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.
6 products
CLAAS LEXION combine harvester
The combine harvester series launched by CLAAS of Harsewinkel in 1995 with the LEXION 480, presented at the time as the most powerful combine in the world.
Heidelberg Speedmaster
The sheetfed offset printing press series launched in 1974 by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, used for commercial and packaging printing around the world.
Herrenknecht tunnel boring machines
Custom tunnel boring machines from Schwanau, used on projects from the Gotthard Base Tunnel to metro lines worldwide, in every geology from hard rock to soft soil.
Kärcher high-pressure cleaners
Kärcher's cleaning business began in 1950 with the DS 350, described as Europe's first hot-water high-pressure cleaner.
RATIONAL iCombi Pro
An intelligent combi steamer for professional kitchens that combines steam and convection heat and adjusts cooking automatically; RATIONAL invented the category in 1976.
STIHL Contra chainsaw
STIHL's first gearless one-man petrol chainsaw, launched in 1959 at 12 kg, which helped make powered chainsaws practical for individual forestry workers.
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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