Karlheinz Wobser, who is widely known in the region as a former managing partner of LAUDA for many years and due to numerous honorary activities, will celebrate his 85th birthday today, Monday.

Karlheinz Wobser was born in Dresden on June 28, 1936, the first child of Dr. Rudolf Wobser and Dorothea Wobser, née Nitzki. In 1942, the year of the war, he was enrolled in school in Medingen, about 20 kilometers away, where his father had been given the task of setting up an apparatus department at the Medingen test equipment plant. On his way to school, which was about 1.5 kilometers long, Wobser often had to throw himself into the ditch to avoid low-flying air raids. The night of February 13, 1945, when Dresden sank into rubble, was a traumatic experience. In 1954, he graduated from the Dresden-Süd high school. From the fall of 1954, he studied mechanical engineering, specializing in precision mechanics, at the Technical University of Dresden. During a practical semester, Wobser learned practical skills at the Medingen testing equipment plant, among other places.

In May 1955, the parents decided to leave the GDR after the political pressure on the father became stronger and stronger. The Wobser family fled to West Berlin in August 1955, and a month later they flew to Frankfurt am Main. The family found accommodation for some time in Schwenningen am Neckar. Until March 1956, Karlheinz Wobser worked as a mechanic at the Wigo factory in Schwenningen, while the rest of the family had meanwhile moved to Burlafingen near Neu-Ulm. During this time, his father, who was searching for investors, a location and possible customers for his own company throughout Germany, found interest in the Lauda city council as well as the factory owners Erich Widmann and his friend Paul Hagspiel. On March 1, 1956, Messgeräte-Werk LAUDA DR. R. WOBSER KG was founded, which celebrated its 65th anniversary this year.

After his application for admission to the Federal Republic of Germany failed, Karlheinz Wobser was threatened with deportation back to the GDR. Fortunately, however, he obtained an identity card a few years later and thus Federal German citizenship. The previous uncertainties were, however, a major reason why Wobser did not resume his studies. Nevertheless, he played a decisive role in the establishment of his father's young measuring instrument factory LAUDA. As one of the first employees, he learned the theoretical and technical basics of refrigeration technology. The fact that LAUDA refrigeration circulators gained an excellent reputation worldwide in the following years is the decisive merit of Karlheinz Wobser.

In January 1957, Karlheinz Wobser met his future wife, Gudrun Schüssler from Tauberbischofsheim. Three children, Andrea (1962), Gabriele (1963) and Ulrike (1964), were born. In the meantime, all daughters have their own families with grown-up children. In addition, two of his daughters still work in the company today. Now, with a newly developed and revolutionary program for the young company, a steady upward development began, more and more employees were hired and construction phase followed construction phase. From 1957 to 1977, Wobser was the company's technical director. When the company founder, Dr. Rudolf Wobser, died on June 17, 1977 after a short, serious illness at the age of only 66, his two sons Karlheinz Wobser and Dr. Gerhard Wobser became managing partners of the LAUDA company. Karlheinz Wobser retired at the end of 2002. His nephew Dr. Gunther Wobser was appointed as the new managing partner, and today he is the third generation to lead the family business. Until 2010, he managed the company together with his father Dr. Gerhard Wobser, before the latter also retired after 39 years.

In addition to his career and family, Karlheinz Wobser's life has been marked by numerous honorary commitments. From 1985 to 2008, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Sparkasse Tauberfranken, from 1996 to 2004 he was an honorary commercial judge at the Chamber for Commercial Matters at Mosbach District Court, and for many years he was a member of the Assembly of Representatives of the AOK. In addition, he was a member of several clubs in Lauda and was a board member of both the Lauda Tennis Club and the Bauland Air Sports Club for many years. For several years he was a member of the golf club Glashofen-Neusaß near Walldürn. In addition to golfing, other hobbies of the jubilarian included traveling on river cruises, making music on the accordion and keyboard, maintaining his koi fish pond, boating on the lakes of Mecklenburg, especially with his four grandchildren, and painting, which he is now less and less able to do for health reasons.

