Herbert Schnitzer, the last surviving member of the four Schnitzer brothers, died on June 5, 2026 — his 85th birthday — at home in Freilassing, surrounded by his family. The obituary came from Uwe Mahla, a former BMW press officer who knew Herbert for more than fifty years.
Inside the team Herbert was called “the Patron.” His other nickname was the man with the “golden bladder”, earned by sitting on the pit wall with a lap chart for hours without moving. Gerhard Berger called him the soul of the operation. Dieter Quester called him a hard-nosed businessman who wasn’t too proud to keep the lap chart himself through a full 24-hour race. Both things were true at the same time, which is probably why the team lasted as long as it did.
The Schnitzer History
Herbert and his older brother Josef took over the family BMW dealership in 1966. The racing division followed a year later. Josef had the engineering degree and built the cars; Herbert ran the business. Josef became German circuit racing champion in a BMW 1800 TISA and later a 2000ti. Together they developed and sold their own Formula 2 engine — Jacques Laffite won the 1975 European F2 championship on Schnitzer power, ahead of the works BMW engines.
It didn’t last. In 1978, Josef was killed in a road accident that was not his fault. The team responded by winning the German Touring Car Championship that same year with Harald Ertl. You can call that resilience. It’s also just grief with nowhere else to go.
From there the titles piled up across almost every series BMW entered: European and World Touring Car Championships, British, Italian, Japanese, and Asia-Pacific titles, the American Le Mans Series. In 1999, Dalmas, Martini, and Winkelhock won Le Mans outright in the BMW V12 LMR. The drivers who came through the garage included Bellof, Berger, Cecotto, Fitzpatrick, Ickx, Ludwig, Piquet, Quester, Rohrl, Stuck, both Mullers and both Winkelhocks. Herbert sat on the pit wall through all of it with his lap chart.
His two half-brothers, twins Dieter and Karl “Charly” Lamm, who handled race operations for much of the team’s later era, died before him. Dieter in 2014, Charly in 2019. Herbert was the last one.
Schnitzer’s Motorsport Program Ended Also
Schnitzer closed its racing program at the end of 2020. Herbert had fought to keep it going longer than most people expected. The team had come back to the DTM in 2012 after years away and won the drivers’, manufacturers’, and teams’ titles in its first season back. Then the money ran out anyway.
In his final years Herbert watched motorsport on television, kept up with old friends, and was driven to his regular table by his longtime companion Peter Reinisch. Fifty years of championships. One family. Herbert was the last of them, and now all four are gone.
