Note sull'episodio
Amalie Auguste Melitta Liebscher was born in Dresden in January 1873 to a book publisher, with grandparents who owned a brewery. Married to Hugo Bentz and raising Willi, Horst, and Herta, she was fed up with bitter coffee from percolators, slow gritty early espresso filters, and stained linen bags. She punched holes in a brass pot with a nail, lined it with blotting paper from her son's school notebook, and in June 1908 won a patent in Berlin. The family founded the company that year, with Hugo making filters and Melitta selling them through shop window demonstrations and coffee afternoons.
World War I nearly ended it. Hugo and Willi were drafted, her brother Paul Liebscher stepped in, metals went to zeppelins, paper was rationed, and the British blockade cut off coffee, so the company went dormant. It revived in the 1920s despite inflation, with Willi becoming co-owner in 1923, and in 1929 it moved from Dresden to a factory in Minden that still operates. The cone filter followed in 1932, the year Melitta and Hugo handed the business to their children.
- The red and green packaging arrived in 1925 to set genuine filters apart from knockoffs.
- The Melitta script logo was introduced in 1932 and finalized in 1937.
- She gave workers a five day week, three weeks of paid vacation, and Christmas bonuses, and set up the Melitta Aid social fund in 1938.
- During World War II filter production stopped and the factory was designated a National Socialist Model Plant making military supplies.
- She died on June 29, 1950, in Porta Westfalica.