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   Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg 
   
   As the diesel emissions scandal roiled Volkswagen AG last fall, Wolfgang Porsche -- the elder statesman of the clan that controls the automaker -- did what he does every autumn. He put on his boots, picked up his rifle, and went deer hunting near the half-timbered Austrian farmhouse where he spent his childhood. As he has almost every year for decades, Porsche trekked through the woods above the blue waters of Lake Zell and dined at Schloss Prielau, a 16th-century stone castle he transformed into a luxury hotel. 
   
   What Porsche didn't do is take a clear stance as the carmaker his grandfather helped create sank into crisis. In September, Volkswagen acknowledged equipping 11 million diesel vehicles with software designed to trick emissions testers -- revelations that have cost the CEO his job and thrown top management into disarray. The crisis has sent the company's shares down by more than 20 percent, cutting the family's wealth by $2 billion. Last Friday, VW posted the biggest loss in its history and more than doubled the funds set aside to cover the costs of the emissions scandal to 16.2 billion euros ($18.2 billion). 
   
   Despite bearing one of most storied names in automotive history, the family -- which controls 52 percent of VW's voting shares via a company called Porsche Automobil Holding SE -- wasn't prepared for a challenge like the diesel crisis. Bound by a tradition of consensus and discretion honed during their privileged upbringing along the German-Austrian border, family members have remained virtually mum. That has left a power vacuum even as VW faces costs that could top $30 billion and become a hit to its reputation that risks eroding sales and profits for years. 
   
   Wolfgang Porsche, chairman of Porsche SE. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg 
   
   Porsche, 72, made almost no public comment on the matter for months, until unions demanded a signal of commitment to the company. On Dec. 2, the VW supervisory board member travelled to the German city of Wolfsburg, where he spoke to 20,000 workers packed into Hall 11 of the giant VW factory. Porsche pledged to preserve jobs and praised management for its handling of the crisis, but said little that directly addressed the cheating. 
   
   “No one here is giving in to panic,” Porsche told the overflow crowd. “I am of the rock-solid conviction that Volkswagen can weather the situation and emerge even stronger.” 
   
   While the family has the voting power to muscle through change, they're not acting on it. The clan is a sprawling tribe of about 80 people with diverse interests and careers ranging from medicine to film to e-commerce. The ruling patriarchs, now well into their 70s, have been slow to hand the wheel to their children, few of whom have demonstrated an interest in the car business. 
   
   “We are not satisfied with the way the scandal is being handled,’’ said Ingo Speich, a fund manager at Union Investment, which owns almost 1 percent of Volkswagen's shares. “The supervisory board is not doing a good job.” 
   
   The clan's disengagement dates to 1972. After an internecine struggle over the company's direction that culminated in what family members call a "group therapy session'' at the Zell farmhouse with a professional mediator, they agreed to hand management to outsiders. And while the Porsches have had ties to VW since the 1930s, they only stumbled into control less than a decade ago -- the counterintuitive denouement of a failed bid by Porsche to take over its bigger rival. 
   
   With the family AWOL, the void has been filled by VW's powerful unions. Even before the crisis, labor had an unusually strong voice, holding half of the 20 seats on VW's supervisory board and typically finding allies occupying the two seats controlled by the state of Lower Saxony, VW’s second-largest shareholder. Since the crisis, Bernd Osterloh, Volkswagen's burly, combative union boss, has gone on the offensive with a message for the executive suite: This is your mess, and the workers aren't going to foot the bill. 
   
   When asked to identify a family leader of the next generation, Wolfgang Porsche singles out his 38-year-old nephew Mark Philipp Porsche. Mark Philipp -- whose resume says he spent 15 years studying business in Innsbruck and who is married to an Austrian television personality -- sits on the boards of VW’s SEAT brand and the MAN truck unit. He declined to comment. 
   
   “They’re not a bunch of technicians,” Wolfgang Porsche said as younger family members checked out VW's latest offerings at the Geneva International Motor Show in March. “But they don't have to be technicians. What's important is understanding and a clear head.” 
   
