Wilhelmine Ehrhardt

Wilhelmine Ehrhardt , b. Wilhelmine Friederika Huthsteiner (born August 23, 1866 in Düsseldorf ; died February 23, 1945 in Pforzheim ) was the wife of the factory manager of the Eisenach vehicle factory , Gustav Ehrhardt, and an automobile pioneer . She is one of the first women in Germany to be actively enthusiastic about automobiles.

Life

In Eisenach , Wilhelmine Ehrhardt (-Huthsteiner) was the role model for the first German women's movement . In the early 1880s she met and fell in love with the German automobile pioneer Gustav Ehrhardt in Düsseldorf . The couple married in April 1889 in Pittsburgh America , where several siblings Wilhem Ines lived where the father Heinrich Ehrhardt , his son to study and had sent for training. The task was to collect information about the technical progress of the USA . In the following years Wilhelmine gave birth to their three children Harry, Marie and Henry. At Heinrich's request, the family left the USA in 1896 and returned to Eisenach so that Gustav could take the position of factory manager at the Eisenach automobile plant.

Wilhelmine showed an early interest in her husband's work and accompanied him to automobile shows in Munich and Berlin . At these exhibitions she explained the Wartburg motor vehicle to the male visitors and drove it independently for presentation purposes. These demonstrations were a sensation at the time, as Wilhelmine was the first woman to explain to the man how technical inventions work. Her father-in-law Heinrich Ehrhardt, the former founder of the Eisenach vehicle factory, was averse to Wilhelmine's provocative behavior. According to his ideas, a woman does not have to break out of the everyday norm. He was also afraid that Wilhelmine's actions could tarnish the family name. Wilhelmine, however, was not intimidated by Heinrich's dismissive behavior and continued to live out her interests, which were atypical for then. She even went so far that she wanted to take part in a car race, which was canceled due to severe storms. Wilhelmine competed in her second race as a passenger, her husband drove there. The route ran from Nuremberg to Kitzingen . They took first place. On August 3, 1901, she entered a car race for the first time as an active driver with a "Wartburgrennwagen" (120 km / h). The race track started in Eisenach, led via Oberhof and Meiningen and finally back to Eisenach. Wilhelmine won fourth place and her husband Gustav came second.

The Ehrhardts' company went bankrupt in 1903, after which the family moved to Zella-Mehlis to continue their family business. However, because of the high prices, business was no longer as good as in Eisenach. Due to illness and age, Wilhelmine and Gustav moved to their daughter Marie in Pforzheim in 1936 . During the air raid on Pforzheim on February 23, 1945 , Wilhelmine, her husband Gustav, their daughter Marie, married Huthsteiner, and their granddaughter were all killed in their house.

literature

• Matthias Doht : Gustav Ehrhardt - the car pioneer in Eisenach: The history of the Wartburg motor vehicle. Nestler, 2016, ISBN 978-3981315974