Otto Griessing

Otto Griessing (born January 19, 1897 in Munich ; † November 11, 1958 in Überlingen ) was a German electrical engineer . Otto Griessing became known as the developer of the “ Volksempfänger ”, a radio apparatus ( Audion ) presented to the public at the 10th Great German Radio Exhibition in August 1933 . Griessing developed the inexpensive tube receiver at the behest of the Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels . The different versions of the Volksempfänger were the most widely produced radios in the German Reich between 1933 and 1945 . The “German small receiver” presented in 1938 is also referred to as a people's receiver.

Life

The son of a Bavarian sergeant attended school in Munich, went into the field as a volunteer in 1914, taking part in the fighting in the east and west as a radio operator, most recently as a lieutenant. In 1918 he was deployed in the Orient and interned after the conclusion of the Turkish armistice. From 1919 he studied at the Polytechnic in Würzburg (today: University of Applied Sciences ).

With an interest in high-frequency technology, he started at Erich F. Huth in Berlin under the laboratory manager Karl Rottgardt. A few years later he moved to the Munich broadcasting station , which he helped to build. When the German hour began broadcasting on March 30, 1924, he was technical director. From January 1926 to August 1927 he was technical director involved in setting up a telecommunications factory in Toblach (Italy), which he chaired. From September 1927 he worked for Georg Seibt in Berlin-Schöneberg , where he soon rose to become chief designer. At Goebbels' request, in the spring of 1933 he began to design a radio receiver that was affordable for everyone. Competitors were the two Berlin companies Telefunken , then a subsidiary of AEG and Siemens & Halske , as well as Ideal-Werke AG for wireless telephony ( Blaupunkt from 1938 ). The selection committee decided in favor of Griessing's model, later the VE 301. The design of the case was largely made by Walter Maria Kersting . At the radio exhibition in 1933 it was advertised at 76  Reichsmarks (equivalent to 349 euros in today's purchasing power and currency; as of January 2015) at half the price of a comparable device, and 200,000 units had already been sold in autumn. A battery powered version cost 65 RM. At the 16th Great German Radio and Television Exhibition in Berlin in 1939, Griessing in SA uniform was presented with the radio prize of RM 10,000.

literature

• Kurt Jäger (Hg.): Lexicon of electrical engineers . Berlin; Offenbach: VDE-Verlag, 1996. ISBN 3-8007-2120-1
• Sigfrid von Weiher: men of radio technology. A collection of 70 life works by German radio technology pioneers. VDE-Verlag, Berlin and Offenbach 1983, ISBN 978-3-8007-1314-1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Organization chart of the German Hour 1924 ( Memento from June 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ This figure was determined with the template: Inflation and relates to January 2015.
3. ^ Sigfrid von Weiher: Men of radio technology ; P. 67 f.