Tenovis
Tenovis (previously German private telephone company , telephone work and standard time , T & N , Tele Norma and Bosch Telecom ) was a German telecommunications - Group with more than 5,400 employees. He had offices in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Tenovis had its head office in Frankfurt am Main , and its product portfolio consisted of communication solutions, including telephony , call centers , business recovery centers (alternative data centers ), customer relationship management , voice messaging , networking and services for companies and government agencies. The mainstay of the company was self-developed telephone systems with up to 32,000 extensions, as well as their installation, support and rental.
In November 2004 Tenovis was taken over by Avaya Inc., an American telecommunications company.
history
The origin of the company was the Deutsche Privat Telephon Gesellschaft H. Fuld & Co. , founded in 1899 as a rental company for telephone systems in Frankfurt / Main with the brand name Priteg at Liebfrauenstrasse 6. The trained banker Harry Fuld founded it together with the master watchmaker Carl Lehner (1871-1969 ) the company as a partner . Although Fuld had to start out very small with his meager start-up capital of 30,000 marks , which his mother had advanced , he planned the business of renting and maintaining private telephone exchange systems from the outset to expand. A franchising system, which was almost revolutionary at the time, enabled rapid growth without additional capital requirements. The Reich Postal Administration gave the go-ahead for the expansion of the private telephone business in 1900 by lifting the ban on connecting in-house telephone systems to the office. From then on, a flood of orders poured into the young company. The new company, which initially only employed two fitters in addition to the two business owners, was able to expand rapidly and opened branches in Cologne , Mannheim , Munich and Nuremberg one year after the company was founded , and one year later in Leipzig , Dresden , Hamburg , Wroclaw , Berlin and Strasbourg .
- In 1901 the H. Fuld & Co. Telephon und Telegraphenbau GmbH was founded as an independent subsidiary for the production of private branch exchanges, since the devices originally obtained from the Bell Company in Antwerp did not prove to be very reliable.
- In 1902 the company moved into larger premises at Vilbelergasse 29, employing 150 people.
- In 1907, the number of employees increased to 250, and the company moved its headquarters to an even larger building at Mainzer Landstrasse 193 in the Gallus industrial district of Frankfurt .
- In 1912, the company acquired much larger, new buildings at Mainzer Landstrasse 136–140; this company headquarters existed until it was taken over by Bosch Telecom GmbH in 1995.
- In 1913 a new branch of business was established, strictly separated from the telephone business, the manufacture and rental of remote-controlled, electric clocks.
- 1914 Outbreak of the First World War - abrupt changeover to belt locks and cookware, later grenade detonators and field telephones .
- 1918 almost a new beginning due to the strong effects of the war, the company was converted to H. Fuld & Co. Telephon und Telegraphenwerke GmbH , Carl Lehner took over the technical management and the chairmanship of the supervisory board .
- 1926 Conclusion of a delivery contract with Friedrich Merk Telefonbau AG in Munich. This contract lasted until 1989.
- 1928 Foundation of the company's own Elektra-Versicherungs-AG , conversion of the company into a stock corporation . 5,000 people were already employed.
- In 1932 Fuld & Co. took over the Hanoverian nucleus of Telephon-Fabrik-Actiengesellschaft, formerly J. Berliner .
- In 1933, after Harry Fuld's death in 1932, the “H. Fuld & Co. Telephon und Telegraphenwerke AG "dissolved and became the newly founded" National Telephon und Telegraphenwerke GmbH "(NTT).
