Bäumer at the wheel of the Mercedes when he had his driver test at Monza, 1937.
Graham Gauld talks to Maserati 300S author Walter Bäumer
Two years ago Walter Bäumer Jr. launched his tome on Maserati and in particular to the Tipo 300S and since then he has been working on an equally complicated book on the Maserati A6G 2000 Zagato models. However,If you are of a certain age the name Walter Bäumer might mean something to you for there was a Walter Bäumer who raced for Mercedes-Benz in 1938. He was the author’s uncle.
Young Walter is a very amusing and affable enthusiast who specializes in Maserati history (www.internationalMASERATIresearch.com) but about a year ago we talked a bit about his family and particularly his uncle.
He started out racing a BMW Dixi ,which was the Austin 7 built under license by BMW back in the 1930s, but he was so successful, by winning 93 races in that class, that in 1936 he was offered a contract by the Austin Motor Company to race an Austin 750 Monoposto in Europe. He took part in a number of voiturette-events with reasonable success while his brother Werner became his manager and business adviser.
Walter Bäumer at the wheel of the Austin 750 single seater in the Voiturette race at Bern in 1936.
However Bäumer’s big break came when he was invited to a test session with Auto Union at the Nurburgring in 1937 alongside some other up and coming drivers. Though he drove well he unfortunately crashed the car and so was not considered for the team.
He was devastated but the team manager remarked that they had an old Alfa Romeo that Paul Pietsch had raced. So Bäumer bought the Alfa in order to become a private entrant in grand prix racing. However, he then received an invitation from Mercedes Benz to test their car at Monza and was chosen to join the team for the 1938 season. So he never raced the Alfa. In the next two years he came to action as a junior driver for the Mercedes team and raced in the German Grand Prix, the Swiss Grand Prix, in Donington and in the last Grand Prix in Belgrade on the day WWII was declared.
The onset of World War II cut his racing career short but Walter Bäumer actually shared the winning BMW Coupe with Huschke von Hanstein in the 1940 Grand Prix of Brescia – the renamed Mille Miglia.
Young Walter explained that most of the leading sportsmen in Germany had been made members of the NSKK which was not, as has sometimes been suggested, an offshoot of the SS, but a separate group formed by the governing National Socialist party. Each of the members was, however, given an honorary SS rank. Walter Bäumer was not very pleased about this situation and on the photo of the winning BMW-team in Brescia, his uncle was the only driver refused to wear any Swastica on his overalls. A Little later BMW had plans to race two of their winning MM-cars in Brasov, Romania. They practiced but due to the war-situation the race was canceled.
In action in practice for the 1939 Swiss Grand Prix with the Mercedes Benz spare car. He is leading Hermann Muller’s Auto Union.
When WWII started Mercedes Benz arranged that their drivers were given jobs that kept them out of the action and Walter Bäumer was made chauffeur to a German general in the South of France. In 1941 Bäumer drove the general back to Germany on leave and whilst waiting in his hometown he picked up one of his numerous girl friends in his own 500K Mercedes Benz and took her out for dinner . The Mercedes had been bought from the factory and had previously been owned by his team mate Manfred von Brauchitsch. It was a wet night and when driving along a road in the countryside the girl friend leaned over to kiss Walter on the cheek but he turned and kissed her. However, when he looked back he was coming into a corner and the car went off the road. The door flew open and Walter Bäumer fell out of the car on to a sharp fence post and was killed. When his uncle’s body was taken back to the family house, Walter’s aunt told him, two SS men arrived with a black uniform and insisted that Bäumer be buried in an SS uniform. Bäumer and most of the other drivers had refused to join the Fahrer SS and his father, was incensed by the demand that his son be buried in an SS uniform. He waited until the two SS officers left and then stripped off the black uniform and put on Walter Bäumer’s civilian clothes to be buried. The 500K was not much damaged and taken to the local Mercedes dealer. He declared the car as totally demolished to the SS and transported it to the house of the Bäumer family where it survived the war hidden behind big wooden boxes and sold to a journalist in the late 40s.
Many years later, in 1976, Walter Bäumer Jr. met the woman who gave his uncle the fateful kiss. She still remembered the tragic situation with tears in her eyes.
Perhaps one day we can persuade Walter Bäumer to write a history of his uncle and the Mercedes and Auto Union racing drivers from before the war. Are you reading this, Walter ?
Walter Bäumer’s new book on Maserati A6G Zagatos will be available soon from Dalton Watson.
How about the www and Henann Lang info that Baumer was driving a Tatra V8 (some sources say even on his own driveway) when he was killed.
I would appreciate an answer.