Who is Melitta Bentz
Melitta Bentz (1873-1950) born in Dresden, Germany. She was a German housewife who invented the paper coffee filter in 1908. She was among the first women to register and protect her invention.
Her invention was so successful that paper coffee filters remain essential today. Paper coffee filters are widely used in households, specialty coffee shops, and international coffee brewing competitions.
Other brewing methods aim to extract as much as possible from coffee grounds. In contrast, brewing coffee filtered through paper focuses on extracting only the most essential elements of the coffee bean. The result is a pour over coffee that feels pure and clean, with rich flavor and less bitterness.
Melitta inherited a a business mindset from her family. Her father was a book publisher, and her grandfather owned a brewery. The family’s business tradition and experience with paper and beverage production created a solid foundation for Melitta’s success.
In the early 1890s, she married Johannes Emil Hugo Bentz, a small business owner. They had three children: Willy, Horst, and Herta.
Like other housewives, Melitta Bentz understood the various challenges of daily family life. With the mindset of an inventor and entrepreneur, she always sought new solutions to these problems. With that spirit, Melitta’s household soon became a five-member business.
The Invention of Melitta Bentz: Great Things from Small Problems
At that time, the simplest way to brew coffee was to pour hot water over coffee grounds and wait until the grounds settled. Then, pour into a cup. Melitta was not satisfied with this because:
- The coffee would get cold during the waiting time.
- There were still coffee grounds floating in the cup, causing discomfort.
- The coffee was immersed in water for too long, leading to over-extraction and unclear flavors.
Coffee filters made of cloth, metal, or perforated porcelain were available on the market. Melitta was also not happy with these filters. If the holes were too big with metal or ceramic filters, grounds would still get through. If the holes were smaller, it caused blockage, leading to bitter and astringent coffee. Cloth filters were not fine enough to filter out all the grounds, were hard to clean, and left odors. If used once and discarded, they were too expensive.
Melitta really had a very refined taste. Even today, when I drink coffee from a French Press or Vietnamese phin, I can accept the bitter and astringent flavors.
There was another inconvenience that only housewives might understand: cleaning coffee brewing tools is not a pleasant experience. If you pour too much coffee grounds into the drain, it can get clogged. So, you have to try to remove the grounds and throw them in the trash before rinsing the equipment under the faucet. I guess Melitta didn’t like this either.
After reading many documents about Melitta Bentz, I can imagine her creative process might have been like this:
- She wanted brewed coffee to stay hot, taste pure, be less bitter, and have no sediment.
- Therefore, the contact time between hot water and coffee grounds had to be shorter than usual. If she had kept the method of immersing coffee in water, then when pouring, it would have had to go through a filter. It would have needed an extra container. The cleaning process afterward also took time.
- So, separating the coffee grounds and the brewed coffee from the beginning was already a breakthrough idea for Melitta. She considered a device to hold the coffee grounds on top and collect the extracted coffee below. She used a brass pot and a nail to punch holes in the bottom, making this pot the place to hold the coffee grounds, then placed it on top of another pot. Hot water would pass through the coffee in the upper cup and then down to the lower cup.
- What remained was the filter component—the soul of this handy device. The story is that Melitta Bentz used paper from her son’s school notebook to filter the coffee grounds. And the result was a beautiful coffee flavor, just as she wanted.
- Blotting paper was a genius choice. Water would seep through coffee grounds. Oils, and other unwanted components would stay behind—something metal or ceramic filters couldn’t achieve. The paper also helped water pass through the coffee more slowly than cloth, allowing enough contact time with the coffee grounds.
I have tried using paper filters to filter coffee grounds finely for espresso. The result is that water can still seep through without clogging (though slowly), and the fine coffee grounds cannot pass through the paper filter.
The Real Difference
I researched other coffee-related patents in Germany and neighboring countries. This was during the same period when Melitta registered her patent. Those inventions were also great, as seen in the images below.
But you’ll notice that other inventors did not focus on creating a cup of coffee with a different taste. They also didn’t prioritize the convenience of cleaning after use. They seemed to prefer automating the process of pouring hot water over coffee.
Moreover, no inventors used blotting paper. Their idea was to use metal filters to be durable and save customers money. Some others used cloth to make it more reusable. Melitta’s idea was genuinely different: manual brewing, simple equipment, using disposable paper, easy to clean after brewing.
