Your Porsche is Part-Jewish

His name is not likely to be known to owners of Porsche’s highly coveted 911 series of German sports cars or the Panamera sports sedan, which can carry you and four passengers around a closed track at speeds approaching 190 miles per hour. But were it not for Adolf Rosenberger, a successful Jewish race car driver, those brilliant examples of German automotive engineering might never have been built. His investment started the firm in 1930.

Now that story is told in all its painful details in a new book called, “Driven Out, Adolf Rosenberger,” by the distinguished German historian of the Nazi era, Joachim Scholtyseck. It’s an impressive volume of more than 500 pages, with an additional 104 pages of footnotes and a 27-page bibliography.

The work, which was published simultaneously in German and English editions, was aided by surviving members of Rosenberger’s family. Art historian Sandra Esslinger, who is a distant cousin of the Jewish automotive pioneer, expressed her gratitude for the recognition that the company he helped found finally recognized him 96 years later.

“This study bridges the gap between the bitter family memory and the company’s history,” Esslinger said. “We are grateful for how respectfully our family legacy has been handled. The results give Adolf Rosenberger his place in history back.”

But when the book was finally unveiled at a symposium sponsored by Porsche and Emory University, she had a sterner message.

“Rosenberger’s experience is emblematic of a generation whose contributions to German society and industry were systematically erased from the record,” Esslinger said, “not only through violence and dispossession, but through … antisemitic stereotypes and institutional denial. For decades, he was dismissed as the money man or the dirty businessman.”

Rosenberger, who was born into a prosperous Jewish family at the turn of the 20th century, saw promise in an automotive engineer, Ferdinand Porsche, when few thought the often-cantankerous visionary had much of a future in the German automobile world. In addition to his financial investment, Rosenberger, who had achieved fame in the 1920s as a driver for the Mercedes-Benz racing team, signed on as the managing director of the Porsche Design Studio. He brought technological know-how, born of his long hours on the racetrack, and he was an early advocate of rear-engine automobiles.

What Rosenberger did not foresee was the rapid ascent of the Nazi party in Germany during the early 1930s and Ferdinand Porsche’s growing relationship with the new deeply antisemitic regime. In 1935, Rosenberger would be forced to sell out his stake in the firm at fire sale prices and see his name erased from the history of the iconic automotive brand.

When he was forced to leave Germany that same year, he narrowly escaped a lengthy stay in an early concentration camp. Like many Jewish businessmen he was given little for his share of the business. Despite Porsche’s growth in the pre-war years, he was forced to cash out for a single payment of 15,000 German Reichsmarks, worth about $6,000.

Ferdinand Porsche would go on to become a Hitler favorite, achieving fame and fortune for his design of what would become the VW Beetle. The firm was an integral part of the Nazi war machine and designed and built vehicles for the Wehrmacht military forces during World War II.

The publication of this book seems to be an effort by the corporation to make amends. The press release that accompanied the book put it this way: “For Porsche, the responsibility that arises from the past shapes how it acts in the present. We are strongly opposed to exclusion, discrimination and antisemitism.”

After the war, the Porsche family went back into the automobile business, picking up right where they left off. When Rosenberger, who had moved to the United States, protested the pittance he had received for his shares, the family paid him off, again. He received a settlement of 50,000 German Deutsche marks worth about $12,500 at the time.

He was also given the choice of a new VW Beetle or a Porsche 356 sports car. He took the Beetle.

In the following years, as his investments dwindled, he and his wife began living off Social Security payments of $116 and $65, respectively. He died in December of 1967.

With the publication of this new book, Porsche has finally attempted to set the record straight and give Rosenberger proper recognition. Today, the market value of the Porsche firm that began with Rosenberger’s $6,000 is said to be worth $45 billion.