German entrepreneur Adolf Rosenberger helped Porsche get started in the early 1930s, but that changed with Hitler's rise to power. This article is an exclusive excerpt from the new book Nazi Billionaires.
文/David de Jong
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On the day Adolf Hitler seized supreme power in Germany, another, a completely different Adolf resigned. On January 30, 1933, at the age of 32, Adolf Rosenberg summoned 19 employees to the porsche design company office on Kronastraße in the center of Stuttgart and told them that they would resign as commercial director. Two years ago, Rosenberg co-founded the company with two partners: Ferdinand Porsche, a resourceful and talented car designer, and an aggressive Viennese lawyer, Anton Pi ch, his son-in-law. Rosenberg was the company's financial sponsor and fundraiser, but he was tired of spending his own money and raising money for Porsche from family and friends, which was constantly burning money and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Adolf Rosenberg was very different from the new Chancellor of Germany at the time, although they shared the same name. The handsome, tech-savvy German Jew was a Mercedes-Benz racer, and some of his cars were designed by Ferdinand Porsche. In 1926, after a serious accident at the Berlin Grand Prix that killed three people, Rosenberg's racing career came to an abrupt end. After that, he began investing in real estate in his hometown of Pforzheim and funded their racing car design work through a partnership with Ferdinand Porsche to turn them into drivable prototypes.
When Ferdinand Porsche started the company of the same name in Stuttgart during the worst of the Great Depression, it was the first time the 55-year-old, bearded, self-taught man had started his own business. People in the auto industry see him as an "incompetent perfectionist" because of his lack of financial discipline and his capricious temper. So Ferdinand Porsche opened its own company, hired experienced engineers, and worked with co-founders who were able to lend when he lacked the funds. But he couldn't overcome the bad impulses, and he would still lose his temper. At one point, he grabbed the wide-brimmed hat he had been wearing, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it like a wayward child. The more important problem was that his designs were still too expensive, which made them never approved for production during the Depression. Gradually, Ferdinand Porsche found itself facing bankruptcy.
Ferdinand Porsche
When Hitler came to power, Ferdinand Porsche had just received a job in Charge of automobile production in Moscow for joseph Stalin's Soviet regime, but after careful consideration, he rejected the life-saving straw. He thinks he's too old, and he doesn't speak Russian. For him, politics didn't matter, he only cared about car design. When Hitler offered Ferdinand Porsche another lifeline in Germany, the latter clung to it.
In late June 1934, Ferdinand Porsche signed a contract with the skeptical and reluctant Reich Association of the German Automotive Industry to develop the Volkswagen within 10 months. It was a "people-friendly car" that cost just 1,000 marks (about $8,200 today). Despite this daunting task, Porsche was able to complete a suitable Volkswagen prototype at a cost of 1.75 million Dem. (about $14 million), two years, three versions of the design, and plenty of political means to cater to Hitler.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand Porsche and his son-in-law, Anton Piëch, strengthened the family's control over the Stuttgart Automotive Design Office. On September 5, 1935, just ten days before the Nuremberg Race Laws were enacted, Adolf Rosenberg was arrested by the Gestapo in his hometown near Stuttgart on charges of "racial humiliation" and placed in a remand prison in Karlsruhe for dating a non-Jewish girl. Because Rosenberg was a brilliant Jewish entrepreneur, he had been warned that he would be the target of the Gestapo, but he ignored the ominous omen.
Just five weeks before his arrest, on July 30, 1935, Rosenberg transferred his 10 percent stake in the automotive design company to Ferdinand Porsche's 25-year-old son, Ferry. Previously, under the guidance of his father and senior engineer, the young man had been working for the company for almost 5 years. Ultimately, the struggling company made a profit through Ferdinand Porsche's contract with Volkswagen, as well as the design of the car he and Rosenberg developed together, which was close to 170,000 marks (equivalent to $1.5 million today). As a result, Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch began buying two shareholders who were not members of the Porsche family: Rosenberg and Hans von Veyder-Malberg.
Break
During the Third Reich, when the Jewish "element" in asset ownership was removed, it was considered "Aryanized," which could involve buying Jewish-owned companies, houses, land, jewelry, gold, art, or shares at a price lower than the actual value, as in Rosenberg's case, and could be extended to outright property theft. Because of Nazi Germany's preference for formal legal procedures, Aryanization often embodied the illusion of formal operation.
In fact, the notional amount the two used to buy Rosenberg's shares was exactly the same amount the latter paid when they bought the Porsche shares in 1930: only 3,000 marks ($25,500). Even though Rosenberg has contributed so much to the company, the sale price of its shares is still significantly below its value. "It's a squeeze on me. As long as I'm a shareholder, I won't get something like a pennant (certification) that a company without Jews could get... In any case, I did not accuse Mr. Porsche and Mr. Pierch of personal anti-Semitism," Rosenberg later said. "But... They took advantage of my Jewish identity to get rid of me cheaply. Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Pierch denied this allegation. Regardless of the motivation, though, the two's acquisition of Rosenberg's Porsche shares is clearly an "Aryanization."
