Who was Josef Ganz and why is he important?

Dipl.-Ing. Josef Ganz (1898 - 1967) was the engineering father of the Volkswagen Beetle - the most famous car ever built - and laid the foundations for lightweight modern motorcars. He coined the design, the name Volkswagen, the nickname Beetle, built the first prototypes, and heavily propagandized the entire concept.

Josef Ganz made his first Volkswagen design sketches in 1923, designing an innovative small lightweight car with a mid-mounted engine, independent wheel suspension and an aerodynamic body, but at first lacked the money to build a prototype.

As editor-in-chief of Motor-Kritik from 1928 onwards Josef Ganz used this magazine as a platform to criticize heavy, unsafe and old-fashioned cars and promote innovative design and his concept for a Deutschen Volkswagen ('German Volkswagen'). He attacked the old and well-established auto companies with biting irony. These companies fought against Josef Ganz and his Motor-Kritik with law-suits, slander campaigns and an advertising boycott. However, every new attempt for destruction only increased the publicity for the magazine and Josef Ganz firmly established himself as the leading independent automotive innovator in Germany.

Josef Ganz built his first Volkswagen prototype at Ardie in 1930 and completed a second one at Adler in 1931, which was nicknamed the Maikäfer ('May-Beetle'). Both these cars featured a lightweight design incorporating a tubular central backbone chassis, independent wheel suspension with swinging rear half-axles, and a rear-mounted engine. Along similar lines the production model Standard Superior – advertised as ‘the fastest and cheapest German Volkswagen’ – was introduced at the Berlin motor show in February 1933 where it was seen by Adolf Hitler and sparked the later KdF/Volkswagen project.

Furthermore, as a consultant engineer at Daimler-Benz Josef Ganz initiated and helped to construct the Mercedes-Benz 170 (1931) – the company’s first lightweight model with independent wheel suspension –, the Mercedes-Benz 120H prototype (1931) – a predecessor of the VW Beetle – and the resulting production model Mercedes-Benz 130H (1933). In a similar position at BMW Josef Ganz helped develop the BMW AM1 – likewise BMW’s first model with independent wheel suspension.

His brilliant engineering work and critical journalistic writings jump-started a revolution in the automotive industry to build more affordable, lightweight, comfortable, safe and efficient cars. Ironically, while German car manufacturers one by one took over the progressive ideas that had been published in Motor-Kritik since the 1920s, Josef Ganz was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 on falsified charges of blackmailing the automotive industry, his career was destroyed, and his life became endangered. This lead to his escape from Germany in June 1934 - the very month Hitler assigned Ferdinand Porsche to realize the prophecy of Josef Ganz: designing a mass-producible Volkswagen for a consumer price of 1,000 Reichsmark.

Josef Ganz later settled in Switzerland where with government support he started a Swiss Volkswagen project in the mid to late 1930s. After the second world war and numb from five years of highly complex court battles Josef Ganz left Switzerland for France in 1949 and eventually settled in Australia in 1951. Despite some attempts to restore his name in the 1960s, it was too little too late. Josef Ganz died in obscurity in Australia in 1967 – his legacy the VW Beetle known and admired by all but his name forgotten.

For more information on Josef Ganz: http://www.ganz-volkswagen.org/