Adolph Rosenberger was at every major intersection and never stopped loving the company that hurt him (photo: Yaftar website)
Everyone knows the really great stories in history, the ones that changed the course of humanity such as the discovery of fire, astronomy, understanding the basic laws of nature, geographical discoveries.
Agricultural, social, scientific revolutions.
Technological discoveries and inventions and of course the great wars, the stories that fold the fate of entire nations, change the course of life of billions of people, set borders and create countries out of nothing.
But among these events are hidden some of the smaller and more fascinating stories.
World War II was one of those historical mega-events, and the story you're about to read right here is exactly one of those plot twists that no writer could have written.
These are the stations in time of Adolf Rosenberger, the third, dismissed, forgotten side of the sports car manufacturer Porsche, and the one that only years after her death received the respect it deserved.
Businessman, racing driver and diligent entrepreneur (photo: manufacturer's website)
1900 - Pforzheim, Germany
The Jewish Rosenberger family had a son who won the all-German name "Adolf".
The name, which since the end of World War II has become assigned out of disgust, was previously considered a respectable name - a combination of "Adal" with the suffix "Wolf" meaning "noble" and "wolf".
The respectable family headed by Simon (Shimon) Rosenberger, a businessman in the field of real estate and owner of a movie theater, saw itself as part of the German nation and Jewish in its religion preferred to assimilate among the general population.
1917 - Western Front, German-French border
While the foot soldiers are wasting their blood in pointless assaults and static trench warfare, fierce battles are taking place in the sky in one of the newest war tools in the campaign - airplanes.
One of them is piloted by Adolf who, despite his young age, proves to be very talented and no less brave.
After the war, Adolf remained fascinated by machines and became a mechanic along with a number of ventures that would soon make him replace the wrench with a fountain pen.
A single driver sat in the Tropfenwagen for races of hundreds of kilometers (photo: manufacturer's website)
1924 - Stuttgart, Germany
Adolf, then already a successful businessman, has been competing in car races for about two years, recording significant successes on the track.
In fact, his extraordinary talent and the combination of mechanical orientation and driving skills lead him to become an official Mercedes driver in many events in Germany.
The previous year he excelled in long-distance solo races that reached 800 km. A type of competition that was considered difficult at the time, so it was customary for the driver to travel with the mechanic to help overcome breakdowns on the road. During these years, he also gained expertise in the Tropfenwagen
car Tipa" in free translation, which were considered to be very advanced aerodynamically for their time and despite the modest power of about 60 hp also very fast, although they require a confident and cool hand on the steering wheel, partly due to the unusual location of the engine - at the back - remember this piece of information , he will still float later.
Ferdinand Porsche (standing with a hat) next to one of the cars he designed in the 1920s (photo: manufacturer website)
1926 - Berlin, Germany
Rosenberger and the Mercedes team are already a proven force on the race tracks and in the hill climb competitions of those years.
The team is preparing for the peak event - the German Grand Prix held on public roads that were closed for the purpose of the competition on what is considered the fastest track in the world.
But that race on July 11, 1926 no one remembers because of the perfect weather or the close race won by Rudolf Carciola in the Mercedes SS "Monza" - but mainly because of the accident.
No one knows exactly what happened there, but the theory is that a leak of ether (the same liquid that was used as an anesthetic and is extremely flammable) that was used to power the six-cylinder engine of his Mercedes, caused Rosenberger to lose consciousness.
His car was blown into the marshals and lap timers station - three were killed, and Adolf, who was seriously injured, barely survived.
The race would not return to this track until 33 years later in 1959.
Rosenberger participated in one final race in 1927, the first major motoring event held at the historic Nürburgring.
Rosenberger who jumped from first place finishes second in a dream race for Mercedes where her cars finish in places 1,2,3.
The racing bug didn't leave Rosenberger entirely, but he realized that if his plans included a life expectancy that would bring him to at least the other side of his 30th birthday, he might as well make it a less dangerous hobby.
So he stopped competing, but the drive and talent still flickered in him - remember this piece of information as well.
The jump at the Nürburgring in 1927.
Rosenberger in car number 1 on the right (photo: manufacturer's website)
1931 - Stuttgart, Germany
After years of working at Daimler-Benz and after their merger into Mercedes-Benz in 1924, the power games within the manufacturer and the political struggles in which he had no interest, the genius Ferdinand Porsche was tired of all the fights.
After retiring, returning to his homeland in Austria and again to Germany, he realized that he could only realize his engineering ideas in his own company.
It is natural when Porsha was sometimes called an "unemployable perfectionist", due to his tendency to completely ignore budgetary discipline and his irritable nature that also included tantrums bordering on violence.
Rosenberger and Ferdinand already had an early acquaintance, Porsche co-designed some of the race cars Adolf used on the track.
