150th Birthday of Bertha Benz

Bertha Ringer was born in Pforzheim on May 3, 1849 and was 23 when she married Karl Benz on July 20, 1872. She passed away 55 years ago, on May 5, 1944, two days after celebrating her 95th birthday in Ladenburg, in the state of Baden, where the family finally settled.

History is punctuated by the efforts of committed women who have made significant contribution to the life's work of their famous husbands. One such figure is Bertha Benz, the resolute lifetime companion of Karl Benz, the father of the automobile.

Without her strong will and unshakeable belief in the success of her husband - and a healthy dose of nerve -- the Benz company may never have prospered. Berha Benz gave her husband all the support she could, driving him on when the brilliant inventor and design engineer suffered serious technical setbacks and increasing self-doubt about the direction his life's work was taking.

Even during the engagement before her marriage to Karl Benz, Bertha made a determined and selfless decision which was to prove crucial to her husband-to-be. When it was revealed that Karl Benz had been maneuvered into an almost untenable financial situation by a business partner, Bertha Benz barely hesitated before prematurely paying in her dowry. Although not a huge amount of money, it was enough to buy out the partner and secure all future decision-making powers for Karl Benz.

Although his work was constantly afflicted by one setback or another, Karl Benz was given constant strength by Bertha's unshakeable belief in him and his invention and pushed on regardless. On January 29, 1886 he applied for a patent for his three-wheeler with a gas engine. This represented an important historical milestone, in which Bertha Benz played a considerable role.

The patent specification (DRP. No. 37435) is recognized today as the birth certificate of the automobile. Karl Benz went on to build further, perfected versions of his "patent motor car." Despite a mostly enthusiastic reception from the public, the commercial success he craved remained elusive.

Once again he became wracked by self-doubt and again it was his wife who found a way out. She realized that the general public remained inherently suspicious about the feasibility and reliability of this driving machine, which people saw as powered by secretive, "devilish" forces. The dynamic Bertha reasoned that the only way to convince people that the motor car would actually work was to prove it to them in practice.

Early one August morning in 1888 -- and without the knowledge of her husband -- she set off in Karl's three-wheeler with the couple's two sons on the journey from Mannheim to Pforzheim. As darkness fell, the intrepid trio arrived safe and well in Pforzheim. They then sent Karl a telegram to tell him that they had successfully completed the first long-distance journey in his motor car.

News of this sensational event spread like wildfire. Two kids and a woman in a hissing and snarling, horseless carriage - it had to be the work of the devil incarnate! Yet, Bertha Benz had achieved what she had set out to do.

The critics were won over by the reliability of the Benz motor car and it had become the talk of the town. Karl Benz was later to write in his memoirs: "Only one person stood by me during those times when I was heading towards the abyss. That was my wife. With her bravery and courage she could always find new hope."