SABA | 1953

Villingen, Wildbad, Lindau, Meersburg, Bodensee, Freiburg: in this ad from November 1953, SABA named its radios after towns and landscapes of south-west Germany, from DM 308 for the Villingen to DM 648 for the top-of-the-range Freiburg.

SABA stands for Schwarzwälder Apparate-Bau-Anstalt (Black Forest Apparatus Works). Its roots go back to 1835, when Joseph Benedikt Schwer started a clock-making business in Triberg, in the Black Forest. The company moved to Villingen in 1918 and soon turned to radio: in 1931 it built more than 100,000 sets of a single model.

In this ad we can see a snowy Black Forest farmhouse among the fir trees. The set is sold as a “Schwarzwald-Radio”, and the slogan promises “Black Forest precision and quality”, the reputation the region’s clockmakers had built.

The ad appeared in Hören und Sehen (“Hear and See”), a weekly radio-listings magazine. In 1953 the radio was the centre of the living room, and television had only just begun.

In 1968 the American group GTE bought a majority stake, and in 1980 SABA passed to the French group Thomson. Today the name lives on as a brand of consumer electronics.

Text in the ad

SABA Radio
Wenn Sie etwas Besonderes haben wollen – ein Rundfunk-Gerät, das nicht nur prachtvoll klingt, sondern auch eine vorzügliche Empfangsleistung bietet und zudem noch äußerst trennscharf arbeitet – dann leisten Sie sich ein Schwarzwald-Radio!
Villingen W III DM 308.–, Wildbad W DM 328.–, Lindau W III DM 348.–, Meersburg W III DM 448.–, Bodensee W III DM 548.–, Freiburg W III DM 648.–. Vorführung in jedem guten Fachgeschäft
Schwarzwälder Präzision und Qualität

Translation:
SABA Radio
If you want something special – a radio that not only sounds magnificent but also offers excellent reception and is extremely selective – then treat yourself to a Black Forest radio!
Villingen W III DM 308, Wildbad W DM 328, Lindau W III DM 348, Meersburg W III DM 448, Bodensee W III DM 548, Freiburg W III DM 648. Demonstrations at every good specialist shop
Black Forest precision and quality

Brand

SABA

Year

1953

Decade

1950s

Country

Germany

Medium

Magazine

Themes

Appliances, Technology