The doors to the first International Automobile Exhibition IAA were opend in Berlin on the famous boulevard Unter den Linden in 1887 to the stunning public, who could now follow the booming development in the motorcar industry.
Eight motorcars were set on show and the IAA grew to an institution, where new ideas and patents from all over displayed their innovative products such as Robert Bosch’s jump-spark ignition or the first lorry/truck with trailer (1903).
Even the later so famous petrol enigine was nothing else than an option to steam- or electrical powerrains.
How importent the motorcar and the related industry was shows the fact, that the IAA was arranged twice a year during the periode from 1905 to 1907. The 1907 IAA was for commercial vehicles only and that year the first aluminumcasted engine found it’s way to the showrooms.
The German motorcar industry were up front in development of new practical constructions to make the life for the car drivers easier. The dipped headlight was introduced in 1914 just two years after 36.000 workers were employed at the total of 124 manufacteurs in the German Car Industry.
The Outbrake of WWI set a full stopp for civilian cars and 1921 the first postwar IAA was placed at the Kaiserdamm in Berlin. None foreign exhibitor participated cause of the exclussion of the Germans as member of the international association of motorcar manufacteurers.
Five years later in 1926 Germany again joined this exclusive club and the German public got a chance to view a great variaty of cars and news.
The famous Mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, successed in getting the IAA to his hometown in 1927, but only for a year: 1928 the show was back on the ground of it’s orgin, displaying severel types of diesel engines and the elektrical powered wiper.
The worldwide recession in 1929 and 1930 was the reason to make a unwilling hold, but untill the outbrake of WWII in 1939 the IAA attracted a wide public every year.
At the 1939 show Ferdinand Porsche revealed the first VW Beetle and till the end of prodction decades later more than 16 million Beetles left the Volkswagen factories worldwide.
Aproxmately 825.000 guests visited the last show before the six year long war rolled over Europe. In 1950 Berlin again welcomed the world public to the IAA.
