Germany – Third Reich: A.D.A.C. Motor Sports Badge, bronze grade, unmarked, 53mm x 47mm with needle pin fitting and housed in it’s fitted case of issue with the inside of the lid marked ‘Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club e.V. Sitz: Munchen.
Condition: Good Very Fine
The Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club (ADAC) was founded on 24 May 1903, at the then-Hotel Silber in Stuttgart. It was originally named the Deutsche Motorradfahrer-Vereinigung (German Motorcyclist Association). In 1911, due to an enormous growth in the membership of car owners, it was renamed the Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club (ADAC). The Prussian eagle was selected as the emblem on the club's badge in appreciation of the Prussian royal family's support and patronage. Its most senior figure at the time was the German Emperor and King of Prussia, Wilhelm II.
The ADAC breakdown assistance service was launched in Germany in 1927 under the name of ADAC-Straßen-Hilfsdienst.
After 1933, during Gleichschaltung, the Nazi Party amalgamated all motoring organisations in Germany into the DDAC (Der Deutsche Automobil-Club e.V.), an umbrella association that was allowed to exist in the shadow of the NSKK (National Socialist Motor Corps). A DDAC appeal described the 1934 international Automobile Exhibition as a "show for the people" rather than an "exhibition for the more affluent bourgeois segment" of society. "Motoring for the people" (Volkskraftfahrt), it proclaimed, was more "in the spirit of the Führer".
