Siegfried Bettmann (entrepreneur)

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Siegfried Bettmann (born April 18, 1863 in Nuremberg , † September 23, 1951 in Coventry ) was a bicycle, motorcycle and car manufacturer, founder of the second oldest still producing motorcycle brand Triumph Motorcycle Company and mayor of Coventry in 1913.

Life

Young years

As the ninth son of the Jewish timber wholesaler and namesake of the village of Bettmannsäge Meier Bettmann, he moved to England in 1885 at the age of 21 and settled in Coventry. First he worked for six months at Kelly & Co., an English business directory publisher. He then took a job as a translator at the White Sewing Machine Co. and, thanks to his in-depth knowledge of foreign languages, worked there as a sales representative for Northern Europe. In 1895 he married Coventry-born Annie Meyrick and took British citizenship.

Years as a businessman

Bettmann founded the company S. Bettmann & Co in 1884 and began selling bicycles and sewing machines from Germany under the name Triumph in London, which he obtained from the William Andrews Company of Birmingham . In 1886 the company was renamed the Triumph Cycle Company . In 1887 the company was registered under the name New Triumph Co. Ltd and Mauritz Johann Schulte, a Nuremberg engineer, joined as a partner. With his parents' financial support of £ 650 , he ventured from sales to manufacturing Triumph bikes in Coventry. In 1896 he founded the German subsidiary Triumph Werke Nürnberg (Orial TWN) .

In 1902, the first Triumph motorcycle was built in the company's own halls on Munch Park Street. It was a Belgian Minerva engine with a capacity of 363 cubic centimeters and an output of 2.25 hp, which was inserted into a Triumph bicycle frame. In 1907 the company moved to a former mill on Priory Street. In 1909, Bettmann expanded the product range to include typewriters, which is why he bought Typewriter Works Kühren & Riegelmann.

In 1913 the German subsidiary TWN was split off because of the looming First World War . As the first resident not born in England, he became Mayor of Coventry that same year. But he had to give up this office again in 1914 due to his German origins. Also in 1914, he and his wife founded the Annie Bettmann Foundation, which was supposed to help Coventry residents between the ages of 18 and 40 to set up a business. Two weeks after Britain declared war on Germany, he received an order from Captain CV Holdsworth of the Army Service Corps on Saturday afternoon to deliver 100 motorcycles for the war in France. It was precisely this captain who would later become his managing director. Bettmann and his staff worked all weekend to deliver the motorcycles to the loading station in Coventry on Sunday evening. The British Army then ordered large batches of the Model H "Trusty" motorcycle (550 cm³), making it the largest motorcycle manufacturer in Great Britain by 1918.

In 1921, with the purchase of the Dawson Car Company, automobile manufacturing was added to the portfolio. The first Triumph automobile was the 10/20 model. In 1930 the company was renamed Triumph Motor Company . In that year Bettmann also donated a memorial for the 66 fallen employees in the London Road Cemetery.

In 1936 the company got into a financial slump and Bettmann had to part with the bicycle and motorcycle construction divisions. The motorcycle company was bought by industrialist and philanthropist Jack Sangster, owner of Ariel Motorcycles , and renamed Triumph Engineering Co Ltd. renamed.

Late years

With the outbreak of the Second World War , Bettmann withdrew completely from the business to spend his retirement with his wife and family on his Elm Bank estate. He also had to witness the heavy air raid on Coventry on November 14, 1940, in which the factory buildings were completely destroyed. Siegfried Bettmann's success also made him president of the Coventry Liberal Association and founder of the Coventry Chamber of Commerce in his lifetime. He was also an avowed Freemason . Siegfried Bettmann died on September 23, 1951 on his estate at the age of 88.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Bettmann. Coventry Transport Museum, June 1, 2009, accessed September 3, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Rob Orland: Coventry's Mayors. In: Historic Coventry. Accessed September 3, 2018 .
  3. ↑ The beginnings of triumph in England. In: MotoScout24 . Archived from the original on April 23, 2015 ; accessed on September 3, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Bettmann, Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British bicycle, motorcycle and car manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1951
Place of death Coventry