Willibald Gatter
Willibald Gatter (born December 12, 1896 in Hühnerwasser in Northern Bohemia , † May 14, 1973 in Kirchheim unter Teck , Baden-Württemberg) was a Sudeten German automobile manufacturer and politician. The founder of the Gatter-Reichstadt car factory (Czech: Autopodnik Gatter-Zakupy) and designer of the Gatter-Wagen is considered the inventor of the “Lidové auto”, the “Volksautos” or “Volkswagens” in the Czech Republic.
Life
Gatter was born as the oldest of eight children of mechanical engineer Josef Gatter (1854–1929) and his wife Marie Eiselt (1870–1941). In his parents' house he had access to his father's business, where in addition to hydroelectric power stations with large paddle wheels, hydraulic rams , pumps and fire engines were also manufactured; this resulted in an early interest in machines.
First World War
After attending the community school in Niemes , Gatter studied mechanics and technology at the higher industrial school in Reichenberg . During the First World War , the student was not called up for the army, but was assigned to the Škoda factory as a designer in June 1915 . Here Gatter worked in the production of large-caliber cannons and tested them in combat on the Italian front. At the same time, he worked at the Škoda sister plant Austro-Daimler together with Ferdinand Porsche on the development of gasoline-electric C-trains for transporting heavy artillery pieces, such as the 30.5-cm M.11 mortar . After the USA entered the war, Willibald Gatter registered for active military service as a one-year volunteer in March 1918 .
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From June 15, 1918 he took part in the Piave offensive of the Austro-Hungarian Army. After his retirement, Gatter initially returned to his Bohemian homeland, where he managed his parents' machine factory until his brother's return from captivity. He supported his father in the planning of the local waterworks, in the construction and measurement of deep-spring water pipes and the pumping stations that were supposed to supply the mountain villages there with running water. With the increasing marginalization of the Germans in the Czechoslovak Republic, Gatter went to the newly proclaimed Republic of German Austria in August 1919 .
Worked at Austro-Daimler
The 23-year-old was able to find a job as an automobile designer through contacts that Gatter had made with Austro-Daimler in Wiener Neustadt during the war, where the towing vehicles for the Skoda mortar were manufactured during the war. Despite the successful years of the war, Austro-Daimler was facing ruin, the largest client, the Austro- Hungarian army no longer existed. It was now necessary to switch back to civilian products and only the rapid resumption of automobile production with improved pre-war models promised salvation. Director Ferdinand Porsche recruited capable engineers mostly from the area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Willibald Gatter. In addition to fast and light touring cars, large luxury cars with modern engines in aerodynamically sophisticated bodies were now also produced. Gatter was initially involved in the development of electric buses and petrol trucks, and later also in the construction of heavy and light passenger cars. Together with Porsche and engineer Karl Bettaque , Gatter designed the "Sascha" in 1921/22, the first sports racing car of the post-war period, named after the film pioneer Alexander "Sascha" Graf Kolowrat . Willibald Gatter drove his first races with this car in the early 1920s.
At the Technical University in Vienna in the mechanical engineering department, Gatter also gave courses on motors, gears and gearshifts as a guest lecturer. During this time his first publications appeared in specialist magazines such as Werkstatt-Technik and Auto-Technik as well as the first patents. On February 6, 1923, he registered the Austrian patents for a “copying device for machine tools” (No. 97 881) and for the “device for cutting single and multiple threads on the lathe” (No. 97 882). The financial management of the plant in Wiener Neustadt was held by Camillo Castiglioni , who had acquired a huge fortune through speculation in the war. He controlled the Austrian Daimler Motoren AG among many other companies. His interests, which were purely for personal gain, were not compatible with the technical interests of his engineers. In February 1923, for example, Castiglioni demanded the immediate dismissal of 2,000 workers and the transfer of all foreign currency to him in order to cause a bear market on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Director Porsche then left Austria and went to Daimler in Stuttgart. In 1925 Willibald Gatter moved to Georgschicht AG in Aussig .
