Trabant und Wartburg
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In Eisenach, a city in the eastern part of Germany, the production of cars started as early as 1898. Before the Second World War the factories were owned by BMW. After the war Eisenach became part of the German Democratic Republic and all industries were taken over by the state. East Germany produced its own kind of cars whose design was regulated by the former Sowjetunion. In Eisenach the production of the Wartburg cars began in the 1950s. In the late 1950s a few Wartburgs were imported into Ireland. Between 1964 and 1976 more than 19 000 Wartburgs were exported to the UK. Wartburg cars were also exported to South America, the US, South Africa and China.
The Trabant was made in the Sachsenring factory in Zwickau. The factory had originally belonged to August Horch who used a latinised form of his name for his cars (Audi). Horch (1868-1951) had worked for Carl Benz before founding his own firm in Cologne in 1899. He quickly expanded and opened another factory in Zwickau where limousines, trucks and fire engines were produced. From 1910 onwards Horch began to manufacture the Audi. Horch was the first German car manufacturer to produce a car with a four stroke engine and he introduced the left hand drive in 1923.
For four years after the war factory workers in Zwickau were only allowed to carry out repairs on cars. The extreme shortage of raw materials in East Germany led to the construction of the Trabant whose entire bodywork was made of plastic. The Trabant 601 had a two stroke engine, was quite noisy, not exactly environmentally friendly and guaranteed a bumpy ride wherever you went. Nonetheless Trabis were in great demand and more than three million cars were produced between 1957 and 1990. In contrast to the West German cars the Trabi model changed comparatively little over the years. Another effect of the East German planned economy was that car buyers had to wait up to 15 years before they got a Trabant. In 1989 the huge queues of Trabis at Hungarian, Czech and finally inner German borders turned the Trabi into a symbol of the ardent desire of East Germans for freedom. At the same time the car became an epitome of the backwardness and poverty of East Germany. When the wall came down it was evident that Trabant and Wartburg cars had no chance of competing with West German cars and the plants were taken over by a West German car manufacturer. Although the production of Trabis ceased more than ten years ago about 100 000 are still on the road. The original Horch factory has been turned into a museum where pre-war models of Horch's luxury cars and Audi as well as Trabi models are on display.
HANOMAG
In 1835 Georg Egestorff established a machine factory and iron foundry in Hanover. A year later the company began to produce steam engines and factory machines. In 1924 the company was producing passenger as well commercial vehicles. In 1989 a Japanese firm bought 80% of the shares. The company was renamed Komatsu Hanomag AG and now specialises in commercial vehicles like wheel loaders.
