The Porsches had five children: two daughters and three sons. Porsche’s father wanted his eldest son to take over his business, however, he died in an accident while working as a shop assistant. Ferdinand, as the second born son had to take over his father’s business. Porsche started working in his father’s factory when he was fifteen years old. While visiting a carpet factory in the village, his attention was drawn to the first electric light bulb he had ever seen. Porsche was amazed by the fact the factory seemed to be illuminated as if it was broad daylight, even though it was pitch-black outside. He showed great interest in learning more about the mysterious light. Porsche would go to the carpet factory every day to learn more details about the factory’s operations from the manager Ginzkey. His father did not approve of it and he wanted his son to stick to his own craft. In secrecy, Porsche started building electrical circuits in the attic of his house using parts he had carefully collected.

Workers in those days, both adults and children, used to work hard for twelve hours a day. Porsche’s mother Anna took it upon herself to protect his secret attic activities, until Anton, his father, caught him red-handed one day. Porsche’s father ended up with a minor burn on his leg caused by the sulfuric acid from a battery he angrily kicked while storming the room. His mother, who secretly approved of her son’s projects, suggested that he go to a school in Vienna. Since Vienna was far away, his father was firmly against the idea, but eventually agreed to let his son attend the Imperial Technical School in Reichenberg. Porsche’s father thus agreed to let his son continue his studies in electrical engineering. Even though he was an extremely strict employer, as a father, Anton recognized the boy’s talent. In that way Porsche started his studies, working in his father’s workshop during the day and travelling eight kilometers to school every evening.

When returning home one evening, Porsche’s father, Anton, was surprised by the blinding light coming from his house. Porsche had just finished constructing his own electrical generator and installed electrical lighting in the entire house. Since the village was small, the light Porsche made could be seen from afar. A few days later, Ginzkey visited Porsche and suggested to him and his parents that he be sent to study electrical engineering at the University of Vienna. Anton was by then already well aware of the boy’s talent, so he wholeheartedly allowed the boy to start his journey. When he was eighteen, with the help of Ginzkey, Porsche landed a job at Béla Egger & Co., a manufacturer of electrical equipment and machinery in Vienna.

Upon arriving in Vienna, Porsche still felt lonely because of his origins and accent, but he received encouragement and support from Aloisia Johanna Kaes, the librarian at the company where he worked. Porsche would go to his employer’s library to borrow books on physics and mathematics. He soon started liking Aloisia, whose father was also a craftsman from the present-day Czech Republic. They spent time walking the streets of Vienna, and she was his guide. Meetings with Aloisia had a great influence on Porsche’s future and the future of the whole automotive industry. One day when they were taking a walk as usual, they went to the Industrial Museum where there were numerous cars Porsche had never seen before. One exhibit particularly attracted his attention. It was a car made by Siegfried Marcus in 1875. The problem with this exhibit was that the engine Marcus had built into the car was too small, and therefore not powerful enough, so the car could not run. It was the first time Porsche realized that somebody should make an engine powerful enough to run a car. That is when he started being interested in museums of this type and ways to make engines with one-horsepower traction. At this time, Porsche had numerous ideas, which the company he worked for used to facilitate the operation of the plant equipment. His talent was rightfully rewarded when he was offered a high position as the head of the experimental and control department. He worked at the company, at the same time continuing his university studies and spending his free time researching engines.

I came into the world at the same time as the auto, if you will.

At a young age he started working at the Jacob Lohner & Co. factory, which started manufacturing cars in 1896. One of Ferdinand Porsche’s many masterpieces originates from that time. In 1898, he constructed the Lohner-Porsche, presented at the Paris Exhibition in 1900. This car broke several speed records in Austria with its 56km/h, and more powerful engines from Daimler helped break a few more speed records.

The expansion of cars was rapid in Europe at that time, making them a successful replacement for horse-drawn carriages. Jacob Lohner & Co., a leading manufacturer of such carriages, feeling threatened by the latest achievements, founded their own car manufacturing department in 1896.

At Jacob Lohner & Co., Porsche became assistant designer and began seriously studying car design. The Columbia Electric Car company had already made five hundred electric cars in the United States, which showed a number of defects. Porsche used the consecutive approximation method to remove the shortcomings of these cars. In just two months, he made a vehicle named the Lohner-Porsche, which was later exhibited at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900, where the Porsche won the Grand Prize. It was also the first car in history which had a four-wheel drive. In this car, he traveled from Vienna to Paris at an average speed of 14.5km/h. Following the Paris World Exhibition, Porsche achieved a victory at the speed hill rally in Semmering, with an average speed of 40km/h. He finished the race in one tenth of the time it had taken the previous race winners.

