Barometers Realm

The company name is written variously as "Stäcker & Olms", "Stäcker und Olms" and "Staecker & Olms". The mark itself was "SundO" — that is, "S und O", "S and O" — and also appears as "S & O". Regrettably, little is known about the biographies of the founders or about the firm's earliest years. Of Johann Ludwig Nicolaus Stäcker it is recorded that he was born on 4 August 1857 and was a mechanic by trade; that he learned precision mechanics under Robert Deutschbein; and that in 1881 he passed his master's examination under Sudmann in Hamburg. For his master's piece he had developed an aneroid barometer movement of his own design. Karl Ivan Olms was a merchant — the customary pairing of the trade, a man of the bench and a man of the books. A year after the examination the two had a firm of their own.

Olms's departure is documented, as it were, by absence. In the register of companies and cooperatives at the Hamburg local court [Sign. A1, vol. 20, no. 5229, pp. 103–104], in the entry of 1903/04, J. L. N. Stäcker duly appears as a mechanic — and Karl Ivan Olms is no longer mentioned at all. The file number, 5229, is the one the firm would still carry in the register a century later. The name stayed on the sign and in the logo; the man behind it was gone. "S und O" had by then become a brand in its own right, and as a brand it would outlive both founders.

On 1 March 1919 Theodor Johannes Wirth joined the business as a partner. He too was a merchant by profession, a man of the counting house rather than of the bench. Maria Stäcker, born 1889, the founder's daughter, married Wirth and in 1922 came in as a partner in her own right. The original name Stäcker & Olms was left untouched; in the same year the founder withdrew from the firm he had built.

By 1930 the firm was issuing a full range of catalogues divided by product group: a catalogue of hygrometers and weather stations (series HB), a catalogue of thermometers (TD), a barometer price list (VA) and a barometer catalogue including barographs (series W). A further barometer catalogue followed in 1936. A separate company brochure, "Stäcker & Olms. Barometer-Fabrik", also survives.

Business went well enough that Wirth was able to take over one of his competitors, the firm Heinrich Fröbel Nachf., in 1934. From 1 November 1934 Stäcker & Olms and Heinrich Fröbel thus had one and the same proprietor in Th. J. Wirth. The name of the acquired firm was left unchanged — Fröbel Nachf. appears for the last time in the Hamburg address book of 1937, already at an altered address. For the Hamburg barometer trade this was a familiar pattern: workshops bought one another up without killing off the old marks, because a mark was worth more than the machinery.

The SundO range, as recorded in the catalogues and in surviving instruments, covered practically the entire domestic and professional spectrum:

• aneroid barometers — wall-mounted and desk models, including marine types;
• large "normal" barometers of station class (around 23 cm), tested by the German Naval Observatory (Deutsche Seewarte) — that is, admitted to serious meteorological work and not merely to decorating a hallway;
• pocket barometers;
• , among them the Baro-Discograph, a disc recorder in a wooden case with a seven-day movement and a range of roughly 960–1050 hPa;

Among the constructional hallmarks: bevelled ground glass, dials in both metal and paper, the marking "Ges. Gesch." (gesetzlich geschützt — registered design), and the SundO stamp on the dial.

Part of the output went out through trade partners: instruments by SundO are known bearing the plate of the Hamburg firm C. Plath, a venerable supplier of navigational instruments. One such barometer of around 1935 shows that the factory kept a close eye on fashion: the chromed aneroid movement is put on display beneath a transparent hemisphere, and the base is made of Bakelite. Art Deco in its purest form — a long way from ship's brass.

The firm's historic address was Margaretenstraße 43 (43a also occurs) in the Hamburg district of Eimsbüttel, 20357. Production and offices later moved to Warnstedtstraße 8 in the district of Stellingen, 22525, and the registered address was transferred there as well. Legally the business existed as a limited partnership, Stäcker & Olms KG, entered under HRA 5229 in the register of the Hamburg local court; the registered description of its activity is the manufacture of precision mechanical instruments — barometers, thermometers, hygrometers and altimeters.

