Horch, an Audi! The cradle of the world brand with the four rings as the Zwickau Where founded August Horch (1868-1951), the Audi works? Where Audi invented the left-hand drive? Such questions could be quizmaster at any time, submit their rate shows. The candidate would touch with a high probability of Ingolstadt. But really is: Zwickau! Here is the birthplace of Audi, one of the most respected brands in the world and one of the most popular employers in Germany. 1909, Audi's global success story in the northern suburb of Zwickau, where today the
August Horch Museum .
Second choice: Why is the "Lord of the four rings" in Zwickau settled The automobile pioneer comes from the Mosel-Winningen community and learned the blacksmith father's occupation. After studying at the Technical Mittweida he worked in a foundry in Rostock, at the local shipyard Neptune, in a machine factory in Leipzig and Carl Benz in Mannheim. 1899 Horch founded in Cologne a "repair shop for motor vehicles and machines of all kinds," the bursting at the seams. Moritz Bauer bought from Plauen it from him, Horch was director. The facilities were first in 1902 in the Vogtland-city, then moved to the nearby Reichenbach. 1904 again was a parade. Why the location Zwickau was only second choice, Horch describes in his autobiography:
"In April, it could we go in Leipzig to look for suitable factory premises. I had learned that the factory where I had previously worked as a manager (coarse and Cie.), Would be free and would be offered for sale. I went there immediately, but the day before it was sold to another company. I continued in Leipzig, but I found nothing that would have been suitable for the construction of cars. I told the founding meeting next with, and someone said the proposal to go to Zwickau. I objected immediately that Zwickau me to lay off from the main line Berlin-Leipzig-Munich. But Dr. Stöß said, the games for the automotive industry are not essential, and he also was convinced that the main rail line will soon be out of Zwickau. He had won the majority of the Lords of Zwickau. I may anticipate that the main line was never about Zwickau " 1904/1909. Establishing the Horch and Audi-Werke in Zwickau August Horch in 1904 laid the foundation for the Zwickau automotive industry. On the road 49 Crimmitschauer He bought the empty canvas weaving "guard and Zeuner, and on 10 May he founded the company "A. Horch and Cie., Motor-Werke AG in Zwickau in Saxony "with a capital of 110,000 Reichsmark. In the Second Herkomer competition in Landsberg am Lech, the country's oldest touring car rally the world in 1906 Horch 11/22 PS won the smallest car of the field for overall victory. Was steered the car from Zwickau lawyer Rudolf Stöß. In 1909 came the break: The board was responsible for listening to his car at races no longer occupied the top places. The contractor left the settlement of 20,000 Reichsmark company he founded.
Horch was now even more gas. In a former woodworking factory - within sight of the first workplace - the smart designer founded on 16 July 1909, August Horch Automotive GmbH with registered capital of 200,000 Reichsmark. A legal dispute over the own name Horch lost to his former company. Random House was in Zwickau its shareholder Franz Fikentscher the World Brand "Audi" was born - the Latin translation of "listening": Not as Horch wrote in his memoir, the son of the landlord, but by his Latin teacher.
rally victories and left-hand drive: Zwickau Audi works on the fast track The Audi brand was once for quality, luxury and technological progress. Zwickau in 1910, won the Swedish reliability test, the rally of the Gau Saxony and Dresden mountain road test. August Horch in 1911 won himself in an Audi 10/28 hp Type B, the Austrian Alpine Rally. As a member of the Audi factory team Horch won the 10/28 PS (1912) and the new 14/35 hp (1913, 1914) each of the team's victory, and thanks to this triples the Alpine Challenge Trophy. The return trip in late June 1914 after Zwickau impressed the genius car manufacturers:
"In Zwickau they had not endured with impatience already in Neudeck in Bohemia came to meet us the first car, and there was a storm of welcome. When we got to Aue to the Ore Mountains, stood on the large space inside the town a huge number of cars, and again it was a huge and warm welcome, and in a true triumph, it went through snow mountain to Zwickau. " In The festivities burst the way the news of the assassination in Sarajevo triggered the First World War.
