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Philips
AEG
Siemens
chronology
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Philips,
AEG and Siemens
This page profiles Philips, AEG and Siemens, the electrotechnical
groups whose history provides a perspective on Westinghouse
and General Electric. Philips and Siemens were parents
of Polygram, the record group acquired by Seagram.
It covers -
introduction
Until 1939 world electrical markets were dominated by
five groups: the US Westinghouse
and GE, German Siemens and AEG,
and UK GEC/EMI. Westinghouse allied
with Siemens, General Electric allied with (and invested
in) AEG. All four cooperated and competed with the UK
GEC.
Philips
emerged after the war as a diversified electronics group
with interests in the record industry. Those interests
were eventually bundled with Siemens' recording holdings
(centred on Deutsche Grammophon) as Polygram, which was
sold to Seagram and thus passed
under control of Vivendi.
Philips
[under development]
Siemens
Siemens traces its origins to establishment in 1847 of
Telegraphenbauanstalt von Siemens & Halske, which
leveraged invention of gutta percha insulation of copper
wire to develop Prussia's first major telegraph line.
In 1853 Siemens & Halske built a 10,000 kilometre-long
telegraph network in Russia, establishing a subsidiary
in St Petersburg in 1855 and in the UK in 1858 (initially
centred on production and laying of submarine cables).
Research by Werner Siemens (enobled as Werner von Siemens
in 1888) was reflected in installation of Berlin's first
electric railway (1879), first electric streetlights and
electric elevator (1880) and electric tramcar (1881).
Siemens established an alliance with Westinghouse - a
departure from its emphasis on inhouse development rather
than licencing - and became a public company in 1897.
In 1903 acquired competitor Elektrizitäts-Aktiengesellschaft
vorm. Schuckert & Co to establish Siemens-Schuckertwerke
power engineering and joined AEG in founding Gesellschaft
für drahtlose Telegraphie System Telefunken, concerned
with radio equipment manufacturing and operation. At the
outbreak of war in 1914 it had a global workforce of 82,000
people. By the end of the war Siemens had lost 40% of
its capital, with expropriation of most foreign operations
and patents.
Integration downstream during the 1920s into steel and
coalmining was disappointing. However, research, manufacturing,
sales development and network construction meant that
by 1933 Siemens was again one of the four dominant global
electrotechnical groups, with interests extending from
domestic appliance manufacture to construction of major
power plants. Siemens, like IG Farben, was an integral
part of the Third Reich, despite the liberal stance of
some directors and executives and the Nazi Party's anti-corporate
rhetoric. AEG and Siemens had formed the Klangfilm joint
venture in 1929 to compete with AT&T's
Western Electric film interests.
In 1941 Siemens acquired AEG's stakes in Deutsche Grammophon,
Klangfilm and other interests. AEG gained Siemens' stake
in Telefunken, including the Telefunken-Schallplatte record
company. In 1944 the Siemens workforce had grown to some
244,000, including 50,000 forced labourers (eg from concentration
camps). Losses at the end of hostilities were identified
as equivalent to 80% of the group's assets.
Siemens rode the post-45 Wirtschaftswunder, rebuilding
its international operations, renewing its alliance with
Westinghouse and acquiring competitors. In 1962 it formed
the Gramophon-Philips Group (GPG) joint venture with Philips,
replaced by jointly-owned Polygram in 1972.
In 1969 - with over 270,000 employees worldwide - Siemens
consolidated its operations into six groups (comparable
in spread to that of GE and Westinghouse): Components,
Data Systems, Power Engineering, Electrical Installations,
Medical Engineering and Telecommunications. Autonomous
units included the Bosch-Siemens Hausgeräte joint
venture (formed with Robert Bosch in 1967) and the Kraftwerk
Union power plant construction joint venture with AEG.
Siemens bought out AEG as that group headed towards bankruptcy
in the late 1970s.
In 1983 Siemens began to dispose of its interest in Polygram.
During 1990, with support from the European Commission
it sought to build on itsd semiconductor interests by
acquiring Nixdorf to form the largest EU computer group,
going on to acquire the UK Plessey in 1991 and US Rolm
(from IBM) in 1992). Lack of success saw Siemens spin
off most computing operations to Fujitsu in 1999, a year
after it acquired Westinghouse's fossil fuel power plant
arm.
AEG
AEG - the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft -
was established by Emil Rathenau in 1887, replacing the
Deutsche Edison Gesellschaft (DEG) that he had founded
in 1883 to licence Edison's electrical patents. AEG experienced
explosive expansion through acquisition and licensing,
becoming the German counterpart of the US General Electric
- with which it had a strategic alliance - and UK GEC
as it encompassed consumer products, light and heavy engineering,
aluminium production, finance and other sectors. It gained
a reputation for advanced management and for design, with
products and factory building for example being designed
by Bauhaus precursor Peter Behrens.