He appreciated, believed and encouraged Ferdinand to implement some of the less conventional ideas he came up with, including the concept of placing the engine at the back of the car.
Perhaps inspired by those drop cars in which Rosenberger had short achievements against significantly more powerful ones.
Ferdinand, the engineering master teamed up with Rosenberger, who combined the mechanical evidence with the financial means, and with a third partner, Anton Feich, Porsche's son-in-law, who was also a shrewd lawyer who, at the age of 28, already had a doctorate in law and even successfully represented Ferdinand in lawsuits against his former employers at Daimler-Benz.
On April 25, 1931, they actually founded the Porsche company - at that time not yet a sports car manufacturer but an engineering company.
The idea was simple at its core - the strict and strict Anton would be responsible for the numbers, Ferdinand for the engineering, and Adolf would be a source of integration between the business management and an understanding of the engineering side of the story.
An unemployable perfectionist - Ferdinand Porsche (photo: manufacturer's website)
1933 - Berlin, Germany
Germany of the early 1930s was a country in a difficult economic situation.
Poverty, hunger, rampant inflation, all of these were fertile ground for the nationalist movement that offered the Germans stature, pride and above all - someone else to blame.
On these waves rode the Nazi party and its leader to power.
But remember the small stories within the big events?
Even for the Porsche company, these years were not exactly easy.
Ferdinand Porsche's extraordinary developments had no buyers, time after time Rosenberger raised more and more capital, which soon disappeared and again brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy.
Uncompromising Porsche turned down an offer from one Joseph Stalin to head the Soviet Union's car manufacturing setup and the cash-strapped company was looking for a stable source of income.
The opportunity was created thanks to Rosenberger, who was friends with Klaus-Detlev von Uertzen, the chairman of the board of directors of the company that was founded - Auto-Union. Auto-Union, which was made up of four companies that were reflected in its four-ring symbol, would later become Audi (which was one of the partners) Von Uertzen recognized an opportunity to harness Porsche's engineering capabilities for the funding that the German government agreed to provide to manufacturers that would build the race cars that would proudly represent Nazi Germany on the track.
Hitler saw car racing as a propaganda channel for Nazi supremacy (photo: manufacturer's website)
The hope that the words of the Nazi Party and its leader are separate from their actions, and the desire to believe that salvation is coming and an abundance fund is going to uplift their society, led Rosenberger to paint a different reality than it really was.
Later that year, Auto Union begins testing prototype versions of the TYPE A, their first racing car.
Day after day, the German racing driver Hans Stock climbs into the driver's cabin of the 16-cylinder iron beast and marvels at laps of the Nürburgring.
On some of these days, Rosenberger also participates.
Remember the germ and the flickering talent?
When Rosenberger returned from his TYPE A lap the scoreboard showed that he easily equaled Stock's times.
But the shocked faces of the people on the treatment floor changed very quickly to embarrassment and then to coolness and a cold shoulder.
With all due respect to talent and ability, the Nazi Party officials who were responsible for budgeting the German racing program revoked Rosenberger's racing license.
For them, no Jew, no matter how talented, will take part in this project.
Hans Stock runs the TYPA A (photo: manufacturer's website)
January 30, 1933 - Germany
This date that students memorize for their history matriculation exams was the day Adolf Hitler officially assumed the position of chancellor in Germany.
What they probably don't know happened that day is the sad meeting of 19 company employees that Adolf Rosenberger convened and announced his departure from the position.
In June 1934, about a year and a half after his departure, when he still owns 10% of the ownership in the company, Porsche signs the contract that will completely change its course - Hitler's venture to build the Volkswagen "people's car".
In a few months the company turns from one that was on the verge of bankruptcy to one that is worth a lot of money, but there is a problem - the 10% owned by the Jewish partner is a red sheet in the eyes of the Nazi Party.
This is where the economic plan of the Nazi government to deprive Jewish partners of ownership of German companies in a process called "arization" - turning these companies into pure "Aryans" - enters the picture.
Broadly speaking, the new laws allowed partners in a partially Jewish-owned lodging business to buy that part at a nominal price, which the other partners determined, in other words, dispossessing the rightful owners.
And so in July 1935, the same 10% is transferred from Rosenberger to Perry Porsche, Ferdinand's 25-year-old son for the sum of 3,000 Reichsmarks, the amount he invested in 1930 when the company was founded, even though in practice the real value of that 10% was already much higher.
One of the prototypes of the Beetle, Adolf pushed for the arrangement of an engine in the back (photo: manufacturer's website)
September 1935 - Stuttgart
But Rosenberger's tragedy did not amount to this amount of money and he was robbed of the company he helped to establish and maintain.
Despite all the warning signs, Rosenberger did not consider it necessary to lower his profile and continued to maintain his normal life routine.
Not much time passes and he is arrested by the Gestapo, the charge: violation of racial laws by having a relationship with an Aryan girl.
