born
October 14 ,
1909 in
Lingen ,
Lower Saxony ,
Germany – died
January 27 ,
1938 on the
Frankfurt /
Darmstadt Autobahn.
His father owned a garage and repair shop where young Bernd 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 normal race cars. This was later considered a benefit as he was not yet used to the handling of
Traditional Layout race cars. The
Mid-engine d
Silver Arrows of
Auto Union were hard to drive, and only he and Italian Legend
Tazio Nuvolari truly mastered these 500bhp beasts.
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 repassed. 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 aviatrix
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 an uniform.
Several sensational
Grand Prix Motor Racing victories in 1936 and 1937 (also in the
Vanderbilt Cup in the USA) made him popular not only in Germany. He won the
European Driving Championship in 1936.
His marriage to young flying ace
Elly Beinhorn added even more celebrity hype. It also made him learn to fly a private plane, something which many race pilots of later generations would do also. Before a testing session, he once used an now defunct airfield next to the ''Flugplatz'' section of the
Nürburgring as a landing strip, and rolled his plane to the pits via the race track - in opposite direction.
His son Bernd Jr was born in November 1937. Only ten weeks later, Bernd Snr was killed during a world speed record attempt.
Rosemeyer considered 13 to be his lucky number. He was married on July 13th 1936. 13 days later he won the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. His last Nürburgring victory came on the 13th June 1937. His last race victory came at his 13th start of the 1937 season at
Donington Park .
Bernd was killed during a world speed record attempt on the
Autobahn between
Frankfurt and
Darmstadt , on January 28th 1938.
Competing for the record on the same day against
Rudolf Caracciola , the Mercedes driver went first and set a new record of 268mph in the early hours of the day. Rosemeyer went out next in his Auto Union Streamliner despite report that the wind was picking up. After two preliminary runs he was on his third and final attempt at 11:47am when the car was probably caught by a gust of wind or an unforeseen aerodynamic effect and skidded to the left and then to the right and off the road. Rosemeyer was thrown out of the car that was somersaulting through the air, and died at the roadside.
Today, there is a monument near a rest area, roughly where his car left the road due to wind gusts. A sign states that it is 70 meters away. It was hidden in bushes which were removed recently, and is apparently visited frequently as a foot path leads there.
