AKTION P: Survival of 540K Mercedes-Benz (Chassis #408377) from World War II

For much of recorded history, the automobile has played an indispensable and inseparable role in some of the world’s most important and tragic events. Whether in the service of good or evil, many vehicles stand correctly today as cultural icons. This poster investigates the way the automobile becomes art and the reason for preservation of a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 540K. It does this by exploring the documents, blueprints, and photos of the history and survival of this unique relic of WWII. There is virtually no end to the photographic coverage of Hitler’s life and that means automatically that of the numerous Mercedes-Benz automobiles which he used throughout his career. And yet, it is simultaneously very spotty and nebulous. It is only by chance, by good luck rather than good management that one stumbles across photographs of cars mentioned in contemporary documents and nowhere else. The documentary record itself is a major problem: odds and ends and bits, yes, but no coherent whole. Mercedes-Benz cars play a particularly prominent role and that above all in the New World, or more precisely the United States. Maybe it is nothing more than the fascination exercised by evil that makes itself felt, but for the last four decades the market for the relics of the Third Reich have been one of constant boom, helped along by extravagant and repeatedly deliberate misleading claims advanced not merely by individuals but by public and private institutions of a supposedly professional nature and quality. I argue that with the prices Mercedes-Benz command at auction today, restoration and preservation of an automobile from the greatest conflict the world has ever known is vital not only for today but for future generations to learn from.