Vintage audio: vinyl player Dual 1219 by Nordmende. Made in Germany
Nordmende, originally from Bremen, Germany, is a trademark owned by Technicolor SA. Nordmende was historically renowned as a major consumer electronics brand for high quality televisions and domestic appliances. The brand is now manufactured and distributed under licence in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Turkey and Italy.
The original company, Radio N. Mende GmbH, was founded in 1923 by Otto Hermann Mende (1885-1940) in Dresden. Following the destruction of the plant during the bombing raids in 1945, Martin Mende (the founder’s son) created a new company in Bremen in 1947, in a former Focke-Wulf plant, under the name Norddeutsche Mende-Rundfunk GmbH. The name was subsequently changed to Nordmende: subsequently the company became one of the prominent German manufacturers of radios, televisions, tape recorders and record players in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1969, Mende’s sons took over the company, and in 1977 a majority shareholding was sold to the French Thomson Brandt company. The following year, the family sold their remaining shares to Thomson. In the 1980s, the factories in Bremen were closed, Nordmende becoming purely a Thomson trademark.
