Alfred Teves

Alfred Teves
Born	(1868-01-27)27 January 1868 Trittau, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died	3 August 2004 Blumberg, Baden-Württemberg German Federal Repubic (West Germany)
Occupation(s)	Ship's captain Auto-industry pioneer Entrepreneur-industrialist
Spouse(s)	1. Else Bruch (1880–1915) 2. Maria Göttsching (1881–1952)
Children	1. Heinz Wilhelm Teves (1906-1978) 2.Alfred Erich Teves (1910-1912) Ernst August Teves (1913-1981)

Alfred Teves (27 January 1868 - 5 November 1953) was a German ship's captain who came ashore in 1898 and reinvented himself as an auto industry entrepreneur. The "Alfred Teves Maschinen- und Armaturenfabrik" company, became one of the largest suppliers of components and sub-assemblies to the German auto-industry. It was rebranded during the early 1920s, more succinctly, as "ATE".

Life

Provenance and early years

Alfred Teves was born in Trittau, a small town in Schleswig-Holstein, located some 30 km (20 miles) east of Hamburg. Friedrich Wilhelm Teves (1814-1871), his father, who died while he was still a small child, was a local government official. His mother, born Auguste Biernatzki (1833–1923), was the daughter of Johann Christoph Biernatzki, a protestant pastor (and published author).

Between 1877 and 1883 Alfred Teves attended for the prestigious "Katharineum" (secondary school) and the "Großheim’schen Realschule" (secondary school) in the nearby city of Lübeck and then switched to a specialist sea-faring school in Steinwerder, emerging qualified for work as a helmsman. He went to sea in 1885, employed at different stages as a second officer and, after acquiring the necessary additional qualifications at the Royal Navigation College in Altona, as a ship's captain, both on sailing ships and steam ships.

Adler

Teves told an interviewer later that he moved onshore because he felt that as a ship's captain he had progressed his career as far as he could at sea: his appetite for adventure had been sated. He joined the Frankfurt-based company Adlerwerke vorm. Heinrich Kleyer AG" (better known by the name it acquired in 1900 as "Adlerwerke" or more simply still, "Adler", principally known when Teves joined as a manufacturer of bicycles and tricycles. Heinrich Kleyer (1853–1952), the firm's founder and a brilliant engineer, was a cousin of Alfred Teves. Teves joined the company as a warehouse clerk. In 1899 Adler diversified into the manufacturing of motor cars, and by 1902 Treves had risen to the position of "Head of car sales". Like many auto-industry executives at the dawn of the motoring age, Teves participated in a number of automobile races during the early part of the twentieth century.

Car parts entrepreneur

In October 1906 Alfred Teves set up his own business, still in Frankfurt. "Alfred Teves, Automobil-Technisches Material und Zubehörteile" was a distributor for automobile equipment and accessories. Not for the last time, Teves' timing was impeccable. Automobile manufacturing was undergoing a phase of rapid expansion, and Frankfurt was a major centre of industrial and commercial opportunity. The business flourished. It continued to prosper under the same name till 1925, although it was far from the only business with which Teves would involve himself through that eventful period.

In December 1909 Teves teamed up with his friend the engineer Matthäus Braun, who moved across from the Stuttgart-based "Süddeutsche Kühlerfabrik Julius Fr. Behr" to establish the "Mitteldeutsche Kühlerfabrik" ("Central Germany Radiator Factory") in Stuttgart. The factory started off with a workforce of 120, and was soon manufacturing radiators not just for automobiles but also for aeroplanes. In 1911, by this time employing 300 people, the manufactory was transferred to Frankfurt. Customers included August Horch's Audi and Wanderer businesses, along with Hansa in the north of Germany. By this time the focus of the Teves businesses was on manufacturing rather than on wholesaling or retailing the product of other suppliers. It was also in 1911 that Teves purchased a workshop for the manufacture of manual compression adjustment valves. This factory was relaunched in 1912 and rebranded as the "Alfred Teves Maschinen- und Armaturenfabrik". During the war that broke out two years later this factory, under the capable direction of Chief Engineer Natan Sally-Stern (1879– 1975) who had been head-hunted from Adlerwerke AG, would be modified to produce fuses and cartridges for munitions, along with various associated precision components. The war years were a period of rapid expansion for the factory, which became by 1918 one of the principal manufacturing businesses in Frankfurt, with approximately 2,000 people on the payroll.

Manufacturing during the boom years

After the war, with the scale of his enterprise transformed by success as a manufacturer of munitions components, and with new efficiencies in production technology having become mainstream across the auto-industry in western Europe through the pressures of war, Alfred Teves made the switch to peace-time production. In 1919 the business was converted into a limited liability company (GmbH), and quickly emerged as a major supplier of piston rings at the start of what turned out to be a decade of significant expansion for the German auto industry. The Teves production portfolio already also included components for car braking systems. It was in 1921 that a new more modern logo, featuring the letters ATE, replaced the former more fussy badge that had depicted a fist holding up a hammer encircled by a piston ring. By the mid-1920s the company had become Germany's largest producer of piston rings, producing these not just for passenger cars, but also for commercial vehicles and, according to one source, for aircraft engines.

