March 2020 | News from our office in Friedrichshafen!

Last time we have pro­vid­ed a short intro­duc­tion about the work being done here in Friedrichshafen, Ger­many and why this loca­tion is of such impor­tance and rel­e­vance to the May­bach his­to­ry until today. Now, we want to give fur­ther insight into why we are col­lect­ing and why exact­ly our com­pre­hen­sive data­base is such a viable tool for our work.

Many things that are tan­gi­ble such as doc­u­ments and objects are still dor­mant in people’s homes and attics here in the region around Lake Con­stance, but also all over Ger­many as well. These can some­times, at first sight, seem small but are nev­er­the­less very impor­tant to be able to tell the entire sto­ry of the ground­break­ing devel­op­ments by Wil­helm and Karl May­bach – which are rel­e­vant in today’s world. This nar­ra­tive around May­bach not only encom­pass­es many ground­break­ing prod­ucts and devel­op­ments but also show­cas­es the lives of the peo­ple who used to work at the ‘May­bach Motoren­bau’ in Friedrichshafen, Ger­many. There are many exam­ples that demon­strate the close con­nec­tion between the work­ers and the com­pa­ny such as the renowned bust of Karl May­bach which was sculpt­ed by a lathe oper­a­tor in his spare time.

How­ev­er, not only the things of the tan­gi­ble kind are essen­tial, but also the intan­gi­ble sto­ries and anec­dotes are just as impor­tant and sig­nif­i­cant as well. By record­ing the oral his­to­ry which is con­nect­ed to var­i­ous objects images and doc­u­ments, the full poten­tial for research and pre­sen­ta­tion can be accom­plished. Addi­tion­al­ly, there is a lot of expert knowl­edge which needs to be record­ed: While some of the tech­ni­cal aspects may have become rather obso­lete since their devel­op­ment, they nev­er­the­less con­sti­tute inno­v­a­tive mile­stones of their time – mile­stones whose sto­ries need to be told and explained to inspire new gen­er­a­tions of design­ers and inno­v­a­tive thinkers.

Not only did the ‘Fre­un­deskreis May­bach Muse­um e.V.’ (Friends of the May­bach Muse­um Asso­ci­a­tion) lay the ground stone need­ed, it also rep­re­sents an essen­tial cat­a­lyst to fur­ther build and grow this impor­tant May­bach col­lec­tion. Their net­work fos­ters the progress of the col­lec­tion as many donate new objects and doc­u­ments but also many of its mem­bers are con­tem­po­rary wit­ness­es and experts as well.

With thor­ough doc­u­men­ta­tion that also includes the oral his­to­ries as men­tioned before, the col­lec­tion becomes a very impor­tant source both for research done in house as well as for peo­ple com­ing from out­side such as stu­dents or researchers. As we also con­tin­ue to build a library of spe­cial lit­er­a­ture, anoth­er lay­er of infor­ma­tion is added that also becomes research­able in our data­base. All record­ed infor­ma­tion can be con­nect­ed in our data­base which leads to imme­di­ate results that — in the best case — to give an exam­ple, com­bine both an object as well as a doc­u­ment, an eye­wit­ness account and a men­tion in literature.

These con­nect­ed lay­ers of infor­ma­tion which are avail­able in the data­base enable to present doc­u­ments and objects to their full poten­tial with­in an exhi­bi­tion. One of our key top­ics is ‘propul­sion sys­tems’ built by ‘May­bach Motoren­bau’ for trains, and the so-called ‘SVT’ espe­cial­ly; short for ‘Schnell­trieb­wa­gen mit Ver­bren­nungsmo­tor’ (high-speed trains with com­bus­tion engines). With the May­bach foundation’s project to restore one of the last trains of this era, the ‘SVT 137 856 type Cologne’, this top­ic can be expe­ri­enced via an object on the great­est scale pos­si­ble. Karl May­bach and his com­pa­ny were vision­ary in their devel­op­ment of the need­ed tech­nolo­gies that enabled speeds that were unheard of before. Even the first exper­i­men­tal train of this line, the SVT 877 a/​b Fliegen­der Ham­burg­er (‘Fly­ing Ham­burg­er’) reached speeds of around 160 km/​h. In our image, we are show­ing a press print of the first tri­al voy­age between Ham­burg and Berlin, Ger­many made by the Fly­ing Ham­burg­er – a col­lec­tion item we will present in more detail the next time.