Huschke

Even now, three years after his death, I walk to my mailbox in California hoping to miraculously find a letter from Huschke there. For almost three decades, we maintained a very lively correspondence. His notes, cards and letters arrived from all corners of the world. He wrote the most wickedly funny vignettes about people we both knew in the motor racing world. His comments on political or racing events often made me laugh out loud. Through the years we had a lot of fun this way, which only stopped about a month before he died. Of course, our relationship had not started out as friends on an equal footing, but as employee and boss/mentor.

When I walked into his office on a sunny day four decades ago, I could not in my wildest dreams have imagined how this encounter would change my life and shape my future. Answering an ad for “multilingual help” for the press department, I drove out to Zuffenhausen and Porsche Werk II. I was told to see Rennleiter and Public Relations Director Baron Huschke von Hanstein. Up to this point, I had never heard of Huschke, but immediately thought that a man with such a sensational name would have to be something out of the ordinary. Before I could sit down in his tiny reception area to collect my thoughts for the first job interview of my life, he came running out of his office with outstretched arms and asked me to tell him my life story, “within four minutes and in English, please!” Halfway through my stammering, he asked me whether I could also brew coffee and speak French. Not bothering to look at my résumé, he told me that I was hired. He felt that I was a “natural” PR girl and Porsche was looking for young people to build up the company and grow with it. I left the interview walking on air, but slightly baffled because I had no idea what public relations was!