Construction of the "Europe Car"
The shift group, which processes fatty acids , made advances in other sectors of the economy in order to invest the surpluses generated in the soap business profitably. Georgschicht, who was responsible for the commercial management of the company, the automobile production, which rapidly rose after the First World War, seemed the right way to do this. Gatter was recruited as the technical director of the new automobile division, with the concession that he had extensive freedom in design and technical execution and that the car was marketed as a “Gatter Wagen”. Gatter's plan was to create an inexpensive four-seater that would enable large sections of the population to motorize, a so-called “people's car”. At the end of 1926 the prototype of the gate car was already roadworthy and in spring 1927 production of a refined car started in Aussig .
According to statistics from the Aussig police station, only 166 cars, 86 trucks, 3 buses and 4 tractors were registered in the city. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the shift works, the still archaic box-shaped gate wagon was presented for the first time in 1928. The citizens of Aussig welcomed the idea of domestic automobile production with goodwill and pride. When the magazine Motor Criticism presented the vehicle to the professional world in 1929, the car was already showing aerodynamic curves.
However, the Great Depression of 1929 ended the plans to start series production. Europe is sinking into unemployment and inflation, the demand for automobiles has reached an all-time low and the share capital of many companies, including the Shift AG, is falling into disrepair. In mid-May 1929, the motor critic published the plans for the car and ennobled it as a promising model of a "European car". “There is simply nothing between outright auto surrogates and“ luxury ”cars costing over 20 pfennigs per kilometer,” writes editor-in-chief Josef Ganz , “and this gaping gap could be closed by a correspondingly sophisticated gate car”.
Construction of the “Kleiner Gatter” as a people's car
Gatter then returned to his hometown and worked without hesitation on the plans for a new Gatter car. The type of car that had to be created should have the comfort of an automobile, but correspond to a motorcycle in terms of fuel consumption, technical simplicity and price. Real small cars didn't exist back then. The "Volkswagen" was used as a catchphrase and in 1938 Adolf Hitler took over this popular name for his Volkswagen factory , which was founded in Wolfsburg , but the entire technology was still too heavy, large and expensive at the time.
To create a true “people's car”, in Czech “Lidovy automobile”, as Gatter's car was called in company advertising in the 1930s, the designer broke new ground. At the end of 1929, the plans for this “small gate” had progressed so far that Gatter decided to go into production. On November 22nd, 1929, he submitted the building application for a production hall in the North Bohemian town of Reichstadt : On September 13th, 1930 he was granted the commercial license for the "production of motor vehicles in building NC 126 in Reichstadt-Vorstadt" and the "Autowerk Gatter-Reichstadt" was founded. Between October 1930 and June 1936, between 1,400 and 1,500 small cars of this brand were produced at the plant.
Gatter is therefore honored in the Czech Republic as the true inventor of the Volkswagen, the “Lidovy automobil” or “Lidové auto”, because his “Kleiner Gatter” was the first automobile to be mass-produced that really deserved this title. In December 2006, the North Bohemian Tourist Association dedicated a commemorative plaque to the designer on the occasion of his 110th birthday and the 80th anniversary of Gatter automobile production.
Racing successes
The fact that the gate wagon quickly enjoyed great popularity and also became known beyond the borders of Bohemia was not only due to the low acquisition and operating costs. Gatter's racing successes also contributed to the car's good reputation. With his "small gate" the designer won many prizes at the hill climbs of the 1930s. His greatest successes were gold medals at the Bohemian hill climb and the Giant and Jizera Mountains Tour, and class victories at the Great Mountain Prize of Germany, the Black Forest Destination Tour and the Tatra Rally. Gatter did not shy away from competing against the grandees of racing at the time such as Rudolf Caracciola . For him it was less about a victory than about proving the performance and reliability of small cars in front of a mass audience. He saw himself as a pioneer in the renewal of German automotive engineering.
