Gottlieb Daimler once marked his family home on a postcard with a star. His sons turned it into a trademark in 1909, and in 1926 it was set inside the laurel wreath of Benz & Cie. The result is still on every Mercedes-Benz.
- Country
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Germany - Active
- Since 1926
- Founded by
- Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler
- Website
- Official website ↗
Two inventors, two cities, one patent
Mercedes-Benz has two founding fathers, and in 1886 each of them built a car. Carl Benz worked in Mannheim. Gottlieb Daimler worked in Cannstatt, near Stuttgart, more than 100 kilometres away. Neither worked for the other, and the company that carries both names did not exist until 1926.
Benz came first. In October 1883 he founded Benz & Cie. Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik Mannheim together with two bicycle traders, Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Esslinger. On 29 January 1886 he filed a patent application for a “vehicle with gas engine drive”. The company today calls patent DRP 37 435 the birth certificate of the automobile, and the three-wheeler it covered became known as the Patent Motor Car. The first documented drive took place in July 1886. Two years later, in August 1888, Bertha Benz took the car from Mannheim to Pforzheim without telling her husband, the first long-distance journey in automotive history.
Daimler, meanwhile, had turned the greenhouse of his Cannstatt villa into a workshop in 1882. With Wilhelm Maybach he built a small, high-speed engine and fitted it to a carriage in 1886, the world’s first four-wheeled automobile. On 28 November 1890 he and two investors, Max Duttenhofer and Wilhelm Lorenz, set up Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft, or DMG. Daimler died on 6 March 1900, before any car had carried the name that would make his company famous.
A girl called Mercédès
The name belonged to a girl of about ten. Emil Jellinek was a wealthy Austrian businessman living in Nice, and DMG’s best and most demanding customer. He entered Daimler cars in races under a pseudonym: Mercédès, the first name of his daughter, born in 1889.
On 2 April 1900 Jellinek and DMG signed a sales agreement in Nice and decided that “a new engine should be developed which bears the Daimler-Mercedes name”. Later that month he ordered 36 cars for 550,000 marks. The first car with the new engine, a 35 hp racer designed by Maybach, reached him on 22 December 1900. At Nice week in March 1901 the Mercedes cars were practically unbeatable, and the arched Mercedes lettering appeared on DMG radiators. “Mercédès” was registered as a trademark on 26 September 1902. In June 1903 Jellinek was allowed to rename himself Jellinek-Mercedes. “This is probably the first time that a father has taken his daughter’s name,” he remarked.
Summer 1909: a star in Untertürkheim, a wreath in Mannheim
The two emblems that would later be fused were born within weeks of each other. On 24 June 1909 DMG applied to protect a three-pointed star. Four days later it filed a four-pointed star as well. Both were registered as trademarks on 9 February 1911, but only the three-pointed one went straight onto cars. The four-pointed star sat unused in the files until 1989, when it became the trademark of Deutsche Aerospace AG.
On 6 August 1909 Benz & Cie. submitted its own new mark: the name Benz inside a stylised laurel wreath, registered on 10 October 1910. Before that, Benz had advertised “Original Benz” inside a black gear ring, a nod to engineering skill. Mercedes-Benz suggests the switch to a wreath probably followed Benz’s racing wins and records of 1907 to 1909.
Land, water and air: what the three points mean
The star began as a doodle on a postcard. While Gottlieb Daimler was technical director of the Deutz gas engine factory in the 1870s, he marked the family home on a picture postcard with a star. His sons Paul and Adolf remembered it years later, and when DMG needed a trademark in 1909 they proposed the symbol. According to Mercedes-Benz, the three rays stood for their father’s vision of engines powering vehicles on land, on water and in the air.
A 1916 variant put Mercedes lettering around the star with four small stars in a ring. On 5 November 1921 DMG applied for protection of a three-dimensional star set inside a ring, including a version for use as a radiator emblem. Daimler Truck’s heritage archive notes that it first appeared on the cooling-water screw cap. The star in a ring was registered on 2 August 1923.
The 1926 merger and the badge it created
Benz & Cie. and DMG formed a community of interests on 1 May 1924, and the new joint badge was ready before the companies were. On 18 February 1925 a trademark application was lodged for the Mercedes three-pointed star encircled by the Benz laurel wreath. The Mercedes-Benz wordmark followed on 25 April. On 28 and 29 June 1926 the two firms merged into Daimler-Benz AG, headquartered in Berlin with central administration in Untertürkheim. From that summer the star wore the wreath on every Mercedes-Benz, and the combined trademark was entered in the register on 3 September 1926.
