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.
4 products
Isar Aerospace Spectrum
A two-stage orbital launcher from Ottobrunn near Munich; after a failed first flight in March 2025, it reached orbit from Norway in September 2026.
OroraTech FOREST satellites
Thermal-infrared small satellites built to spot wildfires from orbit several times a day; the FOREST constellation reached 20 satellites in orbit in October 2026.
Quantum Systems Vector
A portable reconnaissance drone from the Munich area, introduced in 2020, that takes off vertically and then flies like a plane; widely used by Ukraine's forces.
TanDEM-X and WorldDEM
Two German radar satellites flying a few hundred metres apart that produced a seamless 3D elevation model of all Earth's land, on a 12 metre grid, completed in 2016.
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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