Control
of the group passed to Emil's son Walther, captured as
Arnheim in Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities
and a key figure in mobilisation of Germany's economy
after August 1914. Rathenau was assassinated in 1922 by
antisemitic terrorists while serving as German Foreign
Minister.
The
group was propelled by its momentum for the next two decades
but in contrast to Siemens was increasingly beset by management
weaknesses from the 1960s onwards as it grappled with
saturation in its domestic consumer markets and second
ranking in heavy engineering markets. That echoed the
experience of GEC and Westinghouse. In 1982 it was acquired
by the Daimler-Benz auto group as part of Daimler's expansion
into services, electronics and aerospace. Rationalisation
saw closure, sale or spin off of most AEG operations.
studies
Philips is the subject of a large-scale academic history.
Volumes include The history of NV Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken
(Vol 1: The origin of the Dutch Incandescent Lamp Industry,
to 1891) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1986) and
The history of NV Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken (Vol
2: A Company of Many Parts, 1891 till 1918) (Cambridge:
Cambridge Uni Press 1988) by A. Heerding and The history
of Philips Electronics NV (Vol 3: The Development of N.V.
Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken into a major electrical group)
(Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff 1992) and The history of
Philips Electronics NV (Vol 4: Under German rule)
(Zaltbommel: European Library 1999) by I.J. Blanken.
Marcel Metze has produced two studies of Philips in crisis
- unfortunately not available in English. They are Kortsluiting
(Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Sun 1991) and Let's make things
better: Philips 1990-1997 (Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Sun
1997)
There is no major English-language study of Siemens of
the quality and breadth of Feldman & Gall's history
of Deutsche Bank, Feldman's study of Allianz or Hayes'
work on IG Farben.
An introduction is provided by The Siemens Company:
Its Historical Role in the Progress of Elecrical Engineering,
1847-1980 (Berlin: Publicis 1987) by Sigfrid von
Weiher & Herbert Goetzler, Jürgen Kocka's Unternehmensverwaltung
und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens, 1847-1914
(Stuttgart: 1969) and Industrial Culture & Bourgeois
Society in Modern Germany (Oxford: Berghahn 1999)
and by Wilfred Feldkirchen's Werner Von Siemens: Inventor
& International Entrepreneur (Columbus: Ohio
State Uni Press 1994) and Siemens: 1918-1945
(Columbus: Ohio State Uni Press 1999). The latter volume
and History of the House of Siemens (New York:
Arno Press 1977) by Georg Siemens, first published 1957,
might ideally be read in conjunction with a study such
as West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi
Past, 1945-1955 (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina
Press 2001) by Jonathan Wiesen and Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany Under the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) by Ulrich Herbert. For more recent activity
insights are offered in Sources of Industrial Leadership:
Studies of Seven Industries (Cambridge: Cambridge
Uni Press 1999) edited by David Mowery & Richard Nelson.
Context is provided by Alfred Chandler's outstanding Scale
& Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism
(Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1999).
Interest in AEG has largely centred on its activity as
a design patron (eg with Peter Behrens) and the link with
Walter Rathenau. Three useful introductions are Peter
Strunk's Die AEG, Aufstieg und Niedergang einer Industrielegende
(Berlin: Nicolai 1999), Manfred Pohl's Emil Rathenau
un die AEG (Berlin: Hase & Koehler 1988) and
Astrid Zipfel's Public Relations in der Elektroindustrie
- Die Firmen Siemens und AEG 1847 bis 1939 (Cologne:
Böhlau Verlag 1997). A point of reference for the
latter is provided by David Nye's Image Worlds: Corporate
Identities at General Electric, 1890-1930 (Cambridge:
MIT Press 1985) and Tilman Buddensieg's Industriekultur:
Peter Behrens and the AEG, 1907-1914 (Cambridge:
Harvard Uni Press 1984).
For Walther Rathenau see in particular Walther Rathenau
- Industrialist, Banker, Intellectual & Politician:
Notes & Diaries 1907-1922 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press 1985) edited by Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann - augmented
by rediscovery of the Rathenau papers in the Moscow Central
Archive - and Fritz Stern's perceptive study 'Walther
Rathenau and the Vision of Modernity' in Einstein's
German World (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1999).
Other works of interest are Peter Berglar's Walther
Rathenau: Seine Zeit, sein Werk, sein Persönlichkeit
(Bremen: Schuenemann 1970) and David Felix's Walther
Rathenau and the Weimar Republic: The Politics of Reparations
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1971).
 next
page (Polygram, Decca and DG chronology)
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