20th-century German inventors

Ludwig Dürr (4 June 1878 in Stuttgart – 1 January 1956 in Friedrichshafen) was a German airship designer.

Alfred Oppenheim (3 November 1878 in Berlin – 14 May 1943 in Berlin) was a German chemist and gas mantle manufacturer.

Arthur Scherbius (30 October 1878 – 13 May 1929) was a German electrical engineer who invented the mechanical cipher Enigma machine. He patented the invention and later sold the machine under the brand name Enigma.
Scherbius offered unequalled opportunities and showed the importance of cryptography to both military and civil intelligence.

Harald Ernst Malmsten Schering (November 25, 1880 – April 10, 1959) was a German physicist born in Göttingen. He is best known for his work in high voltage electricity and the Schering Bridge used in electrical engineering. Schering was the son of Ernst Schering, mathematician at the Göttingen Observatory. His mother came from a family of Swedish academics who worked with Ernst to translate works from French and Italian. Harald grew up with his two siblings in Göttingen and studied physics at the University of Göttingen. In 1903 he worked at the Geophysical Institute and obtained a Ph.D. in 1904 under Eduard Riecke with work on the Elster-Geitel dispersal apparatus. Beginning in 1905 he was a scientific assistant at the Physics and Technology Institute in Berlin Charlottenburg; today known as the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). His work at the PTB under Emil Warburg primarily dealt with high voltage/high current research and development, and in 1914 he developed a measurement methodology for examining current transformers. In 1914 he was drafted into the First World War and was injured in 1916. In 1918 he became head of the high-voltage lab, succeeding Karl Willy Wagner. In 1919 he attained the title of professor at PTB with an annual salary of 4500 Marks and 1500 Marks as housing allowance. In 1924 he wrote a book on insulators in high voltage. A new institute was established in Hannover, buts construction was delayed by the war. Beginning in 1927, Schering was a professor of electrical engineering and high voltage technology at the Technical University of Hannover (today known as the Leibniz University Hannover). In 1933, he signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State. He retired in 1949 but continued to work at the PTB until 1954 when Gerhard Pfestdorf took up a position to head the institution.Schering is remembered for invention of the Schering Bridge, which he developed along with Ernst Alberti is an AC bridge circuit used to measure capacitance and the dissipation factor of capacitors. Schering received a Golden Doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1954 and an honorary doctorate from Braunschweig. He was awarded the Great Cross of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957.

Ernst Philipp Barthel (17 October 1890 in Schiltigheim - 16 February 1953 in Oberkirch (Baden)) was an Alsace philosopher, mathematician, and inventor.In the 1920s and 1930s he taught as a Privatdozent of philosophy at the University of Cologne. From 1924 on Barthel edited the magazine Antäus. Blätter für neues Wirklichkeitsdenken (Journal for new Reality Thinking), which served as the organ of the Gesellschaft für Lebensphilosophie (Society for Life Philosophy) founded by him in Cologne.
Barthel maintained philosophical friendships with his compatriots Albert Schweitzer and Friedrich Lienhard.

Oskar Messter (21 November 1866 – 6 December 1943) was a German inventor and film tycoon in the early years of cinema. His firm Messter Film was one of the dominant German producers before the rise of UFA, into which it was ultimately merged.

Johannes Wilhelm "Hans" Geiger (; German: [ˈɡaɪɡɐ]; 30 September 1882 – 24 September 1945) was a German physicist. He is best known as the co-inventor of the detector component of the Geiger counter and for the Geiger–Marsden experiment which discovered the atomic nucleus. He also carried the Bothe–Geiger coincidence experiment that confirmed the conservation of energy in light-particle interactions.
He was the brother of meteorologist and climatologist Rudolf Geiger.

Hugo Junkers (3 February 1859 – 3 February 1935) was a German aircraft engineer and aircraft designer who pioneered the design of all-metal airplanes and flying wings. His company, Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG (Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works), was one of the mainstays of the German aircraft industry in the years between World War I and World War II. His multi-engined, all-metal passenger- and freight planes helped establish airlines in Germany and around the world.
In addition to aircraft, Junkers also built both diesel and petrol engines and held various thermodynamic and metallurgical patents. He was also one of the main sponsors of the Bauhaus movement and facilitated the move of the Bauhaus from Weimar to Dessau (where his factory was situated) in 1925.
Amongst the highlights of his career were the Junkers J 1 of 1915, the world's first practical all-metal aircraft, incorporating a cantilever wing design with virtually no external bracing, the Junkers F 13 of 1919 (the world's first all-metal passenger aircraft), the Junkers W 33 (which made the first successful heavier-than-air east-to-west crossing of the Atlantic Ocean), the Junkers G.38 "flying wing", and the Junkers Ju 52, affectionately nicknamed "Tante Ju", one of the most famous airliners of the 1930s.
When the Nazis came into power in 1933, they requested Junkers and his businesses aid in the German re-armament. When Junkers declined, the Nazis placed him under house arrest in 1934 and eventually seized control of his patents and company. He died the following year. Under Nazi control, his company produced some of the most successful German warplanes of the Second World War.