It all began with a request for peas, an order from the military government, and the question of how to organize a successful trade fair in a devastated city. The early years of the HANNOVER MESSE are legendary in economic history, with a series of successful improvisations serving as their common thread.

The story begins with a substantial list: eight kilograms of peas, seven kilograms of potatoes, fifty sausages weighing one hundred grams each, plus bacon, beef bones, semolina, fifteen liters of milk, and ten kilograms of rhubarb. What sounds like the provisions for a field kitchen is actually the contents of an official request submitted to the Hannover Office of Economy and Food. A meeting is scheduled for May 11, 1947, in Hannover-Laatzen, at which representatives of the economic ministries of the western and southern German states are to prepare for a trade fair that does not yet exist. Even a shared meal had to be rationed in 1947.

The trade fair had a client who brooked no argument. On April 15, 1947, General Sir Brian Robertson, the strongman of the British military government, ordered an export fair to be held in his zone. The directive included the following statement: “The Germans are responsible for ensuring that the export fair is a success.” The logic behind this is simple. A country that cannot feed itself must sell what it produces—only then can it break free from the Allies’ relief shipments. Düsseldorf declined. Hannover, heavily destroyed but with five undamaged machine halls belonging to the light metal works in nearby Laatzen, agreed. Until then, the city had hardly been noticed as a trade fair venue; now it was to become the northwestern German successor to the great Leipzig Trade Fair, which had been Germany’s central industrial hub before the war. Within a few months, the halls were cleared out and provisionally refurbished.

Bosch, Siemens, Telefunken, AEG, and MAN have been on board from the very beginning

About 3,000 companies want to participate, but only 1,300 are allowed—so the trade show already has a waiting list even before its premiere. Anyone flipping through the exhibitor directory will discover many everyday items: toys and shoelaces, razor blades and prayer books, corset straps and laundry detergent—but mixed in among them are already Bosch, Siemens, Telefunken, AEG, and MAN. Stands as we know them today do not exist. “It was already considered quite elegant to have a partition wall on the right and left,” an employee of Deutsche Messe AG later recalled. In front of many products stands a sign reading “For export only.” Only the approximately 4,000 guests from 53 nations were allowed to shop; they were expected to tell people back home that Germany was supplying goods again. Everyone else was allowed only to look—and yet they came anyway: 736,000 visitors in 21 days. Anyone walking through the halls saw things that, during the years of war and famine, had been known only in dreams. With an admission ticket costing three Reichsmarks, visitors receive—without needing any food stamps—a fish sandwich and a glass of “trade fair wine”—contemporary witnesses refer to it less politely as “test-tube wine.” The people of Hanover soon dubbed the inaugural event the “Fish Sandwich Fair”; for the association’s 70th anniversary in 2017, a fish sandwich food truck even rolled through the city center.

180 hotel rooms for 736,000 visitors—the “trade show mom” comes to the rescue

Anyone who wants to go there needs stamina. It’s a 45-minute walk from the tram’s final stop in Laatzen; the British are using trucks. Only 180 hotel rooms are available; more than 10,000 guests stay in private accommodations, and many others sleep on mattresses and straw beds in schools. Out of necessity, a Hanoverian institution was born: the “Messemutti.” To this day, the city’s tourism marketing department recruits hosts—now under the name “Messemutti 4.0.”

Things were looking up

The results after three weeks: 1,934 export contracts worth approximately 31.6 million U.S. dollars. More important than any number, however, was the mood. A Siemens employee later recalled those days: Things were looking up; we were making a difference again.

Grow, divide, merge—and a phone line to New York

The premiere whets the appetite—for more than just fish sandwiches. As early as May 22, 1948, shortly before the currency reform, the second trade fair follows: six halls, 2,340 exhibitors, 6,000 applications, and, as a sensation, the first direct telephone line from the fairgrounds to New York. The world is back on the line. In 1949, companies and guests from the French occupation zone were allowed to attend for the first time—there simply wasn’t enough space. A newly created exhibitor advisory board’s first official act was to implement a division: a General Export Fair at the end of April and a Technical Export Fair at the end of May, each lasting ten days. In 1950, the event was renamed the German Industrial Fair. Among the 2,805 exhibitors, 45 were from abroad for the first time, representing ten countries, including the U.S. In 1954, the split was reversed, as the automotive industry had relocated en masse to Frankfurt, freeing up space, and new halls were completed. The covered area now totaled 200,000 square meters—up from 30,000 in 1947—with 3,911 registered companies, including 297 from 18 countries.

Three Names, One Principle: Transformation

In seven years, the exhibition space grew more than sixfold; by the early 1960s, the electrical industry alone occupied as much space in a single hall as all five halls from 1947 combined. The names changed—Hannover Export Fair, German Industrial Fair, and, starting in 1961, Hannover Fair—but the willingness to adapt remained: As industry changed its face, so did the fair. And then came the airport. On April 26, 1952, just in time for the fair, Hannover-Langenhagen Airport began operations. The trade fair had requested an airport for its guests—Hannover built it in five months. The first plane to arrive—a DC-3 operated by British European Airways—carried Berlin’s Governing Mayor Ernst Reuter, just a few years after the blockade of his city. In 1957, a special aviation exhibition took off from the same airport as part of the trade fair; this later evolved into the ILA.