Starting the Business
Melitta recognized the potential of her product. On June 11, 1908, she filed an application for her utility device at the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin. She described it as a “Coffee filter with a curved bottom and an indentation on the underside as well as a slanted outlet hole.“
On July 6, 1908, the Reichsanzeiger—the official gazette of the German Empire—published an announcement recognizing her patent. Melitta Bentz officially became one of the first women to protect her own invention. She was the inventor of the coffee filter that uses paper.
On December 15, 1908, she established a family company. She began selling Melitta filters with a starting capital of 72 Reichspfennig. The company’s headquarters were right at her home; her husband and sons were the company first employees.
The eternal spirit of entrepreneurship
Initially, they ordered a metal factory in Westfalen to produce 50 filters. A paper factory in Sachsen supplied the first 100 boxes of paper filters. Once they had the products, Melitta and her husband began promoting them everywhere.
Mr. Hugo Bentz introduced the products to local stores. He even demonstrated how to brew coffee with a filter in the shop windows. This was unprecedented and attracted a lot of attention.
To expand promotion, he hired female models—”demonstration ladies“—to do this work. Melitta Bentz went to coffee parties to introduce and present her products to guests. Their two sons were assigned the task of delivering products to customers.
1909, they brought the filter to the Leipzig Trade Fair and sold 1,200 products there. In 1911, their product won a medal at the International Health Exhibition held in Dresden.
They not only promoted and sold their products, but the Bentz couple also constantly improved them. They filed new patents and registered trademarks. In 1910, they released an improved version of the original prototype.
My perspective on the success of the Melitta family
Filters or coffee brewing devices that were invented around the same time:
- Other coffee brewing tools at that time used metal and cloth filters. So they didn’t create a clear difference in the final product – the taste of the coffee.
- Although inventors always tried to apply advanced technologies, focusing on automating the process of pouring hot water into coffee. This didn’t bring outstanding customer benefits and made the products more complex and more challenging to clean.
- They emphasized using metal and cloth filters to save customers money. That’s true, but the better they did their job, the less customers had to spend money on them. A paradox, isn’t it?
Melitta Filter:
- Coffee filtered through Melitta’s paper was completely different, with purity and rich aroma. Melitta had no competitors at that time.
- There was a demand for clean, sediment-free coffee, even a high demand.
- The disposable paper coffee filter was a repeat-use product with high frequency.
- These factors caused the Melitta family’s business to indeed boom. The better they did their job, the more customers spent regularly using their paper coffee filters daily.
Do you see the difference between these two cases? If you were a business owner, who would you prefer to be?
Leading the Company Through Storms
The first significant challenge for Melitta was World War I. The import of coffee was halted due to British blockades, causing the demand for her products to decline.
Raw materials for production were scarce. Metal was used to manufacture Zeppelins (German airships), and paper was rationed.
Her husband and eldest son had to join the military. Throughout the war, Melitta managed the company alone. She had to switch to selling cardboard boxes to make a living because she couldn’t produce filters.
After the war, her company returned to normal operations. Germany was then in poverty due to war reparations and rampant inflation. Surprisingly, the Melitta company was able to thrive.
In the 1920s, people began to imitate Melitta’s products, but this could not pose a significant obstacle for her. She registered ownership of the brand identity with red and green packaging. Then, she registered the legendary “Melitta” brand lettering.
This seemingly simple action was extremely important. Many companies today are on the rise and suddenly lose everything because they do not register trademark.
Legacy and Influence
In 1937, Melitta Bentz and her husband retired and transferred business operations to their children. Before retiring, she established a five-day workweek, three weeks of annual leave, and Christmas bonuses. She founded the “Melitta Aid” Fund in 1938 as a social fund to support employees.
Melitta Bentz succeeded in building a culture of innovation in her family company. Since 1932, the Melitta company filed new patents every year. The detail of Melitta and her husband’s personal patents were lost through two world wars. However, you can still see the registration information and press releases through the following sources:
“Bentz & Sohn OHG” and “Melitta-Werke AG” were the names of the Melitta company in 1923 and 1932. The patents owned by the company can be searched at this source:
Her business acumen focused on product innovation and employee well-being, setting standards for future entrepreneurs.
The family business started from her small apartment in Dresden over 100 years ago. It has now become a group comprising dozens of companies and thousands of employees. It is still managed by the fourth generation of the family. Approximately 50 million coffee filters sold daily by the group today originate from Melitta Bentz’s 1908 invention.
In 1997, the city government of Dresden named a street after Melitta Bentz to commemorate the woman who invented the coffee filter.
Additionally, there is a memorial plaque dedicated to Melitta Bentz at Wilder-Mann-Straße 13a, her former production facility.
