corpuls Brand Guidelines: The Kaufering Defibrillator Maker Begun in a Basement in 1982

A basement workshop in Upper Bavaria.

corpuls is a brand name, not the legal name of the company behind it. German Wikipedia describes corpuls as the brand of GS Elektromedizinische Geräte G. Stemple GmbH, a German medical-technology maker based in Kaufering, near Landsberg am Lech in Upper Bavaria. The brand is written in lower case, and the company keeps it that way in product names such as corpuls3 and corpuls cpr.

The company was founded in 1982 by Günter Stemple. In its own history, corpuls says Stemple developed a new portable defibrillator in his basement hobby workshop in Kaufering, and that the corpuls 200 and corpuls 300 were the first products. German Wikipedia says the firm at first mainly sold a portable defibrillator. The company says those early units were built for the pre-hospital setting, with a power supply and a charging system designed for installation in vehicles.

The company’s timeline marks a few early milestones. In 1984, it says, a single-channel ECG recorded on board the merchant ship Humboldt Express, off the coast of South America, was transmitted to Germany using its equipment — a story it now tells as the start of its telemedicine work. In 1992 it introduced the corpuls 08/16, with a fold-down screen; the company says it was the first device for the pre-hospital sector with a 12-channel ECG, and that it could be extended with further monitoring channels.

The family stayed in charge for almost four decades. German Wikipedia and the company both record that Günter Stemple retired in 2021, and that his son Klaus Stemple, his daughter Iris Klimmer and his son-in-law Christian Klimmer took over the running of the business.

Monitor, patient box and defibrillator in one.

In the company’s own history, the turning point is the corpuls3. The company says it presented the device at the MEDICA medical-technology trade fair in 2007, and describes it as a unit that splits wirelessly into three parts: a monitor, a patient module and a defibrillator module. A second generation and a lighter defibrillator module called SLIM followed in 2012, and in 2020 a touch-screen version, the corpuls3T, which the company says can still be worked with buttons and a rotary dial.

Smaller devices filled out the range. The corpuls1, a compact defibrillator and patient monitor, arrived in 2011 and is aimed, the company says, at fire services, first responders, patient transport and disaster relief. The corpuls cpr, a mechanical chest-compression device, followed in 2015, and in 2020 the company linked it to the corpuls3 so that the two work as one system. The corpuls aed, an automated external defibrillator for lay rescuers and first responders, came in 2017, with picture-based instructions and voice prompts.

Software has become a larger part of the business. The company lists a telemetry application, corpuls.web LIVE, from 2012, and in 2020 a tele-medic platform, corpuls.mission, which combines live data, video calls and mission records. It also sells corpuls simulation, a training set that hides a tablet inside a case shaped like a corpuls3. In 2025, the company says, it bought Cosinuss of Munich, a maker of in-ear sensors for monitoring vital signs.

Design awards appear in the company’s record. It says the corpuls 08/16 received a product design award from the Industrie Forum Design in Hanover in 1995, and that the corpuls cpr received a Red Dot design award in 2016. Its awards page reproduces the jury statements for both.

Design and documentation.

Makers of patient monitors and resuscitation equipment present themselves through settings more than through objects. The familiar picture is the intensive-care bedside: a monitor beside the bed, its screen filled with coloured waveforms and numbers, wired to the patient and to a central station down the corridor. The same companies also show their equipment in operating theatres, emergency departments and the backs of ambulances.

Outside the hospital, the images change. Automated external defibrillators appear in wall-mounted cabinets in railway stations, airports, offices and sports halls, often in a brightly coloured case marked with a heart symbol. Paramedics are shown kneeling with a portable monitor-defibrillator, and training courses use mannequins on the floor of a classroom, where people practise chest compressions and placing pads.

Much of the visual language comes from the signals themselves. The ECG strip, with its grid of pink or green squares and a running trace, is the oldest of these images, and many makers began with recorders that drew such traces on paper long before screens took over. Waveforms, grids and the outline of a heart recur in catalogues, brochures and trade-fair stands.

Those trade fairs are where the sector meets its buyers. MEDICA in Düsseldorf and Arab Health in the Gulf are among the international shows where makers set out their monitors, defibrillators and software side by side. This guide looks at how individual makers began, who owns them now and what they say about where their products are made, and marks clearly what rests only on a company’s own word.

A family firm with a private-equity partner.

The ownership changed in 2023. On 19 April that year, the Stockholm-based investor Nordic Capital announced that it had agreed to buy a majority share in corpuls, with completion expected around the middle of the year. The announcement said the founding family would stay invested and keep its place on the management board, and described corpuls as a company with 450 employees selling in more than 60 countries. German Wikipedia confirms that Nordic Capital became the majority owner in 2023. The company’s own pages now give a larger workforce and more than 70 export countries.

Manufacturing stays close to home. The company says it has developed and made its products at its headquarters in Kaufering for decades, and that a newer site at Igling, about three kilometres away, now houses manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and customer service. Nordic Capital’s 2023 announcement mentioned that corpuls had just acquired a new factory site near its headquarters for an additional production facility. German Wikipedia lists further German sites in Augsburg, Potsdam, Lübeck, Landau, Munich and Cologne, with offices abroad including Malaysia.

The company has also bought its own dealers. The company says it took over its long-standing sales and service partner Riedel + Schulz of Nuthetal in 2024, and in 2025 hestomed nord of Stockelsdorf, Meßmer Medizintechnik of Landau and Hans Peter Esser of Kürten, after which all its former German sales and service partners were part of the group. In 2025 it also announced a change of chief executive, with Christian Klimmer handing over to Christoph Brönnimann.

The brand’s wording is direct. In German, its motto is “FÜR-MENSCHEN-LEBEN”; the English pages use “FOCUS ON PATIENTS.”

For a design guide, corpuls shows how a family firm built a recognisable product family around one modular device. Compare Dräger, another German medical-technology maker, and ZOLL. For this guide we use a deep red, ink and slate grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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