The ZIEHL-ABEGG story starts with an invention, not a factory: in 1897 Emil Ziehl devised the external-rotor electric motor, a technology that thirteen years later, in 1910, led him and Swiss engineer Eduard Abegg to found a company in Berlin. Abegg left that same year, but the joint name "Ziehl-Abegg" and its simple logo have survived to this day.
World War II destroyed the Berlin factory, but it wasn't the end of the story. In 1947, brothers Günther and Heinz Ziehl rebuilt the family business at the Künzelsau castle mill in southern Germany — the same small town that, eighty years later, remains ZIEHL-ABEGG's headquarters and engineering home.
From the 1960s onward, building on that same external-rotor technology, ZIEHL-ABEGG grew into one of the world's largest manufacturers of fans and ventilation equipment — a path that continued with internationalization from 1973 and conversion into a family-owned joint-stock company in 2001. Today ZIEHL-ABEGG SE, with close to 5,800 employees, 17 production plants, and revenue past one billion euros, is one of Europe's largest family-run engineering groups — and remains fully family-owned.
ZIEHL-ABEGG Germany — company timeline
1897
Emil Ziehl, the company's future founder, invented the external-rotor electric motor — a technology that would later become one of the core pillars of ZIEHL-ABEGG's product range.
1910
Emil Ziehl and Swiss engineer Eduard Abegg founded ZIEHL-ABEGG in Berlin — a name that has endured to this day, even though Abegg himself left the company the same year.
1947
After World War II destroyed the Berlin factory, brothers Günther and Heinz Ziehl rebuilt the company at the Künzelsau castle mill in southern Germany — the town that remains ZIEHL-ABEGG's headquarters today.
1960
Production of external-rotor motors as fan drives began in Künzelsau, laying the foundation for ZIEHL-ABEGG's strong global position in fans and ventilation.
1973
ZIEHL-ABEGG began its internationalization, and over the following decades expanded production and sales companies around the world.
2001
ZIEHL-ABEGG became a family-owned joint-stock company (ZIEHL-ABEGG SE), a structure that keeps family ownership alongside the professional management of a large industrial group.
2025
For the first time in its 116-year history, the ZIEHL-ABEGG Group's annual revenue passed the one-billion-euro mark — with close to 5,800 employees, 17 production plants, and products sold in more than 100 countries.
Alongside fans and ventilation, ZIEHL-ABEGG has spent more than a century in elevator drive technology. Its range of gearless permanent-magnet synchronous machines covers everything from home lifts to high-rise projects: ZAtop, with an internal rotor, for payloads up to 6,500 kg and speeds up to 4.0 m/s; ZAtopx, with a flat steel-and-PU StPUGurt belt suspension for slim shaft designs; ZAdisc, with a flat disc rotor built for machine-room-less shafts; and ZAsyn, with an external rotor mounted directly on the shaft wall. Every machine ships with a type-examination tested brake compliant with the EU Lift Directive 2014/33/EU and capable of serving unintended car movement (UCM) and ascending overspeed protection. ZIEHL-ABEGG pairs these machines with its own control technology — ZAdyn frequency inverters, ZArec power recuperation units, and the EVAC evacuation system — as one matched package rather than parts sourced separately.
Atlas Asanbar Arsh carries ZIEHL-ABEGG's gearless machines in its catalog so engineers and contractors can draw on more than a century of German engineering heritage when choosing the right traction machine for their project.
100+ years in elevator drive technology
