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Adolf Rosenberger, Jewish co-founder of Porsche, was forced out under the Nazis and largely erased from history. New research and family documents now reveal his vital role in VW and Porsche’s early success.
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00:00Does German automotive history need to be rewritten?
00:04Where would the Volkswagen Group be today if it weren't for Porsche's Jewish co-founder Adolf Rosenberger?
00:11Without Adolf Rosenberger there would not have been a Porsche company today.
00:17Germany's dark Nazi history is also closely linked to that of the German auto industry.
00:23But had it not been for Adolf Rosenberger, a German Jew,
00:27many iconic cars would never have made it onto the road.
00:32VW certainly wouldn't exist.
00:37Without the support and expertise of Adolf Rosenberger it wouldn't have been possible.
00:46Yet while Ferdinand Porsche and his son Ferry have their place in the automotive history books,
00:51Adolf Rosenberger was simply forgotten.
00:57But he was forgotten on purpose because talking about him was also a direction to talk about the Nazi time.
01:07He was removed and he slowly but surely was not there anymore.
01:12But now a new study and book commissioned by the Adolf Rosenberger Foundation and Porsche
01:18finally revisits the car manufacturer's Nazi-era history from its Jewish co-founder's perspective.
01:28In 1935 Adolf Rosenberger was forced out of this company.
01:33Because in 1935 having a Jewish co-partner was bad for business.
01:39Admitting that you have done wrongful things also means rewriting history.
01:48For me Porsche's history doesn't need rewriting.
01:53No.
01:54For us the present study is a sound corroboration and fills in the many gaps in the company's early history.
01:59In 1931 Ferdinand Porsche founded an engineering office in Stuttgart together with his son-in-law Anton Piech and Adolf Rosenberger.
02:11After the Nazis seized power Rosenberger was coerced into giving up his share in the company.
02:17Not long after he was arrested, sent to a Gestapo prison and then to a concentration camp.
02:23Following his release he then fled to France and eventually to California.
02:28Where he and his wife Anna lived until his death at the age of 67.
02:33Sandra Esslinger is Adolf Rosenberger's great niece.
02:38She and her family were very close to Rosenberger and his wife during their time in Los Angeles.
02:44And to Anne, as I called her, Anna, she was part of my life, my whole life.
02:55So, and she told me the stories.
02:59She told me the stories.
03:02And I felt a great loss because, you know, he was being erased before her very eyes.
03:13And ours.
03:14And so there was a point at which you want to make sure that it doesn't completely disappear.
03:24When Anna died, she left Sandra Esslinger's family valuable documents belonging to Adolf Rosenberger.
03:31They shed an entirely new light on the story that Porsche had told until then.
03:36Sandra Esslinger published these documents together with German journalists.
03:40Then in 2019, she teamed up with lawyer Christoph Ruckel and a number of family members to found a non-profit company bearing Rosenberger's name.
03:49It's aim is to finally reveal the true story of his role in Porsche's history.
03:54I always compared our endeavor as David versus Goliaths.
04:00We were the David and Porsche the Goliaths.
04:03But the Goliaths, Porsche was in a very special situation because in, as I remember, in September 22, they prepared the IPO going to the stock exchange.
04:17In 2022, Dutch historian and journalist David de Jong was also researching the background of the Porsche Piech company.
04:24His book, Nazi Billionaires, the dark history of Germany's wealthiest dynasties, took a critical look at German industry during the Nazi era and prompted Porsche to reassess its conduct towards Rosenberger.
04:36Because they had no choice.
04:37You know, at the time that my book was published, Nazi Billionaires, which also details the Porsche Piech family, they were doing an investor roadshow in the run up to the IPO of Porsche.
04:53And, you know, institutional investors in the US and the UK were starting to ask questions about the lies that Porsche had told, that Porsche Piech had told about him and the Porsche history.
05:09They were asking, investors were asking, well, if you're going to lie about your history, are you also going to lie about your financials?
05:16Certainly, you know, books like David de Jong's also added pressure.
05:25With the pressure mounting on Porsche, the company made an agreement with the Adolf Rosenberger Foundation.
05:30Independent historian Joachim Scholtesek would write an analysis of the Rosenberger case.
05:35He was given access to both documents from the Porsche archive as well as material in the possession of Sandra Esslinger.
05:42Scholtesek spent two years delving into the life of Adolf Rosenberger.
05:46Born into a Jewish family in Pforzheim, in 1931 he raised the money Ferdinand Porsche needed to open his engineering office.
05:55Without that money, the company in this form wouldn't exist.