Telefonbau und Normalzeit (TN) In
1934 the subsidiary NTT became "Telefonbau und Normalzeit GmbH", a pure manufacturing company. In the same year Priteg became a stock corporation, which was run as T elefonbau und N ormalzeit AG and continued sales as the parent company. In 1935 all Jewish shareholders and almost 1,500 employees of Jewish origin had to leave the company to prevent a boycott of the public authorities. Due to the Aryanization , the AG had to be renamed Telefonbau and Normalzeit Lehner & Co. in 1937 . The most important shareholders included u. a. the company founder Carl Lehner, who also took over the chairmanship of the executive committee of the company representative, with 28 percent of the shares and his sons Karl Ludwig and Fritz. In the same year Meta Gadesmann, a close colleague of the late Harry Fuld and Carl Lehner, was arrested and imprisoned for having been shown that she was moving funds abroad ( Switzerland ) to help Jewish friends start up their own businesses in exile. The Ministry of Finance opened proceedings against TN for tax and foreign exchange offenses, which aimed to induce shareholders to cede the company to the Reichspost by arbitrarily inflating tax debts . It seems a miracle that under these circumstances TN survived the Nazi era as an independent company at all. But friends were found in the emergency. The then 81-year-old Robert Bosch , who as the successful company founder Harry Fuld had remained connected in the pioneering spirit, stood up for Ms. Gadesmann. In 1941 the well-known industrialists Julius and Hans Thyssen brought shareholder capital into the ailing company so that it could pay off its tax debts. In the same year, Thyssen man Friedrich Sperl took over the management until he left the company at the end of 1965. In May 1944, the two Frankfurt plants in Mainzer Landstrasse and Kleyerstrasse were completely destroyed by air raids, except for the burned-out structures. Only the factory in Urberach , which had only been set up in the war years, had emerged as good as undamaged from the fighting. In 1945, therefore, it was considered very seriously whether it might not be more wise to limit oneself to the further expansion of this new plant and to give up Frankfurt as a production facility entirely. What at that time still eked a miserable existence as an alternative operation in the city in the underground cellar vaults of a building on Hainer Weg, was in fact not enough to raise high hopes. Ultimately, the management decided to stick to the company's headquarters in Frankfurt, which turned out to be the right decision. After the end of the war, the company experienced a rapid boom, which intensified after the currency reform . In 1950, Fuld's heirs regained their lost rights, and Carl Lehner left the company a year later. In 1965 the "Vertriebsgesellschaft Telefonbau und Normalzeit Lehner & Co." employed 6,300 people, the production company TN GmbH, headed by Carl Lehner's son Fritz, even 7,200 people. Although the company had a base of 150,000 rental and maintenance customers, many factory branches were present in larger German cities and sales were approaching the DM 500 million mark, the shareholders' meeting in May 1968 approved a 15 percent stake by AEG-Telefunken , to raise the capital needed to move from electromechanical to electronic switching.
The name part Telefonbau is a description of the activity for the Reichspost and the production of extension systems in every size for companies, authorities etc. The company built exchanges for the Reichspost ( self-election - "offices").
Telephones were also manufactured for the Reichspost, such as the "Frankfurt" series from 1928 or the Maingau I series from 1935. From 1950, TN, together with other telephone construction companies, manufactured the standard W48 telephone for the Deutsche Bundespost . From 1952 the widespread, successful extension sets of the series "Europa" (model E), for the design of which Arno Kersting was responsible.
Standard time stands for the supply of the Reichsbahn with standard time for the station clocks . At that time , the central standard timer was located very close to the company's Plant II on Ackermannstrasse in Frankfurt am Main. It was the forerunner of today's atomic clocks at PTB in Braunschweig. TN held numerous patents , including a. also for the case voter , which was built for 40 years , which fell impulsively due to a weight during the election and was wound up again with a motor after the end of the connection. As early as 1902, Carl Lehner developed the push-button line selector for connecting extension telephones in series.
After the Second World War, “Telefonbau und Normalzeit” presented a wide range of products - from postage metering machines and telex exchanges to hazard alarm systems , nurse call and person search systems , data acquisition and transmission systems to display boards in sports arenas and various types of vending machines . The core business, however, remained the production of telephones or telephone systems and the manufacture of clocks or centrally controlled time service systems with master and slave clocks, for example. B. for public transport in large cities and rail traffic, schools and other public buildings, companies, radio and TV studios. TN watches can still be found in some public places up to the present day - pay attention to the logo.
