1970: The Fatal Accident of Racing Driver Jochen Rindt

On September 5, 1970, racing driver Jochen Rindt had a fatal accident during a training session for the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. His death aroused consternation and grief throughout Austria, going far beyond the actual milieu of motor sport fans. The tragic accident and Rindt’s early death are fundamental parts of a reverence that continues to this day. Although Rindt was born in 1942 as the son of a German and an Austrian, and although he held a German passport throughout his life, he is considered one of Austria’s most outstanding sports heroes. That he became a posthumous Formula One world champion is another essential component of his athletic hagiography.

In his public persona, Jochen Rindt condensed several important popular and youth cultural elements of the times. For example, Rindt, leaning casually with a cigarette in the pit lane of the racetrack, was the embodiment of cool and contemporary James-Dean-like masculinity. The jet-set life of this media darling who resided in Switzerland and was married to a Finn formed an ideal longing and object of projection for a newly emergent increasingly mobile middle-class. Rindt represented modernity, vigour and anti-provincialism.