   Peter Daniell Porsche, owner of PDP Holding GmbH and member of the Porsche family, poses for a photograph following an interview in Salzburg, Austria, on Friday, April 15, 2016. Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg 
   
   One non-technician seeking a bigger role at VW is Peter Daniell Porsche. His father, Hans Peter Porsche, 76, has said he'll hand his board seat in the family holding company to Peter Daniell by 2020. When he inherits his father's shares, Peter Daniell -- an only child -- will have the largest individual stake among the family's fourth generation. A former teacher at an alternative Waldorf school who in 2012 published a book titled "There's More to Life Than Building Cars," Peter Daniell, 42, is stepping up his engagement in the company. In the past two years, he has joined the board of VW’s Czech Skoda brand, started serving as vice chairman of a foundation run by VW's unions, and has been advising Porsche Design, a subsidiary that sells branded luggage and fashion accessories. 
   
   "I stand behind the company, absolutely," Peter Daniell said in the renovated 16th-century mill in Salzburg where he manages his investment interests. "But I'm going about it in my own way." 
   
   With the family AWOL, the void has been filled by VW's powerful unions 
   
   The family lost its strongest voice at VW a year ago, when Wolfgang Porsche’s cousin Ferdinand Piech quit the board after more than two decades as Volkswagen's guiding force. He started as an engineer at Porsche then transferred to Audi, VW's luxury nameplate. In 1993 Piech took over as VW's chief executive officer, bringing the company back from near bankruptcy. In 2002 he became chairman of the supervisory board and helped make VW the world’s biggest car maker. 
   
   Last April, the 79-year-old Piech was forced out after battling with then-CEO Martin Winterkorn (who resigned five months later because of the emissions scandal). Piech had sought to forge a dynasty at the company by naming his wife, Ursula -- a former nanny for his family and 19 years his junior -- to the board in 2012. Fund managers at the time criticized her appointment, saying she was unqualified. 
   
   Ferdinand could hardly be more different from his cousin. Where Wolfgang is soft-spoken, a bit portly, and comes off as an avuncular country gentleman, Piech is all sharp angles, hard edges, and vicious in a fight. In his autobiography, Piech talks at length about ousting executives on his way to the top and insists harmony in the executive suite is overrated. 
   
   Ferdinand Piech, left, with former VW CEO Martin Winterkorn. Photographer: Nigel Treblin/Getty Images 
   
   The cousins had a falling out when Porsche sided with Winterkorn during the dispute -- which Piech took as a personal affront, according to people close to the family. After a standoff with other directors at a small airport near Wolfsburg last April, Piech and his wife quit the board. Piech is frustrated by his family's handling of the diesel crisis and remains estranged from most members on both sides of the clan, people who know them say. He declined to comment. 
   
   With Piech sidelined, Porsche stands alone at the head of the family, but he has done little in the role. The family now has four seats on the 20-person supervisory board, two of them from the fourth generation: Ferdinand Oliver Porsche, a 55-year-old Salzburg lawyer who has been a director since 2009; and Ferdinand Piech's niece Louise Kiesling, 58, who joined the board last year. 
   
   The current generation "has stayed on the horse so long that the younger generation cannot really get up to speed," said Marc-Michael Bergfeld, a professor specializing in family firms at Munich Business School. "Succession should have been prepared 5 to 10 years ago." 
   
   “No one here is giving in to panic” —Wolfgang Porsche 
   
   The family's links to the company began with Ferdinand Porsche, who designed what became the VW Beetle under a contract with Hitler to develop a “people’s car.” After the war, Porsche was jailed in France for almost two years due to his ties to the Nazi regime, but was released without charges in 1947. When he died four years later, his son Ferry took over as the company was ramping up production of a sporty two-seater called the 356. In 1963, Porsche introduced the slinky 911, and the family prospered from building those iconic speedsters -- original U.S. list price $5,500 -- and pocketing a licensing fee from VW for the Beetle's design. 
   
