The story
Founded by Edmund Rumpler in 1909.1
Founded in Berlin by Austrian engineer Edmund Rumpler in 1909 as Rumpler Luftfahrzeugbau. The firm originally manufactured copies of the Etrich Taube monoplane under the Rumpler Taube trademark, but turned to building reconnaissance biplanes of its own design through the course of the First World War, in addition to a smaller number of fighters and bombers.
The company, from the beginning a limited liability concern (GmbH), became a Aktiengesellschaft and changed its name, to Rumpler-Werke AG, on 21 September 1917, with a capitalization of 3,5 million Marks.
In 1918, 3,300 people worked for Rumpler at the Berlin headquarters and a subsidiary in Augsburg, the Bayerische Rumpler-Werke AG.
As a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles Germany was not allowed to manufacture aircraft. Rumpler instead attempted to secure a place in the post-war automobile market, which led to the development of a vehicle with the first effective aerodynamic chassis, the Rumpler Tropfenwagen, on the premises of its Augsburg subsidiary. It was shown at the 1921 Internationale Automobil Ausstellung in Berlin.
The car failed to attract sufficient sales and the Bayerische Rumpler-Werke AG went into receivership in 1923, followed by the Rumpler-Werke AG in Berlin in 1925. The assets were liquidated in 1926, with the Augsburg premises bought on 30 July 1926 by the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, predecessor of Messerschmitt.
From Wikipedia’s article on Rumpler, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3