He was imprisoned for three weeks before being transferred to a concentration camp near the town of Heidelberg, and after 4 days of torture he was suddenly released.
Baron von Weider Malberg, the one who held his previous position at Porsche and had moves in the party (without any lifting of a finger by his former partners) is the one who intervened in his favor.
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November 1935 - Paris
The oaths in prison, the dispossession, the treatment from his former partners, all of these opened Rosenberger's eyes.
He moves to Paris, changes his name to Alfred and, in a way that may be hard to understand after the hardships he went through, he still believes in Porsche and continues to work under an external contract as the company's representative in France, England and the United States in regards to registering patents and business relationships.
This arrangement stopped suddenly when in June 1938 he received a letter in which he was told that due to "orders from above" the company would not be able to keep in touch with him.
The letter was signed by none other than the same Baron Von Weider who arranged for his release from Gestapo custody.
Rosenberger, who then felt protected in Paris, realizes that this may be his last chance to get justice for the injustice done to him.
He writes a letter to Anton Feich in which he offers two options for a compromise.
A one-time payment of 12,000 dollars that will allow him to open a new page or make him the company's patent licensee in the United States where he will represent it.
A month later, in August 1938, the correct reply letter is received from the lawyer: "My company does not recognize your claims under any circumstances and rejects them due to the lack of a legal basis."
And if he needed any more clarification that his chance of litigation tends to zero - his own citizenship, born in Germany, fighter pilot, celebrated racing driver and part of the founders of Porsche - was denied.
Ferdinand Porsche (left), and Perry Porsche (photo: manufacturer's website)
1940-1967 - America
After a short stay in neutral Switzerland, Rosenberger arrives in America.
With his accent and the original first name - Adolf, it is difficult to get along in a country that has not yet entered the war, but has understood which side it belongs to.
So he changes his name to Alan Robert and settles in Los Angeles.
He establishes a gas station with German partners and when it closes he moves to odd jobs and in 1944 receives American citizenship.
At the end of World War II, Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Feich are imprisoned on the charge of collaborating with the Nazi regime.
It is said that during this difficult period they were the ones who contacted Adolf, now Robert, with a request for financial or other assistance in the form of products such as chocolate or coffee.
After the war he tries to return to Germany, only to discover that none of his family is left and all their possessions have been destroyed or taken from them.
Adolf-Robert felt that a second chance had come his way to claim what he deserved, to do justice to the injustice he had suffered and this time in front of a court that was not mobilized in favor of the other side.
In the trial he conducted in 1949 to 1950, he sued Porsche in a German court for the amount of 200,000 German marks at that time.
In between, he married Anna Metzger, a former secretary at Porsche's offices in Stuttgart, who herself immigrated to the United States in 1939 with her former partner.
As part of the compromise, he was given the option of choosing a Volkswagen Beetle or a Porsche 356 (photo: manufacturer's website)
Rosenberger entrusted the administration of the trial to his lawyer while he dined his wife who fell ill shortly after their marriage.
Without his presence and without his approval, his lawyer accepts the settlement decided by the court - a compromise in which Rosenberger receives 50 thousand marks and the option to choose between a luxurious Volkswagen Beetle or a Porsche 356. Strange as it may sound, he chooses a Beetle, perhaps he could not bear the thought of driving a car from the company which he helped to establish and which he is deprived of.
But that was not the end of the verse for him, after the deaths of Anton and Ferdinand, in the early 1950s, Rosenberger returns to Stuttgart, with a determination that is hard to understand, he offers Perry Porsche, then the CEO of the company named after his family, to represent Porsche in California. Perry refuses his offer.
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2012-2022 - Late Jupiter
It may have been the grief, the sense of injustice or the insult upon insult and injustice, but Adolf Rosenberger after the trial and the compromise could no longer find the strength to continue the struggle.
In December 1967, he died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, unrecognized and unrecognized for his part in founding the car company.
And as if to add sin to the crimes of the past, when Perry Porsha published his first biography in 1977, he reshaped the facts regarding Rosenberger's imprisonment and claimed that the Porsha family was the one who worked for his release, and even pointed an accusing finger at him for trying to extort money that did not reach him after the war.
In his second book published in the 1980s, he refined the accusations, but still did not take responsibility on behalf of the company for the actions towards Rosenberger, reducing his share in the establishment of the company and continued to deny his dispossession by "buying" his share in the company for a lower amount than he deserved.
Only in 2012, when the program "The Third Man in Porsche" was broadcast in Germany, was the true story of the man who was the third rib in this manufacturer revealed and was expelled from it in the vicissitudes of history.
On October 31, 2022, Porsche announces that the company in collaboration with the Adolf Rosenberger Foundation (established by his descendants) will finance an 18-month research project about the racing driver and businessman Adolf Rosenberger.
This was actually one of the first official times in which the company officially and openly presented the third side of its founding story.
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