Ivan Hirst

Major Ivan Hirst (1916-2000) was a British Army officer and engineer who was instrumental in reviving Volkswagen from a single damaged factory at Wolfsburg into a major postwar car maker. Born in Saddleworth, Yorkshire, he studied optical engineering at the University of Manchester and served in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during the Second World War. He arrived in Germany in the summer of 1945 with Colonel Charles Radclyffe when the British Army took control of Wolfsburg. The original plan was to scrap the factory for war reparations, but Hirst found a pre-war prototype Volkswagen in a remote workshop and realised the plant could build cars for the British Army. The works became known as No 2 REME Auxiliary Workshop, and ownership passed to the German Government on 6 September 1949. Hirst later worked in the German section of the Foreign Office and then at the OECD secretariat in Paris until he retired in 1975. He died on 10 March 2000.