Andreas Stihl (10 November 1896 in

Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Z ...

, Switzerland – 14 January 1973 in Rohrbronn,

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

, Germany) was a Swiss-born German engineer and important inventor in the area of

chainsaw A chainsaw (or chain saw) is a portable gasoline-, electric-, or battery-powered saw that cuts with a set of teeth attached to a rotating chain driven along a guide bar. It is used in activities such as tree felling, limbing, bucking, pru ...

s, and the founder of Andreas

Stihl Stihl (, ) is a German manufacturer of chainsaws and other handheld power equipment including trimmers and blowers. Their headquarters are in Waiblingen, Baden-Württemberg, near Stuttgart, Germany. Stihl was founded in 1926 by Andreas Stihl, an ...

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 primary ('' ...

, before moving to relatives in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

. He attended the

Realschule ''Realschule'' () 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''), ...

Singen Singen ( 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 very south of Baden-Württember ...

(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 Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...

. From 1917 until 1920, he studied

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

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

Invention of the chainsaw

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

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the Sw ...

, which was dissolved in 1926. Stihl founded a new company, for steam boiler prefiring 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 that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...

chainsaw worldwide. In 1929, Stihl built a

petrol Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic c ...

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 (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

from 1933 and of the Allegemeine SS 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 Waiblingen (; Swabian: ''Woeblinge'') is a town in the southwest of Germany, located in the center of the densely populated Stuttgart region, directly neighboring Stuttgart. It is the capital and largest city of the Rems-Murr district. , Wai ...

). 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 A (plural , German for " fellow traveller") is a person (the German term has the male grammatical gender; to specifically indicate a female the -in suffix has to be added) believed to be tied to or passively sympathising of certain social movemen ...

, 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 Hans Peter Stihl (born 18 April 1932, in Stuttgart) is a German industrialist who was head of Stihl from 1973 to 2002. He remained a board member until 2012. In 2006, he became Consul-General of Singapore. He is a member of the Robert Bosch Ind ...

(born 1932) and Eva Mayr-Stihl (born 1935), who succeeded her father in managing the company and remaining

Vorstand In German corporate governance, a ''Vorstand'' is the executive board of a corporation (public limited company). It is hierarchically subordinate to the supervisory board (''Aufsichtsrat''), as German company law imposes a two-tier board of direc ...

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 Nazi Party members German company founders