Fascinating F1 Fact: 72

Wilhelm Höttl was a Nazi, a member of the party in Austria and a Sturmbannführer in the SS security service, known as the Sicherheitsdienst, during the war years. In this role he was responsible for counter espionage operations in Eastern Europe, based in Budapest. In 1945, when he was 30 and the Third Reich was falling apart, Höttl made a clever decision. He contacted America’s intelligence agency, the OSS, and agreed to turn himself in to them. As a consequence of this he figured prominently in the Nuremberg Trials – as a prosecution witness. This also meant that he was released from custody in 1947 when he became involved in intelligence work, running two US-controlled spy networks in the Russian occupied zones in eastern Austria, in the early Cold War years.

At the same time, he opened his own private secondary school in Bad Aussee, expanding to accept boarders in 1955, when the occupation of Austria ended and his spy networks were no longer required.

The aim of the school was to take troublesome Austrian teenagers and get them through the matura, the examination before graduation, at the age of 18.

In his spare time he wrote books under the name Walter Hagen about some of his wartime activities.

Höttl‘s school quickly grew to around 400 pupils, including 320 boarders. Austrian society did not seem to mind about the past and wealthy Austrians felt that discipline was the right thing for their troublesome children. Discipline and lots of sports.

The Höttl school produced no fewer than four Grand Prix drivers in the era, including two World Champions…

Jochen Rindt and Helmut Marko were contemporaries and, a few years afterwards, Niki Lauda and Harald Ertl passed through the same corridors. It is often forgotten that when Lauda crashed at the Nurburgring in 1976, his old classmate came to his rescue. Arturo Merzario is often credited with having saved Lauda, but he himself said that it was Ertl’s bravery, dashing into the fire, that gave him the courage to do what he went on to do. Brett Lunger, a Vietnam War veteran, and Guy Edwards also played roles in saving Lauda from the flames.

Ertl is not remembered for the rescue of Lauda, but rather for his exuberant Chase Carey-ish handlebar moustache, although he had a full beard as well. It was all rather Germanic…

In fact, Ertl was an Austrian and renowned as a charming individual. His results in F1 did not reflect his talent, rather his budget…

Born in Zell am See, the picturesque lakeside town , to the south of Salzburg and the Berchtesgaden Alps, in the summer of 1948 (Lauda was born in February 1949), Ertl was the son of a civil engineer whose career had led him to the city of Mannheim in 1964, when Harald was 16. After boarding school Ertl studied business in Karlsruhe and then borrowed the money he needed to buy a Kaimann Formula Vee car. He was quick but tended to have accidents. He worked as an automotive journalist and also earned money driving touring cars in the Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft, notably with Schnitzer and Alpina. In F3 he drove a Lotus, a GRD and even a little-known Rheinland F3 car, while Team Obermoser Jorg (later to build TOJ chassis) ran him in Formula 2. His biggest win came with Derek Bell in the 1973 Tourist Trophy in an Alpina BMW.

In 1975 he found sponsorship from the Warsteiner brewery to get a chance in Formula 1 in 1975. He bought an ex-Alan Jones Hesketh 308 from the factory and it was painted up in the gold livery of the beer company. Ertl finished eighth first time out at the Nurburgring and ran well at Monza as well, despite being a lap down because of an scheduled pit stop. This was promising and so plans were laid for a full season with the Hesketh team in 1976. It would be a disappointing year, although he came close to scoring a point at the British GP. Two weeks later came Lauda’s crash an he would finis eighth again in the wet in Japan. He stayed with Hesketh in 1977, with backing from the tool company Heyco, but left when the money ran out. He would reappear in 1978 in a Sachs-sponsored Ensign. At Hockenheim in 1978 he was running in sixth place with three laps to go, after a long battle with the new boy Gilles Villeneuve in a McLaren, when his engine failed and the car stopped in the stadium area. There would be one of two appearances with ATS after that but he did most of his racing in touring cars.

In April 1982 he planned to spend the Easter weekend with his family on an island just off the coast of northern Germany, near the Danish border. His brother in law Dr Jörg Becker-Hohensee owned a six-seater single-engined Beechcraft Bonanza plane and the plan was to fly from Mannheim for the holiday. Harald and his wife Vera, their son Sebastian, his sister Gabi Becker-Hohensee and his niece Alexandra. They had just passed over Frankfurt when there was an engine problem. Becker-Hohensee crash-landed in a field near Giessen. Alas, all three of the Becker-Hohensees and Ertl were killed in the crash. Vera and Sebastian were injured but survived.