Hannes was always upright fighting for his goals with TAD and was a good friend and valued business partner for his colleagues.
He was born in Coburg 1947, a „post-war version“ as he called himself, and as a music lover started to work at the early age of 12 in order to fulfill his dream of owning a portable radio.
Hannes was a big player in our small HiFi world and started 1973 as co-founder of Audiolabor, one of the early and innovative German High End manufacturers. Here he was CEO and chief marketing manager for years. High End Society and the related Audio Fairs have their roots in that time.
In 1981 he met Hildegard who became his wife and shared the passion for his activities. Being a family man Hannes is father of three daughters and by now arrived at six grandchildren.
After the sale of Audiolabor 1984, he started his own distribution business and in 2000 established the company which is known as TAD today with his friend Joachim Spelling. This association was indeed a lucky find and together they made „Lifestyle Audio“ popular in Germany, selling Tivoli Radio products in large numbers driven by clever marketing campaigns.
But deep in his heart Hannes was always a "High Ender“ and consequentially you can find renowned brands like Rega, Unison, Opera, Fyne Audio, Tannoy, Gold Note Excalibur, Watson‘s, Simply Audio, Ruark and others in the sales profile.
In 2015 Joachim Spelling left the company and a generation change took place when Paula Knorn, daughter of Hannes and Hildegard, became CEO of TAD.
Hannes claimed he no longer wanted to go to the office every day, but everybody who knew him would guess that this was only part of the story and you could count on him being at work frequently irrespective of any health issues. It was only this half of the current year being in worse healthiness that prevented him from doing what he felt was necessary.
Hannes will be sadly missed by Hildegard, Paula, Anna, Tina and the rest of his family.
Everyone at Rega is deeply saddened by this news and we send our profound condolence to all the family and everyone at TAD.
