Diehl, the Nuremberg-based company, looks back on its 100-year tradition. The major milestones from foundation of the small shop for wrought-iron work to today's internationally engaged technology corporation are listed below. A detailed company history from the point of view of a leading historian, Professor Gregor Schöllgen from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, entitled: "Diehl – A family-owned company in Germany. 1902 – 2002", has recently been published by "Propyläen-Verlag.
Margarete and Heinrich Diehl found a shop for wrought-iron work in the Schweiggerstrasse in Nuremberg for manufacture of epitaphs, building fittings and artistic cast goods. Heinrich Diehl looks after the technical aspects of the company, Margarete Diehl after finances and personnel. In 1917, their own metal, casting and pressing plant was constructed in the Äussere Bayreuther Strasse.
With the installation of a modern extrusion press for manufacture of rods and tubes, the company enters industrial dimensions and supplies its products to customers in the construction and automotive industries also outside the Nuremberg region.
Karl Diehl, son of the founders, starts mass production of precison-mechanical parts in the former Bing factory in the Stephanstrasse. The company's headquarters are established there in 1937. In 1938, a new plant for semifinished products is completed in Röthenbach on the Pegnitz. Heinrich Diehl dies on November 7, 1938 while construction of a second plant is being planned and Karl Diehl assumes responsibility for 2,800 employees in the midst of the largest building project of the company's history.
Shortly after, Diehl is classified as a war-strategic company.
During the war, prisoners of war, later on also forced laborers, are employed to be able to produce the quantities dictated by the German authorities. Heavy air raids destroy important production facilities. After the war, dismantling and rebuilding of civil production characterize the situation in the plants. On a temporary basis, repair work is carried out on German railroad cars, and commodities such as ladles and soup pots are manufactured. Precision-mechanical production is resumed, and already in 1947, the first Diehl clock is put on the market.
Diehl rapidly expands its main business, the production of semifinished material and establishes a number of further fields of business such as the production of calculating machines and timers with adjustable presets which develop into independent sections in the subsequent years. Through diversification, the company makes itself independent of the cyclical upswings and downswings of a very specific market and acquires additional technological and material competence in related business areas. The foundation of the Bundeswehr and the demand for defense technology from domestic production leads Diehl to again make use of its experience in fuze production, which was gained during the war, and form a partnership which - in addition to the Bundeswehr - soon encompasses the armed forces of allied countries.
The technological change from mechanical systems to electrical and, later on, electronic applications results in Diehl's painful changeover from calculating-machine production, which has been very successful until then, to systems of data technology and modern word processing. A similar development takes place in the sector of clocks and watches where the traditional balance wheel, which regulates the movement of clocks and watches, is increasingly replaced by quartz crystals.
The sport timer by the Diehl subsidiary Junghans determines the Olympic champions of Munich, a little later the company switches its entire production to electronic clocks and watches. The fact that markets are growing closer requires increasing internationalization of the company. Diehl meets this requirement by intensifying worldwide sales activities and by establishing first company sites abroad, for instance, in Brazil and the US.
With its new development center in Röthenbach, Diehl amalgamates its capabilities. Against the background of new technologies on the one hand and changed threat scenarios on the other, Diehl turns to so-called intelligent ammunition in order to compensate through new business fields for the decline in traditional ammunition business. Automated assembly of the MLRS artillery rocket system at Mariahütte makes Diehl a system supplier with international reputation. This position is expanded further by acquisition of Bodenseewerk Gerätetechnik in Überlingen, a leading manufacturer of aeronautical equipment and prime contractor for the European AIM-9L air-to-air missile production program, making Diehl also a renowned avionics supplier.
Junghans presents the world's first radio-controlled solar wristwatch and becomes the pacesetter in watch and clock technology. Through takeover of the AKO plants in Wangen and Kisslegg, Diehl becomes one of the large European suppliers of the white-goods industry. In the fields of household appliances and heating equipment, Diehl products are now present in almost every household. Parallel to this, activities in the field of semifinished products are expanded continuously - especially in rolled goods - through various takeovers abroad, but also through the large-scale expansion of production capacities. The conversion of the company to a family foundation to secure continued independence and autonomy accompanies a restructuring in three corporate divisions - "Metall", "Controls" and "VA Systeme".
Thus, the company has structured itself strategically and positioned itself such that the joint management of subsidiaries actually allows synergies. Hence, the Diehl Group believes that even under the conditions of global competition and at the threshold of the second century of its existence to convince its customers and partners of its high level of performance in the future as well.
© 2013 Diehl Stiftung & Co. KG
