The Beetle

A new book posits that a Jewish journalist should get credit for inventing the Volkswagen Beetle, reports Phil Patton in the New York Times (1/20/12). “The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz” by Paul Schilperoord “provides a picture of the automotive culture in Germany between the wars, with many, small, struggling companies.” It also challenges the “standard history — that Hitler hired Ferdinand Porsche … to design and build his Strength Through Joy car.” Instead it tells the story of a “people’s car” thought leader who “was arrested, chased from Germany and nearly airbrushed out of history.”

Paul says that the concept of a "people’s car" in Germany in the 1930s was almost a cliche, not unlike "personal computer" in 1980s America. So, there were lots of people pursuing the idea, including Josef Ganz, who wrote for a magazine called Motor-Kritik and "advocated a people’s car with an air-cooled engine placed at the rear, based on a backbone-type frame and using independent suspension at both ends." He favored a design advanced by a friend, Paul Jaray, “whose shape resembled what is now known as the Beetle.”

According to the book, "Ganz was the only one arguing for a combination of tubular chassis, rear engine, streamlined body and independent suspension — a formula that would produce a light, affordable, family car." Instead of thanking him, the Gestapo arrested him and threw him out of Germany. In 1965, Ganz gave an interview in which he claimed credit for inventing the Volkswagen, however lots of people were working on similar ideas in the ’30s. "The Beetle was an accumulation from many ideas and from so many people," says Paul Shilperoord, "that it is impossible to say one person was the originator of it."