The man who set up Volkswagen of America, was instrumental in founding Audi, formed joint-ventures in China, and saved Skoda has died at the age of 96.
Professor Dr Carl Horst Hahn was a former Volkswagen AG management board chair person and a member of the supervisory board for numerous national and international companies.
Current Volkswagen AG management board chair person Oliver Blume says Hahn was a great visionary and a great personality during his 40 years at the company setting the course at Volkswagen and laying the foundations for its current success.
“In the US, the VW Beetle became an icon,” Blume says.
“He was instrumental in founding the premium brand Audi. In a figurative sense he became one of the fathers of the Golf Generation. As Chair, he developed Volkswagen into an international, multi-brand group and, above all, demonstrated strategic vision with his involvement in China.
After Germany’s reunification, Saxony became a state-of-the-art location under his leadership. Volkswagen AG and Wolfsburg owe Hahn a great debt of gratitude and mourn with his family. Hahn was, is and will remain an integral part of the Volkswagen family,” Blume says.
Hahn was born on July 1, 1926 in Chemnitz into a Catholic family. His father was instrumental in the rise of DKW to become the largest motorcycle factory in the world and was one of the co-founders of Auto Union in 1932. Hahn survived the Second World War and then studied economics in Germany, Switzerland and England as well as political science in France. In 1952 he received his Ph.D. in Bern.
At the end of 1954, at the age of 28, Hahn came to what was then Volkswagenwerk GmbH and became assistant to the general manager, Heinrich Nordhoff. Hahn was sent to the U.S. in 1959 to set up Volkswagen of America. With the help of a marketing concept that was revolutionary at the time, he succeeded in increasing sales of the VW Beetle on the U.S. market to more than 650,000 vehicles.
The U.S. success led Hahn in 1964 – at the age of 28 – to the Volkswagen Board of Management in Wolfsburg, where he took over responsibility for global sales. In the same year, Volkswagen bought Auto Union from Daimler-Benz. At that time, Hahn pushed through a two-brand strategy: In 1967, the DKW Auto Union became the Audi brand, with its own product range and independent sales organization.
His career path brought him to Continental AG in 1972, initially as CEO, before he returned to Wolfsburg in 1982 to take over as Chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG. With his strategic decisions, foresight and intuition, Hahn set the course for Volkswagen’s rise to a global player.
Shortly after taking office, Volkswagen entered into an exclusive cooperation with the Spanish manufacturer SEAT. The resulting relocation of Polo and Passat production to Spain made it possible to increase Golf production in Wolfsburg and paved the way for the Volkswagen Group to return to profitability and to the leading position in Europe.
When Volkswagen bought SEAT in 1986, the group acquired a new and profitable brand. Only a few years later, Hahn succeeded in bringing the Czech brand Škoda into the group and thus took over the market leadership with Volkswagen in Central Europe after the collapse of communism.
During his time at Volkswagen, Hahn pursued a consistent globalisation strategy. The Chinese market, which he had on his agenda from the start as Chair, played a key role.
Hahn saw the potential and as early as 1983 Volkswagen began a test assembly of the Santana in Shanghai. A year later, Volkswagen signed a joint venture agreement with the Chinese government and the ground-breaking for a car factory in Shanghai took place. A second joint venture followed in 1991 with FAW in Changchun, which positioned Audi in the market.
Saxony had a special place in Hahn’s heart. Ever since he was a child, Hahn had been familiar with the region’s automotive tradition and believed in the opportunities it offered. After the Wall came down, he was one of the first to invest in the location by bringing Volkswagen to Zwickau. Today, the Zwickau plant has become a flagship location for Volkswagen for the transition to e-mobility.
At the end of 1992, Hahn handed over his office as Management Board Chairman to the former Audi CEO Ferdinand Piëch and moved to the company’s supervisory board, of which he was a member until June 1997.
Hahn remained active after his retirement. This included activities on numerous supervisory boards and the honorary chairmanship of the supervisory boards of Audi, Seat and Skoda.
The Wolfsburg Art Museum and its private financing go back to Hahn’s initiative. He was a member of the Board of Trustees and Board of Directors of the Antonius-Holling Foundation, the Ilsenburg Monastery Foundation, the Mayo Clinic Foundation in Germany and the Board of Trustees of the Volksbank BraWo Foundation.
In 2006 he founded the Carl and Marisa Hahn Foundation with his wife, who died in 2013. In addition to supporting those in need, the foundation is dedicated to early childhood education.
He was honorary professor at the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau (FH) and at the State University for Civil Engineering, Transport and Architecture (Faculty for Software Engineering), Bishkek, as well as a member of the board of the Lauder Institute of the Wharton School/University of Pennsylvania, of the international Advisory Board of the Salk Institute in California and the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain. Since 2014, the vocational school for business, administration and health in Wolfsburg has carried his name.
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