Ganz: How I Lost My Beetle (2019)

Directed by: Suzanne Raes | 85 minutes | documentary

Ask a hundred random passers-by about their favorite car. There is a good chance that the Volkswagen Beetle will be mentioned often. The round shapes, the characteristic roaring sound, the nostalgic look… many people had a Beetle as their first car and still remember it with love and nostalgia. But who actually invented the VW Beetle? The first Beetles are traditionally attributed to Nazi Germany, Hitler himself is even said to have made sketches for the car for the common people, but the history of the development of the Beetle goes back much further. The real designer of the beloved car is Josef Ganz. In ‘Ganz: How I Lost My Beetle’, filmmaker Suzanne Raes gives this car designer who died in 1967 the recognition he deserves.

Ganz was a Jewish engineer who was a car enthusiast. At the same time, he saw the arrival of the first cars with dismay. He called it horseless carriages, these angular vehicles were not for the common people. In his car magazine Motor-Kritik he criticized major car manufacturers and showed in practice how things should be done according to him. He worked for Ardie, Adler, and was hired as a consultant at Daimler-Benz and BMW. But he was also Jewish and that killed him to say the least.

‘Ganz: How I Lost My Beetle’ sheds light on Josef Ganz’s history from multiple angles and in different ways. The technology journalist Paul Schilperoord, who already put Ganz in the spotlight with his book “The secret of Hitler’s Volkswagen” (2014), makes an extremely valuable contribution to the documentary, but the interviews with Ganz’ relatives are also interesting. In addition, Raes uses archive footage, from news footage to photos and film material from Ganz’s extensive archive itself (he was an avid photographer). For example, he photographed car accidents, not out of sensation, but from a scientific point of view. See how it could be better.

‘Ganz: How I Lost My Beetle’ also becomes touching when Schilperoord’s mission, together with Josef Ganz’ great-nephew Lorenz, to restore an old Standard Superior (predecessor of the Beetle) goes against the grain, for example. That in Germany Ganz’s influence on the development of the Beetle is still downplayed, becomes clear when Schilperoord gives a lecture in Wolfsburg in the Volkswagen Museum. Painful… But not as painful as realizing that this man has never really been appreciated in his lifetime, while he was an absolute key figure in the German car industry in the 1920s and 1930s. It’s nice that the filmmakers have rewritten history and that the truth is now coming to light.