Edgar
Barth

Edgar Barth was born in Herold on 26 January 1917. He started out racing DKW motorcycles before moving on to BMW sports cars. Driving the works car of EMW, the make that grew out of the East German BMW factory, he won the East German Formula 2 championship in 1952 and 1953.

In 1953 he was allowed to enter three races in the West. He finished fifth in the Eifelrennen, which was not part of the World Championship, but retired from both the Avusrennen and the German Grand Prix, his first World Championship round. In 1957 he moved to the West and drove in Formula One on an occasional basis for the Porsche works team. His World Championship starts for Porsche came in 1957, 1958 and 1960, and he finished seventh in the 1960 Italian Grand Prix. His final start was the 1964 German Grand Prix in a Cooper-Climax run by Rob Walker Racing, where he did not reach the finish. In all he took part in five World Championship races.

Outside Formula One, he won the Targa Florio with Wolfgang Seidel in 1959. Driving for Porsche, he took the European Hillclimb Championship in 1959, 1963 and 1964. He also competed at the Le Mans 24 Hours on a number of occasions and finished fifth in the 500 kilometres of the Nürburgring in 1960 in a BMW 700.

Edgar Barth died on 20 May 1965. His son Jürgen Barth became an engineer at Porsche, also raced, and won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1977.

Source: Wikipedia, “Edgar Barth”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.