Our founders

Ernst Leybold combined a willingness to work hard with the ability to recognize when a good business opportunity presented itself. Wolfgang Gaede personally held close to 40 patents in Germany alone for vacuum technology. Dr. Manfred Dunkel expanded his predecessor’s accomplishments to move the company forward.

Ernst Leybold

Our Founder & Namesake

* 11/17/1824 Rothenburg/Tauber (Germany)

† 2/10/1907 Cologne (Germany)

Ernst Leybold, like his father and grandfather, started out as a merchant. In 1846, he left the house he outgrew in the small town of Rothenburg and took up a sales position in Cologne with Böcker, an import company. By 1850, he was working with a coffee import agency. In 1851, his landlord, Martin Kothe, a sales agent and importer of foreign wines and various pharmacy supplies, died suddenly and left behind a wife with no business experience, so Leybold stepped in to help.

First, he continued simply running the business. He then became involved financially, and finally took over the company in 1863, under the name E. Leybold (formerly Leybold & Kothe). As part of the settlement with Kothe’s heirs, Leybold expanded the pharmacy supplies business line. This decision proved to be a good one. The business of physical and pharmaceutical apparatuses, along with accessories, was so successful...

Wolfgang Max Paul Gaede

Pioneer of modern vacuum technology

* 05/25/1878 in Lehe, Bremerhaven (Germany)

† 06/24/1945 in Munich (Germany)

Another person who had a significant influence on the fate of our company at the beginning of the 20th century was Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gaede. In 1897, Gaede began studying medicine at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau, but soon switched to the Institute of Physics, where he received his doctorate in 1901 through his thesis entitled, “On the change in the specific heat of metals with temperature”.

Subsequent research on the Volta effect in vacuum was unsuccessful, however, because the level of vacuum that could be achieved with the pump technology at the time was insufficient. This problem led him to his life’s work, the creation of an entirely new, effective apparatus for generating and measuring high vacuum. In 1905, he presented his rotating mercury air pump at the natural scientists’ meeting in Merano and caused quite a stir, despite the fact that this pump (along with his...

Dr. Manfred Dunkel

Company owner and founder of the GAEDE Archives

* 11/27/1898 in Bremen (Germany)

† 04/26/1985 in Cologne (Germany)

Manfred Dunkel took over the Cologne based company, a special factory for high-vacuum pumps and scientific teaching materials founded by E. Leybolds’ Nachfolger, from his father-in law, Alfred Schmidt in 1931. Using the vacuum technology developed by W. Gaede, a university professor in Karlsruhe, he succeeded in expanding the process of high-vacuum technology. In 1952, he founded the subsidiary Leybold-Hochvakuumanlagen GmbH. In 1967, under his direction, the two companies merged with the Heraeus vacuum department in Hanau to form the Leybold Heraeus GmbH & Co.

In 1968, he retired into private life.

Dunkel held numerous honorary positions and received numerous awards. From 1964 to 1966, he was chairman of the metal industry’s employers’ association in Cologne, and from 1950 to 1969, he served as a board member of the association of German precision-mechanical and optical industry e.V. as well as a lay judge, commercial and employment judge in Cologne. Manfred Dunkel established the GAEDE Foundation in 1984 and laid the groundwork for its assets.