On September 23, 1935, after spending nearly three weeks in a Gestapo prison, Rosenberg was transferred to the Kislau concentration camp south of LeHeideberg. After being beaten there for four days, he was suddenly released. Rosenberg's successor at Porsche, Baron von Veyder-Malberg, negotiated with the Gestapo in Karlsruhe and successfully lobbied the latter to release Rosenberg. Still, Rosenberg had to pay the Gestapo 53.40 Deutsche Mark ($455) as payment for his "protective imprisonment." In contrast, Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Pierch did nothing to ensure the freedom of the company's co-founders, although later the opposite was said. Rosenberg had asked Ferdinand Porsche through a lawyer to save his life, but the latter was busy gossiping at the Spanish Grand Prix outside Bilbao.
A month later, Rosenberg left Germany and moved to Paris in November 1935. At the beginning of 1933, he stepped down as commercial director of Porsche and instead worked for the design company as a contractor. Even after being imprisoned, Rosenberg, 35, remains the company's foreign representative, responsible for granting Porsche's patents in France, Britain and the United States. Rosenberg could keep 30 percent of the terms of sale, and the contract would be valid until 1940, at least that's what he thought.
In early June 1938, Rosenberg received a letter from his apartment near Avenue Marceau and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which contained bad news. Baron Hans von Vader-Marberg informed him that "under the direction of a higher authority", Porsche AG was no longer able to maintain the patent licensing contract with it. The man who had rescued Rosenberg from the camp was now severed from all professional and personal ties because of "some deterioration in the internal situation." The letter was sent on June 2, a week after Hitler laid the foundation stone for the Volkswagen plant. Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piech severed their last ties with the company's Jewish co-founders.
On July 23, 1938, Rosenberg wrote a letter to Anton Piech, who was a tough legal adviser to Porsche. In the letter, he proposed two ways to break up amicably: by paying $12,000 (about $240,000) so that it could start over in the United States, and by transferring Porsche's U.S. patent license to Rosenberg. On August 24, 1938, Anton Piech coldly rejected these proposals as an insult to Aryanization. "My company will not recognize your claim under any circumstances and refuse to accept it on the grounds of lack of legal basis." In the same month, the Gestapo began the process of revoking Rosenberg's German citizenship. It was time for him to leave Europe.
Rosenberg never returned to Porsche. In 1940, he immigrated to the United States and lived in Los Angeles under the name Alan Robert. In 1948, the Jewish immigrant wanted to restore his status as a shareholder in the company and take back the shares they had acquired from Porsche and Anton Piech from him when he was Aryanized in 1935.
At the end of September 1950, when the case went to court, a lawyer from Porsche and Anton Pierch proposed a settlement to Rosenberg's lawyers: 50,000 Deutsche Marks (about $144,000), plus a car. Rosenberg can choose between two cars: a luxury version of the Volkswagen Beetle and a Porsche 356, the first sports car of the Porsche family, designed by Ferdinand Porsche's son Ferry. Rosenberg was still caring for his sick wife in Los Angeles at the time, so his lawyer accepted the settlement without consulting him and wrote to inform Rosenberg when the matter was over. In the end, Rosenberg chose a Volkswagen Beetle.
The 1957 Porsche 356A was presented at the 2017 Classic Auto Show at the Great Temple Fair in Chengdu at wuhou temple
misrepresent
In December 1967, The persecuted Porsche co-founder Rosenberg died in Los Angeles at the age of 67. After his settlement with Porsche and the deaths of Porsche and Anton Piëch in the early 1950s, Rosenberg returned to Stuttgart and met with the current Porsche CEO Ferry. The former patented the latter and wanted to do Porsche agency business in California. After all this happened, Rosenberg still wanted to be part of the company he helped build. However, Ferry responded in an ambiguous manner, and to no avail.
