The journey is an epic
– no petrol stations, no mechanics and an alarmed population who see the
vehicle as the work of the devil. But it is the publicity breakthrough the Benz
invention needs, even though Bertha has risked her relationship with Carl by
setting off without his knowledge. It makes a fitting climax to the story of a
fascinating and determined woman (Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of
The Witness)
South African writer Penny Haw has written The Woman at the Wheel, a fictional account of the life of Bertha Benz. She was the wife of Carl Benz who is celebrated as the father of the motor car, having built the first working prototype in the late 1880s. Eventually the company he founded would evolve into the Mercedes-Benz marque. I
In Haw’s telling which is largely based on known facts, when Bertha was ten years old, she read her father’s entry in the family Bible at the time of her birth – “Unfortunately only a girl again” – and this spurred her on to be independent-minded and determined to make her own mark on the world.
We see Bertha growing up, and then, at the time when her parents were looking for a suitable young man for her to marry, she met Carl. He was not altogether what her family had in mind, being somewhat eccentric and difficult, and consumed by his dream of building a “horseless carriage”. He also had no money, and finding suitable backers for his plans would be an ongoing problem through the early years of his marriage to Bertha, and beyond.
But Carl stuck to his ambitions, with the fiercely loyal Bertha working at his side, trying to smooth his path and cope with his undeniably difficult personality, and eventually get formidable opinion-makers convinced that he was on to a viable plan. Carl might have had the inventive brain, but Bertha was the one who knew how to oil the metaphorical wheels.
Bertha’s story is fascinating, and is now being recognised in contemporary Germany. But there are times in the middle of the book when Haw becomes too bogged down in the minutiae of both the personal and business life of the couple, and the story becomes repetitive and the telling clumsy.
Also the character of Carl never really comes to life on the page. Things look up towards the end when Bertha and her two young sons take matters into their own hands and drive the three-wheeled “motorwagen” the hundred kilometres from Mannheim where the Benz family lives to Pforzheim where Bertha grew up.
The journey is an epic – no petrol stations, no mechanics and an alarmed population who see the vehicle as the work of the devil. But it is the publicity breakthrough the Benz invention needs, even though Bertha has risked her relationship with Carl by setting off without his knowledge. It makes a fitting climax to the story of a fascinating and determined woman. - Margaret von Klemperer
Woman At The Wheel is published by Sourcebooks Landmark: ISBN 978-1-7282-5773-0
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