On this day: celebrating the life of Bernd Rosemeyer

He somehow convinced the team into signing him as a car racer, but they were anxious about running him in its first race of the year, at Avus – a circuit that was in reality two straight stretches of autobahn conjoined by 180deg turns, one of them banked to the extent that it resembled the motorcycling ‘wall of death’ on which Rosemeyer had once wowed crowds.

So of course the young man wrote every day on his boss’s office calendar “Will Rosemeyer race at Avus?” until eventually the exasperated Willy Walb scrawled back not “nein” but “ja!”.

A burst tyre put paid to his debut, but weeks later he was the talk of Germany as he gave Mercedes-Benz's legendary Caracciola a run for his money at the Nürburgring.

The Auto Union was very hard to drive, with a rear-mid-mounted Porsche V16 sending almost 400bhp to the primitive tyres on the rear axle, this layout resulting in unconventional handling, but many believe that this was a help rather than a hindrance to Rosemeyer, as he had no prior car experience whatsoever, whereas his rivals were having to adapt.

His first win came in Czechoslovakia, as a prelude to his all-conquering season of 1936, in which he won six races, among them three of the four that counted towards the European Championship, winning him that coveted title. His team-mates, veteran Hans Stuck and promising cadet Ernst von Delius, were very often many seconds adrift on hot laps.

His most impressive win was surely the 1936 Eifel Grand Prix at the infamous Nürburgring. He had overtaken the Alfa Romeo of Nuvolari from a rainy start, and then thick fog descended. Everyone slowed – except for Rosemeyer, who was now going 10sec faster than his Italian rival.

Beinhorn claimed this was due to his having extraordinary eyesight, as she once experienced first-hand as he drove them at high speed in his beloved Horch road car.

(It’s inescapable that this win earned Rosemeyer an appointment to the SS from Heinrich Himmler. This remarkable era of automotive engineering is in inextricably entangled with the Nazi Party in every way, and it should not be forgotten that the Auto Union and Mercedes teams were propaganda tools for this despicable regime. Rosemeyer was no Nazi, but it was an honour that no German could safely refuse. He never actually joined the party and never once wore his SS uniform; indeed, he took the brave liberty of instead wearing a suit to meet propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.)

Rosemeyer then got involved with Auto Union’s attempts to break road-car speed records, and in his first such session broke the world record for speed over 10 miles, hitting 233.89mph (and remember, this was in 1936!).

The pinnacle of his racing career came in 1937, as the Germans headed to New York for the Vanderbilt Cup. The tight, twisty circuit was far from suited to these cars, but Rosemeyer somehow pulled off a famous win, triumphing over the Americans with his driving as well as his innocent donning of knee-length socks, shorts and a green Tyrolean hat.

He endured a tough 1937 racing season overall but ended the year on a high as he became the first man to exceed 250mph – the effort of keeping the streamlined Auto Union tracking straight so great that he had to be lifted from the car semi-conscious.

Perhaps he should have taken that an omen, but his desire and enthusiasm for speed and daring could never be dampened. Despite the arrival of his first child, a son, in early 1938, he elected to attend another record-attempt session.

Mercedes’ Caracciola went first, before Rosemeyer set a new record of 268mph. Believing he could still improve, he went for another run, despite the wind having picked up. He lost control of the car, and even his famously cat-like reflexes and masterful car control weren’t enough to save him at around 270mph – the kind of speed that, staggeringly, wouldn’t be exceeded on any public road in the world until the 2010s.

“Rosemeyer had become an established ace; a great popular figure in Germany; with his name spoken by every child with bated breath as a veritable demon of speed,” eulogised Autocar’s John Dugdale at the time. “I have seen his boyish daring and excitability turn to a nervous energy so strong that he would hardly pose for a photograph, hardly stand still or appear to concentrate.”