Clärenore Stinnes - What a woman . . !

Carl-Axel-Söderström (left) and Clärenore Stinnes (right) with the both Adler Standard 6 in Berlin 1929

Today I want to introduce you a, in my eyes, very awesome person. Today it would be her 110th Birthday, if she hadn't died in 1990. The person I'm talking about is none other than Clärenore Stinnes.
You never heard about her? So keep on reading, she really had an interesting life!

Clärenore was born in 1901 in Mühlheim an der Ruhr, Germany. As I could read in her book "Im Auto durch zwei Welten (In Car through two worlds)" she always had a passion for cars. But just think back, it was at the begining of the 20th Century, cars were very rare and not everyone was able to buy one. Thanks to her dad, a industrialist, she had the oportunity to repair them and just enjoyed the time she was able to spent with cars. At the age of 24 she took part at her first motor race and between 1925 and 1927 she had won 17 motor races.

She wanted to help the Car industry, to make the car more popular, worldwide, and started on the 25th May 1927 a travel no one did ever before - 47 000 km around the globe, by car!

Not everyone thought positive about that trip. Too dangerous, shes a woman and so on. . . She decided to use an Adler Standard 6. The whole crew consisted out of her, two mechanics (in a identical second car) and the swedish photographer Carl-Axel Söderström.

The route took them from Frankfurt to Budapest, Constantinople, Baghdad, Tbilisi, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ulan Bator to Peking, from there by ship to Japan, Tokyo, again by ship to San Francisco. In America they drove to Vancouver, flew to Panama, south America, went back to North America, met Henry Ford in Detroit and started in New York again with an ship the last journey to Le Havre and then to Berlin.

What a pleasure for Clärenore to visit Henry Ford in this Factory, shook his hand and talked to him. Also she was welcomed by president Herbert Hoover in Washington D.C. .
Really nice to read are details like "128 hard bolied eggs till Konstantinopel" in her and Söderströms Diary entries.

The whole journey took 2 years and one month. Söderström was married when he left and in love with Clärenore when he came back to Berlin in 1929.
They married and had some kids together before Söderström died in 1967 (aged 83) and Clärenore on the 7th September in 1990 (aged 89).

At the end I linked you a Video from YouTube with original scenes of Söderströms Movie from year 1931 about their trip around world.

There were several books puplished but just in german and not all are still available (happily I have a exemplar!) :)

I took some snaps of the prints in the book and wrote some explanatory captions under each!