   In 2008 -- a time when VW sold more cars in a week than Porsche did in a year -- the sports car maker said it planned to buy its bigger rival. As the financial crisis devastated markets worldwide, Porsche was forced to abandon the bid, and Volkswagen soon turned around and swallowed the smaller company. On a rainy summer day in 2009, Wolfgang Porsche's voice trembled and his eyes brimmed with tears as he told 5,000 workers gathered in the factory courtyard that the company would be folded into the Volkswagen Group. Despite that moment of anguish, the family emerged with control of Europe’s largest automaker, a colossus that last year sold 9.9 million cars and had revenue of 213 billion euros. 
   
   Though the Porsches were never poor -- at least a half-dozen have attended the Lyceum Alpinum, an $83,000-per-year boarding school in the Swiss Alps -- the VW deal has proven a windfall. In 2014, family members got 307 million euros in dividends from their holding in Porsche SE, roughly four times what they received eight years earlier. 
   
   Nonetheless, the Porsches and Piechs keep a low profile. Many drive Porsches, of course, but they get no discounts on the cars. Wolfgang Porsche usually attends the annual Opera Ball in Vienna, when the city's gilded opera house is transformed into a sparkling ballroom. And they are prominent backers of the Gaisberg Rally, a vintage car race up a mountainside just outside Salzburg every May. 
   
   With VW's dividend all but eliminated due to the crisis, the family holding company will also take a hit. On April 22, Porsche SE said it would slash its dividend by 90 percent, then three days later shifted gears and said it will only be decreased by half. Though the company wouldn't say whether the change was made at the family's behest, any cut will mean tough choices for some of them, says Ernst Piech, Ferdinand's brother. 
   
   Family members “have gotten used to that income,” said Piech, who sold his stake in the company to his siblings in the 1980s and now runs a vineyard in southern England. “They have other investments where they need the money.” 
   
   To maintain stability as the number of family members grows, the patriarchs have created structures designed to encourage the next generation to stick with the company. In 2007, Ferdinand Piech put his stake of about 13 percent in Porsche Holding into two foundations outside the immediate reach of his children, and included a clause that requires nine of the 12 to approve any share sale. The Porsche side of the clan isn’t as restricted, but anyone who wants to sell must first offer their shares to other family members at a discount. 
   
   "One or two selling isn't a problem, but if four or five members want to sell, the family won't have enough to buy them out and they'd have to go to external investors," said Tom Ruesen, director of the Wittener Institute for Family Business. "They may see themselves as simple investors rather than thinking of the stake as their destiny to pass on to their kids.'' 
   
   Watch Next: VW Sets Aside $18 Billion to Pay for Diesel Scandal ||||| Wolfgang Porsche, member of the Supervisory board of German car maker Volkswagen, addresses a news conference at the company's headquarters in Wolfburg, Germany October 7, 2015. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt 
   
   FRANKFURT The Piech and Porsche families that control more than 52 percent of Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) have vowed to back senior management, setting aside past disputes as the carmaker struggles to overcome an emissions scandal, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. 
   
   In a rare interview, Hans Michel Piech and Wolfgang Porsche pledged support for VW chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch and chief executive Matthias Mueller, and said they would stay out of daily operational affairs at Germany's biggest carmaker. 
   
   The two families had clashed when Ferdinand Piech was his family's representative on Volkswagen's supervisory board, a post he resigned from last year, clearing the way for his brother, Hans Michel. 
   
   Some investors feared bickering between the two families would hamper decision-making as the company works to cut costs and adapt to new industry trends such as electronic and autonomous driving. 
   
   "We are different and we see our task as representatives of the families different," Hans Michel Piech was quoted as saying, but he and Wolfgang Porsche both emphasized their ability to find consensus. 
   
   Porsche said that would remain the case despite a recent decision to increase the number of family members with voting power to 34. 
   
   "Not all 34 will become supervisory board members, or have a say in discussions, and not all of them want to. What is important is that the next generation of suitable family members have an interest in the matter and do not simply wait for the dividend to arrive," he said. 
   
