Quality Plating Co., Inc.

Quality Plating Co., Inc. has been serving the electroplating needs of Salt Lake City since 1955.  The founders are Walther Fassmann and his son, Walter K. Fassmann.  The beginning of this company is the story of Walther Fassmann’s life.  Here is a short biography of Walther Fassmann and how he came to be the founder of a company in the United States in his late fifties.

Walther Fassmann was born on June 18, 1896 in Zwickau, Germany, a son of Franz Louis Fassmann and Margaretha Raithel.  Up until the time he left East Germany in 1952, he lived in Zwickau except from 1905 to 1908 when his family lived in Plauen.

Walther’s electroplating career started at the age of 14 when he was offered a three year apprenticeship.  His work was interrupted in 1916 because of the First World War.  He was drafted into the German Navy and trained as a telegraph operator.  All during the war, he was stationed near the naval center Kiel and consequently he did not see any battle action.  In the spring of 1919 on a Sunday, he returned home.  As he entered the branch meeting hall in his navy uniform, Anna Foerster, who had never seen him before, made up her mind right then that this was going to be her husband.  They were married on March 20, 1920.

Walther Fassmann continued his work as an electroplater journeyman.  At this time, the worst inflation ever to hit Germany devastated the economy.  By the time the inflation was brought under control in the beginning of 1924, it took 4.21 trillion Mark to buy one dollar worth of merchandise.  In these dire times, their first two children, Erika and Walter K., were born.

In 1924, the chance presented itself for Walther to buy a defunct plating shop with a partner.  Even though it was tough at the beginning to make ends meet, the business grew into the largest and most profitable electroplating plant in the area.  Two more children, Heinz and Helga, were born while the couple struggled for existence.  Anna, his wife, added tremendously to their success by attending to the house and children as well as financially, by maintaining a dairy route for a few years and by helping in the household of a butcher shop for many years.

With the beginning of the Second World War, things changed considerably.  Eventually his two sons were drafted, Walter K. into the German Navy and Heinz into the Army.  In August of 1943, the message had reached home that Heinz was killed by an artillery shell in Russia.  The end of World War II brought the complete collapse of the Hitler regime.  At first, Zwickau and the surrounding area were occupied by American troops, but after three or four months, they retreated to the west followed by the occupation of Russian troops.

Walther was always active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and at the end of the war, Walther Fassmann was called as the first counselor to the East German Mission Presidency.  Things came to a point when his well being was endangered.  This is described in the book Mormonism in Germany by Gilbert W. Scharfs, Chapter 10, page 155.

“In 1951, Walther Fassmann, the first counselor in the mission presidency living in the East, was arrested.  He was transporting money into that zone to deposit in a bank for the purpose of buying a building to be used in the Church.  The money was taken from him, and he was imprisoned in chains for several days.  Said Fassmann: ‘I was informed that a trial would come up in a few months.  I was given a temporary release, but I had to check with the police every week.  When I inquired about the money I was told, ‘Don’t worry, it is in good hands,’ and that is where it stayed, for it was never returned.  Fassmann was warned that he could expect a five to ten year [prison] sentence.”

After coming home from this scare he convinced his children, his wife, and himself that it was time to get away from the Communist dictatorship.  His oldest daughter had already left in the fall of 1948 to join her husband in Langen, near Frankfurt, who had been released from prison camp in Yugoslavia at that time. Walter K. returned from a prison camp in Yugoslavia the first part of 1949.  He finished his schooling and then escaped from East Germany with his wife, Inge, in the summer of 1951.  His youngest daughter made it safely to the West in the spring of 1952 and Walther and Anna Fassmann followed later that year.  Eventually the whole family made it to the United States and in February 1955, they were all residing in Salt Lake City, Utah.

While Walther was working as a janitor at Kingsbury Hall and his wife, Anna, being a kitchen helper at Bratten’s Fish Restaurant on Fourth South, Quality Plating Company was officially set up in the early spring of 1955.  Walter K., who had been living in Canada came to Salt Lake City to help his father in starting the business.  Working out of the basement at 762 East 600 South and starting out with two-gallon fish aquariums as plating tanks, things started to change quickly.  In the spring of 1957, city inspectors insisted that a commercial location must be found because the business had grown to the extent that it was impossible to continue in a residential area.

A small shop on West Fourth South was found, remodeled, and moved into on Pioneer Day, 1957.  A few years later, Walther quit his job at the University of Utah and devoted all his attention to the business.  The business continued to grow.  Military specification work made Quality Plating Company the choice plating shop in Utah and the surrounding states.  The construction of new building additions to the shop never seemed to end.  Now national and world renowned names adorn the customer list of Quality Plating Company.

On April 20, 1980, Walther and Anna Fassmann celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary, an occasion only few couples will live long enough to observe and they were both alert and in good health.  A few weeks later, Walther Fassmann was there to celebrate the twenty-fifth business anniversary of Quality Plating Co. It is an amazing fact to realize that he had celebrated a 25 year business anniversary in Germany before he left and now he was celebrating a 25 year business anniversary in the United States of America. (as written by Walter K. Fassmannn)