August Horch
Co-founder 1909Background
August Horch trained at the Technical Academy in Mittweida in Saxony, worked in engine construction, and then ran motor vehicle production as operations manager at Carl Benz's company in Mannheim. On 14 November 1899 he founded A. Horch & Cie. in Cologne, moved the business to Reichenbach in 1902 and Zwickau in 1904, and left it in 1909 after disagreements with his board, which is how the Audi name came about.
Role at Audi AG
Audi does not begin with a single founding moment but with a corporate split and a forced rename. August Horch, one of Germany's automotive pioneers, founded A. Horch & Cie. in Cologne on 14 November 1899 after working as operations manager for motor vehicle production at Carl Benz's company in Mannheim. He moved the firm to Reichenbach in Saxony in 1902, registered it as a joint-stock company and relocated to Zwickau in 1904, and left in 1909 after disagreements with his board. He immediately started a second car company in Zwickau, but was legally barred from trading under his own surname. By the account Audi still tells, the son of a business partner was doing Latin homework in the room where the naming question was being argued and pointed out that Horch means listen in German, so the name could be translated into Latin: Audi. Audi Automobilwerke GmbH Zwickau was registered in 1910, and Audi cars won the Austrian Alpine Rally three years running from 1912 with the Type C. On 29 June 1932, at the initiative of Saxony's state bank, Audi merged with DKW, Horch and the car division of Wanderer Werke to form Auto Union AG, then the second largest motor manufacturer in Germany. The four interlocking rings on today's Audi grilles stand for those four companies. August Horch was born in 1868.