This year it is 120 ago that Bertha Benz made her now famous long-distance journey. In August 1888, she and her two sons set off in the patent motor car designed by her husband, Carl Benz, and drove the 106 kilometers from Mannheim to the town of her birth, Pforzheim, returning to Mannheim a few days later. With the exception of one or two minor incidents, the patent motor car functioned perfectly. To mark this anniversary, the town of Pforzheim has unveiled a monument in honor of Bertha Benz. The sculpture, made by local artist René Dantes, is -in his words- “an expression of dynamic movement but also depicts a stylized representation of a Benz patent motor car and seated female figure, whose two elements fuse to form a single entity.” In our words: a fitting Monument to the Mother of all Motoring!
















photos courtesy Daimler AG

May  11, 2008 (Mother's Day!)