How Porsche’s Jewish Cofounder Was Driven Out Of The Company By The Nazis

How Porsche’s Jewish Cofounder Was Driven Out Of The Company By The Nazis

Share to Linkedin On the day that Adolf Hitler seized the most powerful post in Germany, an entirely different Adolf quit his job. On January 30, 1933, the thirty-two-year old Adolf Rosenberger gathered the staff of nineteen at the office of the Porsche automobile design firm in central Stuttgart's Kronenstrasse and told them he was resigning as their commercial director. Rosenberger had cofounded the company two years earlier with two partners: the mercurial but brilliant car designer Ferdinand Porsche and his son-in-law, Anton Piëch, a pugnacious Viennese lawyer. Rosenberger was the firm's financial backer and fundraiser, but he had grown tired of spending his own money and raising funds from family and friends for the Porsche firm, which was burning through cash and nearing insolvency. Changing Gears: After a career as a race car driver, Adolf Rosenberger became an automotive entrepreneur. Adolf Rosenberger could not have been more different from Germany's new chancellor, despite the shared first name. The handsome, tech-savvy German Jew had been a race-car driver for Mercedes. Some of his race cars were designed by Ferdinand Porsche. Rosenberger's racing career ended abruptly in 1926, after a serious accident at the Grand Prix in Berlin left three people