There is a link between company history and post-war history, especially in regards to the commitment of Otto Bock in America.
The close relationship between the headquarters in Germany and the American subsidiary is illustrated by the fact that the “50 Years Otto Bock USA” exhibition in Minneapolis also deals with the 1989 opening of the border in Duderstadt. There is a link between company history and post-war history, especially in regards to the commitment of Otto Bock in America.
In 1948, the family company in Königsee, Thuringia was expropriated without compensation under the Soviet occupation. Starting in 1946, Dr. Näder rebuilt the company from the ground up in Duderstadt on the eastern border of the British zone of occupation. It became apparent that the possibility of another total loss of family assets had to be excluded.
“The Cuban crisis and deployment of the American navy in 1962 were key events that provoked us to extend the internationalisation of our activities to Australia and Canada. These days, that would be called risk management,” 92-year-old Dr. Max Näder recalls. Since he happened to be in Miami, Florida for a convention, he had the opportunity to see hundreds of warships on the sea with his own eyes.
On the return flight, the impression of an acute risk of war fresh in his mind, Dr. Max Näder started working on the “mob-plan” that would eventually contain a host of measures to save the company in case of war. The plan included the ability to continue operating from locations outside Germany.
He was not yet busying himself with these thoughts during his first trip to the USA in 1956. In Salt Lake City, Dr. Max Näder spoke to the US Otto Bock representative Eugene Wagner and visited several major customers. While searching for a successor for Eugene Wagner in October 1957, he met John Hendrickson in Minneapolis. Like John Hendrickson, he credits mutual compatibility with the fact that their meeting led to the founding of Otto Bock USA: “We have good chemistry between us.”
The ongoing global political crisis was the driving force behind the decision to lay the cornerstone for a production facility in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1981 according to the “mob-plan”. Now the company had a second production site on the other side of the Atlantic which could, in an extreme case, have turned into an alternative to Duderstadt in order to continue supplying international customers.
