Editing Auto Union (section)

==East Germany==
Postwar, the Saxon plants of Auto Union were located in the Soviet-occupied zone of communist [[East Germany]].

In 1945, on the orders of the [[Soviet Military Administration in Germany]], the factories were dismantled as [[war reparations]],<ref name="chronicle4">Audi website {{cite web|url=http://www.audi.com/audi/com/en2/about_audi_ag/history/chronicle/chronicle_1945_1959.html |title=Chronicle 1945–1959 |access-date=27 April 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090204031240/http://www.audi.com/audi/com/en2/about_audi_ag/history/chronicle/chronicle_1945_1959.html |archive-date=4 February 2009 }}</ref> while the racing cars found stored in a [[colliery]] were returned to Moscow for reverse engineering. Following this, Auto Union AG assets were liquidated without compensation.<ref name="chronicle4"/> On 17 August 1948, Auto Union AG of Chemnitz was deleted from the commercial register.<ref name="chronicle4"/> The remains of Horch and Audi plants of Zwickau became the [[Volkseigener Betrieb|VEB]] (for "People Owned Enterprise") Automobilwerk Zwickau, or AWZ; (Automobile Factory Zwickau).<ref>[[:de:Automobilwerk Zwickau]]</ref>

The former Audi factory in Zwickau, now under East German control, restarted assembly of the pre-war models in 1949. Those models were renamed [[IFA F8]] and [[IFA F9]] and were similar to the new West German DKW versions. In time, a lawsuit compelled the East Germans to cease using the DKW brand. The site became the home of [[HQM Sachsenring GmbH|VEB Sachsenring]] in the 1950s, which manufactured the infamous [[Trabant]].  After the [[reunification of Germany]] in 1990, [[Volkswagen]] took a controlling interest in the old VEB Sachsenring organization, creating the new subsidiary ''Volkswagen Sashsen GmbH'', operating initially out of what were the historic Auto Union sites in Zwickau and Chemnitz, which were both eventually rebuilt – in 1993 a [[Volkswagen Zwickau-Mosel Plant|new factory]] was constructed in Zwickau in nearby [[Mosel (Zwickau)|Mosel]], which in 2021 became the centre of production for the [[Volkswagen Group MEB platform]] vehicles – notably the [[Audi Q4 e-tron]] – making it the first Audi to be manufactured at Zwickau since the pre-war era.

Audi also established the [[August Horch Museum Zwickau|August Horch Museum]] in 2004 within the surviving factory buildings in Zwickau which dated back to the historic Horch and Audi companies of the 1900s.  The museum charts the early histories of Audi, Horch and Auto Union leading up to the company's reestablishment in Ingolstadt after WW2.