There was something strangely inappropriate about the end of Herbert Diess' career as head of the world's largest car company.

The Austrian with his uncontrollable temperament rocked the headquarters of the Wolfsburg Volkswagen Group for seven years.

He quarreled on the open stage until shreds flew, with works councils, supervisory boards and fellow board members.

Diess, 61, was about to be kicked out at least four times.

And the battles were always fought in public, sometimes for weeks.

The dramas presented by Volkswagen were unparalleled on German executive floors.

Marcus Theurer

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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The end that has now overtaken him did not fit in at all.

It was very different.

Professional, cool and without any prior leaks, Diess was dumped last week.

The supervisory board had previously needed less than an hour to decide on the matter.

The eviction press release contained no bad word about the evicted man and no explanation.

No fight, no drama.

Instead, there is talk of a “generational change”.

It's as if a managerial employee were scheduled to go into well-deserved retirement when he reached retirement age.

Of course it wasn't like that.

Ultimately, Diess lost the trust of the Swabian-Austrian entrepreneurial dynasty of the Porsches and Piëchs, who together hold 31 percent of the shares and the majority of the voting rights in Volkswagen.

Despite all the quarrels, the family clan has long remained loyal to its unpredictable and strenuous CEO.

If it had been up to the employee representatives, who are traditionally powerful at VW, and the state of Lower Saxony as a minority shareholder, Diess would no longer have been in office.

But Germany's most controversial car manager was not just a walking impertinence for the Volkswagen system, but also a much-needed driver.

He recognized early on that the traditional group had to reinvent itself in the age of electric drives and digital networking of the car in order not to go under.

Now the Porsches and Piëchs have a new hope: Oliver Blume, 54, previously head of the Stuttgart sports car manufacturer Porsche, which belongs to the VW empire, is to become captain in Wolfsburg in September.

"Oliver Blume has enjoyed our express trust for many years," said the two family patriarchs, Wolfgang Porsche, 79, and Hans Michel Piëch, 80.

For a manager in the VW Group, such words are an accolade.

The choice of successor is not a surprise.

The new man had long been traded as a crown prince in Wolfsburg.

A hell of a job awaits Blume.

The VW chief post alone is probably the most difficult in German industry because of the complicated balance of power in the widely ramified group.

But Blume will continue to manage Porsche in a personal union, and in the future as an independent company.

Because the group wants to bring Porsche to the stock market in the fall.

A quarter of the shares are to be placed.

This would give Porsche significantly more independence, even if VW remained the main shareholder.

The matter is particularly close to the heart of the Porsche Piëchs.

A car analyst puts it in a nutshell: "This IPO exists because the family wants it." Unlike all other investors, the clan should not only be able to acquire preferred shares in the billion-euro deal, but voting common shares.

The family wants to build up a blocking minority at Porsche with which they can block important decisions that they don't like.