While working for the Viennese coach-building firm Lohner, which
produced coaches for the court of Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria,
Porsche developed an engine that many engineers are once again working
on today: the electric motor. A vehicle equipped with the motor was an
attraction at the Paris World's Fair in 1900.
Even at a young age, Porsche enjoyed such a strong reputation that
two dictators vied for his favor and service: Adolf Hitler and Josef
Stalin. But that never seemed to trouble Porsche: He was an inventor and
a developer who was interested solely in his designs. In the end, who
he worked for was as unimportant to him as the question of whether the
projects were of a civilian or military nature.
Solving the problem at
hand was what mattered to him, not who was paying him.
In World War I, he designed aircraft engines for the army of the
Austrian emperor and tractors for heavy artillery. Later on, Porsche
developed
sports cars for Daimler in Stuttgart, before founding an
engineering firm with his son Ferry in Stuttgart, which developed cars
for two German car and motorcycle makers, Zündapp and NSU.
In 1932, a delegation from Moscow visited Porsche in his Stuttgart
office. Shortly thereafter, Stalin invited him to the Soviet Union for
an informational visit. "At first we thought the invitation was so
improbable that we had trouble taking it seriously," Ferry Porsche later
wrote in his autobiography. "But soon it was made very clear to us that
everything was perfectly serious."
Stalin wanted to advance industrial development in the Soviet Union
with the help of experts from capitalist countries. He had Porsche taken
on tours of aircraft and automobile factories and, in the end,
made him
an offer to become general director of the development of the Soviet
auto industry. Stalin promised Porsche many privileges and powers. But the German
engineer turned down Stalin's offer "after much consideration," Ferry
Porsche wrote.
'The Brilliant Design Engineer'
It was not the communist dictatorship that had deterred the senior
Porsche as much as
the language barrier.
How could he manage such a
gargantuan task, he reasoned, if he couldn't even communicate in his
native tongue?
Stalin's offer "could have had a very decisive influence on my
subsequent life," Ferry Porsche wrote. His life would not have been the
only one affected.
If Porsche had accepted, the VW Beetle might have become the Soviet
Union's "people's car." And instead of becoming a symbol of West
Germany's post-war "economic miracle," perhaps it would have become an
icon of Russian backwardness -- as the Lada did, years later.
When Hitler asked the German automobile industry to develop a
"suitable small car" in 1934, Porsche submitted the best design -- and
was awarded the contract. At the 1935 German auto show, Hitler was full
of praise for Porsche. He said that he was pleased that, thanks to "the
abilities of the brilliant design engineer Porsche," it had been
possible to "complete the preliminary designs for the German
Volkswagen (people's car)."
A new factory had to be built to produce the car, as well as a new
town surrounding the factory to house the workers. "Hitler proposed
building the factory in central Germany," Ferry Porsche recalled.
The search for the site proceeded from the air. It was to be located
near a railway line, canals and autobahn. The site that was eventually
chosen was near a medieval castle, the
Wolfsburg, after which the city
was later named.
Hitler wanted to call the factory the "Porsche Plant," but
Ferdinand
Porsche was opposed to the idea. Instead, it became the Volkswagen
Plant.
An Automobile for the Masses
Much of the money to build the plant came from
trade union assets. To
this day, the
IG Metall metalworkers' union has
a right to an expanded
role in the management of the VW Group on the basis of this early use of
union money. As a result, VW management cannot move production to a
different plant without the consent of labor representatives on its
supervisory board.
DER SPIEGEL
Keeping it in the family:
The Porsche dynasty.
Berthold Huber, the current
head of IG Metall, accused Porsche CEO
Wendelin Wiedeking of being "ignorant of history" when Wiedeking planned
to acquire Volkswagen and transform the group into what he called a
"normal" company.
After 1933, the Nazis occupied and later confiscated union offices
and printing presses, turning them over to the German Labor Front (DAF),
the Nazis' trade union organization. The DAF was eventually required to
provide the original capital of 50 million Reichsmark to establish the
company known as the Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen
Volkswagens mbH
(Company to Develop the German People's Car).
But a true automobile for the masses was not produced in Wolfsburg
during the war. Only 630 Beetles were made there during World War II --
and distributed to the privileged.
Instead, the factories were used in weapons production, to
manufacture tank chains, mines and an all-terrain vehicle that came to
be known as the Kübelwagen ("bucket-seat car"). Thousands of forced
laborers were later used, including Jews from concentration camps and
prisoners of war, mostly from the Soviet Union and Poland.
'Cheap Eastern Workers'
Porsche's son-in-law,
Anton Piëch, began managing the plant in 1941.
In his study "The Volkswagen Plant and Its Workers in the Third Reich,"
the German historian Hans Mommsen writes: "In the summer of 1943, Anton
Piëch bluntly declared that he had to use cheap Eastern workers in order
to fulfill the Führer's wish that the Volkswagen be produced for 990
Reichsmark."
In the early 1990s, this part of the history of the VW Group caught
up with Ferdinand Piëch, the son of the former plant director Anton
Piëch.
Ferdinand Piëch, the head of Audi, was trying to rise to the top
of the Volkswagen Group.
Piëch, who had pushed aside a number of executives along his career
path, had his share of enemies. Some of them spread the rumor that Piëch
was incapable of being the head of VW, hinting at the headlines it
would produce in the important US market if the son of the former
Wolfsburg plant director, who had used forced laborers, became the head
of the modern-day VW Group.
Ferdinand Porsche himself served Hitler during the war as the
head of
his tank commission. He supported Hitler's power and profited from the
regime. Nevertheless, Mommsen believes that "the question as to the
extent to which Porsche understood the criminal character of the regime
he served must remain open."
For Mommsen, Ferdinand Porsche is "the prototype of the expert
interested solely in technological matters." An Allied investigative
commission later declined to file charges against Porsche, although he,
his son Ferry and his son-in-law Anton were imprisoned in France for
several months.
When Ferdinand Porsche died on Jan. 30, 1951, he left behind an
estate distributed across two businesses: the design engineering firm in
the Stuttgart suburb of Zuffenhausen, which would later develop into
the Porsche sports car company, and the Porsche dealership in Salzburg,
Austria, which would become Europe's largest car dealership.