06:00And I believe it's also important to note that Adolf Rosenberger wasn't just the one who provided the financing.
06:06He also kept the place running.
06:10While raising the funds, he also went along to the various companies like Wanderer and Zündapp because he was someone who knew how to negotiate.
06:19Adolf Rosenberger was well connected in the automotive scene because he was also one of Germany's top racing car drivers.
06:30In the 1920s he clinched a series of victories for Mercedes factory team together with his friend and teammate Rudolf Caracciola.
06:40Rosenberger's trophies are housed in the archives of Pforzheim's city museum where they're now cared for by his great nephew Hartmut Wagner.
06:48Through his grandmother, the sister of Adolf Rosenberger's wife Anna, many important documents from the Porsche co-founder's life have found their way into his hands.
06:58Hartmut Wagner has spent decades analysing his great uncle's life by reading old letters and watching videos like Rosenberger's last interview with German public broadcaster ZDF in 1966.
07:11To get development going, we opted to set up the engineering office in Stuttgart at Kronenstraße 24.
07:21After our model, there was this first so-called Volkswagen being developed at the Zündappwerke in Nuremberg.
07:29This car already had most of the characteristics of the later fully formed Volkswagen.
07:42The development of VW is unimaginable without him.
07:48He was a consummate race car driver and car mechanic.
07:52But what bothered my great uncle so much is that, factually speaking, he influenced how the cars were constructed, everything, what the real innovations were.
08:05Those ideas actually came from him, but no one ever gave him his due.
08:11Along with ideas for the later VW Beetle, Rosenberger laid the groundwork for another major Porsche project.
08:19He ensured that in AutoUnion's silver arrow, the engine would be placed behind the driver.
08:25He drew his inspiration from Mercedes' rear-engined teardrop car from the 1920s.
08:30He was passionate from everything that I've been told about the rear-engined, mid-engined car.
08:39He drove the Tropfenwagen and was very successful in the Tropfenwagen.
08:44And I think he was passionate about the mid-engined.
08:47And those were definitely stories that we had at the table and, you know, dinner table.
08:55In July 1935, Rosenberger was compelled to sign over his 10% share in Porsche to Ferdinand's son, Ferry, for a fraction of its actual value.
09:06The company was making big profits thanks also to Adolf Hitler having commissioned Porsche to build a mass-produced people's car.
09:13The KDF, or strength through joy, car would later become the Volkswagen Beetle.
09:20In 1935, it was already likely that the KDF-Wagen, the Volkswagen, would be a success.
09:27And at that moment, Adolf Rosenberger was forced out of the company.
09:33And that's something where Holocaust researchers and Nazi-era experts will say it's not so much Aryanisation as de-Juification.
09:47Meaning, he didn't do it voluntarily.
09:52It is, per definition, an Aryanisation.
09:56A result of Ferdinand Porsche trying to appease Nazi leader Adolf Hitler?
10:03They didn't have to do it.
10:05In 1935, the pressure from above wasn't that great yet.
10:09They had enough room for manoeuvre not to take this step in July 1935.
10:14Yet Ferdinand Porsche took that step.
10:17Joachim Scholtyssek's study now presents uncomfortable truths for Porsche to explain.
10:24A case of the means being justified by the ends, i.e. corporate growth.
10:29What was Porsche's stance towards the Nazi regime?
10:34To be successful, Porsche probably had no other choice at that time than to comply with the regime.
10:46Unlike many other companies, Porsche was always publicly associated with the Nazis.
10:53And when you have that image and embrace that opportunism,
10:59then these things are more or less a logical, albeit unfortunate, consequence.
11:07And Porsche's fortune certainly rose under the Nazis.
11:11The construction of the Auto Union racing car was hugely subsidised.
11:15And during the Second World War, the company used its new car factory to make jeeps and tanks.
11:20As for Rosenberger, in 1935 he was sent to the Kislau concentration camp,
11:25where he endured days of beatings before a colleague secured his release.
11:29Rosenberger fled to Paris, but because his contacts were so vital, he still worked for Porsche from abroad.
11:35Then I received a letter saying that the company was no longer able to uphold my contract,
11:44on instructions from above.
11:47And that they also were no longer able to correspond with me.
11:52That was basically the termination of our relationship.
11:55Logically, and I think rightly, he himself considered the way they forced him out to be fraudulent.
12:05Although he'd never have said it.
12:08But you can see from the video how he's constantly moving his head from side to side.
12:14And that was an expression of emotion.
12:19Adolf Rosenberger later emigrated to the US.
12:22In 1943, he became an American citizen and changed his name to Alan Robert.
