Germany

Dieter Rogg was a well-known protagonist in the research and development of magnetic levitation systems in Germany, in particular the TRANSRAID system.

Dieter Rogg worked for Dornier Systems Co., mainly for the German Ministry of Research and Technology and the Ministry of Transport.

Mr Rogg was born in Upper Bavaria in 1937. After graduating from high school in 1955, he studied electrical engineering at the University of Munich. He started his career at Siemens Erlangen, later working for Dornier System New Technologies and Dornier Consulting International from 1976 to 2005.

As Head of the Project Support and Monitoring Department of the Ministry of Research and Technology in 1977, he was involved in the system comparison of various maglev systems using different magnetic levitation systems and linear motors, which later led to the development of the Transrapid system and the decision to build the Transrapid test track in Emsland for the technical development of maglev trains from TR 04 to TR 09 in Germany.
His department acted as the technical negotiator between the industrial developers and the relevant ministries. This led to the great success of Maglev at the International Transport Fairs in Hamburg in 1979 and 1989 with the test run of the TR 05 and the presentation of the new development of the TR 07, where his department was responsible for the management of the technical projects as an extended arm of the responsible ministry. Without him, the Transrapid community would not have achieved this international success.

Dieter Rogg was also the manager of international cooperation in the field of maglev systems worldwide and his main task was to cooperate with US and Japanese research institutions and to establish the International Maglev Conferences together with Prof. Masada in the 1980s. Finally, he was involved in the various planning activities to establish, build and operate a Maglev system here in Germany.

In this field of activity, Mr Rogg came into contact with many people in the Maglev community worldwide and remained in contact with many of them until the last years of his career, which ended in 2005. He also organised the well-known Transrapid workshops during the carnival season in the town of Stockach, where he - at that time - sometimes also tried to smooth the waters between different individual opinions as well as research, and to mediate between different industrial strategies that had sometimes existed in the months before, in order to achieve a common understanding for a research programme between politics and industry.

Dieter Rogg became known and appreciated far beyond the borders of Germany because of his technological competence, his compensatory character, his strategic thinking and his life-affirming manner. Without him, the Transrapid Maglev Programme would not have been so successful for so long. He therefore made an extraordinary contribution to the development of Transrapid and Maglev technology worldwide.
In his leisure time, he enjoyed playing music on the keyboard, listening to jazz, doing many winter and summer sports and, last but not least, loving the highlands.

Dieter Rogg died on 15 June 2023 at the age of 86 in Salem Beuren in the Bodensee district. We will honour his memory.