Background
Max Baginski was born as one of seven children of a mason and contractor. After the death of his father in 1897, he lived with aunt and uncle.
Max Baginski was born as one of seven children of a mason and contractor. After the death of his father in 1897, he lived with aunt and uncle.
After school he went to Berlin, where he completed a mercantile apprenticeship.
He invented the „Spalt“-tablet, an analgesic bearing a characteristic split-mark. He donated the funds for building the Catholic parish church of Saint Katharina in Bad Soden am Taunus, Germany. He quit his first job after six months and started his own business marketing a first patented invention, an all-purpose bottle cap.
In 1912 he acquired the pharmaceutical firm Doctor Ballowitz & Company in Berlin.
The big success of another invention, a massage device, enabled Baginski to expand his enterprise. In 1931 he teamed up with the prominent serologist Hans Much (1880–1932) and founded another company named „Professor
Doctor medical. Much’sche Präparate m.b.H.“, where the „Spalt“-tablet was created in 1932.
After World World War II, however, most of his production plants ended up in the soviet zone. Baginski himself was accused of having had employed forced labourers, arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
There he vowed to build a church, if he would survive. The Soviet authorities released Max Baginski in August 1948.
From his enterprises only the Doctor Ballowitz & Company had escaped disappropriation, but fortunately, this was where all his trademarks had been registered.
This enabled Baginski to go on producing his articles which he did in Bad Soden am Taunus, a spa town some 15 Kilometers northwest of Frankfurt am Main. In 1953, a new factory of the Professor Doctor medical. Much AG started production and in 1955 Baginski fulfilled his vow by providing the funds for a new church for the town’s catholic parish, a new vicarage and a kindergarten that today bears Baginski’s name.
The factory in Bad Soden was closed in 1993.