175 Years Wilhelm Maybach — A Look behind the Scenes

The 9^th of Feb­ru­ary 2021 marked the 175^th birth­day of Wil­helm May­bach. To appro­pri­ate­ly cel­e­brate the ‘King of Design­ers’ and his con­tri­bu­tions to mobil­i­ty, sev­er­al projects have been launched which allowed mark­ing the anniver­sary in print and online. This week we would like to present an overview of these activ­i­ties and also pro­vide some inter­est­ing insights into the making-of.

Wil­helm May­bach Fly­er Campaign

On Feb­ru­ary 9, we cel­e­brat­ed the 175^th birth­day of Wil­helm May­bach. To mark this very spe­cial occa­sion, the Wil­helm and Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion has made avail­able a set of five edu­ca­tion­al fly­ers giv­ing an overview of Wil­helm May­bach’s life and high­light­ing his impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to tech­nol­o­gy, inno­va­tion, and the his­to­ry of mobil­i­ty. The last one of these cards also refers to the cur­rent work of the foun­da­tion and its mean­ing­ful coöper­a­tion with the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V. (asso­ci­a­tion) – the May­bach Pow­ered Design series that has been cre­at­ed exclu­sive­ly in coöper­a­tion with Michael Schwab stu­dio. In addi­tion to the Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V., part­ners of the cam­paign are the Bruder­haus-Diakonie Reut­lin­gen, the May­bach brand of Daim­ler AG, and the Wil­helm-May­bach-Schule tech­ni­cal school cen­ter in Heil­bronn. The cards will be acces­si­ble at var­i­ous loca­tions in Friedrichshafen and across var­i­ous loca­tions in Ger­many. The fly­ers are also avail­able in a dig­i­tal for­mat and online at https://​may​bach​.org/​c​e​l​e​b​r​a​t​i​n​g​-​1​7​5​-​y​e​a​r​s​-​w​i​l​h​e​l​m​-​m​a​y​b​a​ch/. The fly­ers also include a so-called QR code. By sim­ply using a smart­phone or tablet, you can eas­i­ly take a pic­ture of the code and be tak­en direct­ly to the May​bach​.org web­site, which takes you to the May­bach vir­tu­al muse­um. We have more updates about this excit­ing project very soon!

Book in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Wil­helm May­bach School Heilbronn

Anoth­er impor­tant hon­or­ing of Wil­helm May­bach comes straight from his home­town and an insti­tu­tion that bears his name: the tech­ni­cal school cen­ter ‘Wil­helm-May­bach-School’. This year the Wil­helm-May­bach-School will hon­or Wil­helm Maybach’s name by putting togeth­er a ded­i­cat­ed book­let includ­ing con­tent and visu­als from dif­fer­ent voic­es con­nect­ed to the May­bach her­itage. Proud­ly, the Wil­helm and Karl May­bach Foun­da­tion togeth­er with the Schmid-May­bach fam­i­ly, have pro­vid­ed mean­ing­ful contributions.

To fur­ther cel­e­brate this year’s impor­tant anniver­sary, we have also pre­sent­ed an up to this point unpub­lished por­trait pho­to­graph of Wil­helm May­bach from the May­bach Muse­um Col­lec­tion in Friedrichshafen. Besides pro­vid­ing an insight into the way pho­tographs used to be com­mis­sioned back in the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry, we have also cho­sen it to show­case the every­day work with objects and doc­u­ments by the Foundation’s Ger­man Team. The brochure pub­lished by the Wil­helm-May­bach-School will become avail­able in the course of this year and we are very much look­ing for­ward to its publication.

Heil­bronn, Ger­many is the city where Wil­helm May­bach was born as one of five chil­dren and where he spent the first few years of his life. Besides the school named after him, May­bach is present in this town to this very day by a large col­lec­tion relat­ing to Wil­helm May­bach which is being stored in the city’s archive. Also, with­in the school, the May­bach his­to­ry is and has been kept present enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly over the years. There even had been a project spear­head­ed by Klaus Schel­len­berg­er of restor­ing a May­bach type SW 38 car that was metic­u­lous­ly recon­struct­ed using parts from dif­fer­ent sources – cer­tain­ly, a project like no oth­er (this project was doc­u­ment­ed in the book ‘Das May­bach-Mosaik: von der Vision zu einem May­bach-Auto­mo­bil’ pub­lished in 2003). Aside from sup­port­ing the afore­men­tioned project, the Schmid-May­bach fam­i­ly has donat­ed a price over the years which is award­ed to stu­dents of that year with the high­est-rank­ing achievements.

A key com­po­nent of our col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Wil­helm-May­bach-Schule for the pub­li­ca­tion project was the inter­view with an impor­tant eye­wit­ness of May­bach his­to­ry: Mrs. Irm­gard Schmid-May­bach, daugh­ter of Karl and grand­daugh­ter of Wil­helm May­bach. An audio-Inter­view was record­ed by her son, Ulrich Schmid-May­bach that has pro­vid­ed many inter­est­ing insights into the his­to­ry and also a per­son­al per­spec­tive of Irm­gard Schmid-May­bach. Not only will this inter­view be pub­lished in the small book by the Wil­helm-May­bach-School, but it also has been pub­lished in the ‘Die Stimme’ (The Voice) on the occa­sion of the 175^th birth­day of Wil­helm May­bach on the 9^th of February.

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You can also reach our Museum/​Archive team at museum@​maybach.​org.

We look forward to hearing from you!