How Porsche’s Jewish Cofounder Was Driven Out Of The Company By The Nazis

In an exclusive excerpt from Nazi Billionaires, German entrepreneur Adolf Rosenberger helped the famed car company get rolling in the early 1930s—until Hitler rose to power.

On the day that Adolf Hitler seized the most powerful post in Germany, an entirely different Adolf quit his job. On January 30, 1933, the thirty-two-year old Adolf Rosenberger gathered the staff of nineteen at the office of the Porsche automobile design firm in central Stuttgart’s Kronenstrasse and told them he was resigning as their commercial director. Rosenberger had cofounded the company two years earlier with two partners: the mercurial but brilliant car designer Ferdinand Porsche and his son-in-law, Anton Piëch, a pugnacious Viennese lawyer. Rosenberger was the firm’s financial backer and fundraiser, but he had grown tired of spending his own money and raising funds from family and friends for the Porsche firm, which was burning through cash and nearing insolvency.

Adolf Rosenberger could not have been more different from Germany’s new chancellor, despite the shared first name. The handsome, tech-savvy German Jew had been a race-car driver for Mercedes. Some of his race cars were designed by Ferdinand Porsche. Rosenberger’s racing career ended abruptly in 1926, after a serious accident at the Grand Prix in Berlin left three people dead; he was severely injured. He instead began investing in real estate in his hometown of Pforzheim, then partnered with Porsche to help finance their race-car designs and turn them into drivable prototypes.

When Ferdinand Porsche started his namesake firm in Stuttgart at the height of the Great Depression, it was the first time that the fifty-five-year-old mustachioed autodidact had struck out on his own as an entrepreneur. Those in the automotive industry viewed Porsche as an “unemployable perfectionist” because of his lack of financial discipline and volatile temper. So Porsche started his own company. He hired veteran engineers and partnered with cofounders who could lend balance where he lacked it. But Porsche could not overcome his worst impulses. He still threw tantrums, once grabbing the wide-brimmed hat he always wore, throwing it on the ground, and stomping on it like a petulant child. What’s more, his designs continued to be too costly. They would never be approved for production during a depression. He found himself facing bankruptcy.

When Hitler seized power, Porsche had just turned down a job to head up vehicle production for Joseph Stalin’s Soviet regime in Moscow. After careful consideration, Porsche declined this lifeline. He deemed himself too old, and besides, he didn’t speak Russian. Politics didn’t matter to Porsche; he cared only about his car designs. When the dictator back home threw Porsche another lifeline, he grabbed it with both hands.

In late June 1934, Ferdinand Porsche signed a contract with the skeptical, reluctant Reich Association of the German Automotive Industry to develop the Volkswagen, a “people’s car” that would cost only 1,000 reichsmarks [or about $8,200 in today’s dollars], in ten months. It was a herculean task. Ultimately, it would take Porsche 1.75 million reichsmarks [roughly $14 million], two years, three versions of the design, and much political pandering to Hitler to complete a suitable prototype of the Volkswagen.

In the meantime, Porsche and his son-in-law, Anton Piëch, tightened the family grip on the car design office in Stuttgart. On September 5, 1935, ten days before the Nuremberg Race Laws were enacted, Rosenberger was arrested by the Gestapo in his hometown near Stuttgart, charged with “race defilement,” and put in remand prison in Karlsruhe. His “crime” was dating a gentile girl. Given his prominence as a Jewish entrepreneur and a former race-car driver, Rosenberger had been warned that he was a target of the Gestapo. He ignored the writing on the wall.

Five weeks earlier, on July 30, 1935, Rosenberger had transferred his 10 percent stake in the car design firm to Porsche’s twenty-five-year-old son, Ferry. The young man had been working for his father’s firm for almost five years, under the tutelage of Porsche and veteran engineers. The once struggling firm had finally become profitable through Porsche’s Volkswagen contract and a race-car design that he and Rosenberger had developed. Company profits that year neared 170,000 reichsmarks [or $1.5 million today]. So, Porsche and Piëch started to buy out the two shareholders who were not part of the family: Rosenberger and Hans von Veyder-Malberg.

