FEW MAJOR COMPANIES IN PRO AUDIO are family owned—among these, examples such as Meyer Sound, Peavey and Sennheiser come to mind. Yet in such cases, each of these companies has managed to retain a close-knit family atmosphere among those who work at the company. So it is with great sadness that I heard the news about Sennheiser founder Dr. Fritz Sennheiser, who passed away just a few days after his 98th birthday.

Dr. Fritz Sennheiser
Born in Berlin on May 9, 1912, Fritz Sennheiser’s father wanted him to study landscape architecture, but with the 1929 stock market crash, the 17-year-old saw little future in landscaping during those perilous times and instead entered the electrical engineering/telecommunications program at Berlin’s Technical University. After attaining his PhD, World War II broke out and Dr. Sennheiser continued his research, heading the Institute for Radio Frequency Engineering and Electroacoustics in Hannover. more