With the founding of his company in 1897 in Grimma, near Leipzig, Ferdinand Walther laid the foundations for a successful SME-sector company. At the family's own workshop, door locks and wrought-iron work were manufactured by hand.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and so a piece of railway track served as the first vice. Right from the start, the Walther family was available for its customers seven days a week. This availability was gratefully received and actively contributed towards the growth in the company's customer base.

The first workshop quickly became too small and so construction began on the first factory, which employed around 50 people.  

Lightning conductors, electric bell and DC current systems were installed, and the first deep well pumps were built to satisfy customer orders.

Production had to be expanded with suitable machinery, equipment and low electric current, and later also high electric current installation materials, in order to fulfil customer orders.

The customer base was now also expanding abroad (France, Yugoslavia, Belgium, etc.) and the first catalogues were being printed in English and French.

WALTHER-WERKE has more than 1,300 employees and its production facilities are constantly being expanded. A raft of new machinery is procured to produce the constantly growing product range.

The portfolio already comprises more than 6,000 articles and includes lever, roller and star-delta switches, as well as encapsulated plug devices, junction boxes and switching systems. 

The Second World War did not leave WALTHER-WERKE unscathed either. The production facilities were relocated from Grimma to Bad Reichenhall.

The new setup started out under difficult conditions in a former dance hall. Only a fraction of the machine park was able to move with the company, and so in many areas work had to begin again from scratch. Many of the articles that had previously been offered were no longer produced due to the lack of equipment.  

At the end of the 1940s, Alfred Bosecker invented the first construction current distributor.

Hans Kalthoff Snr., who had already worked for a number of years as a representative of WALTHER-WERKE based in Münster, takes over WALTHER-WERKE. The portfolio was pruned radically in the ensuing years and reduced to the domains of plug connections, cam and lever switches.

The submission of the standard recommendation for the CEE plug connection that is still in use today (round plug connections made from plastic), then known as the CEE 17, finally brought the breakthrough the company needed.

WALTHER-WERKE was growing again. 

The plastic CEE plug connections take hold on the market and increasingly oust the flat plug connections made from aluminium. This also created a need for new production facilities and space. WALTHER-WERKE relocates to its present-day headquarters in Eisenberg (Palatinate).

The range is consistently developed further. In addition to the NORVO product series (for low voltage), the first plug socket combinations made from plastic were unveiled to the market.

Aluminium processing skills are integrated into the new PROCON industrial plug connections product series. To do this, the Müller Steckverbinder company is also taken over.

The sales office in Austria is founded.

The range and number of CEE plug connections, wall sockets that can be switched off and socket combinations are increased further to encompass over 2,500 catalogue articles.

The MONDO product series (installation trunking boxes) are showcased at the trade fair in Hanover. Growth continues, and production capacities have to be constantly expanded.

The sales office in England is founded.

The production facilities in Eisenberg are successfully certified to ISO 9001, while over 600 VDE test certificates and more than 1,000 international certificates confirm the consistently high standard of quality produced by WALTHER-WERKE.

More sales offices are founded, this time in France and the USA. Socket combinations made from solid rubber and polyethylene are launched onto the market. Redesign of the CEE plug connections and socket combinations.