“I don’t accuse Mr. Porsche and Mr. Piëch of personal anti-Semitism,” Rosenberger later contended. “But they used my membership as a Jew to get rid of me cheaply.”

An asset was considered Aryanized in the Third Reich when the Jewish “element” of ownership had been removed. Aryanizations could involve paying less than the actual value for firms, houses, land, jewelry, gold, art, or shares owned by Jews, as had been the case with Rosenberger; it could extend to the outright theft of possessions. Because of Nazi Germany’s penchant for formal legal procedure, Aryanizations often had the veneer of a normal business transaction. But eventually that nicety was discarded.

In fact, the duo bought out Rosenberger for the exact same nominal amount he had paid for his founding stake in Porsche in 1930: just 3,000 reichsmarks [$25,500]. Despite all that Rosenberger had done for the company, the price severely undervalued his shares in Porsche. “It was held against me that a pennant [certification] or the like as a Jew-free company would not be given as long as I was a shareholder…I don’t accuse Mr. Porsche and Mr. Piëch at any rate of personal anti-Semitism,” Rosenberger later contended. “But…they used my membership as a Jew to get rid of me cheaply.” Porsche and Piëch denied the allegation. Still, regardless of motive, the duo’s acquisition of Rosenberger’s Porsche stake was an “Aryanization,” plain as day.

On September 23, 1935, after almost three weeks in the Gestapo prison, Rosenberger was transferred to Kislau, a concentration camp south of Heidelberg. After four days of beatings, he was suddenly let go. Baron von Veyder-Malberg, Rosenberger’s successor at Porsche, had intervened with the Gestapo in Karlsruhe, successfully lobbying for his release. But Rosenberger still had to pay the Gestapo 53.40 reichsmarks [$455] for his time in “protective custody,” as the euphemism went. Despite later claims to the contrary, Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch did nothing to secure their cofounder’s freedom. Via his lawyer, Rosenberger begged Porsche to help save his life, but Porsche was too busy hobnobbing at the Spanish Grand Prix, outside Bilbao.

Rosenberger left Germany a month later and moved to Paris in November 1935. Following his departure as Porsche’s commercial director in early 1933, he had been working on a contractual basis for the design firm. Even after his imprisonment, the thirty-five-year-old remained a foreign representative for the company, licensing Porsche patents in France, England, and America. Rosenberger could keep 30 percent of sales provisions with a contract running until 1940, or so he thought.

In early June 1938, Rosenberger received a letter at his Paris apartment on Avenue Marceau, around the corner from the Arc de Triomphe. The message from Stuttgart contained bad news. Baron Hans von Vey-der-Malberg informed his predecessor that Porsche was no longer able to maintain its patent licensing contract with him “on higher authority.” The man who had freed Rosenberger from a concentration camp was now cutting off all professional and personal contact because of “certain aggravations in the internal situation.” The letter was dated June 2, one week after Hitler had laid the foundation stone for the Volkswagen factory. Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch were severing their last ties with the firm’s Jewish cofounder.

Porsche proposed a settlement. Rosenberger was offered a choice: a luxury version of the Volkswagen Beetle or a Porsche 356. He ended up picking the Beetle.

On July 23, 1938, Rosenberger wrote to Piëch, who was also the company’s tough legal counsel, suggesting two ways to part amicably: $12,000 [or about $240,000] to start over in the United States or a transfer of Porsche’s American patent license to Rosenberger. Adding insult to Aryanization, Anton Piëch coldly rejected the proposal [on August 24, 1938]. “My company does not recognize your claims under any circumstance and rejects them for a lack of legal basis.” That same month, the Gestapo began the process of revoking Rosenberger’s German citizenship. It was time for him to leave Europe.