1920 Audi chose from left switch to right-hand drive - a ground-breaking innovation. This was overtaking by the better insight into oncoming traffic safer and have the will shift lever and hand brake in the middle of the vehicle moved. This reorganization was years ahead of its competitors, Audi. Zwickau grew into a center of innovation approach in the German automotive industry. End of the 1930s were 20 percent of all new cars from the West-Saxon industrial city.
Depression: Association of the famous four rings took over in 1928 the Dane Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen of DKW in Zschopau's largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world, made the financially troubled Audi plant. Under the pressure of declining sales figures in 1932 were joined by Audi, Horch, DKW and the automotive department of Wanderer using the Saxon State Bank to form Auto Union AG, located in Chemnitz together - the second largest German car manufacturer! Hallmark of the car-multinationals, the four interlocked rings, symbolizing the unity of the companies. August Horch was one from 1933 to the Supervisory Board.
Audi sold from now on sporty and elegant middle-and upper-class models. Horch, which had originally been working on a merger with Daimler-Benz, focused on luxury cars such as the twelve-cylinder 670th At the Berlin Motor Show 1939, the company presented the 930 S is a according to the knowledge of aerodynamics crafted streamlined vehicle. An unusual detail of this Horch car was an outboard on the passenger side, pull-out sink with running hot and cold water. "Silver Arrow" racing cars from Auto Union, built in Zwickau Horch factory, afforded duels with the Silver Arrows of Mercedes-Benz. At the wheel of the Saxons were driving racing legends like Hans Stuck and Bernd Rosemeyer. 2009 was in Caramel (California), a silver arrow from Zwickau type D for eight million dollars for the auction.
"Audi-Horch" between adoration and contempt 1920, the "Audi-Horch" - that he signed letters - pulled out of the current fiscal and the West Saxons:
"The reason was simple: I wanted to get away from Zwickau . I had during the war, an extraordinary amount of work for industry and especially for the Audi works abroad must, above all, very often I had been in Berlin, and now I wanted to move to Berlin. There suggested the strong heart of the empire, there was the source, there were the choices, I wanted to be at the source. I could be there for the automotive industry and my company operate very differently than in breast-Zwickau. " In the capital, he worked as an automotive expert and held various honorary positions.
Zwickau, August Horch in 1939 awarded the honorary citizenship. Before that, a street was named after him,
"On 28 June 1934 had told me the city of Zwickau, that it intended to rename the street Crimmitschauer in August-Horch-Strasse. My name is with the city of Zwickau, and the local car industry inextricably linked. I would have put the founding of the two works Horch and Audi, the automobile industry to Zwickau, and for this the city would be grateful. The letter goes on to state that the products of both firms stood not only in the kingdom, but also in the world in high esteem. I was proud of this honor. " After the war, fled with the Jewish Horch Else Kolmar before the Red Army after Münchberg. The former opera singer was nurse his late wife in 1946. When trying to save, in Zwickau remaining possessions and take to Upper Franconia, Kolmar woman was arrested. In 1948 she married the aged Horch. His life in Münchberg he spent in modest circumstances. Two world wars, inflation, global economic crisis and tragedy, like the costly care of his first wife left, his life there be no wealth. After all: his newly founded company in West Germany got in touch with him, invited him and helped him to some extent, financially.
be particularly bad reception Horch defamation of the SED. She asked him to join the Nazi Party and support the war economy. The smear campaign culminated in the back naming the Zwickau August-Horch-Strasse. The withdrawal of the honorary citizenship was denied by the resistance of the population. The age of 82 he died in February 1951 in Münchberg. In 2000, Horch, who stands in a row with the name of Porsche, Daimler and Benz and reportedly never had a driver's license into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Detroit (USA) added.