Partner Country Avant la Lettre: Great Britain

The fair has only had official partner countries since 1980; the first was Brazil. For the early years, however, the choice would have been an easy one: Great Britain. The British occupying forces organized the fair, and their trucks brought the first visitors to the grounds. The fair has not forgotten this. In 1997, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, Great Britain was named the official partner country—specifically because it had played a decisive role in the fair’s establishment in 1947. In his opening speech, Chancellor Helmut Kohl thanked the British commander-in-chief, at whose behest the first fair was established, and recalled the American Marshall Plan, announced in June 1947, less than two months after Robertson’s order. The U.S. was already among the first foreign exhibiting nations in Hanover in 1950; it returned as a partner country in 2016—Barack Obama opened the fair together with Angela Merkel.

From the Adding Machine to the Tube Computer

The office industry at the trade show demonstrates just how rapidly technology is advancing. In 1947, 39 companies occupied approximately 1,000 square meters; in addition to paper and drafting supplies, there were adding machines and calculators, including the Addiator compact adding machine. The Hanover-based companies Geha and Pelikan displayed office supplies, while for Brunsviga from Braunschweig, it was practically a home game. The German IBM subsidiary—then still known as Internationale Büro-Maschinen Gesellschaft—made its debut in 1951 with 28 people in a 150-square-meter space—booth rent was 65 Deutschmarks per square meter, totaling less than 10,000. Probably the cheapest debut IBM ever had. In 1954, the office industry was assigned a permanent hall, number 17, and in the same year, a newsreel featured what may have been the fair’s first electronic computer, a UNIVAC. In 1956, Heinz Nixdorf posed with his self-developed electronic calculator, the ES 24. In 1957, Zuse KG unveiled the Z22, an electronic computing system with several hundred vacuum tubes, designed by the young physicist Lorenz Hanewinkel. In 1958, the RAMAC hummed away at the IBM booth—a metric ton of technology for five megabytes—while at the Bull booth, an electronic multiplier developed by Nixdorf was the talk of the show. In 1959, Hall 17 was expanded to 33,000 square meters, accommodating 459 exhibitors.

“Hell 17”: Where Digitalization Was Still Making a Ruckus

The clatter of hole punches and printers soon earned the hall the nickname “Hell 17.” By the late 1950s, office technology had already risen to third place among all industries, behind mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. This thread can be traced right up to the present day: CeBIT emerged from this very exhibition area in 1986; when it ceased to be held after 2018, its industry-related digital topics were reintegrated into HANNOVER MESSE. What clattered away in Hall 17 in 1957 is now known as artificial intelligence, robotics, and digital twins.

Family Ties: Harting and Wöhner

A booth from 1947 belongs to Wilhelm Harting from Minden—he’s looking for new customers. He manufactures what’s in short supply: immersion heaters, hot plates, and energy-saving light bulbs; his wife Marie delivers the goods by bicycle and is paid in bread, bacon, eggs, and—as you might guess—legumes. According to the company chronicle, the first orders for alternators, starters, and ignition distributors came in from Hanover. The two sons were allowed to tag along. Little Dietmar, who later headed the Exhibitor Advisory Board for many years and served as deputy chairman of the supervisory board of Deutsche Messe AG, recalls what mattered to a seven-year-old: “There was ice cream, bananas, and cake.” In 1950, the company moved to the neighboring refugee settlement of Espelkamp, into the barracks of a former munitions factory. By 1955, it already had 500 employees and doubled its revenue to 8.6 million Deutschmarks within a year; in 1956, the Han connector was patented and went on to become an industry standard. Harting is one of a handful of exhibitors that have participated continuously since 1947. In 2006 and 2016, the company won the HERMES AWARD; on the second occasion, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel visited the booth together—Obama was particularly interested in the yellow Harting sneakers, and Margrit Harting later sent him a pair.

A kitchen table, a fuse box, a standard

Like Harting, Wöhner is also a family-owned company whose path led to Hannover early on. “Wöhner has been represented at the world’s leading industrial trade show since 1954,” recalls Igor Magugliani, Wöhner’s Vice President of Sales, in 2023. “The trade show is the ideal place for face-to-face meetings and personal interaction. That’s why HANNOVER MESSE is definitely the ‘place to be’ for us,” says Magugliani in an interview about the importance of trade shows for Wöhner. The history of Wöhner began in 1929, when Alfred Wöhner opened an assembly shop for electrical installation materials in his home in Rödental, near Coburg in Upper Franconia. The first products were created at his kitchen table. In 1934, he developed a compact fuse holder for Siemens that allowed fuses to be replaced safely—to this day, the company refers to this as a “small revolution on the world market.”
Between 1950 and 1965, the company expanded into metal fabrication, electroplating, toolmaking, and plastics manufacturing; the one-man operation grew into a medium-sized business, and the second generation—led by his son Klaus—took the reins. In 1954, when the trade show reinstated its unified format, Wöhner made its debut among the exhibitors in Hanover—and has been there ever since. In 1980, the 60-millimeter busbar system was introduced, becoming the generic term for low-voltage distribution and earning Wöhner a place among the “Brands of the Century” in 2022. Today, the third generation leads the company, which has twelve subsidiaries and customers in more than 80 countries; in 2023, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the booth to learn about a motor starter that detects short circuits before they occur. This year, Katherina Reiche, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, visited the booth. The trade show has never been just a place for established successes, but also for companies that grow alongside it.