Star products from Germany
Products designed and made in Germany that defined their category or are used around the world, with the engineering story behind each one.
24 products
AEG Magnetophon
The Berlin tape recorder, running on BASF tape, that debuted in 1935. With high-frequency bias added in 1940 it set the template for Ampex and every studio tape machine that followed.
Birkenstock Arizona
The two-strap sandal Birkenstock introduced in 1973, built on its contoured cork footbed and now the brand's best-known model worldwide.
Bosch Sensortec MEMS sensors
Accelerometers, gyroscopes and barometric pressure sensors a few millimetres across, made in Reutlingen. Bosch says more than half the world's smartphones contain at least one of its MEMS sensors.
Braun tube (cathode ray tube)
Ferdinand Braun's 1897 tube, which steered an electron beam onto a glowing screen. It became the oscilloscope, the radar display and, for fifty years, the television picture tube.
Faber-Castell Castell 9000
The green graphite pencil introduced in 1905 by Count Alexander von Faber-Castell, offered in finely graded hardnesses and still a reference tool for artists and draughtsmen.
HARIBO Goldbears
Fruit gum bears launched by HARIBO in 1960, descended from the Dancing Bear that founder Hans Riegel created in 1922.
Herrnhut star (Moravian star)
The original 25-point Christmas star from Herrnhut in Saxony, born as a geometry lesson in a church boarding school and still folded and glued by hand.
Hohner Marine Band harmonica
Ten-hole diatonic harmonica from Trossingen, in production since 1896 and named in a nod to Sousa's Marine Band; the instrument behind much of the blues.
LAMY safari
A robust plastic fountain pen unveiled in 1980 by the Heidelberg firm LAMY, designed by Wolfgang Fabian and now a modern design classic.
Leica M rangefinder
The rangefinder camera system launched with the M3 in 1954, still in production in digital form and still compatible with lenses made seven decades ago.
Melitta coffee filter
The paper coffee filter invented by Dresden housewife Melitta Bentz, registered as a utility model in June 1908 and the founding product of the Melitta Group.
Miele washing machines
Premium washing machines built in Gütersloh by the family company that began in 1899 with a tub washer and still designs for long life and repair.
NIVEA Creme
The skin cream developed in Hamburg in 1911 by Oscar Troplowitz and Paul Gerson Unna, sold since 1925 in the blue tin that became one of the world's best-known packages.
Neumann U 87 microphone
The large-diaphragm condenser microphone introduced by Neumann of Berlin in 1967, still a standard fixture of recording studios worldwide.
Playmobil figures
The 7.5 cm play figures designed by Hans Beck and presented at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1974, the basis of the Playmobil universe of themed play sets.
SIM card (first commercial SIM)
Munich's Giesecke+Devrient delivered the first commercial SIM card in 1991 to Finland's Radiolinja, building on the German chip card patents of Dethloff and Gröttrup.
Steiff teddy bear
Bear 55 PB, the jointed mohair bear designed by Richard Steiff in 1902, which Steiff counts as the first teddy bear and has marked with a Button in Ear since 1904.
Teekanne double-chamber tea bag
The folded two-chamber tea bag patented by Teekanne in 1949, packed without glue on Teepack machines that now run in more than 50 countries.
TetraMin flake food
The dry flake fish food launched in 1955 by Dr Ulrich Baensch that freed aquarium keepers from catching live food; still made in Melle, Lower Saxony.
Thermomix
Vorwerk's heating food processor, first sold as the VM 2000 in 1971, which weighs, chops, stirs and cooks and guides users through recipes step by step.
Wanzl shopping trolley
The European supermarket trolley, sketched by Rudolf Wanzl on a flight home from the US in 1951 and patented as Concentra; still largely made in Bavaria.
adidas Predator
The football boot introduced in 1994 with rubber ridges on the upper, based on a concept by former footballer Craig Johnston, to add grip and swerve on the ball.
adidas Samba
A low-profile, gum-soled football shoe designed in the 1950s for grip on icy pitches, which became one of adidas's most enduring street shoes.
xHE-AAC and MPEG-H Audio
Fraunhofer IIS's successors to mp3: xHE-AAC, which Netflix uses to stream audio on Android, and MPEG-H Audio, the sound system of South Korea's UHD TV and Brazil's next broadcast standard.
Product stories
The German inside: what Germany builds into your car, your flight and the data centre
Your car may be Japanese or Italian, your airliner Airbus or Boeing. Inside both, and in the data centres behind them, sit German gearboxes, seals, bearings, chips, turbines, landing gear and racks.
Germany's strangest world champions: the small firms that quietly own odd niches
Ship propellers from a lake town, Christmas stars from a church village, the trolley sketched on a flight home. A tour of German niche champions and the stories behind them.
Inside your smartphone: the German parts nobody sees
No phone sold today carries a German brand of note, yet German sensors, liquid crystals, glass and silicon sit inside a great many of them. A walk up the supply chain, from Reutlingen to Burghausen.
Mittelstand icons: Thermomix, Playmobil, HARIBO and Steiff, and what keeps them German
Four beloved consumer brands, four family-shaped histories. Their products are global, and some are now largely made abroad. So what is German about them? Ownership, headquarters and a habit of patience.
Medtech made in Germany: scanners, ventilators, prosthetics and the lab bench
From imaging in Erlangen to anaesthesia in Lübeck, prosthetics in Duderstadt and lab equipment in Hamburg and Göttingen, German firms supply much of modern medicine's hardware.
The energy transition's hardware: turbines, inverters and electrolysers made in Germany
Wind turbines from Aurich and Rostock, solar inverters from northern Hesse, electrolysers from Dresden and grid equipment from Siemens Energy. Who builds the physical kit of decarbonisation.
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