Elly Beinhorn Rosemeyer Dead at Age 100

[atr_hugo]

For most, the name in the title of this thread is meaningless. Elly Beinhorn Rosemeyer is not associated with anything we or even most of our parents remember or have run across. But Elly Beinhorn Rosemeyer was one of the last links to pre-WW II German racing greatness. Elly Beinhorn was Germany's 'Amelia Earhart', a remarkable flyer and celebrity in the 1920s before a brash, good looking, motorcyclist turned auto racer swept her away.

That racer was Bernd Rosemeyer, Auto Union driver extraordinaire, who was one of the greatest drivers of all time. Rosemeyer died while attempting a land speed record run on the autobahn in 1938. The Auto Union land speed cars were refinements of the wonderful Auto Union Grand Prix Silver Arrows designed by Prof. Porsche.

Mercedes Benz and Auto Union we're in a severe competition to take and retake the land speed record at the time. And Elly was left a widow long before she should have been. A link to a glorious past has been severed with Elly's passing.

There is some suggested reading (of course ; -). Chris Nixon's translation and update of Elly's biography of Bernd, "Mein Mann der Rennfahrer", is titled simply "Rosemeyer" and is a fascinating read.

There are a couple of links that are worth pursuing also:

http://www.ddavid.com/formula1/rose_bio.htm

and:

http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/beinhorn.html

and:

http://www.chron.com/class/cars/feat...le/073006.html

[Brookside]

Wonderful Hugo....just imagine what their life would be like today....hounded by papparazzi, on the cover of People and US, gossiped about on the cable talk shows...they would have been superstars.
btw- wasn't Bernd Rosemeyer's forte racing in wet weather?....was he the driver that was called "der Regenmeister?"

[atr_hugo]

Regenmeister you betcha - Bernd was incredible - and while Bernd ties this back to cars, Elly was a fascinating character in her own right, a truly 'modern' woman in an age when women were becoming increasingly 'self-aware'.