Liebherr
company

Liebherr (German: [ˈliːphɛʁ] ) is a German-Swiss multinational equipment manufacturer based in Bulle, Switzerland, with its main production facilities and origins in Germany.
Liebherr consists of over 130 companies organized into 11 divisions: earthmoving, mining, mobile cranes, tower cranes, concrete technology, maritime cranes, aerospace and transportation systems, machine tools and automation systems, domestic appliances, and components. It has a worldwide workforce over 53,000, with fourteen billion euros in revenue for 2023.
Established in 1949 by Hans Liebherr in Kirchdorf, Württemberg-Hohenzollern, West Germany, the business is still entirely owned by the Liebherr family. After his death in 1993, Isolde and Willi Liebherr, Hans' daughter and son led the company, becoming vice president and president of the administrative board respectively of the Switzerland–based Liebherr-International AG in 1999. In March 2023, Stéfanie Wohlfarth became vice president and Jan Liebherr president of the administrative board. Isolde Liebherr and Willi Liebherr remain members of the administrative board and several other family members are actively involved in corporate management. In 2005, Forbes magazine listed them as billionaires. In 1974, the Franklin Institute awarded Hans Liebherr the Frank P. Brown Medal.
History
Hans Liebherr was drafted for military service in World War II. During the war, Liebherr served with the Ulm Pioneer Battalion 101, which was subordinate to the 101st Light Infantry Division and fought under Army Group South in the German-Soviet War.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q662090. VIAF identifies the subject as 125159503. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 1949, 1993 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Liebherr” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.