Mr. Dietrich Lubs was a senior member of the Design Department at Braun, AG during the Braun Lectron years of 1967 – 1972.

Mr. Lubs was born in Berlin, GERMANY on August 2nd, 1938.  He started working at Braun on July 1st, 1962. He retired from Braun in 2001.

Mr. Lubs ultimately served as the deputy director of the Braun Design Department starting in 1995. Mr. Lubs’ design work spanned across the entire Braun product spectrum including graphics for HiFi equipment, Shavers, Kitchenwares, Hair Care, and the Braun Lectron System product line. He also personally designed wrist watches, hair dryers, calculators, and wall clocks, specifically the hair dryer “FuturPro”, the alarm clock “AB1” (1987), the calculator “Control ET 55”, the ABW 41 Wall Clock, the AB 10 Analog Watch, and the BNE001 ET66 Calculator shown below.

In November of 2013, I had the honor and pleasure of dining with Mr. Lubs at my hotel in Frankfurt and was able to gain some insights into the Braun era of the Lectron System.

In the photo to the left, Mr. Lubs is pointing to one of his design projects for the Lectron System – the 1300 Demon-stration model. He designed the symbols for the large demo blocks for this model and for the other 2 demonstration models – the 3102 and the 3201. He also designed the symbols for the larger blocks in the Buchlabor model.

In the June 28th, 2014 photo below, I am holding one of the many ingenious products Mr. Lubs designed which in this case is a pocket travel alarm clock. It worked perfectly to wake me up for several early morning meetings during my 2014 trip!

Mr. Lubs gave us entry passes and accompanied Günther Stabe and myself to the annual Braun+Design meeting in Darmstadt on June 28th, 2014. In the photo below Mr. Stabe and Mr. Lubs review some of Mr. Stabe’s engineering designs using the Lectron system for prototyping.

Mr. Lubs knew Mr. Manfred Walter (the Braun Lectron division director) personally and they both worked in the same building but on different floors at 22 Russelsheimer Strasse in Frankfurt. Mr. Lubs authoritatively identified Mr. Walter in the Braun Lectron era photograph shown below. 

Mr. Lubs informed me that Braun management had made a decision in 1972 to divest themselves of all toy and education product lines. These lines were not part of their core business. According to Mr. Lubs, Mr. Walter had led the Braun Lectron division since the Fall of 1967 when Braun acquired the Lectron System sales agency from Deutsche Lectron, GmbH. When Braun announced this decision, Mr. Walter asked to and was allowed to purchase the Lectron System business for a relatively small amount of money.

Mr. Lubs also related a more contemporary account about the appeal of the Lectron System.  In March of 2002, the Werkstätten Messe (Fair), a four day show highlighting the work and products produced by 120 sheltered workshops all over Germany was held in Offenbach. Mr. Lubs was on the show jury led by the chairman Volker Fischer. The jury awarded the First Prize to the Reha Werkstatt Oberrad (RWO) in recognition of the Lectron System. The jury noted that creating circuits of all sorts following the graphical symbols on each block “… made the Lectron System ideally suited to stimulate playful learning.” Sadly, Mr. Walter was likely not well enough to attend the fair as he was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.

After the 2002 fair, Mr. Lubs joined the Lectron-RWO development team which also included Mr. Wolfgang Schrank, Mr. Norbert Cahn von Seelen, and Mr. Gerd Kopperschmidt. All four are Lectron Luminaries and the roles these individual gentlemen played to promote and develop the Lectron System is detailed in their respective pages.  

Mr. Lubs’ latest projects involve the reimagining of his earlier watch creations.  The AW 10 Evo was recently released in early 2019 and the AW 50 Evo release is highly anticipated.

During my trip to Frankfurt in September of 2019, Mr. Lubs and I enjoyed a great meal at a traditional Bavarian eatery – Gemaltes Haus, Schweizer Strasse 67, Frankfurt Sachsenhausen.  Great food and even better company!

Mr. Lubs continues to be very active in the product design world and is a much sought after consultant for his knowledge and expertise.