Nearly a decade after Rosenberg's death, Ferry published his first autobiography, We at Porsche. In the book, the sports car designer distorts not only the truth about Rosenberg's Aryanization and escape from Nazi Germany, but also the story of other German Jews who were forced to sell their companies and then flee Hitler's regime. Ferry even accused Rosenberg of extortion after the war. In addition, the former SS officer blatantly used anti-Semitic stereotypes and prejudices in his distorted narrative: "After the war, it seems that those persecuted by the Nazis believed that they were entitled to additional profits, even if they had been compensated. Rosenberg is by no means an isolated example. ”
Ferrry offers another case for this. After leaving Nazi Germany and heading to Mussolini's Italy, a Jewish family voluntarily sold their factory, only to return after the war to demand a "second payment," at least according to his interpretation of the incident. Ferry said, "It's hard to blame Rosenberg for thinking in a similar way. There is no doubt that he considered himself a Jew, driven out of Germany by the mischievous Nazis, and so entitled to additional benefits. ”
Ferry also lied that his family had saved Rosenberg from Nazi imprisonment. However, it was not Ferry, his father, nor his brother-in-law Anton Pièch who rescued Rosenberg from the concentration camp, but Baron von Vader Marburg. In addition to negotiating with the Gestapo to release Rosenberg, he later helped Rosenberg's parents flee Germany. Ferry, however, on behalf of the Porsche family, stole credit for these morally sound actions from the late Baron. "We had a great relationship, we were able to help him and then he was released. Unfortunately, when Mr Rosenberg saw an opportunity he thought he could make more money, it was all forgotten. In fact, not only Jews, but most immigrants who left Germany felt the same way. ”
In 1998, at the age of 88, Ferry died in his sleep in Zell am See, Austria. Prior to that, the world-renowned sports car icon published his second autobiography. In this version, Ferry changed his tone. Anti-Semitic rhetoric disappeared and the story of Adolf Rosenberg was cut to just two paragraphs, but he continued to deny that his father and brother-in-law had Aryanized Rosenberg's Porsche shares and played the sympathy card. "Even though these events were terrible for Rosenberg, we were fair and right about his actions under the circumstances at the time. It was no easy task for us to deal with the situation at the time. ”
Transposition
In March 2019, the Ferry Porsche Foundation announced that it would fund Germany's first-ever professorship of corporate history at the University of Stuttgart. The foundation was established by Porsche a year earlier, 70 years after Ferry designed the first Porsche sports car, in the hope of "strengthening the company's commitment to social responsibility".
The charity's then-president said in a statement: "Dealing with your own history is a full-time commitment, and that's exactly what the Ferry Porsche Foundation wants to encourage critical reflection, because if you want to know where you're going, you have to know where you're coming from." The chair also added: "Funded professorships ... It is an invitation from the family business, which allows the latter to have a deeper and more frank understanding of their own history, as well as the consequences and possible consequences of this. This is a particularly bold statement because Ferry lied about his SS application, and he blatantly used anti-Semitic stereotypes and prejudices against Rosenberg in his first autobiography, but the Porsche family remained silent in the face of it all.
The Porsche Foundation is funding a professorship at the University of Stuttgart because members of the university's history department published a study funded by Porsche in 2017 on the company's origins during the Nazi era. However, the German public was quick to ask the question: Was the study really based on an independent, objective analysis of historical records?
In June 2019, a documentary about Adolf Rosenberg was broadcast on German public television. The documentary details how important Rosenberg played in the founding of Porsche, how the company's co-founders Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëcie made their stake Arizone in 1935, how Rosenberg sought recognition, and how he was eventually removed from Porsche's history.
The documentary also interviews Wolfram Pyta, a professor of modern history at the University of Stuttgart, the lead author of a study commissioned by Porsche AG. For some reason, None of Rosenberg's personal papers were included in the study. Pitta said a relative of Rosenberg's in Los Angeles refused to give him access to documents he had inherited. But in the documentary, Rosenberg's relatives questioned this. She said one of Pita's researchers did contact her, but Pita didn't look at the documents she had.
Equally questionable is another finding in the study, or missing. Rosenberg was bought out in 1935 at the same price as when he bought a 10 percent stake in Porsche in 1930, although the company's profits grew significantly during this period. Simply put, Rosenberg was cheated out of getting the full value of his shares. Although Pita wrote that "Rosenberg was taken advantage of because of his precarious situation" and that "one cannot shake off the impression that Rosenberg was deceived," the professor declined to call the deal Aryanized.
Pitta said in the documentary that Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piyes made the deal to reinforce the company's family image, not because Rosenberg was Jewish. But the price paid to a Jewish shareholder of a German company, far below the actual market value of its shares in Germany under Hitler in 1935, may mean only one thing: the deal is an Aryanization.
82 years later, a historian funded by Porsche deliberately chose not to acknowledge this fact in an academic study. However, Pitta did admit to this writer in a Zoom interview that the deal brought "Aryan profits."
In a written response to this author's question, Sebastian Rudolph, Porsche's head of public relations and president of the Porsche Foundation, described Ferry's 1976 autobiography, "We at Porsche," as proof of "Ferry Porsche's lack of sympathy for the fate of Adolf Rosenberg and other Jewish families who had to leave Germany..."
"Ferry Porsche believes that Adolf Rosenberg was at least treated and compensated correctly by the company as the only way to explain his irritation at the dispute that resurfaced after World War II."
David de Jong is a Forbes contributor and author of Nazi Billionaires.