The town of Boennigheim has named a new access road to the internationally Hohenstein Institute after the name of Prof Dr-Ing. Otto Mecheels, the founder of the Institute. Otto-Mecheels-Straße leads from the Schlossfeld residential area to Schloss Hohenstein.

A new building was also named after the textile researcher at the Hohenstein Institute in October.

Internationally recognised

The town mayor, Kornelius Bamberger, explained: "Prof Dr-Ing. Otto Mecheels' life's work is closely linked to his home town of Bönnigheim. This applies both to his work as an internationally recognised scientist and also as the founder of the Hohenstein Institute. Therefore it is a great joy to be able to give him a permanent memorial with the Otto-Mecheels-Straße."

Prof Dr Stefan Mecheels, the third generation of General Managers at the Hohenstein Institute, expressed his gratitude for the honour on behalf of the Mecheels family: “I am sure that my grandfather would have been very happy about the choice of name. Just like his father, he was a Boennigheimer through and through.”

Family company

Immediately after the end of the war, Mecheels moved back to the Swabian province with the senior class he looked after from the bombed textile college at Monchengladbach. He first moved to Schloss Boennigheim, and from 1946 he lived in the Schloss Hohenstein district and took his first steps on the path from the field of academia to free enterprise.

Until 1962 he continually expanded both the research facilities at the Hohenstein Institute as well as the testing and teaching facilities and thus laid the foundation for a family company. The company currently employees around 370 employees at the headquarters in Boennigheim.

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