IIRC, we were given the opportunity of signing Oliver Bierhoff after our Anglo Italian game with, I think, Ascoli. But we turned it down for whatever reason. The rest, as they say, is history .. AC Milan, Monaco 😭
I thought it was the opposite. After he scored a hat trick in that game we inquired about him but they said no. Iirc it was a pre-season game.....or was that another player ?
Charlton's first ground was Siemans meadow, a piece of waste ground in front of the Siemans factory in Charlton.
Siemans was a German owned and run cable and telecommunications business founded in 1847. They still make mobile phones and other electrical equipment today.
Many of the first Charlton players went on to work at the factory.
So there was a very early German connection.
Siemans UK holdings were "nationalised" during WWI along with many other German owned businesses.
My mother is half German and worked at Siemens during the war..she understood German but kept schtum 🤣🤣🤣
Good to see the correct spelling of 'Siemens'.
From their website ...
Siemens can trace its history of innovation in the UK back to 1843 when a 19 year-old apprentice, Wilhelm Siemens, travelled from Berlin to London to sell a patent for his brother Werner’s electro-magnetic plating process. The sale was a success and in 1850 Wilhelm took over the Siemens & Halske agency in London. That moment 170 years ago marks the founding of Siemens in the UK.
In 1859 Wilhelm, determined to make his home in the UK, married a Scot, Ann Gordon. He took British citizenship on the day of his engagement and changed his name to Charles William Siemens. Ann was to play an active part in Williams’s career and was influential in William’s life as an entrepreneur and engineer at the heart of Britain’s first Industrial Revolution. (Check that out, Raelynn).
In 1863 Siemens opened its first UK factory in Woolwich, to produce submarine cables. In 1869 Siemens laid the Indo-European telegraph line which ran nearly 7,000 miles from London to Calcutta, a tremendous feat of endeavour and engineering. The line enabled messages that had previously taken many days, to be conveyed in less than half an hour.
William and Ann had a happy marriage until William’s death at the age of 60 in 1883, just a few months after he was knighted by Queen Victoria for services to British engineering.
The company William founded in the UK went on in spite of sequestration during the two World Wars, reopening UK operations and growing to be a major UK employer and manufacturer, now at the forefront of the fourth Digital Revolution, Industry 4.0. William’s spirit and ethos of innovation continues to thrive.
You wonder if William's successors missed a trick though, as they could have invented shirt sponsorship and floodlights as early as 1905.
To offset this, Facebook is heavily influenced by German culture, of course. The oft-repeated question "You OK, Hun?" reflects this.
Comments
From their website ...
Siemens can trace its history of innovation in the UK back to 1843 when a 19 year-old apprentice, Wilhelm Siemens, travelled from Berlin to London to sell a patent for his brother Werner’s electro-magnetic plating process. The sale was a success and in 1850 Wilhelm took over the Siemens & Halske agency in London. That moment 170 years ago marks the founding of Siemens in the UK.
In 1859 Wilhelm, determined to make his home in the UK, married a Scot, Ann Gordon. He took British citizenship on the day of his engagement and changed his name to Charles William Siemens. Ann was to play an active part in Williams’s career and was influential in William’s life as an entrepreneur and engineer at the heart of Britain’s first Industrial Revolution. (Check that out, Raelynn).
In 1863 Siemens opened its first UK factory in Woolwich, to produce submarine cables. In 1869 Siemens laid the Indo-European telegraph line which ran nearly 7,000 miles from London to Calcutta, a tremendous feat of endeavour and engineering. The line enabled messages that had previously taken many days, to be conveyed in less than half an hour.
William and Ann had a happy marriage until William’s death at the age of 60 in 1883, just a few months after he was knighted by Queen Victoria for services to British engineering.
The company William founded in the UK went on in spite of sequestration during the two World Wars, reopening UK operations and growing to be a major UK employer and manufacturer, now at the forefront of the fourth Digital Revolution, Industry 4.0. William’s spirit and ethos of innovation continues to thrive.
You wonder if William's successors missed a trick though, as they could have invented shirt sponsorship and floodlights as early as 1905.
To offset this, Facebook is heavily influenced by German culture, of course. The oft-repeated question "You OK, Hun?" reflects this.