Qualla: Walter Siepmann https://qualla.com/walter-siepmann en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/h/walter-siepmann-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Walter Siepmann https://qualla.com/walter-siepmann Walter Siepmann: Introduction https://qualla.com/walter-siepmann/ Photo credit Theanonymoustypist, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walter Siepmann's story has darker corners than his father's or his uncle's. He inherited a factory and ran it through two of the most morally complicated decades in German industrial history. Richard Rudolf Walter Siepmann was born on 11 March 1902 in Warstein, the youngest son of Hugo Siepmann and Luise Lämmerhirt - which meant he grew up on the Hauptstrasse estate that the family controlled, with his cousins on the other side of a low wall, all of them aware from childhood that the forge two streets over would someday be theirs to run. He finished his Abitur and studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, graduating in 1926. He went straight into the family company. He stayed for the next sixty years.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/h/walter-siepmann-wp/gc4h-walter-siepmann-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Walter Siepmann: The 1930s, and What That Means https://qualla.com/walter-siepmann/ Photo credit Theanonymoustypist, CC BY-SA 4.0. When Walter joined the firm in 1926, Siepmann employed about 400 people. By the bottom of the Great Depression in 1932, that number had fallen to 140. The recovery, when it came, was not a normal recovery. Beginning in 1933, the rearmament programmes of Nazi Germany flooded Germa...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/h/walter-siepmann-wp/gc4h-walter-siepmann-the-1930s-and-what-that-means.mp3 0:06 2 full Walter Siepmann: Inventor in Valves https://qualla.com/walter-siepmann/ Photo credit Theanonymoustypist, CC BY-SA 4.0. What Walter brought to the company was a patenting mind. His name appears on numerous international patents for valves, fixtures, housings, and fittings - the apparently small components that determine whether industrial machinery works at all. After the Second World War he devel...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/h/walter-siepmann-wp/gc4h-walter-siepmann-inventor-in-valves.mp3 0:06 3 full Walter Siepmann: Politics and Position https://qualla.com/walter-siepmann/ Photo credit Theanonymoustypist, CC BY-SA 4.0. From 1940 Walter served as a councillor of Belecke, a village outside Warstein, eventually absorbed into the town. After the war he joined the Christian Democratic Union and remained politically engaged on the local level. He sat on the supervisory board of Commerzbank, one of Ge...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/h/walter-siepmann-wp/gc4h-walter-siepmann-politics-and-position.mp3 0:06 4 full Walter Siepmann: Haus Möhnethal https://qualla.com/walter-siepmann/ Photo credit Theanonymoustypist, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1933 Walter married Johanna Luise Trebs, a concert pianist whose paternal family were doctors in Marburg and whose maternal grandfather had grown wealthy from mining and merchant activities in German South West Africa and Australia. They had four children. In 1938 or 1939 Walt...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/4/h/walter-siepmann-wp/gc4h-walter-siepmann-haus-m-hnethal.mp3 0:06 5 full