EThere are athletes for whom the special aspects of their career are condensed into a single image. There is such a picture by Hans Herrmann. It was created on August 2, 1959 in Berlin on the automobile traffic and practice road, or Avus for short – the first road in the world on which only cars were allowed to travel.
The Avus was opened in 1921. It was a toll racing and test track until 1940, after which it was also used as part of a normal motorway. There weren’t many corners on the race track. It went straight ahead for a good nine kilometers, then went straight back after a tight bend.
Car racing was dangerous everywhere at the time, but the Avus’ safety standards were already disreputable by 1959. Nevertheless, the German Grand Prix took place in the then divided capital and not at the Nürburgring as before and after.
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The Grand Prix was the sixth round of the World Championship and was held in two races. For the occasion, the British Racing Partnership team had hired a 31-year-old German who made his debut with the Mercedes factory team in the legendary Silver Arrows in 1954 and, after withdrawing from Grand Prix racing, tried out for Maserati and Cooper: Hans Herrmann.
Of the 15 drivers who competed, nine reached the finish of the first race after 30 laps. When it started for the second time later, everything went well for five laps. Then a spectacular accident occurred in the particularly narrow south bend, where there were many spectators.
The car with starting number eleven hit the straw bales that marked the entrance to the curve at the end of the straight. It shot into the air, rolled over, a wheel spun up, the driver was catapulted out of the open cockpit, he rolled away on the asphalt next to the car and watched the wreck as it continued to slide like a bystander: Hans Herrmann.
The scene was captured by several photographers. At the time, this was not a given. The black and white photos coined Herrmann’s nickname: “Hans im Glück”.
But they had an even greater impact. In the years that followed, when it came to illustrating the breakneck dangers of motorsport, they were brought out again and again. Herrmann’s accident on the Avus became a symbol of the sport’s proximity to death, precisely because the protagonist survived what seemed insane.
Hans Herrmann, born in Stuttgart in 1928, was often lucky in his life. At the end of the Second World War, at the age of 17, he was drafted into labor service and from there assigned to the Waffen-SS. On the way to the site, he managed to break away with four fellow riders and make his way home.
After the war he learned to be a pastry chef and was supposed to take over the café that his mother ran. But the passion for cars was stronger. At Porsche, Herrmann made it into the Mille Miglia team – a race that ran across Italy on public roads. Unimaginable today.
In 1954, Herrmann failed to brake in time at a railway crossing: he had the presence of mind to hit his co-driver Herbert Linge on the helmet so that he should duck. Crouching in the flat car, the two shot under the barrier and to the other side, just ahead of an approaching train. In the end they won the class in which they were registered.
Herrmann’s greatest success dates back to the late phase of his career: in 1970, at the age of 42, he won the 24-hour race at Le Mans in the pouring rain together with the Briton Richard Attwood. It was the first overall victory for Porsche in the endurance classic. Herrmann then ended his racing career, as he had promised his wife.
Hans Herrmann was later successful as a businessman in the automotive accessories industry. In 1991, he and his wife were victims of a kidnapping. They were released for a ransom. The case remained unresolved and file number XY couldn’t help either.
Hans Herrmann often got off lightly. He later often emphasized that the accident on the Avus in 1959, which gave him his nickname, had nothing to do with luck alone: When he realized that the brakes were failing, he deliberately steered the car into the straw bales, which he knew were heavy because it had previously rained heavily. So he wanted to divert the danger away from the spectators and himself as best he could. That was successful.
During the Schumacher years, Hans Herrmann was asked more often about the Formula 1 races, none of which he missed on television. As a former Porsche and Mercedes great, he enjoyed exceptional status. He was one of the last contemporary witnesses who was able to talk about the early years of motorsport, which he did gladly and vividly.
Hans Herrmann died on Friday night at the age of 97.
