Ein a typical single-family house somewhere in Germany: the television, Telefunken brand, is on in the living room. Next to it is a Grundig audio system. In the kitchen, an AEG refrigerator keeps the food fresh, the Bauknecht washing machine is just rinsing through a drum full of laundry. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee from the Krups machine fills the room. And music blares from the kitchen radio in Nordmende.
Something like this could have happened in Germany during the years of the economic boom, when there was no getting around German brands. But the scene could play just as well in 2023. Because the traditional German brands, whose history goes back to the early 20th or even the 19th century, still exist. Most of the time, however, they have very little to do with the companies that once made them famous. And Made in Germany most of them are long gone.
In particular, not much is left of the once world-leading German industry for consumer electronics apart from the brand names. In the 1970s, 120,000 people in West Germany were still working in the industry. In 2019, it only had 9,200 employees. The decline was, among other things, the result of rising labor costs and increasing international competition, especially from Japan.
But the brands have not completely lost their radiance, which is why other companies are now relying on the impact of the well-known names. Telefunken, for example, was founded in 1903 and was involved in the invention of color television in the 1960s. The television factory in Celle, Lower Saxony, was once considered the most modern in Europe. However, management errors combined with the structural changes of the 1970s led to its decline.
The Telefunken factory in Celle was once considered the most modern in Europe.
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Image: Picture Alliance
In the 1980s, AEG, with which Telefunken had already merged in 1967, sold the consumer electronics division to the French competitor Thomson-Brandt. He had previously taken over the German television manufacturers Nordmende and SABA. Today, only Telefunken Licenses GmbH still exists in Germany, which claims to have licensed the trademark rights to 30 different manufacturers. Telefunken televisions are now manufactured in Turkey by the Turkish company Vestel.
AEG is Swedish today
Grundig also migrated to Turkey. The decline of this traditional Franconian company also began decades before the bankruptcy in 2003. A buyer was finally found in the Turkish Koç Group. Today the brand belongs to its German subsidiary Beko Grundig Deutschland. The televisions come from Çerkezköy in Turkey.
Nordmende fared a little differently. The trademark rights are now held by the Delaware-based company Talisman Brands. Since 2017 there has been a new attempt with televisions and radios made in Germany by the company Technisat, which manufactures them as a licensee – but only until the middle of the year. Technisat did not extend the license beyond that.
In the case of AEG, the disappearance of the company is perhaps the least noticeable, as products from the brand have always been available to buy to this day. The household appliance division has belonged to the Swedish Electrolux group since 1994. Some of the products actually come from the Rothenburg ob der Tauber plant, others from Italy, Romania, Poland, Hungary or the Ukraine.
