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Emil Jellinek-Mercedes | |
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| Born | Emil Jellinek (1853-04-06)6 April 1853 |
| Died | 21 January 1918(1918-01-21) (aged 64) |
| Occupation | Engineer |
| Known for | Mercedes car brand |
Emil Jellinek, known after 1903 asEmil Jellinek-Mercedes (6 April 1853 – 21 January 1918), was an automobile entrepreneur of theDaimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG), responsible in 1900 for commissioning the first modern automobile, theMercedes 35hp. Jellinek created theMercedes trademark in 1902, naming it in honor of his daughter,Mercédès Jellinek.[1][2]
The trademark developed into the companyMercedes-Benz, and the marque became one of the largest car brands in the world. Jellinek lived inVienna,Austria, then later moved toNice, on theFrench Riviera, where he wasGeneral Consul ofAustria-Hungary.
Jellinek was born inLeipzig,Germany, the son ofAdolf Jellinek (sometimes known as Aaron Jellinek). His father was a well-knownCzech-Hungarianrabbi and intellectual in theJewish communities of Leipzig and Vienna. Jellinek's mother, Rosalie Bettelheim (born 1832 inBudapest, died 1892 inBaden bei Wien), was an activerebbitzen. He had two brothers, both of whom achieved fame: Max Hermann Jellinek, as alinguist, andGeorg Jellinek, as an internationallaw teacher. His sisters were Charlotte and Pauline.[citation needed]
The family moved, shortly after Jellinek's birth, to Vienna. He found paying attention to school work difficult and dropped out of several schools, including Sonderhausen. His parents were displeased with his performance, while Jellinek began to indulge in practical jokes. In 1870, when he was 17, his parents found him a job as aclerk in aMoravian railway company, Rot-Koestelec North-Western. Jellinek worked two years before being fired by management, upon discovery that he had been organising train races late at night.[citation needed]
In 1872, when 19 years old, he moved toFrance. There, through his father's connections, Schmidl, the Austro-Hungarian Consul inMorocco, requested his services, getting Jellinek diplomatic posts atTangier andTetouan, successively. In Tetouan, he metRachel Goggmann, an Algerian-born illegitimate daughter of aSephardi mother, Meriem Azoulay, adopted by the husband of the mother, Moise Goggmann (Gogman), a Jew from Lorraine.
In 1874, Jellinek wasconscripted for military service in Vienna, but was declared unfit. He resumed his diplomatic career as Austrian vice-consul atOran,Algeria, and also began trading Algeriantobacco to Europeans, in partnership with Rachel's father.
He also worked as an inspector for the FrenchAigleinsurance company and traveled to Vienna briefly in 1881 at the age of 28 to open one of its branch offices. Returning to Oran, he married Rachel, and their first two sons Adolph and Fernand were born there.
Two years later, in 1884, Jellinek joined the insurance company full-time and moved with the family toBaden bei Wien, Austria, where they lived in the house of a wine dealer named Hanni. His first daughter, Mercédès Jellinek, was born in Baden on 16 September 1889; the nameMercédès means "favor", "kindness", "mercy", or "pardon" in Spanish.[3] Rachel died four years later, and was buried inNice. Even so, Jellinek came to believe the name Mercedes brought good fortune and called all his properties after it. One of his sons wrote:He was as superstitious as the ancient Romans.
Jellinek's insurance business and stock-market trading became very successful, and they started to spend the winters inNice on the fashionableFrench Riviera, eventually moving there and establishing links with both international business people and the local aristocracy.
Helped by his diplomatic career, he became the Austrian Consul General in Nice, and began selling automobiles, mainly French makes, to European aristocrats spending winter vacations in the region. Associated with the automobile business wereLeon Desjoyeaux, from Nice, and Alsatian cyclist Karl Lehmann, who acquired the sole French agency and adopted the alias of "C. L. Charley".[4] Jellinek acquired a large mansion which he namedVilla Mercedes to run the business from and by 1897 he was selling about 140 cars a year and started calling them "Mercedes". The car business was by now more profitable than his insurance work.
