. The history of automobile design in Germany up to 1965 using the example of Auto Union and its predecessor companies. Nicolai, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-87584-864-0 , p. 59 and more often.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Supplement to the Königlich Preußischer Staats-Anzeiger , No. 14 of January 17, 1865, p. 182. (Commercial register reports)
  2. ↑ Jürgen Pönisch: 100 years of Horch automobiles 1899–1999. The rise and fall of a German luxury brand. Zwickau 2000, ISBN 3-933282-07-1 , p. 9.
  3. ↑ Udo Andersohn: Automobile history in old advertisements. (= The bibliophile paperbacks , Volume 434.) Harenberg, Dortmund 1984, ISBN 3-88379-434-1 , p. 151.
  4. ↑ Wartburg Kombi was at home here. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung from April 1, 2008