The founder
Adam Opel was born in Rüsselheim Germany in 1837, a city that is situated approximately 25 km from Frankfurt am Main. The city is a typical German province and the father is a traditional craftsman as a locksmith. The family had prior been working primarily in agriculture, but Adam´s father had chosen to work as a locksmith.
According to the tradition of that area, Adam was bound to follow in his fathers footsteps. The Opel family was considered modern and hence they sent Adam Opel to Paris in order to get ready for his formation.
He fiddled around with different topics and techniques within the locksmith trade, and that was in this process that he discovered the new invention, the sewing machine. He saw a great potential and improvement that could be made in the new invention. Therefor he spend all his spare time to build his own version of the sewing machine. At the age of 25 after his stay in Paris he returned home to Rüsselheim. He was then eager to start the production of his new sewing machine, but his father was not impressed. On the other hand, his mother was very interested in it and found it to be a good idea, and therefore she lent him one of the old stables so he could get started. It took him four difficult years to get far enough that he could build a new tow floor building located in the center of Rüsselheim.
The following year, in 1868 Adam Opel found his Sophie Marie. She was from a wealthy family and the dowry made it possible to expand the factory and install steam driven machinery.
Adam Opel had thereafter many productive years with plenty of new inventions and business opportunities, and together with Sophie they got five sons; Frederich, Ludwig; Heinrich, Wilhelm and Carl – whom all later entered in the company.