Siegfried Marcus was born on 18 September 1831 in Malchin, Mecklenburg, the son of well-off Jewish parents, and is counted among the earliest pioneers of the motor car despite decades in which a number of historians promoted an exaggerated "Marcus legend." Largely self-taught in technical matters, he began his career in 1848 with Werner von Siemens in Berlin, working on the development of telegraphic apparatus. In 1852, at the age…
