Dipl.-Ing. Josef Ganz (1898-1967) was the engineering father of the Volkswagen Beetle - the most famous and enduring car ever built - and laid many of the foundations for lightweight modern motorcars.

Josef Ganz was born in a Jewish family with a Hungarian mother and a German father in Budapest on July 1, 1898 and was already fascinated by technlogy at an early age. After relocating to Germany in 1916 and serving in the German army during the First World War, Ganz started a mechanical engineering study.

During this time, he became inspired with the idea of building a small people's car for the price of a motorcycle. Josef Ganz made his first Volkswagen design sketches in 1923, designing an innovative small lightweight car with a mid-mounted engine, independent wheel suspension and an aerodynamic body, but lacked the money to build a prototype. Therefore, he passionately started publishing articles on progressive car design in various magazines. 

Shortly after his graduation in 1927, Josef Ganz was assigned as the new editor-in-chief of Klein-Motor-Sport. He used this magazine, which he renamed into Motor-Kritik in January 1929, as a platform to criticize heavy, unsafe and old-fashioned cars and promote innovative design and his concept for a 'Deutschen Volkswagen' ('German Volkswagen'). 'With the ardent conviction of a missionary', so post-war Volkswagen director Heinrich Nordhoff would later say, 'Josef Ganz in Motor-Kritik attacked the old and well-established auto companies with biting irony.' These companies fought against Motor-Kritik with law-suits, slander campaigns and an advertising boycott. However, every new attempt for destruction only increased the publicity for the magazine and Josef Ganz firmly established himself as the leading independent automotive innovator in Germany. 

Ironically, while German car manufacturers one by one took over the progressive ideas that had been published in Motor-Kritik since the 1920s, Josef Ganz himself was arrested by the Gestapo in May 1933 based on falsified charges of blackmail of the automotive industry. He was eventually released, but his career was systematically destroyed and his life endangered. This lead to his escape from Germany in June 1934 - the very month Adolf Hitler assigned Ferdinand Porsche to realize the prophecy of Josef Ganz: designing a mass-producible Volkswagen for a consumer price of 1,000 Reichsmark. The Standard Fahrzeugfabrik, which had recently released a new model with place for a family with two children, was now forbidden to use the name Volkswagen in its advertising.