Rosenberger never returned to Porsche. He immigrated to America in 1940 and was living under the name Alan Robert in Los Angeles. By 1948, the Jewish émigré wanted restitution—to be reinstated as a shareholder in the firm he had cofounded, with the same stake Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch had acquired from him in their 1935 Aryanization.

As the case went to court in late September 1950, a lawyer for Porsche and Piëch proposed a settlement to Rosenberger’s lawyer: 50,000 deutsch marks [or $144,000] plus a car. Rosenberger was offered a choice: a luxury version of the Volkswagen Beetle or a Porsche 356, the first sports car under the family name, designed by Porsche’s son, Ferry. Rosenberger was still in Los Angeles, caring for his wife, who was ill so his lawyer accepted the settlement without consulting him. Instead, he informed Rosenberger by letter after the matter was concluded. Rosenberger ended up picking the Volkswagen Beetle.

In December 1967, Adolf Rosenberger died as Alan Robert in Los Angeles from a heart attack. The persecuted cofounder of Porsche and was only sixty-seven. After his settlement with the firm and the deaths of Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch in the early 1950s, Rosenberger had traveled back to Stuttgart and met with Ferry, now the CEO of the Porsche company. Rosenberger offered him patents and hoped to represent Porsche in California. After everything that had transpired, Rosenberger still wanted to be a part of the company he had helped establish. Ferry responded in a noncommittal way, and nothing came of it.

Almost a decade after Rosenberger’s death, Ferry published his first autobiography: We at Porsche. In it, the sports car designer not only twisted the truth of Rosenberger’s Aryanization and escape from Nazi Germany but also did the same with the stories of other German Jews who were forced to sell their firms and flee Hitler’s regime. Ferry even accused Rosenberger of extortion after the war. What’s more, the former SS officer used blatant anti-Semitic stereotypes and prejudice in his warped account: “After the war, it seemed as though those people who had been persecuted by the Nazis considered it their right to make an additional profit, even in cases where they had already been compensated. Rosenberger was by no means an isolated example.”

Ferry supplied an example of a Jewish family who had voluntarily sold their factory after leaving Nazi Germany for Mussolini’s Italy, only to return after the war and claim “payment a second time,” at least according to his interpretation of events. Ferry continued: “It would be hard to blame Rosenberger for thinking in a like manner. He no doubt felt that since he was Jewish and had been forced out of Germany by the Nazis who had done so much harm, he was entitled to an extra profit.”

Ferry then falsely claimed that his family had saved Rosenberger from imprisonment by the Nazis. But it hadn’t been Ferry, his father, or his brother-in-law, Anton Piëch, who got Rosenberger released from a concentration camp in late September 1935, just weeks after the car moguls Aryanized his stake in Porsche. In fact, Rosenberger’s successor at Porsche, Baron Hans von Veyder-Malberg, had negotiated with the Gestapo for Rosenberger’s release and later helped Rosenberger’s parents escape Germany. But Ferry stole credit for these morally sound actions from the dead baron on behalf of the Porsche family: “We had such good connections that we were able to help him, and he was set free. Unfortunately, all this was forgotten when Mr. Rosenberger saw what he thought was an opportunity to make more money. However, not only Jewish people, but most emigrants who had left Germany felt the same way.”

In 1998, Ferry died in his sleep at eighty-eight years of age, in Austria’s Zell am See. The sports car icon of global renown had published his second autobiography a decade earlier. But in this version, Ferry had changed his tune. The anti-Semitic statements were gone, and he reduced the Adolf Rosenberger affair to just two paragraphs. He continued to deny the Aryanization of Rosenberger’s stake in Porsche undertaken by his father, Ferdinand, and his brother-in-law, Anton Piëch. Instead, Ferry played the pity card: “As bad as these events were for Rosenberger at the time, under the circumstances we always behaved fair and correct towards him. For us, too, the situation was anything but easy back then.”