In 1923, when he was 42, Porsche transferred to the headquarters of the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft in Stuttgart, Germany, where he later worked as chief engineer.

Germany still hadn’t recovered from its defeat in the First World War, and was still fighting hyperinflation. Porsche found inspiration for hard work in these circumstances in order to make a car with high performance, showing the power of German technology to the whole world. But he faced a problem he wasn’t expecting at all: race discrimination. Stuttgart was a stronghold of conservatism and had a strong tendency towards rejection of foreigners. Extremely proud of their own country, Germany, the citizens of this city turned their backs on the Czech, Ferdinand Porsche. In this new, unfriendly environment, not even an honorary doctorate from Vienna University of Technology, nor his numerous previous successes meant a lot. He was exposed to open discrimination. Regardless of the difficulties he was facing, Porsche did not give in to desperation, nor did he give up on his goal. He was certain that he could gain their respect, if he made a really astonishing car. Mercedes was the “image” of the Daimler Company. In 1924, Porsche improved the Mercedes, adding a two-litre four-cylinder engine, and, with this new car, took part in the Targa Forio rally in Sicily. Some of the best Italian cars, such as Alpha Romeo and Fiat, took part in the competition. They all expected that Alpha Romeo would dominate the race, but the Daimler model, driven by Porsche, took the leading position. Porsche thus succeeded in winning the trophy to the great pleasure of the Germans, who were proud of the fact that a German car was able to secure a convincing victory.

When he returned from Italy, Porsche received another honorary doctorate, from the Technical College of Stuttgart, and also received a request to sign a document which would change his status from being an honorary citizen to having full citizenship.

In this way, Porsche succeeded in using his talent to overcome ethnic prejudices.

In 1931, he founded his own company, to which he brought many of his former associates in the fields of aerodynamics, transmission, engine development, etc. He also brought his lawyer, Anton Piëch, the father of Ferdinand Piëch, and maybe the most important of them all – his son Anton “Ferry” Porsche. With his team, he designed a new, small car, but no one was interested in the project until, in 1934, it occurred to Hitler that every German should have either a car or a tractor.

Porsche received an order to produce 3 cars based on his design. Daimler-Benz produced another 30. The new factory that produced these cars was named Volkswagen and the town was later named Wolfsburg. Hitler had a political motivation for the development of this car, which Porsche was not aware of.

The conditions for the development of the Volkswagen were clear: it would receive funds for development to the amount of twenty thousand marks per month over a period of 10 months.

Hitler had encouraged Porsche to renounce his Czechoslovakian citizenship in 1935, several years before his country was occupied by Nazi Germany.

Good design should be honest.

He delegated the development of sports cars to his son while he continued to work in Wolfsburg. In addition to cars, he also produced a few very successful war machines, perhaps the most important one being the Tiger tank. After the war, he went to work in France, and adjusted the Volkswagen to be more suitable for the French people, but the French manufacturers, led by Peugeot, did not like it, so Ferdinand Porsche, Anton Piëch and Ferry Porsche were arrested. Ferry was released while the other two men were taken and jailed in Dijon without trial, on the charge of being war criminals. During that period, his son tried to keep the small company in business. With the help of Carlo Abarth, the 360 Cisitalia model was designed. After 20 months in appalling conditions in Dijon a ransom was paid, and Porsche and Piëch were released, by then in seriously bad health. The Porsche 356 emerged soon ... but that's another story, the story of the Porsche Company. It should be noted that the 356, which had similarities with the VW Beetle, was produced in more than 78,000 units in its 17 years of production.

In 1951, Ferdinand Porsche died of a heart attack.

While many admirers of the Porsche brand around the world appreciate the cars from this manufacturer, opinions on the engineer and founder of the company, Ferdinand Porsche, are divided in his hometown of Vratislavice in the Czech Republic. In 2010, the city authorities opened a very modern museum dedicated to the designer of the Volkswagen Beetle, one of the best-selling models in the history of the automotive industry, and the German company, Porsche has regularly provided the museum with car models. However, the new local authorities elected in 2013 objected immediately to the town's glorification of Ferdinand Porsche, who had worked for the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler. Vratislavice, a town with 8,000 inhabitants, was populated by Germans from the Middle Ages, and merged with the former Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hitler then annexed the town to Germany in 1938. The town authorities have removed all welcome posters mentioning that it was the birthplace of Porsche, and have placed an inscription in the museum saying that he was a Nazi. After that, the Porsche Company withdrew all the cars it had put at the museum’s disposal. Because of the Nazi past of the Porsche founder, the authorities of the city of Atlanta in United States turned down a request from 2012 to name a street in the city after him.