The company "Radiobau ZEHETNER" was a small Viennese company which, along with large established German and other Austrian companies (Eumig, Horny, Ingelen, Kapsch, Minerva, Philips, Radione, Siemens & Halske, Telefunken, C.H. Zerdik), wrote Austria's radio history for the 15 years after WWII. Its workshop produced over 40 different radios (including 15 portables between 1950 and 1959), the "Universal-Test-Clip" for technicians (1949), an intercom system (1952), FM-attachements (1953), a UHF-Tuner for the 2nd Austrian TV-program (1961) and various other radio-related odds and ends.

In this rather extensive webpage you'll find the company's complete heritage as well as my personal memories about my father, the engineer Franz Zehetner, who founded the company in 1938 and had to close it in 1986.

You'll also find leaflets, advertisements featuring well-known Austrian actors, pictures of the "UB 60" out of two films (1951), Austria's triple Olympic Champion (1956) and skiing legend Toni Sailer in a film with the "Frohsinn Piccolo" (1959), pictures of the "UB 61" in Africa (1953), the prototype of the "Frohsinn JUNIOR" which had a built-in record player (1953), the first handmade draft of the "Bambi", and also wiring diagrams. Included as well are the "Universal-Test-Clips", probably my father's most important invention. For those interested in advertising I've included two scripts as examples of radio commercials during the 50s. For some appliances there is no existing information besides some photos taken at trade fairs. Because of this the pictures are not always very high-quality. All technical details have been borrowed from original leaflets or special-editions of different magazines.

Every single radio is introduced with pictures and technical details (click on "RADIOGERÄTE" - appliances - and "PORTABLES"), and the key points are summerized on the page entitled "ÜBERSICHT". The order in which the devices appear in this website is based on the year of construction (which I've sometimes had to guess at) .

If you have personal memories, supplementary materials, want to correct something you find in this site, or own radios in better condition (where I own only old ad.pictures), please write to me. I hope to succeed in collecting a color picture of every single appliance. My brother Franz and I would also be happy to have you sign our guestbook and to answer any questions you might have.

This webpage is a work in progress; at the moment I'm finishing up specialized articles about Zehetner-production out of technical journals that will be combined with the appropriate appliances.

Enjoy my webpage and, if you like it, please recommend it to a friend.