Mac Goldsmith: a Jewish career in the German automobile industry (1925 - 1936)

A review of the literature focusing on the contribution of Jewish Germans to German society reveals a peculiar discrepancy. Whereas there is no lack of documentation on Jewish architects, historians, writers, musicians, scientists, and politicians, there is an astonishing scarcity of material on the engineering profession.1 Biographies are even rarer with only Erik Eckermann’s Nathan S. Stern being available.2 While it is certainly worth analysing the reasons for such underrepresentation of engineers and technicians in German-Jewish historiography (the specific historical developments that barred Jews from entering many professions and the resulting “common clichés”3 as well as the scarcity of source material come to mind),4 the purpose of this essay is to begin filling such gaps by providing a critical account of the career of one Jewish engineer: Mac Goldsmith.