Most of the current European microphone manufacturers carry a name that belonged to the driving force behind launching the company. Even the one that doesn't conform to this, shares the other common traits - they were all engineers, inventors and either German or with very close German connections. There are several reasons why this should be but the stories are all individual. We start with the 'Daddy' of them all.
Georg Neumann: had worked for Eugen Reisz, designing a 'high quality' carbon microphone commonly known as the 'Reisz Mic'. It had the appearance of a hollowed flat marble rectangle and was frequently seen in German broadcasting through the 1920s. Neumann set up his own company in Berlin in 1928 with the intention of mass producing condenser microphones which at that time had only ever been made in a laboratory. His first manufactured mic was the CMV3 nicknamed the 'Neumann Bottle' (a body about the size of a Thermos flask with the capsule in a separate case sitting on top) that remained virtually unchanged till after World War II and the arrival of the U47. Careful scrutiny of archive footage of the 1936 Berlin Olympics reveals the widespread use of 'bottles' as commentators mics (the event was an early TV broadcast). Less well known is the fact that Neumann held patents for the invention of the NiCad battery. From microphones the company diversified into disc cutting and from there into mixing consoles. When Georg Neumann died in the early 80's, unfortunately there was no interest amongst the Neumann family in continued involvement in the company.
Eugen Beyer: farsightedly founded the company in 1924 in Berlin to build speakers for cinemas. In 1937 he produced the DT48, the world's first moving coil headphones still in use today. In 1939 the M19 dynamic microphone became the standard mic in the 'Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft' (German radio) for outdoor applications. The Beyer factory was completely destroyed during the battle for Berlin in final days of the war. It was rebuilt and is still highly productive. The company was rebuilt in Heilbronn and in 1948 proceeded with development of horn loudspeakers and ribbon microphones. When Eugen Beyer unexpectedly died in 1959 management of the company passed to his son, Fred Beyer.
Dr Schoeps: brought out his first microphone in 1948 working out of a couple of rooms in a private house in Karlsruhe, Germany. His microphones have been developed and refined over the years and today many consider Schoeps mics a benchmark. The company is still quite small employing only about 40 people. Schoeps have always been a private company and reluctant to talk about their early days. The rumours that Dr Schoeps was a violin playing rocket scientist may not be true but hopefully one day we will be able to learn more of why Schoeps are Schoeps.
Fritz Sennheiser: Professor Sennheiser worked at the University of Hanover on research in the area of vocoding and scrambling. Following bomb damage in 1943 his department was moved to an old farmhouse twelve miles north. As the Allies passed through Germany towards the end of the war a complete ban was placed on any activity that could be considered 'war work' and Sennheiser's activities fell within that area. The farmhouse was sealed with signs stating that anyone who crossed the threshold would be shot. Desperate to find a way to make a living, he crept back into the building some months later and started to assemble voltmeters out of the parts in the lab. The occupation forces took no action. Soon the local Siemens company approached him to see if he could copy a dictation machine microphone that they could no longer source from Austria. Sennheiser copied and improved on it and started manufacturing microphones. As an aside, unlike many of his contemporaries, Sennheiser did not wish to call the company after himself and until 1954 it was known as Laboratorium Wennebostel or more briefly on the mics as Labor W. A rather public incident where supposedly the then Australian Prime Minister on a state visit to Germany at the height of the Cold War seeing the Labor W microphone refused to talking into 'a damn commie microphone'! The brand name Sennheiser followed. The company is now run by Professor Jorg Sennheiser, Fritz's son although he still takes a very keen interest in the business.
Dr Rudolf Goerike & Ernst Pless: Goerike undertook wartime acoustics research for the Germ army in World War II where he had contact with Georg Neumann and Fritz Sennheiser. In 1947 Goericke and Pless formed AKG (Akustische u Kino-Gerate GmbH) in Vienna where they tackled the noise problems of film projection systems and in particular the dificulty of adding commentary to film due to unwanted projector noise pick-up. Research led to patents for the first single element cardioid design and the arrival of the D12 microphone. Until 1965 film products featured heavily in AKGs range including optical soundtrack pickups and an underwater loudspeaker systems for scaring sharks away during underwater filming - developed with a Dr Hass (of Hans and Lotti fame). Until the mid 80s, Rudolf Goerike was still a major shareholder in AKG although the Plessfamily sold out to the banks at an earlier date. AKG is now part of the Harman Group.