1898 - Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG
In the late 1890s, the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg and its Director Heinrich Buz focused completely on growth and new technology. Parallel to the development of the first German rotary press, Buz supported two ambitious young engineers, Carl von Linde and Rudolf Diesel, who would write technological history with their respective inventions. In 1873, von Linde built a first efficient refrigeration machine, which became a bestseller at breweries above all, and which soon accounted for over half of M.A.N. sales. But Diesel’s engine, with its new ignition process, and which with Buz’s support rang in a literally world-shaking new era of machine and engine construction, became even more important.
Progress on the one side, economic difficulties on the other. At the end of the 1890s, the Klett’sche Maschinenfabrik in Nuremberg was in a quandary – both financially and technically, because it urgently needed access to the Augsburg Diesel technology. The company’s owner, Theodor von Cramer-Klett jr., had commissioned Anton Rieppel, the Director of the Nuremberg company, with its sale. In a confidential letter, Rieppel wrote to Buz on April 3, 1898 and suggested a fusion of the two companies. With this “Bavarian solution”, Rieppel wanted to ward off a takeover attempt by the Ruhr industry – and create an “industrial power in Southern Germany”.
In 1898, the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg and the Eisengießerei und Maschinenfabrik Klett & Comp merged. In 1908, the company was finally renamed Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG, or M.A.N. As of that point, Buz and Rieppel led the company together. In recognition of their entrepreneurial achievements, both were raised to the nobility, Rieppel in 1906, Buz in 1907.
Germany set the pace for submarine warfare in World War I as early as 1914, when Kaiser Wilhelm II proved unwilling to risk his High Seas Fleet in a direct engagement with the British Grand Fleet and unleashed the U-boat force. Operating alone, German U-boats usually displaced well over 800 tons, carried very reliable Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg (MAN) diesels, and successfully operated in the English Channel approaches and much of the Atlantic Ocean. The U-boat community, dubbed the Raiders of the Deep by American journalist Lowell Thomas, set the standard for that era’s submarine performance – technical, tactical, and strategic.
In 1921, when the Southern German MAN was taken over by the Gutehoffnungshütte, the coal and steel company in the Ruhr region in the North.
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