Melitta Bentz

Amalie Auguste Melitta Liebscher was born to Brigitte (née Reinhardt) and Karl Liebscher in Dresden, Germany, on January 31, 1873.[1] , into a family of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs. Bentz's father, Karl Liebscher, was a publisher and books salesman, while her grandparents founded and owned a brewery.[2] She married Johannes Emil Hugo Bentz, a small business owner c.1899, and had three children, two sons: Willy in 1899 and Horst in 1904; and a daughter Herta in 1911.[3]

As a housewife at the time, Bentz found that percolators were prone to over-brewing the coffee, espresso-type machines tended to leave grounds in the drink, and linen bag filters were exhausting to clean. She experimented with many means but made a two-part filtration system using blotting paper from her son Willy's school exercise book and a brass pot punctured using a nail. The result was a cheap, disposable, and easy-to-clean coffee filter that produced tastier coffee.[4] When the free, less bitter coffee was met with general enthusiasm, Bentz set up a business .[5][6]

The Kaiserliche Patentamt (Imperial Patent Office) granted her a patent on the 20th of June 1908. On the 15th of December, the company entered into the commercial register with a starting capital of 73 pfennig as "M. Bentz."

Bentz employed her husband Hugo and her sons Horst and Willy as the new company's first employees. The family worked out of their home to assemble, package, and sell the filters. The business became an early success, and after contracting a tinsmith to manufacture the devices, they sold 1,200 coffee filters in 1909 Leipzig fair.[7] In 1910, the company won a gold medal at the International Health Exhibition and a silver medal at the Saxon Innkeepers' Association. When the First World War broke out, metals were requisitioned for use in Zeppelin construction, and paper was rationed. The British blockade also disrupted normal business because coffee beans were impossible to import. Additionally, her husband Hugo Bentz was conscripted by the German government to serve the war effort in Romania. Bentz ran the company all by herself during the war but was eventually forced to support herself by selling cartons when filter production became impossible.[5][8]

By 1928, the demand for coffee filters was so high that 80 workers were needed in a double-shift system. Continuing expansion caused the company to move several times within Dresden. The fast-growing company eventually relocated in 1929 to Minden in eastern Westphalia as no more satisfactory production facilities could be found in Dresden. The company's headquarter has remained in Minden ever since.[5] By that time, 169,420 filters had been produced.[8] While her initial coffee filter design made massive waves in the coffee world, Bentz also worked on several improvements to the design, including the now-popular "fast-drip" filter, which can be recognized by its conical design.[8]

Bentz handed off her leadership role to her husband and Horst, one of her sons. The company was then named "Bentz & Sohn" in 1930. Two years later, Bentz transferred the majority stake in Melitta-Werke Aktiengesellschaft to Horst and Willy in 1932 but kept a hand in the business, ensuring that the employees were cared for regardless. She fostered the company's "Melitta Aid" system, a social fund for company employees, offering Christmas bonuses, increasing vacation days from six to 15 days per year, and reducing the working week to five days. [8]

After the outbreak of World War II, production stopped, and the company was again ordered to support production for military purposes. At the war's end, the workers relocated to old factories, barracks, and even pubs because the surviving portions of the main factory had been requisitioned as a provisional administration for the Allied troops. This condition held for 12 years. By 1948, production of filters and paper had resumed, and at the time of Bentz's death in Holzhausen, Porta Westfalica in 1950, the company valuation had reached 4.7 million Deutsche Marks.[8]

100 years after her invention, the grandchildren of Bentz, Thomas, and Stephen Bentz, still handle the Melitta Group KG headquartered in Minden, on the east of North Rhine-Westphalia, with 3,400 employees in 50 countries.[8] Today, the company sells a wide variety of coffee-related products, including filters derived from Bentz's original invention.[9] Bentz's innovation remains the precursor to all modern pour-over and drip coffee brewing worldwide.[10]

• German inventors and discoverers

1. Strzelichowska, A. (2023, March 6). Melitta Bentz - the woman who invented the coffee filter. Europeana. Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.europeana.eu/en/blog/melitta-bentz-the-woman-who-invented-the-coffee-filter 3. Moses, C. (2018, September 5). Overlooked No More: Melitta Bentz, Who Invented the Coffee Filter (Published 2018). The New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/obituaries/melitta-bentz-overlooked.html?searchResultPosition=1 4. Melitta® - Our Passion through the Years. (n.d.). Melitta. Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.melitta.com/en/Our-Passion-through-the-Years-628.html

• "The invention of the coffee filters - Melitta Bentz, mother of filter coffee: Inventor and entrepreneur". German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA). 2023-01-27. Archived from the original on 2023-01-29. Retrieved 2023-01-29.

• Melitta 100 Jahre: Company History