Demag

The Demag company was formed finally 1910 in Duisburg through the union of the Märkische Maschinenbau-Anstalt L. Stuckenholz AG, the Duisburg Mechanical Engineering AG, and the Benrath Machine Works GmbH.

The Märkische Maschinenbau-Anstalt L. Stuckenholz AG traces back to the machine factory Mechanische Werkstätten Harkort & Co., founded 1819 in Wetter an der Ruhr, already beginning the manufacturing of cranes in 1840.

In 1908, they designed what was then the world's largest floating crane, built for Harland & Wolff in Belfast, which would be used for the building of the passenger liners RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic.

Starting in 1925, Demag also manufactured excavators. They expanded to manufacture locomotives and railroad cars. During the Second World War, armoured fighting vehicles (in particular Bergepanther) were built in the Berlin Staaken plant.

During the buildup to, and during World War II, Demag-designed halftrack military vehicles, both in unarmored "artillery tractor" models in the late 1930s, the basis for the powertrain of their armored Sd.Kfz. 250, which itself played an important role during the war, with just over 6,600 built by Demag and their subcontractors.

In February 2000 Mannesmann was taken over by Vodafone.

All of Mannesmann's industrial activities, which had been combined under Atecs (meaning Advanced Technologies) holding company in order to strategically separate mobile communications and industrial activities, were divested to a consortium of Siemens and Bosch. Siemens and Bosch then divested the different units between them and the Demag units became a part of Siemens. These were Demag plastics technology (with Krauss-Maffei), Demag compressor technology and Demag conveyor technology, which included the Demag mobile cranes and the crane manufacturer Gottwald.