Bernd Rosemeyer
| Bernd Rosemeyer | |
|---|---|
Bernd Rosemeyer (left) with Elly Beinhorn and Ferdinand Porsche
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| Born |
14 October 1909 Lingen, Germany |
| Died | 28 January 1938 (aged 28) Frankfurt-Darmstadt Autobahn, Germany |
| Occupation | Racing driver |
| Spouse(s) | Elly Beinhorn (1907–2007) (m. 1936) |
Bernd Rosemeyer (14 October 1909 – 28 January 1938) was a German racing driver.
His father owned a garage and repair shop where young Rosemeyer worked on motorcycles and cars. Having started by racing motorbikes, Rosemeyer became a member of the Auto Union racing team with hardly any experience in racing cars. This was later considered a benefit as he was not yet used to the handling of traditional layout race cars. The Ferdinand Porsche-designed mid-engined Silver Arrows of Auto Union were fast, but hard to drive, and only he, Tazio Nuvolari and to a lesser extent Hans Stuck truly mastered the 500 bhp (370 kW) machines. Rosemeyer was also a very skilled mechanic, so, like Hermann Lang of Mercedes, he was able to give good technical feedback to Dr. Porsche and development engineer Eberhorst to further develop the Auto Union cars further and set his cars up for races to make them quicker and easier to drive.
In only his second ever Grand Prix, at the daunting Nürburgring, Rosemeyer took the lead from the great Rudolf Caracciola and was almost in sight of the finish line when he missed a gear and was overtaken. However in subsequent years he made up for this mistake by winning three consecutive races at the Nürburgring, one famously in thick fog. Later in 1935 he won his first Grand Prix at the Brno Masaryk Circuit in Czechoslovakia.
Whilst on the podium he was introduced to the famous aviator Elly Beinhorn. Their celebrity relationship was too good an opportunity to miss for the Nazi Party and Heinrich Himmler chose to make him a member of the SS, an 'honour' he would have been unwise to refuse. All German drivers were required to join the National Socialist Motor Corps, but Rosemeyer allegedly got away with never wearing a uniform.
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