In 1931, Gatter competed in the Great Mountain Prize of Germany on the Schauinsland with his “Kleiner Gatter”, the smallest car of the entire race. Caracciola won confidently in a Mercedes SSKL with 7069 cm³ in 8:51 hours and an average speed of 81.2 km / h. Gatter mastered the 720-kilometer race track on his "small gate" with 350 cm³ in 17:38 hours and an average speed of 40.7 km / h. With an eleventh place, Gatter moved to the award ceremony in Freiburg on July 26, 1931, his small car was admired and cheered. Before that he came from Prague in 5th place at the finish of the race.
For Gatter, proof of the cost-effectiveness of its design was the fact that with an engine that was just a twentieth of the performance of Caracciola's SSKL, it finished in half of its best time and half of its top speed.
Promotion and financing of the plant after the collapse of the banks
Targeted advertising also played a major role in the success of the car. In 1931 Gatter automobile dealerships were to be found in Komotau , Bohemian Leipa , Gablonz , Prague and in the neighboring German territories, such as Weiden and Regensburg in Bavaria , and in Chemnitz and Dresden in Saxony. These were usually one-man representations. In the 1930s, gate cars drove mainly in the triangle of Aussig, Prague and Reichenberg. At the end of 1931 the first production hall had become too small. In January of the following year, Gatter acquired the adjacent parcel and built a large factory building here in 1932. The original factory building was converted into a maintenance hall for gate wagons that were already running. However, the credit climate of the time proved to be a hindrance to an expansion of production. In Bohemia, the collapse of the banks until mid-1933 affected industrial groups, which were prevented from borrowing and new investments by the closure of the financial houses as a consequence of the global economic crisis. So Gatter remained only private investors to finance his project, but this set narrow limits. The financiers of the Gatterwerke were among others the Reichstadt Christmas tree decorations manufacturer Eduard Held and Helene Rösler (née Gatter), owner of the Bohemian Leipaer Pianoforte Factory Rösler.
The beginnings of Willibald Gatter's political activity and his first political and economic writings on the state of the nation, which he wrote for various German-language newspapers in the Sudetenland, also fall during his time in the Reichsstadt. As early as 1929 he joined the Reichstädter Kreis, a group of committed and politicized intellectuals who met weekly in the house of the director of the Reichsstätter Hochschule für Forstwirtschaft, Schmid. In the hope of an internationalization of the Sudeten problem, the Reichsstätter Kreis addressed one of a total of 24 Sudeten German petitions to the League of Nations in 1930, which this body received between 1920 and 1931 and denounced the oppression of the German minority in Czechoslovakia. In October 1933, Gatter became Konrad Henlein's comrade in founding the Sudeten German Home Front . At that time he traveled throughout the northern Sudetenland, drove car races and gave speeches and political lectures in which he called for Sudeten German autonomy within Czechoslovakia. The impressions gathered on his travels about the increasing impoverishment of the German minority and the growing unemployment found their way into his post-war economic-policy paper “Neither Capitalism nor Communism - Europe's Liberal Socialism”.
End of the Gatter car factory in Reichstadt
The economic crisis also left its mark on the Gatter car factory. Gatter's most important clientele, the Sudeten German middle class, which was hardest hit by the crisis, quickly became impoverished. The little man could no longer afford “people's cars”. Due to increasing hostility between Czechs and Germans, the Czech group of buyers also dropped out as customers in the mid-1930s.
For a while, the plant was able to hold its own thanks to the production of commercial vehicles, such as small trucks and delivery vans, and the repair of gate wagons that were already in operation. Gatter also tried to get public contracts to build special vehicles for the railroad, but due to his ethnicity and his political activity he could not hope for any concession from the Czechoslovak government. In 1937 the Gatter car factory was forced to close. Gatter left Czechoslovakia and moved to the German Empire.
