Bundesarchiv Bild 183-2006-1017-501, Professor Robert Otzen

Robert Friedrich Ehlert Otzen (9 May 1872 in Giesensdorf - 3 October 1934 in

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

) was a German infrastructure engineer. He is considered the inventor of the word ''

Autobahn The (; German plural ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official German term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. ...

'' when he was head of the Stufa car lobby group (Bahn being the German word for railway), the equivalent of ''

motorway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...

'' (British English) or ''freeway'' (US English).. When a single high speed roadway was built on the Hamburg-Frankfurt-Basel route, Otzen felt that only an entire network of such roads would attract the political support needed for such a project to be built.

References

:''This article has been translated in part from the

German Wikipedia The German Wikipedia (german: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on March 16, 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia (after the English Wikipedia), ...

equivalent Equivalence or Equivalent may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Album-equivalent unit, a measurement unit in the music industry *Equivalence class (music) *''Equivalent VIII'', or ''The Bricks'', a minimalist sculpture by Carl Andre *''Equivale ...

.'' Engineers from Schleswig-Holstein 1872 births 1934 deaths People from Herzogtum Lauenburg {{Germany-engineer-stub