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.
7 products
Aspirin
Acetylsalicylic acid, synthesised in pure form in Bayer's laboratory in 1897 and registered as the Aspirin trademark in 1899, one of the most widely used medicines in history.
Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine
The mRNA vaccine developed by BioNTech of Mainz with Pfizer, which on 2 December 2020 became the first COVID-19 vaccine authorised in a Western country.
Dräger Alcotest
Breath alcohol testing from Lübeck, from the colour-change Alcotest tube of 1953 to electronic devices whose readings are admitted as evidence in court.
FLASH MRI
Fast Low Angle Shot, the Göttingen imaging method that cut MRI scan times by a factor of about 100. It is the Max Planck Society's most lucrative patent, with about 155 million euros in licence income.
Ottobock C-Leg
The microprocessor-controlled prosthetic knee presented by Ottobock in 1997, which adjusts resistance in real time to the wearer's gait and terrain.
Siemens Healthineers NAEOTOM Alpha
The computed tomography scanner that Siemens Healthineers describes as the first photon-counting CT in clinical use, introduced in 2021.
Siemens electron microscope (Übermikroskop)
Ernst Ruska and Bodo von Borries turned the 1931 Berlin electron microscope into the first series-produced instrument, sold by Siemens and Halske from 1939. Ruska's Nobel came in 1986.
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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