Otto Hermann Mende

Otto Hermann Mende , also Hermann Mende , (born February 3, 1885 in Dorfhain ; † June 11, 1940 in Dresden ) was a German entrepreneur and founder of Radio H. Mende in Dresden. Mende is considered a pioneer in the Saxon broadcasting industry.

Live and act

Otto Hermann Mende was born as the son of the forest worker couple Gottlob Friedrich and Johanne Christiane Mende. He received an apprenticeship at the company Elektrotechnische Werkstätten Ellinger & Geißler based in Dorfhain , a manufacturer of electronic components such as resistors, capacitors and coils. Due to his talent, the company enabled him to do a three-year traineeship in the American branch in Galveston from 1901 to 1904 . After his return, Mende worked at Ellinger & Geißler as an authorized signatory .

Mende founded on November 1, 1923 together with the merchant and financier Karl Rudolf Müller in Dresden in the New Town , the company Radio H. Mende & Co. GmbH and started the production of radios . Two years later (1925) the engineer Ullrich Günter joined the company as technical director. In the same year, Mende's nephew Martin Mende joined the company as sales manager and later became head of the company. Under Ullrich, the Mendes company rose to become one of the largest German radio manufacturers.

The production figures rose from 2,000 devices / year (1925) to 200,000 devices / year (1937). In 1938 the annual production was 250,000 radios with a workforce of 3,000. The Mende company thus produced every third radio produced in Germany. In addition, the plant produced transmitters , teleprinters , field telephones and amplifiers .

During the war years of the Second World War , the company produced armaments such as radios and bomb detonators. In cooperation with the Siemens company , the Mende company also produced the Feld-Hellschreiber .

Otto Hermann Mende died in Dresden in 1940.

After his death, the plant was partly destroyed in the further course of the war and finally largely dismantled by the Soviet Union in 1945/46 . The VEB Funkwerk Dresden (later VEB RFT Messelektronik Dresden and VEB Robotron-Meßelektronik Otto Schön) was founded in 1948 from the remnants . Martin Mende successfully built up the Nordmende plant in Bremen from 1947 .

Private

Otto Hermann Mende married the nurse Anna Hempel from Leppersdorf in Dresden in 1919 . The daughter Johanna emerged from the marriage.

Honors

• In 1997, Hermann-Mende-Strasse in the Neustädter industrial area of Dresden was named after him.

literature

• Kurt Jäger, Friedrich Heilbronner: Lexicon of electrical engineering . 2nd Edition. VDE-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8007-2903-6 , p. 286 .
• Jürgen Wolff: Hermann Mende - pioneer of the Saxon broadcasting industry. in: Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz (Hg.): Calendar Sächsische Heimat 2017, calendar sheet 5th week