Published on : 27 May 2019

The adventurer Clärenore Stinnes acts as a muse for the new intake of start-ups at Welcome City Lab.

To celebrate the launch of the 6th intake of start-ups, the Welcome City Lab Team wanted to name an adventurer as a representative of the 13 start-ups selected. But not just any adventurer, Clärenore Stinnes is a woman with ambition and a taste for risks (a bit like our start-ups don't you think?), and we would like to tell you a little more about her here.

Clärenore Stinnes, was the first person to travel around the world by car. At the age of 24, she became a driver, as she could not play a role in running the company owned by her father, a rich German industrialist. Two years later—in 1927—the intrepid driver dropped everything to make the first tour of the world by car in the company of three men that she did not know (two mechanics and a cameraman). She actually married the cameraman, Carl-Axel Söderström, after the adventure. Her journey led her to cross Lake Baikal, which was partially frozen during her attempt, and Russia then Mongolia at Ulaanbaatar. She crossed the Gobi Desert before travelling through China and Japan, where Stinnes and Söderström climbed Mount Fuji. They crossed the Pacific to arrive in South America, where they were the first to drive across the Andes by car—sometimes blasting their way through with dynamite. When they got to Valparaiso, they set sail for Los Angeles, after a stop in Panama. They arrived in Berlin in1928, two years and one month after their departure, having covered 47,000 km. At the end of their journey they made a film following their route with the images shot by Söderström.

Find out more about her exploits in the videography : Inspiring Female Explorers Series