This is a chapter of wider Schild surname history, not a confirmed branch of our direct family line. See the research question later in this story.
Cologne, 1924
Rolf Schild was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1924, the son of a Jewish textile merchant. In the late 1930s, as Nazi persecution of German Jews intensified, he attended the Jawne Gymnasium, a Jewish school in Cologne known for helping its students prepare for the possibility of emigration.
The Kindertransport
In 1939, at age fifteen, Rolf was sent to England on the Kindertransport, the rescue effort that carried thousands of predominantly Jewish children out of Nazi Germany and German occupied territory in the months before the Second World War began. He arrived in Liverpool. His parents stayed behind in Germany.
Parents Murdered at Chełmno
Rolf later learned that his parents had been murdered by the Nazis at the Chełmno extermination camp in 1942. Chełmno, in occupied Poland, was the first Nazi camp built specifically for mass murder by gas, and it was here that his mother and father’s lives ended while their son was safe, and separated from them, in Britain.
An Enemy Alien
Having escaped Nazi persecution as a Jewish refugee, Rolf was nonetheless classified an enemy alien by British authorities because of the German passport he still carried — a wartime policy applied broadly to German and Austrian nationals in Britain, regardless of why they had actually left their home country. He was interned for a time on the Isle of Man, then transferred to Manchester, where he trained to operate a capstan lathe.
He later moved to London, where he worked at a film projector factory while studying physics, engineering, and electronics at night school — the beginning of the engineering career that would define the rest of his working life.
- Cologne, Germany
- Liverpool, England
- Wartime Internment on the Isle of Man
- Manchester, England
- London, England
Medical Engineering at New Electronics Products
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Rolf worked at New Electronics Products, under Zoltan Kellerman. There he developed a phono cardiograph, a device for recording heart sounds, and helped develop an early heart lung machine for polio patients with Hammersmith Hospital — work that placed him at the leading edge of medical engineering in postwar Britain.
He also invented a catheter based pressure transducer, later adapted to measure aircraft engine airflow for Hawker Siddeley — a device that began in medicine and found a second life in aviation.
This section describes Rolf’s engineering career as recorded in his obituary and the AJR Journal.
Founding a Company With Peter Epstein
In the early 1950s, Rolf founded a company with business partner Peter Epstein to develop pressure transducers. The sources available to this archive do not agree on the company’s name: one calls it SE Technology, another calls it SE Laboratories. Rather than silently picking one, this archive notes the discrepancy here, matching the way other unresolved details are handled elsewhere in this history.
Building Huntleigh Technology
In 1973, Rolf acquired control of Hymatic Engineering, a maker of military and aerospace components. In 1975, Hymatic was merged into the Huntleigh Group, a shell company on the Unlisted Securities Market, becoming Huntleigh Technology PLC, based in Luton. The Schild family remained the company’s largest shareholder as it grew into a major international healthcare equipment maker.
Kidnapped in Sardinia
In August 1979, Rolf, his wife Daphne, and their teenage daughter were kidnapped for ransom while on holiday in Sardinia, by a gang calling itself Red Guerrilla. Theirs was one of more than a dozen kidnappings on the island that year, part of a wave of ransom kidnappings that made international news. Their daughter’s name is recorded as both Annabelle and Annabel across the sources available to this archive; both spellings appear in the record, and neither has been confirmed as the only correct one.
Held for Ransom
Rolf was released roughly sixteen days later, in September 1979. Daphne was released in January 1980, after a ransom payment. Their daughter was released in March 1980, days after a family approved public appeal from Pope John Paul II helped break a news blackout on the case. Ransom figures vary across sources at each stage of the ordeal, with a total of £220,000 recorded — this archive presents that figure as reported rather than asserting a single precise total.
Convictions
In 1982, thirteen people were convicted and jailed for the kidnapping.
Recognition and Later Life
In 1997, Rolf was appointed OBE for his achievements in medical design — recognition for a career that began with a phono cardiograph at New Electronics Products and grew into the leadership of a major international healthcare equipment maker. He died in 2003, at the age of seventy nine.
A Research Question
Is Rolf Schild connected to our direct Schild family line?
Rolf Schild’s life, engineering career, and the 1979 Sardinia kidnapping are documented across Wikipedia, his Telegraph obituary, company histories of Huntleigh Technology, and contemporary press coverage.
A direct genealogical connection between his German Schild family and the family line documented elsewhere on this site has not yet been established. This is an open research question, not a documented fact.
People in This Story
Places in This Story
Documents
Obituary
Obituary — Rolf Schild, The Telegraph (Scan Pending)
Portrait Photograph
Portrait of Rolf Schild (Photograph Pending)
Press Photograph