Franz Josef Popp

Franz Josef Popp was one of three men most responsible for the founding of BMW AG and served as the company's first General Director from 1922 until he was forced to relinquish the position in 1942. Historians differ on how to divide credit for BMW's founding among the several men involved, including Karl Rapp, Gustav Otto, Max Friz and Camillo Castiglioni, but Popp is generally seen as the prime organizational force behind the mobility company that grew from their early work. He was born on 14 January 1886 in Vienna and died on 29 July 1954 in Stuttgart. Under his two decades as General Director, BMW moved from its origins as a maker of aircraft engines, a business shaped by the aviation demands of the First World War, into a diversified industrial concern building motorcycles and automobiles as well, expanding through the acquisition of additional manufacturing capacity along the way. His tenure set the administrative pattern that let BMW survive the collapse of German aviation manufacturing after 1918 and re-establish itself as a vehicle maker.