Audis new beginning after 1945: Zwickau reconstruction aid for the West dismantled after the Second World War, the Soviet occupation forces from Reparationsgründen parts of the Zwickau plant facilities. The Saxon Auto Union migrated to the West and in 1949 re-established in Ingolstadt. The population of the center of the auto and oil industry rose to over 120,000 (2005) and has tripled compared to the pre-war (Ingolstadt 1939 had about 35,000 inhabitants, Zwickau then 85,000). there will be settlements with the vernacular name "Little Zwickau" and "small-Chemnitz" created - Many engineers settled on. Late 1950s, Daimler Benz took over the company in the mid-1960s, the Volkswagen AG. Merged in 1969 with the four rings of Audi NSU AG NSU Auto Union AG, based in Neckarsulm. A little later the slogan "Vorsprung durch Technik" was introduced. Since 1985, the company trades as Audi, Seat was Ingolstadt. Audi 1986 wrote advertising history: The wheel model "Quattro" went for a television spot up a Finnish ski jump.
was 2008, sales of the Audi Group's EUR 34.2 billion. Zwickau that one day as a factory site in the annual report emerges is unlikely. But hope dies last: On the occasion of the 100th Audi anniversary in 2009 the then Minister of Saxony said Thomas Jurk (SPD), August Horch in Zwickau had laid the foundation for today's successful Autoland Saxony (VW, BMW, Porsche). The Free State would also like Audi rolled out the red carpet. A public discussion at this time of the Renaissance brand "car Union "for the Audi's parent Volkswagen and Porsche Jurk commented by saying," But only with headquarters in Saxony "
anniversary" 100 Years of Audi ". Zwickau stood in the shadow of Ingolstadt its 100th Audi birthday celebrated with a ceremony opened by Chancellor Angela Merkel in Ingolstadt. Prime Minister of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich and his predecessor Kurt Biedenkopf criticized the choice of venue. "I would have celebrated in place of Angela Merkel's 100-year anniversary of Audi in Zwickau ', Biedenkopf said at a panel discussion in Dresden. It states that it is a "typical example" of lack of Awareness that the GDR has unwittingly and forcibly made an extraordinary contribution to the development of West Germany. "Without the German division of Saxony would now be a leading German business location. Biedenkopf repeated his criticism of Audi in the ARD talkshow "hard but fair" before an audience of millions.
Also in the ad campaigns with the slogan "100 years ahead through technology," Zwickau played no role. Nevertheless, it was also celebrated at the cradle of world brand: with a party at the place of international friendship, where in the 1930 Auto Union presented the riders after their successes cars, and a rally where 100 classic cars 100 kilometers Vogtland rolled.
luxury, leather, saloons: Audi Zwickau maintains its tradition there since 1993 in Zwickau, where August Horch lived 16 years, again a street named after him. 2004, to mark "100 years of car manufacturing in the economic region of Chemnitz-Zwickau", opened in the heart of the former Audi works the August Horch Museum. Winners are the city of Zwickau and Audi AG. The museum on the Audi Strasse 7 is an anchor point on the European Route of Industrial Heritage, a network of key sites of industrial heritage. 2006, the year the World Cup, was the establishment of a Zwickauer of 365 varieties of the "Germany - Land of Ideas ". On the A4 and A72 show signs point to this landmark of Saxony's industrial history. They show a Horch 350 of 1929 and the office building with the historic Audi logo. As the state of Saxony a reorganization of the museum world took into account in order to better distribute tourism lighthouses on the regions to Zwickau in 2002 was hoping for a move of the Dresden Transport Museum - but in vain, it remained in the state capital.
The car is maintained tradition with the annual "Sachsen Classic, one of the greatest classic car rallies in Germany. Lovers of historic vehicles to compare with the Italian racing classic "Mille Miglia (" thousand miles "). The MDR-TV reported in features with titles like "luxury, leather, sedan" or "luxury on four wheels" from the race, which normally runs between Zwickau and Dresden. 2009, the station broadcasts as part of its series "History of Middle Germany" a 45-minute episode, called "August Horch - A life on four wheels" from. Zwickau was a freight forwarder in 2011 his truck having a Europe on the move, smooth by promoting the Horch Museum.
literature - August Horch: I built cars. From the blacksmith's apprentice for auto industrialists (Published: August Horch Museum Zwickau gGmbH) - Hermann Golle: Saxony reconstruction aid for the West, in: Dam, Rocco / Hull, Marco / Herring, Lutz: Highlights from Saxony (Hohenheim Verlag) - Rüdiger Fikentscher: between King and Bebel. German stories from two centuries (Hohenheim Verlag)