   Volkswagen has suffered its worst-ever crisis since admitting in September 2015 it used sophisticated secret software in its cars to cheat exhaust emissions tests, with millions of vehicles worldwide affected. 
   
   The company has set aside 17.8 billion euros (15.83 billion pounds)to pay for costs related to the scandal. 
   
   ($1 = 0.9189 euros) 
   
   (Reporting by Harro ten Wolde and Edward Taylor) ||||| “Just this brief discussion in an academic journal then led to talk that Grieger be put on a short leash and limited in his academic freedom, which in turn led the prominent historian to leave,” according to the open letter from the historians. It expressed doubt that the company would continue to pursue other inquiries into its past, in particular over allegations of collaboration with the military leaders of Brazil in the 1970s. 
   
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   In a statement issued on Tuesday, Volkswagen strongly denied that Mr. Grieger had been dismissed, or that his separation signaled a changing approach. 
   
   “The fact is that Volkswagen continues to recognize the achievements of Dr. Grieger and to thank him for the work performed,” the statement read. “Furthermore, the fact is that Volkswagen has examined its history as an enterprise consistently, honestly and strongly, and will continue to do so.” 
   
   Mr. Grieger was a co-author of an exhaustive study published in 1996 that exposed how Volkswagen had made extensive use of forced labor during World War II, when its factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, produced an array of weapons and military equipment. 
   
   The book, more than 1,000 pages by Mr. Grieger and another historian, Hans Mommsen, was financed by Volkswagen at a time when many German companies were coming to terms with their roles during the Nazi era. 
   
   But Volkswagen may have gotten more truth than it had anticipated. The book also uncovered embarrassing information about the Porsche and Piëch families, who since 2012 have owned a majority of the carmaker’s voting stock. 
   
   The Wolfsburg factory, still Volkswagen’s main manufacturing center, was originally a Nazi prestige project built under the supervision of Ferdinand Porsche, designer of the car that later became famous as the Beetle. The factory produced military goods including land mines, parts for rockets fired at British cities, hand-held anti-tank weapons and a Jeep-like vehicle known as the Kübelwagen. 
   
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   Volkswagen was especially dependent on workers press-ganged from occupied countries or borrowed from concentration camps, including Auschwitz, because it was a new company with a limited work force of its own. 
   
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   While conditions at the factory were slightly better than in the concentration camps, inmates were overseen by SS guards and were poorly fed and frequently beaten or shot for minor infractions. Children born to forced laborers were taken away and housed in a squalid nursery overseen by an SS doctor, where 365 of the infants died. 
   
   Hartmut Berghoff, a professor at the Institute of Economic and Social History at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, was the driving force behind the open letter challenging Volkswagen over Mr. Grieger’s departure. He said it showed a tone-deafness similar to the company’s initial approach to the emissions scandal. “Transparency in reacting to the public is not really the strength of VW,” Mr. Berghoff said in a telephone interview. 
   
   In its statement, Volkswagen said the company regretted that Mr. Berghoff had not responded to its offer of talks on the matter, which a spokesman, Eric Felber, said had been made last week. 
   
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   Mr. Berghoff said an email from Volkswagen had gone into his spam folder, so he learned of the offer too late before the academics’ letter appeared. 
   
   He questioned whether Volkswagen officials respected Mr. Grieger’s work. “Why then did they part with him?” he asked. 
   
   The 75 historians are not the only people upset by Mr. Grieger’s departure. Last week, a former Volkswagen board member and workers’ representative, Walter Hiller, described it as “a scandal.” 
   
   And on Tuesday, two more historians specializing in the behavior of German companies during the Nazi era issued a sharp rebuke on the website of Wirtschaftswoche, the business weekly. By parting with Mr. Grieger, they said, Volkswagen was “disposing of an enlightener.” 
   
   It all shows “clearly how communication has gone awry at the top of VW,” said the historians, Lutz Budrass of Ruhr-University Bochum and Mark Spoerer from the University of Regensburg. 
   
