WOLFSBURG'S MIRACLE BUG

Faced with the dismantling of its vast plants and apartments, this German industrial city was transformed by two men and one very special car

- MICHAEL SCHIEßL

The atmosphere in Wolfsburg in 1949 was depressing, as journalist JA Elten wrote in a report for the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 22 January: ‘Dominated by barracks-like, unadorned apartment blocks, criss-crossed by well-worn footpaths and splinter ditches, covered with junk, rabbit holes and individual allotment gardens.’

The impact of the air raids that had destroyed a good two-thirds of the city more than four years earlier still reverberated through daily life. The inhabitants, numbering 25,000 in total, included 10,000 refugees and nearly 1000 families living in simple shacks; this fragmented and deprived environment was said to risk disenfranchising people from society, referred to locally with the term homo barackensis.

After the war, the British occupying forces confiscated almost the entire city because it represented former National Socialist assets. Local housing was hard to come by and the economy stagnated. The occupying powers had originally planned that the Ford factory in Cologne should meet the demand for cars in Germany, and all others should be dismantled. However, the Volkswagen works had survived the bombing raids relatively unscathed and had been producing the Beetle since 1945.