Editing Felix Wankel (section)

==Early life==
Wankel was born in 1902 in [[Lahr]] in what was then the [[Grand Duchy of Baden]] in the [[Upper Rhine Plain]] of present-day southwestern Germany. He was the only son of Gerty Wankel (née Heidlauff) and Rudolf Wankel, a forest assessor. His father died in [[World War I]].<ref name="a"/> Thereafter, the family moved to Heidelberg. He went to high schools in [[Donaueschingen]], [[Heidelberg]], and [[Weinheim]], and left school without [[Abitur]] in 1921. He learned the trade of purchaser at the Carl Winter Press in Heidelberg and worked for the publishing house until June 1926. He and some friends had already run an unofficial afterwork machine shop in a backyard shed in Heidelberg since 1924. Wankel was now determined to receive unemployment benefits and to focus on the machine shop. One of his friends, who had graduated from university, gave his name and transformed the shop into an official garage for [[DKW]] and [[Cleveland Motorcycle Manufacturing Company|Cleveland motor bikes]] in 1927, where Wankel worked from time to time until his arrest in 1933.<ref>Popplow, pp. 32–36, 51 ff.</ref>

Wankel was gifted since childhood with an ingenious 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]]. He was, however, 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 won his first patent in 1929.<ref name="a"/>