Rosenberger was bought out of Porsche in 1935 for the exact amount he had paid for his 10 percent stake in 1930, even though Porsche’s profits had hugely increased in the intervening period.

In March 2019, the Ferry Porsche Foundation announced that it would endow Germany’s first-ever professorship of corporate history, at the University of Stuttgart. The Porsche firm had established the foundation a year earlier — seventy years after Ferry had designed the first Porsche sports car — with hopes of “reinforcing its commitment to social responsibility.”

In a statement, the charity’s then chairman said: “Dealing with one’s own history is a full-time commitment. It is precisely this critical reflection that the Ferry Porsche Foundation wants to encourage, because: to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve come from.” The chairman added that “the endowed professorship is . . . an invitation to family companies in particular to engage with their history even more intensively and candidly, and the results and possible consequences of it.” A particularly bold statement, given Ferry’s lies about his SS application, his blatant use of anti-Semitic stereotypes and prejudices about Rosenberger in his first autobiography, and the enduring silence of the Porsche family in the face of it all.

The reason why the Ferry Porsche Foundation endowed the professorship at the University of Stuttgart was because members of the university’s history department had published a firm-funded study in 2017 about the Porsche company’s origins in the Nazi era. However, the German public soon raised a question: was the study truly based on independent, objective analysis of the historical record?

In June 2019, a documentary about Adolf Rosenberger aired on German public television. The broadcast detailed how crucial a role Rosenberger had played in the founding of Porsche, how his cofounders, Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch, had Aryanized his stake in 1935, how Rosenberger fought for recognition, and how he was eventually written out of Porsche’s company history.

The documentary also confronted one Wolfram Pyta, a professor of modern history at the University of Stuttgart and the main author of the study that Porsche had commissioned; somehow none of Rosenberger’s personal papers had been included in the research. Pyta said that a relative of Rosenberger in Los Angeles had denied him access to the papers she had inherited. But in the documentary, Rosenberger’s cousin disputed this. She said that one of Pyta’s researchers did contact her, but that Pyta never followed up in order to come and see the papers in her possession.

Equally dubious was another finding — or lack thereof — in the study. Rosenberger was bought out of Porsche in 1935 for the exact same amount he had paid for his founding 10 percent stake in the company back in 1930, even though Porsche’s profits had hugely increased in the intervening period. Plain and simple, Rosenberger had been stiffed and did not receive the full value of his shares. Although Pyta wrote that “there was no hesitation about drawing an economic advantage from Rosenberger’s precarious situation” and “one cannot shake off the impression that Rosenberger . . . was cheated” out of his Porsche shares, the professor refused to call the transaction what it plainly was: an Aryanization.

In the documentary, Pyta said that Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch conducted the transaction to strengthen the firm’s family character, not because Rosenberger was Jewish. But paying a Jewish shareholder in a German company far below the actual market value of his stake in Hitler’s Germany of 1935 could mean just one thing: the transaction was an Aryanization.

Eighty-two years later, a Porsche-funded historian intentionally chose not to acknowledge that fact in an academic study. Although Pyta did later admit to me in a Zoom interview that the transaction constituted an “Aryanization profit.”

In written responses to my questions, Sebastian Rudolph, the Porsche company’s head of communications and chairman of the Ferry Porsche Foundation, characterized Ferry’s anti-Semitic and discriminatory statements in his 1976 autobiography, We at Porsche, as testifying to “a lack of empathy on the part of Ferry Porsche towards the fate of Adolf Rosenberger and other Jewish families who had to leave Germany . . . Ferry Porsche believed that Adolf Rosenberger had at least been treated and compensated correctly by the company. This is the only way to interpret his annoyance at the renewed disputes after the Second World War.”

From Nazi Billionaires by David de Jong. Copyright © 2022 by David de Jong. Reprinted by permission of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

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