The Mother of All Industries
How Germany Let Its Machine Tool Industry Starve
The Invisible Foundation
There is an industry that makes all other industries possible. Without it, there would be no cars, no airplanes, no smartphones, no medical devices. It builds the machines that build machines. It is the mother of all industries.
And hardly anyone notices it.
Machine tool manufacturing is not sexy. It doesn't produce products that consumers hold in their hands. Its machines stand in factory halls, not in living rooms. Its success is measured in micrometers and surface roughness — numbers that mean nothing to most people.
But without these machines, modern civilization would collapse. Every screw, every gear, every engine part was once shaped by a machine tool. Precision is the foundation of everything.
And hardly anyone notices it.
The Enabling Function
The Industrial Revolution did not begin with the steam engine. It began with the ability to manufacture steam engines precisely.
Only John Wilkinson's horizontal boring machine made it possible to manufacture cylinders so precisely that James Watt's steam engines became efficient. Without this precision, the steam engine would have remained a curiosity — an invention without economic significance.
The type of drive — whether water or steam power — was not the decisive factor. What was decisive was the ability to manufacture machines precisely and economically.
This cycle applies to this day: More precise machine tools enable better products, better products require even more precise machine tools. The machine tool is the machine that makes machines.
From World Leader to Decline
Germany took over leadership in machine tool manufacturing from the second half of the 19th century. Systematic scientific penetration, precision measurement technology, standardization — German engineers made mechanical engineering a science.
Until the 1990s, it was true: Whoever wanted the best machine tools bought German.
Names like Deckel, Maho, Pittler, Niles, Hüller Hille, Wohlenberg, Weisser — they stood for world class. Their machines ran in every significant factory in the world.
Today, most of these names have disappeared. Dissolved. Sold. Bankrupt. What happened?
The answer leads to the OEMs — the large users.
The Market Power of the Dinosaurs
Machine tool manufacturers supply the automotive industry, mechanical engineering, aerospace. These customers — the OEMs — have built up overwhelming market power over decades.
The Methods of the OEMs
The result: Low margins despite top technology. Hardly any equity buildup possible. High dependence on bank loans. Vulnerability to every crisis.
The Current Situation: January 2026
The numbers speak clearly:
German Machine Tool Industry 2024/2025
The European market for machine tools collapsed by 18 percent in 2024. Germany lost 12 percent, Italy 28 percent. China stagnates — and now often delivers faster and with better after-sales service than German manufacturers.
"The number of insolvencies is no longer the result of a cyclical dip, but shows the structural collapse of the German economy." — Jonas Eckhardt, Struktur Management Partner
The Connection
Essay VI described the perpetrators: López' warriors, the OEMs, the redistribution machine.
This essay describes the victims: Machine tool manufacturing, the suppliers, the inventors — all who create real value and are systematically cut off from the fruits of their labor.
It is the same story, only from a different perspective.
The mother of all industries is dying.
And with it dies Germany's ability to renew itself.
In Memoriam — German Machine Tool Manufacturers
What follows is an obituary. A list of names that once stood for world class. Companies whose machines ran in every significant factory in the world. Whose engineers set standards. Whose achievements were rewarded with crumbs — until they disappeared.
† Dissolved · Liquidated · Vanished
† Sold · To Foreign Investors
† Insolvent · Dismantled
◊ Still Existing · But for How Long?
"The survivors still build the machines that build machines.
Many have already disappeared — rewarded with crumbs and failed.
Market consolidation, they call it."
"Too bad that Schumpeter's 'Creative Destruction' was so thoroughly misunderstood.
They destroyed the creative ones so the dinosaurs could live even fatter.
Now the asteroid has struck — and the small, agile survival artists
have been systematically and thoroughly decimated in their niches."
This essay is part of the series "Germany's Innovation Desert"
Together with Essay VI "López' Warriors" it forms a diptych: The perpetrators and the victims.