Alfred Teves (27 January 1868 – 5 November 1953) was a German ship's captain who after a short naval career from 1898 reinvented himself as an auto industry entrepreneur.

During the war that broke out two years later this factory, under the capable direction of Chief Engineer Nathan Sally Stern[8] (1879– 1975) whom Teves knew from Adlerwerke AG, would be modified to produce fuses and cartridges for munitions, along with various associated precision components.

A stroke of good fortune turned up in the form of a longstanding German friend from Brussels, who had been forced to leave Belgium in the punishing aftermath of the disastrous war.

The friend arrived with an offer to sell to Teves the plant and equipment from the piston ring factory he had previously set up in Belgium, and which was now crated up and temporarily stored in fourteen railway wagons.

[4] Alfred Teves quickly emerged as a major supplier of piston rings at the start of what turned out to be a decade of significant expansion for the German auto industry.

[1] It was in 1921 that a new more modern logo, featuring the letters ATE, replaced the former more fussy badge that had depicted a fist holding up a hammer encircled by a piston ring.

The Adler Standard 6, introduced to the market in October 1926 at the Berlin Motor Show, was the first volume-produced car outside North America to feature hydraulic brakes.

Hydraulic brakes became mainstream on German and French mid-sized and luxury cars during the decade that followed, and the profitability they conferred on their manufacturers contributed to a further significant growth for the Teves car-parts conglomerate.

[6] In addition to automobile braking systems, "ATE" were also at the forefront in developing and supplying hydraulic components for cars, aircraft, shipping related applications and motorbikes, both within Germany and for export markets.

The "Ate-Haushaltskühlschrank" project drew inspiration from the technology developed over the previous ten years by Frigidaire, a General Motors subsidiary based, by this stage, in Dayton, Ohio.

[10] The Wall Street crash of 1929 was followed by a return to acute economic austerity and a collapse in consumer demand during the Great Depression, as unemployment peaked in 1932 at well above five million.

Teves had never shown any appetite for political involvement; but like all Germany's industrial leaders he would come under growing pressure to throw in his lot with the government during the twelve Hitler years.

During 1933 it became clear very quickly that the shrill antisemitism that had featured prominently in the utterances of populist street politicians from before the start of the 1930s had become a core underpinning of government strategy.

Stern was forced to leave the company in July 1936, but continued to receive consultancy fees and agency commissions from Teves while he arranged his emigration to England.

According to at least one source there were many other Jews whom Teves helped to conceal or, using his international contacts, to escape to Hungary or to the Netherlands or to Belgium as the situation in Germany deteriorated.

[13] Despite the success of his diversification into refrigeration technology, car parts remained at the heart of the Teves business empire, which shared in the auto-sector recovery.

[7][14] In or before 1939 Teves accepted the designation of "Wehrwirtschaftsführer",[15] a title conferred by government on senior businessmen responsible for factories which might be converted for production of armaments and munitions in the event of war preparations becoming necessary.

When workers in the Frankfurt region lost their job because of their links to the (since 1933 outlawed) Social Democratic Party, they were often able to find work in one of the Teves factories, where management would avoid noticing the formation of anti-government resistance cells.

A recent study by Paul Erker of Munich University reports a hitherto little known episode: Alfred Teves was warned that he must fire his Jewish employees or he would not be permitted to display the banners of the government mandated German Labour Front in his factory.

There is no indication that his membership application was ever progressed further, and following publication in 2020 of the results of detailed archival study undertaken by Paul Erker, it has become possible to assert that neither Teves nor his sons ever joined Hitler's National Socialist Party.

[20] Equally, however, it is impossible to overlook the way in which the Teves businesses contributed to the war economy, benefitting from contracts with the land army, the air force and the navy for fighting equipment.

In May 1945 he turned up at what had been the main "Alfred Teves Maschinen- und Armaturenfabrik" (factory) in Frankfurt with a team of 14 men, and began work on clearing away the rubble.

However, by the end of May 1945 refugees were streaming west, and news very soon leaked out that the entire factory had been stripped of plant and fittings, down to the last electric wall socket, presumably by the Soviets, although Berlin-Wittenau was later transferred to French military administration, in accordance with pre-existing agreements between the allied armies confirmed at Potsdam in July 1945.

Alfred Teves was "only" 77 when the war ended, and determined that the company should return to health, telling relatives and friends "Wir kommen wieder hoch!"

The only realistic prospect of succeeding in this lay in rebuilding the business in place of the rubble that had been the main "Alfred Teves Maschinen- und Armaturenfabrik" in Frankfurt.

There was a formidable array of permits from the military administrators and licenses to be negotiated, but Teves succeeded in pushing through the many bureaucratic hurdles and commercial challenges involved.

[4][21] Progressing the rehabilitation of the Frankfurt-Fechenheim factory was more of a challenge, partly on account of a serious shortage of several of the key materials necessary for refrigeration equipment, but also because in the immediate aftermath of the most destructive war to date, the principal priority was clearing the rubble and reconstructing the more basic infrastructure, such as homes, food shops and other work places.

Much of the damage to the main production facility at Frankfurt was still not repaired, but Albert Teves years of pre-war investment and experience nevertheless meant that as early as 1948 was well placed to supply the automobile parts and sub-assemblies which would be crucial to the rapidly expanding German auto industry during the dawning "Wirtschaftswunder" decade, with a particular focus on braking systems.

In May 1949 the British, French and American zones – had been merged to form a new U.S. sponsored West German state which came with the promise of enhanced economic integration between the hitherto separately administered sectors.

The Soviet occupation zone nevertheless underwent its own relaunch as a semi-autonomous nation state in October 1949, becoming the Soviet sponsored "German Democratic Republic" / East Germany") The significance of the Gifhorn location was greatly enhanced by its proximity to Wolfsburg, home to the Volkswagen Gifhorn and Wolfsburg were also both located close to the so-called "Inner German border", which during the early 1950s remained, for most purposes, porous.