Driven Out - Adolf Rosenberger - Race Car Driver and Porsche Co-founder

In the 1920s, Adolf Rosenberger was one of Germany's best known racing car drivers. He was also co-founder and managing director of a design firm that had recently been launched by Ferdinand Porsche, and it was his job to ensure financing for the design firm - a firm that provided important impetus during this time for technical innovation and racing car construction. When the firm fell into difficulties during the global business crisis, he ended up stepping away from his management role in the company, but remained active as partner and "foreign representative". The Jewish Rosenberger was however unable to escape the increasing persecution by the Nazis: in 1935 he lost his shares in the company and landed for a time in a concentration camp. After emigrating in 1938 he would go on over the following decades to develop a precarious new existence in the USA. Compensation and restitution proceedings that he initiated against the company would end up severing any remaining ties with the now internationally renowned sports car manufacturer. This book, drawing on documents that have remained unpublished until now, frames and analyses the exceptional and moving biography of Adolf Rosenberger.

Joachim Scholtyseck ist seit 2001 Professor für Neuere und Neueste Geschichte an der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte umfassen neben der deutschen Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensgeschichte ("Der Aufstieg der Quandts", 2011; "Merck", 2. Aufl. 2018 ) vor allem Italienische Geschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und Deutsches Kaiserreich ("Alliierter oder Vasall?", 1994), Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus ("Robert Bosch und der liberale Widerstand gegen Hitler", 2. Aufl. 2000) und Kalter Krieg ("Die Außenpolitik der DDR", 2003). Scholtyseck ist u. a. Vorsitzender des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats des Hauses der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland sowie der Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung.