Mannesmann-MULAG
The Mannesmann MULAG ( MULAG is the abbreviation of engines and trucks AG ) was a German company based in Aachen , the automobiles and commercial vehicles produced and doing some innovations brought out. Founded in 1900 as Fritz Scheibler Motorfabrik AG in Aachen and renamed to Motoren und Lastwagen AG (MULAG) in 1909 after a merger with the Maschinenbauanstalt Altenessen AG , it was founded in 1910 by the brothers Carl (1861–1950) and Max Mannesmann (1857–1915 ) and continued as Mannesmann-MULAG from the end of 1913 . The factory facilities were integrated into Büssing in 1928 after economic difficulties .
Parallel to this , the Mannesmann Automobilwerk in Remscheid , founded by the brothers Alfred (1859–1944), Carl and Reinhard Mannesmann (1856–1922), existed since 1919 , which emerged from the former Mannesmann Lichtwerke AG and focuses on passenger cars in the upper luxury class and on Had specialized in racing cars.
history
Fritz Scheibler Motorenfabrik AG
The company was originally founded in 1900 by Fritz Scheibler (1845–1921) and his son Kurt (* 1875) as Fritz Scheibler Motorenfabrik AG with the legal form of a stock corporation in Aachen and dealt with the manufacture and sale of engines , motor Trucks and motorized buses . Since 1875, the entrepreneur and engineer Fritz (Friedrich Jacob) Scheibler, descendant had from the Monschauer business family Scheibler , already a machinery factory in the Bach street in Aachen that he wanted to enlarge due to the success and expand a new business.
In 1901, the first arisen trucks and buses under the brand name Scheibler with flüssiggekühltem 12 PS series - four-cylinder - a gasoline engine and battery ignition . In 1902, larger 40 hp engines and gear drives were installed in the trucks. A little later, around 1904, the manufacture of automobiles also began , but from the beginning they did not sell as well as trucks.
In 1905, Fritz Scheibler Motorenfabrik had to register a settlement due to economic difficulties , but it was initially re-established under the name Scheibler Automobil-Industrie GmbH . However, the production of passenger cars had to be stopped in 1907 due to insufficient sales. The L 56 truck was built for a few years from 1907 and had a payload of 6 tons . It was able to pull two trailers with a payload of 2 t each, there was a magneto ignition , leather cone clutch , 4-speed gearbox and a differential instead of a chain drive .
Merger and acquisition
In 1908, merged the company with the Maschinenbauanstalt Altenessen AG and changed its name in 1909 as engines and trucks AG (MULAG). A year later, Max Mannesmann and his brother Carl took over the majority of the shares in the still badly ailing MULAG, headed this company from 1911 and renamed it Mannesmann-Mulag in 1913 . In the period before the First World War until the autumn of 1914, the company had special tasks with the army motorization and it manufactured up to 100 trucks and buses, with forward control vehicles, which was still unusual for the time. A few months later, Max Mannesmann died as a result of pneumonia that he had caught on a test drive at the front, whereupon the work was initially continued by his brother Carl and from 1918 by Alfred Mannesmann, while Carl switched to the post of chairman of the supervisory board.
During the First World War , a 3.5 ton truck for military use was built and delivered to the German Army , based on a 1913 model with a 42 hp engine. Besides Mannesmann MULAG made some street armored cars based on these trucks, as well as license and aircraft engines and repaired a variety of military vehicles and aircraft engines.
On the other hand, the Imperial Russian Army of the Russian Empire on the Eastern Front used some civilian trucks from Mannesmann-MULAG that had been converted into armored vehicles in their own country before the war, some of which were used as self-propelled guns with a rear-firing gun .
A plant with its own aircraft department was also set up in Porz-Westhoven , which mainly took care of the development of a remote-controlled air torpedo with the code name bat on behalf of the Reichsmarinamt . The testing took place on the military training area in the Wahner Heide . In 1919, a British department of the Allied Control Commission discovered components of the giant bollard ( Mannesmann-Poll-Dreidecker ), an unfinished three - decker giant airplane, in the Mannesmann-MULAG-Hallen .
After the war, the company was able to survive with various types of trucks, despite the initially generally difficult economic times. a. In 1921, a semi -trailer truck with a 10 t payload trailer was built, which was an innovation at the time. The company also survived the hyperinflation of 1923, printing and issuing its own emergency money in small numbers. In addition, a branch was set up around 1924 on Hersfelder Strasse in Frankfurt-Bockenheim .
In those difficult times, Mannesmann-Mulag also benefited from increasing exports to (mainly European) foreign countries. A new type of low frame for the construction of trucks (lorries) and omnibuses (KOM) was brought out in 1925, which could be ordered with either left or right -hand drive and had a double magnetic ignition system, heating and pneumatic tires . This type of truck also successfully took part in the so-called Russia trip in 1925 , a reliability test known at the time.
The end of the brand
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If Mannesmann-MULAG was still a profitable company until 1926, however, in 1927 considerable losses were made with a not fully developed engine and many complaints were the result. The Mannesmann family spontaneously sold real estate and machines as well as the patents to Büssing AG in Braunschweig when Mannesmann-Mulag AG was about to file for bankruptcy.
When it was taken over by Büssing in 1928, the truck and bus factory became a supplier to Büssing, although, similar to the takeover of Komnick in Elbing ( East Prussia ), there was no group formation, as Büssing again did not take over the company and its brand name .
The Mannesmann-Mulag brand expired in 1928 and was deleted from the Aachen commercial register. The employees not taken over by Büssing finally found new work at the nearby Ford works in Cologne .
literature
- Günther Schnuer: The automobile manufacture in Aachen 1896–1928. A contribution to the technical and industrial history of the Aachen region. Meyer & Meyer, Aachen 1990, ISBN 3-89124-082-1 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Mannesmann Automobilwerke KG Remscheid
- ^ Max Mannesmann on Rhenish History , accessed on July 9, 2014.
- ^ The Mannesmann family, the Mannesmann cars
- ^ Geschichts- und Heimatverein Rechtsrheinisches Köln eV: Yearbook for History and Regional Studies Volume 5 , self-published, Cologne, 1976, Gebhard Aders , Der Riese von Poll, p. 185.
- ↑ G. Sollinger, THE FORSSMAN TRI-PLANE, THE LARGEST AEROPLANE OF WORLD WAR I The Forssmann-Triplane
- ↑ Annika Kasties: Mannesmann-Mulag: Rare piece of jewelery for vintage car fans , in: Aachener Zeitung , September 3, 2015.
See also
- List of commercial vehicle manufacturers
- History of the German commercial vehicle industry from 1895 to 1945
