Siemens & Halske

About Siemens & Halske

Siemens & Halske AG was the German electrical engineering company founded in Berlin on 12 October 1847 as Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske, a ten-man workshop in Schöneberger Strasse.^[1] It built one of the first European telegraph lines in 1848 and the world's first electric tramway at Gross-Lichterfelde in 1881, and was turned into a stock corporation in 1897.^[2][3] After its heavy-current business went into Siemens-Schuckertwerke in 1903 it specialised in communications engineering and acted as the holding company for much of the Siemens group.^[2][3] It ceased to exist on 1 October 1966, when the founding of Siemens AG legally and organizationally absorbed Siemens & Halske AG, Siemens-Schuckertwerke AG and Siemens-Reiniger-Werke AG.^[3]

Group management of Siemens & Halske sat in Munich from 1 April 1949, with Berlin as a second headquarters city, while Siemens-Schuckertwerke was run from Erlangen.^[3] It bought the Deutsche Grammophon record company in 1941 and in 1962 placed it in the joint venture with Philips, the Grammophon-Philips Group, which was renamed PolyGram in 1972; Siemens sold its PolyGram interest in 1987, by which date the holding had long since passed to Siemens AG.^[4] During the Second World War Siemens & Halske used slave labour from concentration camps.^[2] The interlocking S&H monogram it adopted in 1899 outlived it: in 1966 the group's separate marks were replaced by a single trademark made of the Siemens word mark plus that monogram.^[3]

When it became a stock corporation in 1897 its shares remained almost exclusively in the hands of the Siemens family,^[3] and it later served as the holding company for the Siemens subsidiaries,^[2] so no company stood above it until Siemens AG absorbed it in 1966.^[3]