In Memoriam: Erich Sennebogen Sr.

Erich Sennebogen Sr., who founded an equipment manufacturing company that now employs 1,000 people throughout the world, has died at age 79.

He died near his home in Germany after battling cancer. He had turned the company, Sennebogen Maschinenfabrik GmbH, Straubing, Germany, over to his sons Erich Jr. and Walter nearly 10 years ago.

A statement on the company’s website reads: “We lose the personality that has embodied the history, the values and the success of the Sennebogen Group for six decades. He had mastered and guided the company and its employees with charismatic passion.”

At the age of 21, Sennebogen Sr. founded his own company for building agricultural utility machines. In 1953 the firm had 13 employees. Today it has developed into a company with 1,000 employees that is active worldwide with offices in Germany, Hungary, the United States, Dubai, Singapore and Russia. The company has annual sales of $425 million.

Sennebogen Maschinenfabrik now designs and produces hydraulic material handling machines, rope excavators, cranes, carrier equipment, telescopic cranes, special-purpose machines and steel components. Sennebogen Sr. is remembered for his energy and ambition. “As a full-blooded entrepreneur, 24 hours in the day were simply not enough,” a news release issued by Sennebogen states. “He bubbled over with ideas rather than pipe dreams. Erich Sennebogen had the rare talent of combining visionary innovations and facts so as to produce sustainable results.”

Sennebogen LLC President Constantino Lannes describes Sennebogen Sr. as “an unbelievable man who started from nothing in 1952 and built up the Sennebogen group of companies to what we are today.”

Lannes, who heads Stanley, N.C.-based Sennebogen North American, says, “I always was fascinated with his ideas and innovation. He was always trying to get to the limits of the combination of man and machine to optimize results. Apart from that, he always had a good word to motivate everybody around him.”