It was in Nice that Jellinek became enthralled by the automobile, studying any information that he could gather about it and purchasing successively: aDe Dion-Bouton, aLéon-Bollée Voiturette, both three-wheelers, and a four-seatBenzmotorized-coach. Jellinek greatly admired automobile designerWilhelm Maybach's work. He promised to buy a shipment of 36 automobiles for 550,000 goldmarks if Maybach could design a great race car for him following his specifications. The prototype was finished in December 1900 and, in 1901 went on to have a string of racing successes. Its engine was baptized Daimler-Mercedes.
In 1899, he married Madelaine Henriette Engler (Anaise Jellinek), and had four more children: Alain Didier, Guy, Rene and Andree (Maya).
Seeing an advertisement for a DMG car in the weekly magazineFliegende Blätter, Jellinek, now aged 43, travelled toCannstatt, (nearStuttgart), in 1896, to find out more about the company, its factory, and the designersGottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. He placed an order for one of theDaimler cars and took delivery in October of that year.
The car, aPhoenix Double-Phaeton with 8 hp engine, could reach 24 km/h (15 mph). Maybach had designed theDMG-Phoenix engine, which featured four cylinders for the first time in a car, in 1894, when staying at Stuttgart's former Hermann Hotel.
DMG seemed a reliable enterprise, so Jellinek decided to start selling its cars. In 1898, he wrote to DMG requesting six more cars and to become a DMG main agent and distributor. In 1899, he sold 10 cars and 29 in 1900. Among French car-makers such asPeugeot,Panhard & Levassor and other makers licensed to sell Daimler-engined vehicles in France there was a shortage of cars, and Jellinek benefited by being able to beat other suppliers' lengthy waiting-times.
Jellinek kept contacting DMG's designers with his ideas, some were good, but often with harangues, such as "Your manure wagon has just broken down on schedule"; "Your car is the chrysalis and I want the butterfly"; and "Your engineers should be locked up in an insane asylum."[5] This annoyed Daimler, but Maybach took notice of many of his suggestions.
Every year in March, theFrench Riviera celebrated a speed-week, attracting many members of the local high-society. The events included:
In 1899, Jellinek entered his cars in all of them. As the usage of pseudonyms was common, he called his race-team Mercedes and this was visibly written on the cars' chassis.Monsieur Mercedes became his personal alias and he became well known by it in the region.
Using the DMG-Phoenix, Jellinek easily won all the races, reaching 35 km/h (22 mph), but he was still not satisfied with the car.
| Long wheelbase. Wide track. | |
|---|---|
| Pressed steel chassis. | |
| Low center of gravity (lower engine). | |
| 75 km/h (45 mph). 35 hp (950 rpm). 300 to 1000 rpm (driver controlled). | |
| Light high-performance engine: 4 cylinders. Bore/stroke ratio: 116x140 mm. Displacement: 5918 cc. Cylinder heads part of the castings. Carburetor for each pair of cylinders. Controlled intake valves. Two camshafts. | |
| Low-voltageignition magnetos. | |
| Aluminium crankcase (pioneer), horizontally divided. | |
| Honeycomb radiator. | |
| Wheel steering. | |
In 1899, DMG commissioned some engineers including Wilhelm Bauer, Wilhelm Werner and Hermann Braun, to investigate the possibility of using the Phoenix for sporting events as at that time car racing was the best way of generating publicity in Europe.
On 30 March 1900, Wilhelm Bauer decided spontaneously to enter theNice-La Turbiehill climb but crashed fatally after hitting a rock on the first turn while avoiding spectators. This caused DMG to abandon racing.
Nonetheless, Jellinek came to an agreement with DMG on 2 April 1900, by promising the large sum of 550,000Goldmark if Wilhelm Maybach would design a revolutionary sports car for him, to be called theMercedes great right, of which 36 units had to be delivered before 15 October. The deal also included an order for 36 standard DMG 8 hp cars. Jellinek also became a member of DMG's Board of Management and obtained the exclusive dealership for the newMercedes for France, Austria, Hungary, Belgium and United States of America. Jellinek had some legal problems over the use of the Daimler name in France with Panhard Levassor who owned the Daimler licences for France, and the use of the Mercedes name put an end to that problem.
