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Telefunken Zürich AG, Albisrieden
The Telefunken Zürich AG, Albiswerk Zürich AG or Siemens Albis is a successor of the Swiss Telefunken branch and produced equipment for telephony and wireless communication in Zurich area.
Company history
The Protos Telephonwerke AG, were founded in 1913 in Glarus, after financial troubles, the company has been taken over by Siemens & Halske, Berlin in 1922 and renamed Telephonwerke Albisrieden in 1924, the company produced not only telephones and telephone exchanges but also military wireless communication equipment.
In 1932, Siemens and AEG founded a branch of the Telefunken GmbH in Zurich.
Telefunken had been founded in 1903 from Siemens & Halske and AEG in a partnership project under the name of „Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie GmbH, System Telefunken“; Telefunken developed equipment for maritime, military and commercial (shortwave) long distance communication.
After Albisrieden was integrated in the city of Zurich, the Company got it's new name Albiswerk Zürich AG and produced telephone equipment and home radios. Because Telefunken (Berlin) did produce equipment for the German Wehrmacht, the „Telefonwerke“ were put on a black list. The reaction of the Germans was to boykott their Swiss branch. In 1941, the company completely split off from the Telefunken conglomerate, sets produced later carried the label „Albis“ and Siemens as a reference to the company who did the marketing and sales.
In the meantime, because of racist legislation in Germany, Telefunken became solely owned by AEG.
In aorund 1945, AWZ did produce a few types of key valves in their own premises and started production with the brand „Siemens - Albis“ again; in 1953, the production of home radio receivers stopped. The production of a VHF - FM adaptor and the efforts to develop a television receiver on their own (AlDePa) were without financial success.
In 1955, the still existing Telefunken Zürich AG has been integrated in Albiswerke Zürich (AWZ).
After this, telephone equipment, personal paging systems, RF wired broadcast sets and military communications equipment was produced at the Albiswerk.
Nowadays, the company is still active as Siemens Schweiz AG.
Additional information
- Siemens Albis company history at http://www.siemens.ch