Andreas Stihl (10 November 1896 – 14 January 1973) was a Swiss-born German engineer and important inventor in the area of

chainsaw A chainsaw (or chain saw) is a portable handheld power saw, power saw that cuts with a set of teeth attached to a rotating chain driven along a guide bar. Modern chainsaws are typically gasoline or electric and are used in activities such as t ...

s, and the founder of Andreas Stihl AG & Company KG. He is often hailed as the "Father of the chainsaw".

Early life

Stihl went to the

Volksschule The German term ''Volksschule'' () generally refers to compulsory education, denoting an educational institution every person (i.e. the people, ''Volk'') is required to attend. In Germany and Switzerland it is equivalent to a combined primar ...

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, before moving to relatives in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. He attended the

Realschule Real school (, ) is a type of secondary school in Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia (''realna gimnazija''), the Austrian Empire, the German Empire, Denmark and Norway (''realskole''), Sweden (''realskola''), F ...

Singen Singen (; Low Alemannic German, Low Alemannic: ''Singe'') is an industrial city in the very south of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany and just north of the German-Swiss border. Location Singen is an industrial city situated in the far sout ...

(Baden-Württemberg) and the Gymnasium in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel. From 1915 until his dismissal by injuries in 1917, Stihl fought in the First World War in the

German Army The German Army (, 'army') is the land component of the armed forces of Federal Republic of Germany, Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German together with the German Navy, ''Marine'' (G ...

. From 1917 until 1920, he studied

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

Eisenach Eisenach () is a Town#Germany, town in Thuringia, Germany with 42,000 inhabitants, west of Erfurt, southeast of Kassel and northeast of Frankfurt. It is the main urban centre of western Thuringia, and bordering northeastern Hesse, Hessian re ...

Invention of the chainsaw

In 1923, together with his friend Carl Hohl, he founded an engineering firm in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

, which was dissolved in 1926. Stihl founded a new company, for steam boiler pre-firing systems, in the same year. He also patented the "Cutoff Chainsaw for Electric Power" in 1926, which weighed a hefty 64 kilograms and had a one-inch gauge chain with handles at either end. Due to its bulk, it required two people to operate. It was, however, the first

electric Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

chainsaw worldwide. In 1929, Stihl built a

petrol Gasoline (North American English) or petrol ( Commonwealth English) is a petrochemical product characterized as a transparent, yellowish, and flammable liquid normally used as a fuel for spark-ignited internal combustion engines. When formul ...

powered chainsaw, named the "tree-felling machine", two years after fellow German Emil Lerp had built the first one worldwide. The following year, Stihl created the first ever chainsaw that could be operated by only one person. The company continued to grow and in 1931 it became the first European company to export chainsaws to the United States and the Soviet Union. Stihl has been the biggest chainsaw manufacturing company in the world since 1971.

Nazi Party membership

Stihl was a member of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

from 1933 and of the

Allgemeine SS The ''Allgemeine SS'' (; "General SS") was a major branch of the '' Schutzstaffel'' (SS) paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany; it was managed by the SS Main Office (''SS-Hauptamt''). The ''Allgemeine SS'' was officially established in the autu ...

from 1935. He was not called for military service during the war, and instead ran his company as the "A. Stihl Maschinenfabrik" in Bad Canstatt. After the factory was badly damaged in bombings in 1943-1944, it was moved to Neustadt (now Waiblingen). The company employed about 250 people in 1939, and during the war it also employed some number of slave labourers. At the end of the war he was arrested by Allied troops and his company was seized. After three years' detention, he was classified as a Mitläufer, released, and had his company returned.

Personal life

In 1929, Andreas Stihl married Mia Giersch (1903-2002), with whom he had four children, among them Hans Peter Stihl (born 1932) and Eva Mayr-Stihl (born 1935), who succeeded her father in managing the company and remaining Vorstand until 2002. Stihl divorced his first wife in 1960, and married Hannelore Wegener-Doberg (1927-2009) the same year.

References

External links

Industry Leader in Quality & Innovation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stihl, Andreas 1896 births 1973 deaths Businesspeople from Stuttgart Swiss emigrants to Germany 20th-century German inventors Chainsaws German Army personnel of World War I German casualties of World War I German company founders SS personnel German prisoners and detainees