Death travels with you
09/06/2011
Motor racing used to have exactly two sides: enthusiasm or total rejection.
The many serious accidents were certainly one reason for the rejection. The saying "Death is a driver" was absolutely justified. Almost all racing drivers at the time said goodbye to their lives as soon as they got into the car. They said goodbye to their families before every race. It was not uncommon for racing driver colleagues to have to vacate the hotel room of drivers who had been involved in accidents in the evening. Wives and girlfriends worried about their loved ones on the pit wall. Every time there was an interruption, there was immediate anxiety, and only when the driver reappeared could they breathe a sigh of relief.
Today everything is different. There are more fatal accidents in sports such as mountaineering or paragliding than in motor racing. Safety in motorsport has become extremely high, but that doesn't mean that nothing can happen anymore. A serious accident will certainly shake us up again today. And everything that moves (fast) also harbors dangers!
In this beautiful caricature, death accompanies Bernd Rosemeyer as he drives his Auto Union 16-cylinder racing car. However, Rosemeyer did not have an accident with this car, but with another vehicle on January 28, 1938 during a world record drive on the Reichsautobahn in Frankfurt-Darmstadt near Mörfelden-Walldorf!
But not all of them succumbed to racing death. Paul Pietsch, the founder of Motorpresse Verlag in Stuttgart, drove alongside Rosemeyer in the Auto Union works team in 1935. He survived his racing career in good health and turned 100 years young this year!