Two versions of the mark have lived side by side ever since: the flat star in a ring, and the upright three-dimensional star on the bonnet with a badge beneath it, which became standard on the cars from 1926. On the streamlined racing cars of the 1930s the star was applied flat to the nose instead. The SL sports cars of the 1950s added a third habit: a large star in the middle of the grille, first seen on the 300 SL racing car of 1952.
You might read that the three points honour Daimler, Benz and Maybach, or the three founding investors. Neither idea appears in the company’s own account, which only ever mentions land, water and air.
A star over Berlin, and a new company name
On 30 March 1965 a rotating star ten metres across and weighing 15 tonnes was switched on above the Europa-Center in Berlin. Mercedes-Benz says it was then the largest rotating and tilting neon sign in the world. The star outlived the company name too. On 1 February 2022 Daimler AG became Mercedes-Benz Group AG, after the truck business had been listed separately as Daimler Truck in December 2021. Chief executive Ola Källenius summed it up: “The Mercedes star has always been a promise for the future.”
The cars under the star
Very few badges have travelled from the first automobile to the present day. Here are some of the cars that carried the star, or came before it.
Landmark Mercedes-Benz models, decade by decade
- 1886: Benz Patent Motor Car. The three-wheeler covered by patent DRP 37 435 of 29 January 1886. Its “Model 3” variant became the world’s first series-produced automobile.
- 1900: Mercedes 35 hp. Developed by Wilhelm Maybach and delivered to Emil Jellinek on 22 December 1900. With its pressed-steel frame, low centre of gravity and honeycomb radiator, Mercedes-Benz regards it as the first modern automobile.
- 1926: 8/38 hp and 12/55 hp. The first joint Daimler-Benz range, premiered at the Berlin Motor Show in October 1926, alongside the brand’s first trucks.
- 1954: 300 SL. Shown in New York in February 1954 with gullwing doors and a spaceframe from the 1952 racer. The first series-produced four-stroke car with petrol injection.
- 1972: S-Class (116 series). Presented at the Paris Motor Show, the first generation of luxury saloons officially called S-Class.
- 1979: G-model (460 series). The cross-country vehicle developed with Steyr-Daimler-Puch and built in Graz, Austria, unveiled to the press in Toulon in February 1979.
- 1997: A-Class. The 168-series compact saloon, launched at the Geneva Motor Show with more than 20 technical innovations, many of them in passive safety.
Two names on this site sit very close to the star: Maybach, which carries the name of Wilhelm Maybach, the engineer behind the first Mercedes, and Smart, the small-car brand that grew up alongside Mercedes-Benz. At home the brand’s lifelong rivals are BMW and Audi. There is a Porsche connection as well: Ferdinand Porsche designed racing cars for DMG in the mid-1920s, including the eight-cylinder car that won the 1926 German Grand Prix. For more on how badges like the star are put together, see how car logos are designed.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Mercedes-Benz star mean?
According to Mercedes-Benz, the three points stand for Gottlieb Daimler’s vision of his engines powering vehicles on land, on water and in the air. The design came from his sons Paul and Adolf, who remembered a star their father had drawn on a postcard of the family home.
Where does the name Mercedes come from?
From Mercédès Jellinek, the daughter of Emil Jellinek, a Daimler dealer and racer based in Nice. He raced under her name, and in April 1900 DMG agreed to build a new engine called Daimler-Mercedes. The trademark was registered in 1902.
Why is there a laurel wreath around the star?
The wreath was the trademark of Benz & Cie., registered in 1910. When Benz and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft merged in 1926, the Daimler star was placed inside the Benz wreath to create the Mercedes-Benz badge.
When was the three-pointed star first registered?
DMG applied for protection on 24 June 1909, and the star was entered in the trademark register on 9 February 1911. The star inside a ring was applied for on 5 November 1921 and registered in 1923.
Is Mercedes-Benz still part of Daimler?
The company changed its own name instead. Daimler AG became Mercedes-Benz Group AG on 1 February 2022, after spinning off its truck and bus business as Daimler Truck in December 2021.
Postcard star, Benz wreath: the Untertürkheim ledger
- Founded
- 1926
- Founder
- Carl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler
- Country
- Germany
- Headquarters
- Stuttgart, Germany
- Parent company
- Mercedes-Benz Group AG
- Current emblem
- A three-pointed star inside a ring, with the star in a laurel wreath as the 1926 trademark
- Known for
- Luxury saloons, the S-Class and the invention of the automobile
- Website
- Official website ↗
