grundig: Origin of Heinzelmann name

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? grundig: Origin of Heinzelmann name 
11.Jul.10 03:34
22

Joe Sousa (USA)
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Joe Sousa

Fellow radiophiles,

I have recently been reading several accounts, mostly by our Hans Knoll, of the post-war story of the "Heinzelmann" line of radios made at RVF-Grundig starting around 1946.

The design of these radios appears to be the continuation of the DKE (Deutche Klein Emfaenger) series of radios before the war, that were built around a regenerative triode or tetrode detector front end and a power tetrode driving intially a high impedance reed speaker, then later a moving coil speaker with an audio transformer. The prewar half wave rectifier tube gave way to the selenium rectifier in the Heinzelman radios.

If I understand correctly from the German language account given by Hans Knoll, the last of these single tuned circuit radios was the Grundig Gloria 51W, that derived it's name from the model line of Lumophon that had been acquired by Grundig in 1951.

My question is: Where did the "Heinzelmann" name come from, and does it have a special meaning in German that does not come across in a translation by Google?

Best regards,

-Joe

 

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What is a Heinzelmann - the mistery solved 
11.Jul.10 09:00
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Martin Bösch (CH)
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Martin Bösch

Hallo Joe, even as I am not living in Cologne, I try to explain this expression:

There is a tale from Cologne that "Heinzelmännchen", little gnomes, lutins or dawarfs doing good things. In this tale, they come every night to to the work of the Cologne citizens, in the morning, all work is done. The citizens could be lazy the whole day long.
This help has foun it's end after a curious tailor's wife put peas on the floor, this made the gnomes slip and fall, she wanted to see the helpers. They were very annoyed and disappeared, since then, the Cologne citizens had to work for themselves.

The "Heinzelmann" in this case stands for a little helper, doing al lthe work for You, as the little gnomes from Cologne did.

You might find more about this topic by searching Wikipedia for "Heinzelmännchen" (this is simply plural form) with a poem of the original tale.

A little bit off -topic: another company used little dwarfs / kobolds as a mascot: the "Mainzelmännchen" had their short appearence in animated cartoons coming from 2nd German Television Channel, Mainz. The go their name because of a ressemblance of hard-working little gnomes and the hard-working television people from Mainz ZDF production center.

You might have look at the current website or a nice compilation found on Youtube, there are examples of animated cartoons use before the weather forecast.

Kind regards Martin Boesch

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 3
Magic receiver 
12.Jul.10 04:25
107 from 4749

Joe Sousa (USA)
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Joe Sousa

Hello Martin,

Thank you very much for the clarification. The name now seems very appropriate, considering how much reception can be achieved from so few tubes and a single tuned circuit. It must be magic...

Regards,

-Joe

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 4
Heinzelmaennchen 
12.Jul.10 19:41
163 from 4749

Konrad Birkner † 12.08.2014 (D)
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Konrad Birkner † 12.08.2014

May I add the term "brownie" for a benevolent elf.

"Heinzelmännchen" is generally a plurale tantum or a diminuitiv singular.

Grundig popularized the normal singular form.

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A question answered 
15.Jul.10 20:28
318 from 4749

Mike Izycky (GB)
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Mike Izycky

I too had often wondered where the "Heinzelmann" name had come from; now I know. Looking at the article written by Hans Knoll only makes me wish more that I spoke German. Perhaps that time to learn has come...

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