August Horch was a German engineer and automobile pioneer. He was born on October 12, 1868, and died on February 3, 1951. He founded a large company that later became Audi.

Beginnings

Horch was born in Winningen, a region in Germany known as Rhenish Prussia. His first job was as a blacksmith. Later, he studied at Hochschule Mittweida, which is also called Mittweida Technical College. After earning a degree in engineering, he worked in the shipbuilding industry. Horch began working for Karl Benz in 1896. In November 1899, he started his own company, A. Horch & Co., in Ehrenfeld, Cologne, Germany.

Manufacturing

The first Horch automobile was made in 1901. The company moved to Reichenbach in 1902 and then to Zwickau in 1904. In 1909, Horch left the company because of a disagreement and started a competing business in Zwickau. His new company was first called Horch Automobil-Werke GmbH. However, after a legal problem about the use of the name "Horch," he decided to create a new automobile company. A court ruled that "Horch" was already a registered trademark owned by Horch's former business partners, so he could no longer use it. As a result, Horch renamed his company Audi Automobilwerke GmbH in 1910. The name "Audi" comes from the Latin word for "Horch."

Post Audi

In 1920, Horch left Audi and moved to Berlin, where he worked in different jobs. In 1937, he wrote his autobiography, I Built Cars (Ich Baute Autos). He also worked on the board of Auto Union, the company that took over Audi Automobilwerke GmbH, which he had started. Horch stayed as an honorary executive at Auto Union when the company was reorganized in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, in the late 1940s. He remained in this role until his death in 1951, and he did not live to see the revival of the Audi brand a decade later under Volkswagen’s ownership.

Horch was honored as an honorary citizen of Zwickau. Streets in both Zwickau and his birthplace, Winningen, were named after his Audi cars. He was also given the title of honorary professor at Braunschweig University of Technology. A street called August Horch Street is located at Audi’s main factory in Ingolstadt.