I know that I have made myself quite rare lately. That was because me and my wife moved into our own house in mid-october. Away from the city of Leipzig with its rising rents into a more rural area. We love it!
So there was not much time to pursue my hobby... And now I found something that adds to an already peculiar story. Nothing special but I thought, since there is nothing here about this topic yet, I will share it.
There are a few interesting threads about her over at Altas F1:From: grandprixhistory.org/people wrote:Ilse Pietsch was already a divorcee when she married a 22 year old driver named Paul Pietsch destined to be a driver for Auto Union. Their marriage soon soured when reports of her affair with Auto Union teammate Achille Varzi became common knowledge. Tragically her name is forever linked with Varzi and his drug habit that almost killed him and cast a shadow over the end of his great career. It all started according to motorsport historian Chris Nixon, the evening of the victory celebration for the 1936 Tripoli Grand Prix. Hans Stuck had been leading the race only to be overtaken in a late charge by Varzi. Unbeknownst to the Italian the results had been arranged by the Nazi officials to appease the Italian Government who held sway over Libya. Varzi was furious when he found out that his victory had been tainted. Things became worse at the victory dinner when the Governor of Libya, Marshall Balbo proposed a toast to the "real winner", and raised his glass in the direction of Hans Stuck. At this slight the ever so proud Varzi could take no more and stormed to his hotel room. Ilse was there to console him and it was that night that she introduced him to morphine. Varzi, the perfectionist soon went downhill, a scenario all to common nowadays. The Italian government became so alarmed at the behavior of their champion that upon his return to Italy the way was barred for his mistress, reportedly on the personal instructions of Mussolini. The couple still met when Varzi left Italy only to feed on each other's addition. Varzi would return to race again and again only to disappear for weeks on end. In March of 1939 Hans Stuck came across Ilse in Munich. Destitute she asked Stuck for money to purchase a forged Italian passport so that she could get into Italy and be with her lover, who by that time had abandoned her. Later that evening a waiter at Stuck's hotel informed the German driver of a tragic suicide attempt. Isle had been found unconscious in the street, wearing only a pink nightdress, murmuring a strange Greek-sounding name - Achille. Thankfully she was able to recover from her addiction as was Varzi, both with the help of others. This writer wishes to place no aspirations on either victim for in the end they were both victims to an awful scourge that is still with us today.
- https://forums.autosport.com/topic/139202-ilse-pietsch/
- https://forums.autosport.com/topic/40408-ilse-pietsch/
- https://forums.autosport.com/topic/7191 ... /?hl=Varzi
So the wife of German race driver Paul Pietsch (1911 - 2012) was after all a very disliked person. And now I found a photograph from the legacy of Rudolf Caracciola in an auction. It shows Rudolf Caracciola, Achille Varzi, Ilse Pietsch, Antonio Brivio and Louis Chiron possibly in Cannes in 1935.
The photograph was captioned by Mrs. Alice Caracciola as follows: Caracciola, Varzi, "Nutte", Brivio, Chiron in Cannes ?
The German word "Nutte" means whore. So that person really left some burned soil in that racing-cosmos and nobody wanted to talk about her anymore and changed her name in books afterwards.
Does anybody have further information on her? And what do you think about all that? Was she that poisonous lady that led Varzi into addiction?
