Wölfel Group Turns 50 – a Brief Outline of the Company History

How big can the new bell in the church tower be without compromising its stability? Does a newly developed car seat ensure comfort in light of its vibrations? What blasting concept will ensure that a 600-meter-long highway bridge collapses without danger? And where is that single loose screw that makes an entire production line run out of round?

For 50 years now, the employees at the mid-sized company Wölfel have been getting to the bottom of these questions with great technical expertise. But it was a long way getting there – and it all began in 1971 with two engineers in a basement in Höchberg.

First specialization: the design of safe power plants

Horst Peter Wölfel, a freshly graduated doctor of engineering, decides to go beyond pioneering work at the university in the field of software-supported simulation and calculation and founds a company: Wölfel Beratende Ingenieure. As a doctoral student, Wölfel had already dealt with the question of how nuclear power plants can be structurally protected against earthquakes, and thus this area became the focus of the young company.

To found the company, Wölfel left his alma mater in Darmstadt to settle in Höchberg near Würzburg. There, the first office was not built in a garage, but quite pragmatically in the basement of the house in which Wölfel's apartment was also located. The deciding factors in favor of Höchberg were its proximity to Wölfel's parents' home in Wertheim and its convenient location in terms of transportation. The special field of activity brought the company rapid success and thus the number of employees grew steadily, resulting in the move to Otto-Hahn-Strasse.