Early Life
Wankel was born in Lahr, Baden, in the upper Rhine Valley. He was the only son of Gerty Wankel (née Heidlauff) and Rudolf Wankel, a forest assessor. His father fell in World War I. Thereafter, the family moved to Heidelberg. He went to high schools in Donaueschingen, Heidelberg, and Weinheim, but dropped out in 1921. Then he learned to be a purchaser for the Carl Winter Press in Heidelberg. He lost his job because of economic problems in 1926.
He was gifted since childhood with an ingenous spatial imagination, and became interested in the world of machines, especially combustion engines. After his mother was widowed, Wankel could not afford university education or even an apprenticeship; however, he was able to teach himself technical subjects. At age 17, he told friends that he had dreamt of constructing a car with "a new type of engine, half turbine, half reciprocating. It is my invention!". True to this prediction, he conceived the Wankel engine in 1924 and opened a shop in Heidelberg to develop the idea, winning his first patent in 1929.
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