Hilti, the Schaan firm that changed Liechtenstein

If you’ve ever worked on a building site, or know someone who has, Hilti’s red case will ring a bell. What few people realise is that the brand is from Liechtenstein, that it was born in Schaan in the middle of the war and that it still has its headquarters there. To me it’s a shortcut to grasping that this is, above all, an industrial country, and it leads you to one of the best museums on the Städtle.

From a Schaan workshop to 120 countries

It all began in a small machine shop that Eugen Hilti ran in Schaan in the 1930s, next to his car garage, where he made saws and spark plug bodies among other things. At the end of 1941 he founded Hilti Maschinenbau OHG with his brother Martin, an engineer. In 1948 the firm won its first order for steel bolts for powder-actuated fastening, and from then on it specialised in fixing things into concrete and steel.

The milestones Hilti itself highlights are the DX 100 of 1957, which it presents as the world’s first powder-actuated tool, and the TE 17 of 1967, the first electropneumatic hammer drill. In 1970 it opened its first factory abroad, at Thüringen in Austria’s Vorarlberg. It has been Liechtenstein’s biggest company since the 1960s, according to the Historisches Lexikon. Schaan’s other famous firm, Ivoclar, arrived in 1933 as a porcelain teeth factory, which explains Liechtenstein and false teeth. Today it has 34,195 employees, operations in more than 120 countries and, from January to August 2026, sales of CHF 4,244 million. How much firms like this weigh in the economy is broken down in why Liechtenstein is so rich.

A family that gave up its inheritance

There’s a governance detail I find very Liechtenstein. In 1980 the Martin Hilti Family Trust was created, and all of Martin Hilti’s direct descendants renounced their inheritance so the company would never be split. His son Michael ran it from 1990 and in 1994 stepped aside for Pius Baschera, the first chief executive from outside the family. The headquarters was completely refurbished in 2016, a year after a new innovation centre opened, as a sign that the firm is staying in Schaan. Martin Hilti also set up welfare schemes regarded locally as a model, including a company pension fund in 1959, and in 1996 a foundation that supports social, educational and cultural projects in Liechtenstein and abroad.

The awkward chapter

It would be dishonest to tell this story without its darker side. The Historisches Lexikon explains that, in its first years, the company produced mainly for the German war economy, with 70 employees in 1943 making engine parts and spark plugs. Between 1940 and 1942 Martin Hilti was one of the leaders of the local Nazi movement and editor of its newspaper, and in 1945 a Swiss military court convicted him in absentia of espionage. He held no political office after the war. The background to those years is in Liechtenstein in the Second World War.

What you can actually see

The Schaan headquarters is a working company and I haven’t found any public tours, so I wouldn’t send you there. The visitable part is in Vaduz. The family has collected art since the 1970s, started building a serious collection in 1997 and set up the foundation in 1998. In 2015 it opened its own museum on the Städtle, a white cube by Morger + Dettli Architekten attached to the black cube of the Kunstmuseum, sharing its foyer and entrance. It holds more than 500 works, with names such as Picasso, Klee, Kirchner, Giacometti and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. I cover it in depth on the Hilti Art Foundation page.

The shared ticket costs CHF 15, CHF 10 for concessions, is free for under-16s and free for everyone on Wednesdays. It’s open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 17:00, and until 20:00 on Thursdays.

A curious mark on the map

Hilti’s last calling card is a railway stop. The line that crosses Liechtenstein between Feldkirch and Buchs has three stops in the country, and one of them is called Forst Hilti. To me that sums up how much this company weighs in a territory of 160 km². If you’re thinking of using the train, read my page on getting around by train in Liechtenstein first and check the Austrian railways timetable before relying on it.