Apparently Jellinek laid down a strict specification for theMercedes stating "I don't want a car for today or tomorrow, it will be the car of the day after tomorrow". He itemized many new parameters to overcome the problems found in many of the ill-designed "horseless carriages" of the time which made them unsuitable for high speeds and at risk of overturning:
The model would be officially called theDaimler-Mercedes which the DMG chairman accepted readily as it overcame the problem of the Daimler name in France being owned by Panhard & Levassor.
Over the next few months, Jellinek oversaw the development of the new car at first by daily telegrams and later by traveling to Stuttgart. He took delivery of the first one on 22 December 1900, at Nice's railway station – it had already been sold to theBaron Henri de Rothschild who had also raced cars in Nice.
In 1901, the car amazed the automobile world. Jellinek again won the Nice races, easily beating his opponents in all the capacity classes and reaching 60 km/h (37 mph). The director of theFrench Automobile Club,Paul Meyan, stated: "We have entered the Mercedes era", a sentiment echoed by newspapers worldwide.
The records set by the new Mercedes amazed the entire automobile world. DMG's sales shot up, filling its Stuttgart plant to full capacity and consolidating its future as a car making company. The number of employees steadily increased from 340 in 1900 to 2,200 in 1904. In 1902,[6] on 23 June, the company decided to use theMercedes name as the trademark for its entire automobile production and officially registered it on 26 September.
As well as shaving off his side-whiskers, the overjoyed Emil Jellinek, in Vienna in June 1903 at the age of 50, changed his name toJellinek-Mercedes, commenting: "This is probably the first time that a father has taken his daughter's name".[7] From then on, he signed himselfE.J. Mercédès.
Jellinek and his enthusiastic associates were distributing DMG-Mercedes models worldwide, six hundred were sold by 1909, making millions for DMG. He supplied cars to all 150 members of Nice's Automobile Club and also supported racing teams all over Europe. His life was absorbed by the business, spending much time away from home, and sending many telegrams.
As the 1900s continued, his passion for the Mercedes began to fade. He tired of the special requests being made by his highly demanding aristocratic customers. He also became disillusioned by DMG's technical department which he called "those donkeys" and built his own large repair facilities at Nice behindVilla Mercedes. Wilhelm Maybach, his favorite designer, left DMG in 1907. He also so angered DMG's chairman that in 1908 he permanently cancelled Jellinek's original contract.
His diplomatic career continued and he was Austro-Hungarian Consulate General in successively Nice (1907), Mexico, and Monaco. In 1909, when in Monte Carlo, Jellinek finally severed his commercial activities to concentrate on his consular work but did purchase some casinos in the region.
Just before war broke out in 1914, the Austrian government charged Jellinek for taxes on his French properties. The family then moved toSemmering, Austria. While being treated at a sanatorium inBad Kissingen by Dr. Von Dapper, he ceded the Baden mansion to his family, writing: "(The Baden Villa) disturbs me terribly, I cannot sleep and that is detrimental to my health!"
WhenAustria-Hungary entered war on 28 July 1914, Jellinek and his family stopped speaking French outside their property. Later that year, they moved to Meran (France) but there, he was accused of espionage for Germany, supposedly hiding saboteurs in his Mediterranean yachts. At the same time, the Austrians suspected his wife, Anaise.
Fleeing in 1917, they ended up inGeneva, in neutral Switzerland, where Emil Jellinek was temporarily arrested again. He stayed there until his death on 21 January 1918, at the age of 64. All his French properties were later forfeited. Since 1982, his remains have been resting near Rachel's tomb, in Nice's Catholic Cemetery.
A decade after his death, in 1926, amid the German post-war crisis, DMG merged withBenz to become theDaimler-Benz company with their automobiles calledMercedes-Benz. Daimler-Benz purchasedChrysler in 1998 and became DaimlerChrysler until August 2007, when Chrysler was sold off toCerberus Capital Management. The company is now known as theMercedes-Benz Group.
In the Mercedes global boom in 1900, Jellinek-Mercedes purchased several properties including:
His most important properties were:
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