During the mid-1920s Alfred Teves acquired from Lockheed Corporation in North America a license to produce hydraulic braking systems for cars. The Adler Standard 6, introduced to the market in October 1926 at the Berlin Motor Show, was the first volume-produced car outside North America to feature hydraulic brakes. The subassemblies were supplied by ATE. Hydraulic brakes became mainstream on German and French mid-sized and luxury cars during the decade that followed, and the profitability they conferred on their manufacturers contributed to a further significant growth for the Teves car-parts conglomerate. The number of German cars sold with "ATE" hydraulic brakes had surged to 47% by 1932, and to 73% by 1938. In addition to automobile braking systems, "ATE" were also at the forefront in developing and supplying hydraulic components for cars, aircraft, shipping related applications and motorbikes, both within Germany and for export markets.

Diversification

During 1928 Teves used some of the profits gained from supplying a booming auto-industry to embark on a major diversification. The "Ate-Haushaltskühlschrank" project drew inspiration from the technology developed over the previous ten years by Frigidaire, a General Motors subsidiary based, by this stage, in Dayton, Ohio. A single cylinder reciprocating compressor was driven by an electric motor, using a V-belt. The assembly's crankshaft was sealed against the belt casing by means of a stuffing box. Air cooling of the condenser made the use of a hydraulic connection unnecessary. The Refrigerant used was Methyl chloride CH3Cl. A special feature was a selector switch linked to a thermostat which automatically maintained the selected temperature. Teves claimed to be the first to manufacture an automatic refrigerator in Europe. The market had hitherto been dominated by American imports. During 1929 "Ate-Haushaltskühlschrank" developed an entire range of refrigerators, starting with domestic consumers - a market in which price competition quickly became intense - and moving on a a range of more specialist commercial applications in the retail, agriculture and dairy sectors. On the high streets high-class Konditorei selling cream cakes, butchers shops with sausage manufacturing facilities at the back, health food shops, restaurants, hotels, other industrial catererers and even ice cream parlours all offered tempting commercial opportunities.

An end to the good times

In 1928, for the first time, the German auto industry produced more than 100,000 passenger cars. It would be another six years before that level of output would be exceeded. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 was followed by a return to acute economic austerity and a collapse in consumer demand, as unemployment peaked in 1932 at well above five million. The auto-industry was particularly badly hit. Brennabor, which is believed to have been Germany's largest auto-producer in the middle 1920s, saw its business collapse at the end of the decade and would never return to volume production. The Teves industrial empire emerged from the economic carnage relatively unscathed, and Alfred Teves himself by this time enjoyed a reputation for a singular combination of entrepreneurial flair and prescience which he would retain through the difficult years that followed.

Meanwhile German politics became increasingly polarised, and by the early 1930s the polarisation was spilling onto the streets, while the growing strength of the two principal extremist parties in parliament led to that institution becoming deadlocked as the Communists and the National Socialists refused to enter into coalition either with each other or with any of the more moderate parties. In January 1933 the Hitler government took power and lost little time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Teves had never shown any appetite for political involvement; but like all Germany's industrial leaders he would come under growing pressure to throw in hos lot with the government during the twelve Hitler years. During 1933 it became clear very quickly that the shrill antisemitism that had featured prominently in the utternances of populatist street politicians from before the start of the 1930s had become a core underpinning of government strategy. Many Germans - including Jewish Germans - during the early years of National Socialism, were unable to believe the extent to which Jews would be persecuted and killed under the Hitler government. These included the brilliant engineer Natan Sally-Stern (1879 – 1975) who had been at the side of Alfred Teves for twenty years. Alfred Teves himself seems to have been initially blind to what was happening. In 1936 Teves and Sallay-Stern were no longer able to ignore the direction of travel of the government policy, and Teves helped his friend excape to England. According to at least one source there were many other Jews whom Teves helped to conceal or, using his international contacts, to escape to Hungary or to the Netherlands or to Belgium as the situation in Germany deteriorated. Surviving details of what this involved are nevertheless sparse.

Industrial revival

During the 1930s governments in western Europe sought to expand car ownership and usage, in part as a route back to economic growth. The so-called "Motorisierung" strategy was implemented with particular fervour in Germany, supported by an economic strategy of deficit financing which then, as now, was contentious among economic theorists. The German governmet indeed went a step further than the governments in England or France: new cars purchased in Germany after April 1933 were no longer burdened by an annual car tax charge. Despite the success of his diversification into refrigeration technology, car parts remained at the heart of the Teves business empire, which shared in the auto-sector recovery. In 1934 a substantial new manufacturing facility was set up in Berlin under the leadership of Alfred Teves' eldest son, Heinz Wilhelm Teves (1906-1978). In 1939 a large plant to produce refrigeration products was erected at Frankfurt-Fechenheim.

Starting in 1936 Teves developed special braking systems tailored to morotsport, which were used in the Mercedes-Benz W125Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union racing cars of the period.