August Horch

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August Horch

August Horch (* 12. October 1868 in Winningen , † 3. February 1951 in Münchberg , Upper Franconia) was a German mechanical engineer and founder of the automotive company Horch and Audi .

Life

Horch came from an old family of winemakers and blacksmiths . After completing school at the age of 13, Horch first learned the blacksmith's trade in his father's forge and built his first means of transport: a three-wheeled pennywheel . From 1888 to 1891 he studied at the Technikum Mittweida and worked from 1891 to 1899 as a mechanical engineer in Rostock , Leipzig and at Carl Benz in Mannheim . August Horch never had a driver's license .

Horch & Cie.

Doctor Rudolf Stöss in a Horch 18/20 hp, winner of the Herkomer competition , 1906

In 1899 August Horch founded the Horch & Cie company in Cologne-Ehrenfeld and in 1900 built his first automobile with the "shock-free engine" he had developed. Because of his investor Moritz Bauer, Horch relocated the company to Reichenbach in the Vogtland in 1902 . In 1903 he presented the Model 3, a car with a four-cylinder engine , a displacement of 2382 cm³ and an output of 22 hp (16 kW).

August Horch in one of his carriages, 1908

Through his connection to Paul Fikentscher , the Zwickau city ​​council and president of the Saxon-Thuringian Automobile Club (SThAC), newly founded in 1903 in Zwickau, West Saxony , he became a member of the Fahrwart Club. In 1904 he relocated the company to Zwickau, where it was renamed A. Horch & Cie. Motorwagenwerke Actiengesellschaft was entered in the commercial register. The difficult Herkomer competition , in which, among other things, certain inclines had to be overcome, was won in 1906 by the Zwickau lawyer Rudolf Stöss on a Horch car. In 1907 Horch & Cie. presented the first six-cylinder engine in the Horch 26/65 PS . After that, as a result of the lack of follow-up successes in the automobile competitions, there were differences of opinion with the Supervisory Board. Horch left the company at the beginning of 1909, because he had no decision-making power due to his low capital stake.

Horch founds Audi

With his investor friends Paul Fikentscher and his nephew Franz, he founded a second company within sight of the Zwickauer Horch-Werke, August Horch Automobilwerke GmbH , which was entered in the commercial register of the city of Zwickau on July 16, 1909. Thereupon a legal dispute broke out with his former company because of the brand name Horch , which August Horch lost in the last instance before the Reichsgericht in Leipzig. A son of Franz Fikentscher invented the brand name “Audi” as a consequence of the legal dispute; this is the translation of the imperative “listen!” (audi = hear! = listen!) into Latin. On April 25, 1910, the company was renamed Audi Automobilwerke GmbH . At first, business activity was limited to maintenance and repair work, while Horch designed a new car together with engineer August Hermann Lange , who also came from Horch AG. Horch delivered the first Audi in July 1910. In 1915 the company was converted into a stock corporation and went public as Audiwerke AG Zwickau . In 1917 Horch became a member of the commission that developed the first German " A7V " tank .

Expert in Berlin

After the company was founded, Horch had little influence on business decisions, so he left active business. From 1920 to 1933 he worked as a “publicly employed and sworn motor vehicle expert for motor vehicles of all kinds in the area of ​​the Berlin Chamber of Commerce and Industry” and as a “sworn expert for the Berlin Chamber and Regional Court”. In addition, Horch held several honorary positions during this time. Among other things, he was a member of the race management for the first Avus race (1921), member of the supervisory board of "AUKA" to coordinate the automobile exhibition in 1923, since January 1924 head of the standards committee of German industry, since November 3, 1924 first president of Deutsche Verkehrswacht e . V. , etc. in 1922 awarded him the TU Braunschweig , the honorary doctorate . In 1923, Horch initiated the left-hand steering system for automobiles, which is now almost worldwide standard.

During the 1920s August Horch got into economic difficulties, which he tried to counteract with a chicken farm on the Moselle. But this company brought him considerable losses. In addition, his wife was in poor health, so that he had to sell his house in Berlin in autumn 1931.

Appointment to the supervisory board of Auto Union AG

After the Saxon automobile manufacturers DKW , Horch , Audi and Wanderer had been merged with retroactive effect from November 1, 1931 to form the new company Auto Union AG based in Zschopau , the Management Board appointed August Horch to the Supervisory Board in 1933. In 1935 the monthly remuneration was 500.00 RM; In 1938 - when Horch had to finance the care of his seriously ill wife in a home - it was increased to RM 1,000.00.

In 1939 the city of Zwickau made August Horch an honorary citizen .

As early as 1941 Horch sought protection in the Saxon province from the increasing number of bomb attacks on Berlin. When the end of the war approached in 1945, he lived in Langenhessen near Werdau and feared that the appreciation he had previously enjoyed in the Nazi state could prove fatal. In July he fled again; first to Helmbrechts in Upper Franconia, then on to Münchberg. In the east he has now been branded as one of the people responsible for the inhumane treatment of forced laborers in the Audi plants.

The time after 1945

After the war , there were left-wing circles who denigrated August Horch as a “Nazi” and claimed that he was only thinking of extending the war in order to increase his profits. Therefore the honorary citizenship of the city of Zwickau should be revoked. However, Horch was neither a member of the NSDAP nor did he have any influence on the production of armaments, so that the city council did not approve the proposal.