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   In his review of the study of Audi’s past, Mr. Grieger criticized the authors as having played down the company’s cooperation with the Nazis and its employment of forced laborers. 
   
   After publication of his landmark book, “Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich” (The Volkswagen Works and Its Workers During the Third Reich), Mr. Grieger oversaw the Volkswagen company archives. He made them freely available to researchers and journalists — a surprising decision at a company long known for caution about what information it makes public. 
   
   During World War II, Mr. Porsche oversaw construction and management of the factory with help from his son-in-law, Anton Piëch. Mr. Piëch’s son Hans Michel Piëch is currently a member of the Volkswagen supervisory board. Another son, Ferdinand Piëch, is a former Volkswagen chief executive who remains a major shareholder. 
   
   At the end of World War II, according to Mr. Mommsen and Mr. Grieger, Anton Piëch commanded a unit of the so-called Volkssturm, a poorly armed citizens’ militia ordered to make a last-ditch defense against invading Allies. 
   
   After leading his Volkssturm troops to the front, according to Mr. Grieger’s and Mr. Mommsen’s book, Mr. Piëch retreated to the Porsche family estate in Austria. He took about 10 million Reichsmarks of company funds, worth about $1 million at the time, according to the book. 
   
   The family used the money to revive the family engineering bureau, which later evolved into Porsche, the sports car maker, according to the book. The family said that Volkswagen had owed the bureau the funds for work that had been performed. 
   
   Ferdinand Porsche and Anton Piëch were held by the Allies for nearly two years after the German surrender, but were never charged with war crimes. Mr. Porsche died in 1951 and Mr. Piëch in 1952. ||||| Osnabrueck, Germany (dpa) - German carmaker Volkswagen will part ways with its corporate historian, the company announced Saturday, amid media reports that the split is because the researcher thought a recent report downplayed wartime ties to the Nazis. 
   
   
   
   Manfred Grieger agreed to the split, a VW spokesman said Saturday. He will be replaced as head of historical communication by archivist Ulrike Gutzman. 
   
   
   
   The Braunschweiger Zeitung newspaper has reported that the split came after Grieger was critical of a report about the activities of Auto Union during Germany‘s Nazi era. Auto Union is the company that became Audi, now a key subsidiary of Volkswagen Group. 
   
   
   
   Grieger reportedly said the study was biased and said it played down the relationship between Auto Union officials and the Nazi elite during the World War II era. 
   
   
   
   Those comments landed him in hot water with VW senior management, the paper reported. 
   
   
   
   A VW spokesman said the split was prompted by disagreements about the way Grieger and VW worked together. 
   
   
   
  
target: – Volkswagen's troubles continue after its record-breaking $14.7 billion emissions-scandal settlement last week, with the controversy now swirling around a historian who helped uncover the company's Nazi past. The New York Times dives into the sudden end of Manfred Grieger's contract with VW, now being criticized for "disposing of an enlightener" by other historians, including 75 academics who penned an open letter railing against what they insinuate was Grieger's dismissal for historical whistleblowing. "Transparency in reacting to the public is not really the strength of VW," Hartmut Berghoff, the Georg-August University professor who spurred the letter in Grieger's defense, tells the Times. Both VW and Grieger are mum about the circumstances surrounding his abrupt departure, but the Times notes it seems to be tied to a 518-page 2014 study of the labor practices of VW subsidiary Audi. Grieger reviewed that study last year and apparently didn't think it went far enough in exposing how VW had relied on forced labor from concentration camps for its factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, which produced weapons and military gear. A 1996 book co-authored by Grieger had already delved into those uncomfortable facts, as well as embarrassing info about the Porsche and Piech families, still majority VW stockholders. Both the study and review were mentioned in August in a German business journal, which then "led to talk that Grieger be put on a short leash and limited in his academic freedom," the historians' letter claims. Europe Online Magazine says a German paper reported Grieger's criticism had put him "in hot water with VW senior management," but a Tuesday VW statement denied Grieger had been dismissed and said VW "has examined its history as an enterprise consistently, honestly, and strongly, and will continue to do so," per the Times.