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In the 1920s, Adolf Rosenberger was one of Germany's best known racing car drivers. He was also co-founder and managing director of a design firm that had recently been launched by Ferdinand Porsche, and it was his job to ensure financing for the design firm - a firm that provided important impetus during this time for technical innovation and racing car construction. When the firm fell into difficulties during the global business crisis, he ended up stepping away from his management role in the company, but remained active as partner and "foreign representative". The Jewish Rosenberger was however unable to escape the increasing persecution by the Nazis: in 1935 he lost his shares in the company and landed for a time in a concentration camp. After emigrating in 1938 he would go on over the following decades to develop a precarious new existence in the USA. Compensation and restitution proceedings that he initiated against the company would end up severing any remaining ties with the now internationally renowned sports car manufacturer. This book, drawing on documents that have remained unpublished until now, frames and analyses the exceptional and moving biography of Adolf Rosenberger.
About the author
Joachim Scholtyseck taught as Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms University of Bonn from 2001 to 2024. His works include Robert Bosch und der liberale Widerstand gegen Hitler (1999), Der Aufstieg der Quandts (2nd edition 2001), Freudenberg (2016), Der Bank- und Börsenplatz Essen (2018), (together with Michael Kißener, Hermann Schäfer, Carsten Burhop) Merck (2nd edition 2018), Otto Beisheim (2020), Die National-Bank (2021).
Summary
In the 1920s, Adolf Rosenberger was one of Germany’s best known racing car drivers. He was also co-founder and managing director of a design firm that had recently been launched by Ferdinand Porsche, and it was his job to ensure financing for the design firm – a firm that provided important impetus during this time for technical innovation and racing car construction. When the firm fell into difficulties during the global business crisis, he ended up stepping away from his management role in the company, but remained active as partner and “foreign representative”. The Jewish Rosenberger was however unable to escape the increasing persecution by the Nazis: in 1935 he lost his shares in the company and landed for a time in a concentration camp. After emigrating in 1938 he would go on over the following decades to develop a precarious new existence in the USA. Compensation and restitution proceedings that he initiated against the company would end up severing any remaining ties with the now internationally renowned sports car manufacturer. This book, drawing on documents that have remained unpublished until now, frames and analyses the exceptional and moving biography of Adolf Rosenberger.
