“Brunsviga” in the 1950’s before the takeover by “Olympia”
From 1950 on, the name of the factory was just “Brunsviga Maschinenwerke A.G.”. At this time, Hans-Joachim Runte and Ditwalt Bremeier belonged to the board of directors. In May 1952, the factory celebrated 60 years of calculator manufacture – until then about 260.000 BRUNSVIGA calculators had been manufactured.
In September 1953, Alexander Vial started as proxy holder and head salesperson of the Brunswick head office, but he died the same year. From January 1st 1954 on, Wolfgang König was nominated as proxy holder.
In 1954, the BRUNSVIGA top-seller Hermann Ebel, who at that point in time had worked for Brunsviga for 50 years, was celebrated in a rare company jubilee. He had started as a 14-year old, as an apprentice in the Berlin office, had then moved on to being a travelling salesman, and from 1923 on was the head of the Berlin sales office.
From 1953 to 1955, “Brunsviga” founded daughter companies in the UK, Belgium, Italy and Peru. In 1953, on average every three minutes, a BRUNSVIGA machine was finished. In 1954, prices had to be lowered substantially due to increased competition, and on April 20th, a new price list came into effect. The losses could only be made good by increases in turnover and the manufacture of large series.
In 1955, it was decided on the 83rd general assembly to increase the capital to 4 million DM. Hans-Joachim Runte resigned from the board effective April 30th 1955. Then Carl-Georg Pfeffer and Dr. Waldemar Penkert were nominated as board members. Pfeffer, who had been division leader for the domestic sales and head of the Brunsviga Sales Company in London, took over the commercial direction from Runte. Later, he worked for “AEG Telefunken” in the Nürnberg factory.
To the board of directors belonged at this time also the works councils Wilhelm Paetsch (chairman) and Willy Fischer (vice-chairman). The workforce consisted between 1955 and 1957 of about 1200 people.
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