At the beginning of July 1945 Horch moved to Upper Franconia, where he and his foster daughter and long-time housekeeper Else Kolmar initially found accommodation in Helmbrechts , until an apartment in Münchberg was offered three months later . The French occupying forces did not allow the planned return to Winningen . Horch's wife died on March 26, 1946 in a nursing home in Berlin, a few days later his son Eberhard too. In the summer of 1948 Horch married Else Kolmar, who came from a Jewish family and, thanks to Horch's fame, had been spared Nazi persecution.

Auto Union GmbH, re-established in Ingolstadt in 1949 after it was first founded in 1948, paid tribute to the life's work of the now 81-year-old August Horch by appointing him to the supervisory board.

Honors

Memorial plaque in Cologne-Ehrenfeld
August Horch Museum Zwickau
  • Honorary doctorate from TU Braunschweig in 1922
  • August Horch became an honorary citizen of Zwickau in 1939
  • Horch's birthplace, Winningen, granted him honorary citizenship in 1949.
  • The Landesmuseum Koblenz dedicates a separate department to the works of Horch.
  • A museum in the school of Horch's birthplace Winningen shows, among other things, an exhibition on his life's work.
  • Renaming of the vocational school Andernach to BBS August-Horch-Schule 2005
  • The vocational school center (BSZ) for technology in Dieselstrasse 17 in Zwickau is named after him.
  • The public observatory in Drebach (Erzgebirge) names the discovered planoid 2000 SS 44 after August Horch. Since 2007 it has had the official name (62190) Augusthorch .
  • Streets were named after August Horch in many cities and municipalities. a. in Bremen, Erkelenz, Gifhorn, Kaisersesch, Koblenz, Cologne, Lüneburg, Mainz, Münchberg, Munich, Münster, Polch, Reinsdorf , Simmern and Winningen.

Works

  • I built cars , Schützen-Verlag, Berlin 1937.
  • From my traveling years , Hillger-Verlag, Berlin 1939.
  • The car - my life , Stuttgart 1982.

literature

  • The wheel of time - the history of AUDI AG [Ed .: AUDI AG, Public Relations. Texts: Peter Kirchberg…] 3rd edition. Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2000, ISBN 3-7688-1011-9
  • Arno Buschmann (Ed.): The car - my life. From August Horch until today . 2nd expanded edition. Seewald, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-512-00638-8 .
  • Matthias Dallinger: Automobile construction in south-west Saxony until 1945: From the beginning to Auto Union. GRIN, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-640-52454-9 .
  • Walther Herrmann:  Horch, August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 622 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • August Horch: I built cars. From apprentice locksmith to auto industrialist . Publisher: August Horch Museum Zwickau GmbH.
  • Peter Kirchberg: August Horch (1868–1951). In: Franz-Josef Heyen (Ed.): Rheinische Lebensbilder , Volume 16. Rheinland Verlag, Cologne 1997, pp. 161–180.
  • Ulrich Löber (Ed.): August Horch - an automobile designer from Winningen. An exhibition of the Landesmuseum Koblenz . Landesmuseum, Koblenz 1986, ISBN 3-925915-17-6 .
  • Jürgen Pönisch: August Horch, motor pioneer. 1868-1951 . August-Horch-Museum, Zwickau 2001, ISBN 3-00-008754-0 .
  • Ders .: 100 years of Horch Automobile. 1899-1999 . August-Horch-Museum, Zwickau 2000, ISBN 3-933282-07-1 .
  • Peter Kirchberg, Jürgen Pönisch: Horch - types - technology - models . 1st edition. Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-7688-1775-X (Edition Audi-Tradition)
  • Marion Schulz: August Horch. We build motor vehicles for all purposes. Stations in the automotive industry in Reichenbach (Vogtl.) March 1902 - June 1904 . Neuberin-Museum, Reichenbach 2002, ISBN 3-932626-09-5 .
  • Jan-Peter Domschke, Sabine Dorn, Hansgeorg Hofmann, Rosemarie Poch, Marion Stascheit: Mittweida's engineers all over the world . University of Applied Sciences Mittweida, Mittweida 2014, p. 50 f.

Web links

Commons : August Horch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ I built cars , August Horch, Schützen-Verlag Berlin, 1937.
  2. ^ A b c Peter Kirchberg, Thomas Erdmann, Ralph Plagmann: The wheel of time . Edited by Audi AG, Delius Klasing, ISBN 3-7688-1011-9 .
  3. ↑ museum-winningen.de
  4. ↑ 80 years of Deutsche Verkehrswacht e. V. Deutsche Verkehrswacht, archived from the original on February 1, 2014 ; accessed on January 29, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Jürgen Pönisch: August Horch - pioneer of the motor vehicle . August Horch Museum Zwickau, 2001, ISBN 3-00-008754-0 , pp. 151–153.
  6. ↑ Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung, 1922, p. 335 ( Memento of June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) accessed on December 6, 2012.
  7. ↑ whoswho.de
  8. ↑ Jürgen Pönisch: August Horch - pioneer of the motor vehicle . August Horch Museum Zwickau, 2001, ISBN 3-00-008754-0 , pp. 162-167 u. 176.
  9. ↑ mdr.de
  10. ↑ Else Kolmar's name as a foster daughter is taken from the Horch files in the Chemnitz State Archives.
  11. ↑ Jürgen Pönisch: August Horch - pioneer of the motor vehicle . Ed. August Horch Museum Zwickau, 2001, ISBN 3-00-008754-0 , pp. 198, 201-206.
  12. ↑ whoswho.de
personal data
SURNAME Listen, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mechanical engineer and founder of the automotive companies Horch and Audi
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Winningen
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1951
Place of death Münchberg , Upper Franconia