Telenorma In
1981 Telenorma oHG was founded , in which Robert Bosch GmbH received 75.5% and AEG -Telefunken AG 24.5% of the company shares. AEG-Telefunken previously held a 24.5% stake in TN Lehner & Co. , these shares have now been transferred to Telenorma Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH .
In 1980 TN had a turnover of over 1.5 billion DM; the highest number of employees of around 18,000 was achieved worldwide. TN Lehner & Co and Telefonbau und Normalzeit GmbH now operated with the addition of Telenorma.
Bosch Telenorma In
1989 Telenorma TN Lehner & Co. and Telenorma TN GmbH were incorporated into Bosch Telecom GmbH as Telenorma GmbH . From 1992 Telenorma GmbH traded under the name "Bosch Telenorma", and in 1994 Telenorma GmbH was dissolved, then integrated into Bosch Telecom GmbH together with Friedrich Merk Telefonbau GmbH . The buildings at Mainzer Landstrasse 136–140 were completely demolished, and ruins were seen on Europa-Allee until 2009. The site remained undeveloped until 2018. Since then, apartments and offices as well as a hotel, a supermarket, a daycare center and the associated underground car park are to be built there by 2021.
Tenovis
As early as 1999, Bosch Telecom GmbH sold the “Public Networks” division to the British company Marconi Company . In April 2000, the “Private Networks” and “Terminal Devices” sectors were sold to the holding company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) for 400 million US dollars . These areas employed 9000 people at the time and after the sale the company "Tenovis" was founded. The security technology division, on the other hand, remained in the Bosch Group to this day as Bosch Sicherheitssysteme GmbH .
In 2002 Tenovis achieved a turnover of 950 million euros with 6,000 employees, in 2003 Tenovis achieved a turnover of 890 million euros with 5,500 employees. After substantial staff cuts and the sale of the production facilities, Tenovis was taken over by the American telecommunications company Avaya in November 2004 for 635 million US dollars . At that time, Tenovis employed 5,400 people across Europe. Overall, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. had cut 40% of the workforce, the manager responsible for the restructuring was Péter Záboji .
Avaya
After the takeover in German-speaking countries, the company traded as Avaya-Tenovis, in April 2006 the company was changed to "Avaya". When it was integrated into the Avaya Group, the company was significantly redesigned, including the establishment of subsidiaries into which corporate areas such as assembly and service were transferred, the outsourcing of parts of the company and further staff cuts. In mid-2006 Avaya had 4,500 employees across Europe. The Avaya specification seat in Frankfurt am Main was until 2017 part in the buildings of the former plant II of Telefonbau and standard time at Kleyerstrasse now in which a data center is located. At present, the headquarters of Avaya GmbH & Co.KG is at Theodor-Heuss-Allee 112.
advertising
The company was the first to place a product on the Second German Television : The ZDF Sportstudio started with the theme melody and the dark screen; a clock appeared in the flourish , which was always a Telenorma clock with the rhombus logo and the letters T and N on top of each other, later offset next to each other. When this indirect advertising was noticed, the TN logo was pasted over with the ZDF logo, as every television viewer knows it today.
hints and notes
- ↑ Hessian Economic Archives
- ↑ Case voters in the museum
- ↑ https://www.fnp.de/frankfurt/gueterplatz-hier-entstands-teures-komplizierter-wohnquartier-10391372.html
- ↑ Peter Záboji: Construction completed. In: manager-magazin.de. July 30, 2002, accessed April 12, 2018 .
Web links
- telenorma.tk Is the only one in Germany, Switzerland and Austria that still repairs old Telenorma telephone systems: z. B. Integral 2, Connex-T
- Geschichtsverein Informationstechnik eV (GVIT) - Contains an archive with a photo collection of earlier Telenorma products and locations (of course also TN, Bosch Telecom etc.)
Coordinates: 50 ° 5 ′ 50 ″ N , 8 ° 37 ′ 47 ″ E