The company survived both wars and carried on working in Hamburg, which fell within the western occupation zone. Post-war examples carry the marking "Made in West Germany".

To this period belongs the Super-Vario 3000 — a barometer with a dual scale in millibars and torr, a settable index pointer for marking the previous reading, and an altitude correction covering 0–3000 metres. In the 1960s the firm was still producing desk thermometers under the SundO mark, and at auction these appear under the full official name: Stäcker & Olms Barometer- und Thermometerfabrik, Hamburg.

In 1953 a Mr Otto Stäcker was granted sole power of procuration (Einzelprokura). Matters stood so until 1956–57, when both managing directors retired on grounds of age.

A limited company, a GmbH, was then formed, with Gerhard Hillmann and Walter Jänisch — Otto Stäcker's son-in-law — as managing directors, together with Fritz Thiem, the majority holding being in the hands of J. P. Wirth. Fritz Thiem retired on grounds of age at the end of the 1970s; Walter Jänisch followed him in 1987.

The fortunes of the business thereafter rested with Gerhard Hillmann and his son Alfred Hillmann, who had entered the firm in 1983.

On 17 August 2005 the company SUNDO GmbH was registered (register number HRB 94549, share capital €25,200, three managing directors). From that point the worldwide distribution of Stäcker & Olms products ran exclusively through the new entity: the manufacturing mark stayed old, the commercial shell became new. On 26 October 2006 Jan Goossens ceased to be a managing director.

In 2008 the father died, leaving his son a business with a tradition attached.

On 28 November 2018 the commercial register published the resolution to dissolve the company: SUNDO GmbH entered liquidation, Alfred Adolf Gerhard Hillmann was appointed liquidator, and the authority of managing director Joachim Tomalik was terminated. By this time the limited partnership Stäcker & Olms KG was recorded as economically inactive.

The mark, however, did not disappear. The manufacture of mechanical instruments for measuring temperature and humidity continues in Hamburg under the name SundO, for industrial and domestic use alike, and the firm has found its market niche in an unexpected but logical place — saunas and the wellness sector: sauna thermometers, hygrometers, magnetic thermometers.

There is a quiet irony in this. A business that a century and a half ago equipped captains with instruments for reading the weather of the North Sea has ended up measuring the humidity of a steam room. But the principle is unchanged: bimetal, hair, aneroid capsule — mechanics without a single battery.

Sources

1. Gerhard Stöhr, "Aneroid-Barometer, die robuste Alternative. Von der Idee zur Realität" (2016), section 4.1.17: "Stäcker & Olms (SundO) — Hamburg, DE" Printed monograph; the standard reference work on aneroid barometers and their German makers. The principal source for the founders and their trades, Stäcker's training and master's examination, the register entry of 1903/04, Wirth's entry in 1919 and the marriage into the family, the acquisition of Fröbel Nachf., the Einzelprokura of 1953, and the succession of directors down to the Hillmanns. Stöhr's own documentary basis for the chapter includes the company catalogues Barometer W and Barometer VA (both c. 1930), the SundO prospectus "Die Wetteruhr", a DokuSearch research report on Stäcker & Olms and Heinrich Fröbel Nachf. (2009), and correspondence between A. Hillmann and W. Habenicht of 23 June 1980.

Deutsche Meteorologische Gesellschaft — Michael Jung, "Geschichte und Gegenwart der deutschen Aneroide und ihrer Hersteller" (3 August 2025) — https://www.dmg-ev.de/2025/08/03/geschichte-und-gegenwart-der-deutschen-aneoride-und-ihrer-hersteller/ Essay of the German Meteorological Society, drawing on Stöhr (2016) and on Bert Bolle's "Alte Barometer" (1980). Used here for the Hamburg cluster of workshops and the founding of the manufacturers' association. Note that the essay dates Stäcker's master's piece to 1903, apparently conflating the master's examination of 1881 with the register entry of 1903/04; Stöhr's account separates the two.