Wobser followed the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in his native city of Dresden with great interest and donated substantial contributions to the Friends, of which he is still a member. As a result, Wobser was also a guest at the inauguration ceremony of the Frauenkirche in Dresden in October 2005. "Despite all the adversities, I can describe my childhood in Medingen as a happy time, even if memories naturally transfigure some things," says Wobser, who for many years maintained contact not only with his old home, but also with his old school friends. "Live and let live," is what Wobser calls an essential motto that has accompanied him throughout his 85 years of life and has always been very important to him.

Stefan Eiselein is the new Managing Director of the newly founded company, LAUDA Medical GmbH & Co. KG, based in Lauda-Königshofen. The 56-year-old qualified computer scientists will take over the role from the President and CEO of the LAUDA group, Dr. Gunther Wobser, who has temporarily held the position since LAUDA Medical was founded. Stefan Eiselein was most recently Chief Digital Officer and Chief Corporate Development Officer at Vogel Communications Group GmbH & Co. KG, a renowned specialist media company and B2B communication service provider from Würzburg.

Through the new company, LAUDA Medical, LAUDA will specialize in technology for the medical market. Its first development project is a technologically brand new, innovative hypothermia device to stabilize patient temperature during heart surgery. LAUDA has supplied devices to a leading manufacturer of heart/lung machines for over 40 years, and will continue to expand this partnership. In addition, LAUDA wants to build a reputation as an independent brand for precise temperature control on the growing medical market.

“Stefan Eiselein was responsible for managing and driving forward digital development at Vogel Communications for many years. During this time, he built up several new business areas from scratch and worked successfully with start-ups. I first became aware of him in 2017,” explains Dr. Gunther Wobser. “I am confident that he will actively shape the development of our new business unit for medical devices, and especially that he can make an important difference when it comes to digital solutions, user integration and subsequent sales development,” says the President & CEO of LAUDA. “The medical technology industry is a growing market. Digitalization is just one of the drivers of this development. I’m very pleased to acquire a new international business field with LAUDA Medical,” says Stefan Eiselein, commenting on his new role.

LAUDA DR. R. WOBSER GMBH & CO. KG, LAUDA, the world market leader for constant temperature equipment and systems, has secured a major order for Variocool process thermostats. The German subsidiary of a major global US company in the biopharmaceutical sector has ordered a total of 76 devices, including accessories, for integration in their systems for producing the Covid-19 vaccine. The different models have a cooling capacity of between 2 and 10 kW.

The Variocool process thermostats are factory-certified according to CE and NRTL, and therefore meet the standards required in Europe as well as in North America. LAUDA redesigned these flexible devices before launching them onto the market in November 2020. The process thermostats have bi-frequency and multivoltage capability, which means that if production is relocated, the thermostats can be easily transferred to another location and also make project planning easier for the customer.

LAUDA has scheduled delivery of the ordered Variocool process thermostats to the customer for the end of April 2021. The customer uses LAUDA devices for controlling the temperature of mixers and single-use bioreactors required to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines. Cell cultures are grown at a temperature of between 4 and 37 °C in reactors with a volume of between 200 and 2,000 liters. Variocool process thermostats are designed to maintain a stable temperature within an extremely narrow tolerance range of ± 0.1 K.

Last year, LAUDA significantly increased its production capacity for Variocool process thermostats due to the high demand, and was therefore able to meet the tight delivery deadline. "LAUDA had already been working closely with the Variocool process thermostat customer for several years even before the major order was secured", explains OEM sales specialist Tobias Henning, who is responsible for OEM customer support in the bioprocessing sector. The LAUDA OEM division helps customers develop complete systems by establishing standards in collaboration with the relevant development teams, which are then integrated into the product configurator of the OEM customers at a later stage. As a result, the customer also receives assistance with documentation, calculations and similar tasks. In some cases, the OEM division even develops devices specifically for customers. "We are currently seeing a high degree of satisfaction with LAUDA on the market and want to build on this trust as a basis for further expanding our capacity to cater for specific customer developments", explains Thorsten Eilers, OEM Managing Director at LAUDA.