12:27He married fellow emigre Anna Junkert, who had been Ferdinand Porsche's secretary in the 1930s.
12:34After the war, the couple made regular visits to West Germany,
12:38usually staying with his great-nephew's family in Fotsheim.
12:42Uncle Al came to see if he could gain a foothold in Germany again.
12:54He hoped to be able to find some line of work with Porsche again.
12:59But they declined contact.
13:04Starting in 1948, the first car to bear the Porsche name was based on the KDF Wagen, the Porsche 356.
13:13And Porsche signed cooperation agreements with the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg,
13:17where the Beetle was now rolling off the assembly lines.
13:20But for Porsche, Rosenberger was history.
13:23I'm trying to put myself in Ferdinand Porsche's shoes.
13:28For him, his Beetle concept is great.
13:32And he doesn't need Adolf Rosenberger.
13:35His erasure.
13:40I think he saw it happen during his lifetime.
13:46That he was removed.
13:51The books he annotated to show where he wasn't and where he was.
13:58And he, slowly but surely, was not there anymore.
14:02And he watched it.
14:04In 1949, Rosenberger sued Porsche to reclaim his stake.
14:09At the time, Porsche was worth an estimated 1.2 million Deutschmarks.
14:13Rosenberger was in the US, caring for his sick wife.
14:16So his German lawyer accepted a settlement without consulting him.
14:2050,000 Deutschmarks and a VW Beetle.
14:24We're talking about the kind of disrespect that's impossibly hurtful.
14:30When you've had so much success and supported people, in good faith.
14:35I think that after the war, he was simply a broken man.
14:42Because he evidently had no prospects or reason to stay in America.
14:47In the United States, you're still a little bit of an outsider.
14:53But then, moving back to your home after Nazi Germany, you're also an outsider.
14:59So he was, in a certain way, heimatlos, even after the war.
15:07After Ferdinand Porsche's death in 1951, Adolf Rosenberger tried again to rejoin the business with Porsche's son, Ferry.
15:17He hoped to at least manage US sales at the Porsche 356.
15:22The ironic thing, in the end, it wasn't the firm's persecuted Jewish co-founder and German emigré, Adolf Rosenberger, who brought the price name of Porsche to America.
15:34But it was Prinzing, a former SS-Hauptsturmführer.
15:40Ferry Porsche teamed up with him to market the first Porsche sports car.
15:45Albert Prinzing, Porsche co-managing director, chose American car importer Max Hoffman to be the company's US representative instead.
15:54Prinzing, an old-school friend of Ferry's, wasn't the only one on the Porsche board who'd made a career for themselves in the Nazi-era Third Reich.
16:02There was a continuity of money, power and ideology from the Third Reich to West Germany.
16:11And of course, you know, Ferry Porsche is probably the best example of that, right?
16:16Because he was a voluntary SS officer who surrounded himself with former high-ranking SS officers in the Porsche boardroom.
16:25And it is important to note that Ferry Porsche, in his autobiography, spewed virulent anti-semitic vitriol about Adolf Rosenberger.
16:38Now, alongside the Porsche family's historical recollections, there's finally a book from a different perspective,
16:45one that reflects Adolf Rosenberger's point of view.
16:48So does Porsche's history now deserve a rewrite?
16:57In some respects, yes.
17:02Because there's basically nothing about Adolf Rosenberger being the co-founder of this engineering company.
17:09For me, Porsche history doesn't need rewriting, but an important aspect, the history of Adolf Rosenberger, is now being comprehensively covered for the first time.
17:22The book would at least definitely get the message out to the public, in our museum shop too.
17:28But there won't be any special exhibition about Adolf Rosenberger.
17:32But why not? Surely the new book will prompt further efforts towards a proper and contemporary analysis of the company's own history.
17:42The Adolf Rosenberger Foundation plans to promote the upcoming English translation at events in the US,
17:48and is working with non-profit associations in Germany and elsewhere to make Rosenberger's story better known worldwide.
17:55As the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant, is show these stories, is have these stories to be very widespread, is learned from history.
18:04History isn't relevant at any moment in time unless it is relevant in the present.
18:12And the current situation we're in in this world, I think it's essential we understand what fascism is and what it does to people.
18:22And Adolf Rosenberger is a great moment right now for that.
18:27Without Jewish co-founder Adolf Rosenberger, Porsche's cars might never have got off the drawing board.
18:33He was pivotal to the production of some of the German auto industry's most iconic models.
18:39Yet to this day his contribution hasn't been given its rightful place in the history books.
18:44The First Club
18:56I see후들 of Pomer sci-fi
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