Güldner

The history of Güldner

Güldner built engines for other people's tractors for twenty-five years before it built its own, and that is the key to the whole story.

The Güldner-Motoren-Gesellschaft mbH was founded in Munich on 15 February 1904 by the engine builder Dr Hugo Güldner with Dr Carl von Linde and Dr Georg von Krauss, making gas engines and gas generators to Güldner's own patents. Production moved to Aschaffenburg in 1907, where the range ran to two-cylinder diesels of up to 300 hp, constant-pressure oil engines, gas power plants and even motorcycles. One customer mattered more than the rest: Linde's ice-machine company needed drives for its refrigeration plant, and took its first shareholding in 1908. Three- and four-cylinder engines of up to 600 hp followed from 1912.

The First World War stopped civil production in favour of armaments. Afterwards Güldner bought into the Berliner Moorkultur Kraftpflug GmbH, which made motor ploughs for cultivating moorland. Economic trouble followed, Linde's increased its stake in 1925, and in 1929 took the company over outright.

Small diesels of seven to 36 hp were added from 1933, and they are the reason Güldner ended up making tractors at all: the engines proved themselves so well in other manufacturers' machines that the firm began developing its own tractor in 1935. The A 20 was shown in 1938, the A 30 followed, and during the war a 25 hp wood-gas tractor. The Aschaffenburg works was badly damaged in the last months of the Second World War, and gas-engine production was moved to Fahr at Gottmadingen.

Engines were being built at Aschaffenburg again from 1946, and the first post-war tractor, the A 28, appeared the same year. A full range of small and medium tractors grew out of that one farm machine, and by 1956 nearly 25,000 Güldner tractors had come off the line.

On 20 June 1958 Güldner and Fahr signed a contract to develop tractors jointly, with an eye on competing in the new European market, and the shared Europa series was presented from 1959. When Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz took a 25% stake in Fahr in 1961, Güldner ended the cooperation and carried the Europa range on alone. The G series followed in 1962 and lifted sales, and in mid-1965 the firm was renamed Linde AG, Werkgruppe Güldner, Aschaffenburg.

Then the market saturated. Sales fell; other tractor makers cut their purchases of Güldner engines sharply, both for that reason and because they cost more than the Deutz equivalents; and when ZF stopped making gearboxes for tractors under 80 hp the end was close. A Linde press release of April 1969 announced that the Güldner works group would stop building Güldner diesel engines and tractors and concentrate on hydraulics and materials handling instead. The Güldner name was not struck from the commercial register until 1991.

Written from Traktorenlexikon: Güldner, Wikibooks, CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 2026-09-14. Our words, not the source's.