Here he initially worked in Roßlau as head of the department for the development of marine engines at the Sachsenberg brothers . With the beginning of the Second World War, Gatter switched to the armaments industry. At Jahns Regulatoren in Offenbach am Main , he was responsible for the development and testing of controllable pitch propellers for fighter aircraft from Heinkel and Junkers until 1943. During this time he married Emilie Hoyler, a Swabian from Kirchheim unter Teck . Due to the permanent air raids by the Allies on the German aircraft industry, important parts of the apparently safe east were brought to safety. In 1944 the Gatter family in Offenbach was bombed, but remained unharmed.
Willibald Gatter saw the disaster as a chance of returning to Bohemia and went to the Protectorate . In the Letov works in Prague, requisitioned by the Wehrmacht, he worked for Junkers on the development of the Ju 288 C and the Ju 290 fighter planes. When the German Wehrmacht's Jäger staff set up a "Jäger Emergency Program" on February 28, 1945, which only included the Construction of certain types of aircraft in order to reduce costs and save raw materials, it was clear to Gatter that the war was lost for him. When the Red Army reached Prague in April 1945, he and his family fled to his wife's hometown in Kirchheim unter Teck.
After the war, Willibald Gatter planned a new edition of his car success and designed an affordable small car again in the 1950s. In Kirchheim unter Teck on Krebenstrasse, where the factory of the glider manufacturer Schempp-Hirth is today , he built the prototype of the “Gatter Mini”. With the onset of the German economic miracle, however, consumer interest in small and micro cars waned. Gatter only had to shake his head for the development towards ever larger wagons and more and more swank: "So much sheet metal to carry a few kilos of human flesh."
Political commitment
As before the war, Gatter was also politically active in the post-war period. He was a co-founder of the Liberal Socialist Party of Germany and its Bundestag candidate in the constituency of Nürtingen-Böblingen. In 1954, Willibald Gatter drafted the party's European program, which, in its 21 points, called for the establishment of a European constitution, a European army and a common European currency, as well as the joint exploitation of the colonies. At the end of the 1950s, the party became part of the Free Social Union (FSU) (later the Human Economy Party ). In his economic policy writing Neither Capitalism nor Communism - Europe's Liberal Socialism (1973), Gatter sets out the goals and ideals of the party.
In the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft , Gatter advocated a return of the Sudeten areas to Germany and a return of the displaced to their homeland.
Willibald Gatter visited Czechoslovakia several times after the Second World War, but his hometown Hühnerwasser (now Kuřívody) was inaccessible because it had become part of a Soviet military training area and was almost completely destroyed as a missile target. Gatter's parents' house, the former Thurn und Taxis post office from the 17th century, was also destroyed.
Honor
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On the eightieth anniversary of the Gatter-Reichstadt car plant and Willibald Gatter's 110th birthday, the designer was honored with a commemorative plaque in the Czech Republic in December 2006. He is remembered here as the inventor of the “Lidového Auta”, the first “people's car” to be built in series.
Source / literature
- Volkswagen construction on the Elbe and Teck. From the life of the Sudeten German automobile pioneer and politician Willibald Gatter (1896–1973), series Stadtarchiv Kirchheim unter Teck, 2007, vol. 32, pp. 127–170.
- Probouzející se Ralsko, Sdružení Náhlov v oblasti Ralsko, 2005, pp. 49–54
- Car pioneers - Czechs honor Willibald Gatter with a commemorative plaque as the inventor of the Volkswagen, Der Teckbote 28 Dec. 2006, p. 18.
- Willy Gatter: Neither capitalism nor communism - Europe's liberal socialism , Kirchheim unter Teck 1973. ( PDF edition )
- Willy Gatter: European Program of the Liberal Socialist Party of Germany , 1954.
Web links
- From the life of the Sudeten German automobile pioneer and politician Willibald Gatter
- Information from the Kirchheim city archive
- Czechs honor Willibald Gatter as the inventor of the “Volkswagen” with a commemorative plaque
- Report on the car and his engineer (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gatter Volksauto. Retrieved November 15, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gate, Willibald |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Sudeten German automobile manufacturer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 12, 1896 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chicken water , North Bohemia |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 14, 1973 |
| Place of death | Kirchheim unter Teck , Baden-Wuerttemberg |