Microtech Gefell GmbH were, in the days of the German Democratic Republic, a nationalised company originally set up by Georg Neumann in 1928 in Berlin which was damaged by an incendiary bomb. For that reason the company was relocated 1943 to Gefell, a small town close the old border between East and West Germany.

The first microphone they made was the CMV 4a ´bottle´ using the M7 capsule developed by Neumann and later used in his U47 and M49 microphones, as well as in Microtech Gefell´s own current UMT70S and UM92.1S models.

After the war, Neumann set up a new factory in Heilbronn making nickel cadmium batteries, before returning to Berlin to start the company we all know and love, Georg Neumann GmbH (now owned by Sennheiser). However, his former technical director, Mr. Kühnast, and most of the original staff remained in Gefell making microphones, and communication with Neumann was maintained, even after the German Democratic Republic nationalised all manufacturing industries.

By 1957, Microtech Gefell had produced their first 3-pattern switchable valve microphone and introduced two more capsule designs, but when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961 all communications between East and West stopped. In 1989 the East German government finally collapsed, the Berlin Wall came down, and the Berlin Neumann company offered to co-operate with Microtech Gefell. When Sennheiser took over Neumann GmbH in 1991 they severed all links with Gefell, which became an independent, privately-owned company

Currently under the technical supervision of Kühnast ´s son, Microtech Gefell still produce the M7 capsule in exactly the same way Neumann taught the elder Kühnast in the 1940s.