Voith
company
The Voith Group (German pronunciation: [fɔʏt]) is a global technology company. With its broad portfolio of systems, products, services and digital applications, Voith trades in the markets of energy, paper, raw materials and transport. Founded in 1867, Voith today has around 22,000 employees, sales of € 5.2 billion and locations in over 60 countries worldwide and thus is one of the larger family-owned companies in Europe.
Company history
Years of foundation
In 1825, Johann Matthäus Voith took over his father's locksmith's workshop in Heidenheim with five employees, mainly carrying out repairs to water wheels and paper mills.
By around 1830 in Heidenheim, there were about 600 people working in 15 factories, mostly textile factories that had been established by wealthy merchants and publishers. The necessary maintenance and repair of the expensive machinery offered a source of income to several workshops, particularly the locksmiths and metalworkers in what was still a small town at the time. In 1830, Johann Matthäus Voith and his workshop were involved in the construction of a paper machine developed by Johann Jakob Widmann from Heilbronn.
Voith developed the first wood grinders based on the patented design of Friedrich Gottlob Keller. In doing so, he laid the cornerstone for the industrial enterprise Voith. As the company got bigger, so too did the private wealth of its owners.
“Voith” enters the record as company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Voith and company can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Voith” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Voith and company provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q126944. VIAF identifies the subject as 136933586. The Library of Congress control number is n2004034112. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1867, 1825 and 1830.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Voith”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Voith primary sources, Voith archive and Voith research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Voith” 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.