The Devil's Wheels

Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic

Sasha Disko

• Editorial: Berghahn Books
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781785331701
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: German History

During the high days of modernization fever, among the many disorienting changes Germans experienced in the Weimar Republic was an unprecedented mingling of consumption and identity: increasingly, what one bought signaled who one was. Exemplary of this volatile dynamic was the era's burgeoning motorcycle culture. With automobiles largely a luxury of the upper classes, motorcycles complexly symbolized masculinity and freedom, embodying a widespread desire to embrace progress as well as profound anxieties over the course of social transformation. Through its richly textured account of the motorcycle as both icon and commodity, The Devil's Wheels teases out the intricacies of gender and class in the Weimar years.

CHAPTER 1

From Pioneers to Global Dominance

The First Forty Years of the German Motorcycle Industry

In 1928, the “rationalization” craze had a firm grip on German society. Theory and Praxis of Rationalization, its cover designed by avant-garde artist John Heartfield, was Soviet professor Ossip Ermanski’s second book published in German translation. An expert on fatigue and a strong critic of Frederick W. Taylor, Ermanski debated the benefits and drawbacks of the reorganization of labor based on Taylor’s principles of scientific management. Unable to find a diagram of the layout of the Ford factory in Cologne, Ermanski instead used the layout of the Stock motorcycle factory in Berlin to illustrate the principles of flow production and the assembly line, thus acknowledging how efficiently production was organized at the motorcycle factory: “The result of the whole organization is that every four minutes a complete motorcycle leaves the assembly line. The net costs of this German manufacture have been pushed so low that it is even competitive on the export market.”¹ Ermanski’s discussion of advanced production methods reveals a number of aspects salient to this chapter. First, the book itself is a telling artifact, demonstrating the global fascination with productivist ideologies and modernist aesthetics, which was markedly pronounced in the Weimar Republic.² Second, it rehearses the standard association of the assembly line with automobile production and Ford in particular. Third, and if only by accident, Ermanski’s use of the Stock motorcycle factory to illustrate the “praxis of rationalization” points to how, by 1928, the motorcycle industry was one of the most advanced branches of German industry.

The road the German motorcycle industry took to becoming a model of “rationalized” production was, however, neither smooth nor direct. Due to internal and external pressures, the fortune of the German motorcycle industry fluctuated wildly, contributing to a “deviant path” of German motorization.³ Rather than motorizing via the automobile, as for example was the case in the United States, by the end of the Weimar Republic, Germany had both the highest per-capita ownership and was the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles.⁴ The industry developed haltingly alongside the bicycle and car industries from the late nineteenth century through World War I. The first crisis years of the republic and hyperinflation had mixed effects on the industry, leading to the simultaneous growth and rationalization of the industry during the so-called “golden years” of 1924–1929. Finally, the World Economic Crisis deeply impacted German motorcycle production.⁵ This chapter examines the salient aspects of the first four decades of motorcycle manufacturing in Germany, from finance to design to government subsidies, and from the types of motorcycles that were manufactured to the production process of individual companies. Through tracing the development of the motorcycle industry in Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century, I demonstrate the centrality of the motorcycle in the process of motorization in Germany, exploring why this phenomenon was a matter of such great concern for contemporaries.

A set of historically specific economic and legal circumstances facilitated the rise of the German motorcycle industry following World War I, making it the vehicle to individual motorization during the Weimar Republic. Its development and its subsequent rise to predominance must be situated in the context of the larger automotive industry and the economy as a whole, including how it was located within shifting global markets. Alongside juridical and financial incentives provided by the state, advancements in technology, changes in production, and competitive pricing and sales strategies resulted in motorcycles being the only viable and affordable means of personal motorized transportation for both productive and recreation purposes for most Germans. Revisiting the potholes and patches on the German motorcycle industry’s road to global dominance demonstrates how mobility choices were shaped by politics and the economy, both of which were fractured and ambivalent spaces, fraught with competing visions.

The Beginnings of an Industry: Motorcycle Production prior to World War I

Origin stories of the motor vehicle were and most often are still recounted as heroic tales of pioneers who dared to challenge the constraints of nature. Indeed, as many mobility scholars have argued, the conquest of nature is one of the most persistent foundational myths of motorization. In reality, during the nineteenth century, motor vehicles were clumsy, awkward affairs that were neither practical nor reliable. Furthermore, they did not appear out of nowhere, but rather were developed within the context of older technologies. The bicycle, for example, was central to the development of both the motorcycle and the automobile as forms of individual transportation, as of course were horse-drawn vehicles. Advancements in engine-driven mobility during the nineteenth century were moreover dominated by the implementation of steam-powered technologies, most visibly in the form of the railway locomotive and the steamship, and the first self-propelled road vehicles were steam- and electric-driven.⁶ In the 1880s, German engineers and inventors, however, were at the international forefront of applying the mechanics of internal combustion to transportation. According to mobility historian Kurt Möser, “In this decade, new mobility technologies were either invented or older forms were socially and technologically reconstructed, user groups were identified and expanded, new socialization and organization forms were tried out or adopted, stable cultural patterns for usage were established, and finally patterns of perception and representation were stabilized.”⁷

Often cited as the “first” motorcycle, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach developed a one-cylinder internal combustion engine in 1883 that they installed on a two-wheeled vehicle, improving the vehicle over the course of three years. Even though Daimler and Maybach called their vehicle a “riding car” rather than a motorcycle, the two-wheeled vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine was claimed as a German invention.⁸ The “triumphal procession” of combustion engine–powered vehicles was, however, “bumpy,” rather than smooth.⁹ Even after advances in developing the internal combustion engine, both steam and electric power for individual vehicles continued to be viable technological options.¹⁰ Even Henry Ford first dabbled in steam engines, before he was inspired by German innovations in internal combustion.¹¹

In his 1929 dissertation on the German motorcycle industry, Willi Christenn, a 28-year-old doctoral candidate in political economics (Volkswirtschaft) at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and a summer intern at BMW, championed the idea that the motorcycle was a German invention, and that powering it with an internal combustion engine was essentially a technologically determined fait accompli. Noting that the steam engine was not a feasible alternative for powering the smaller frame of a motorcycle, Christenn asserted, “So a vehicle had to be constructed that would eliminate the misshapenness and difficult handling of the steam-powered vehicle (Dampfwagen), as well as the exhaustion of the driver, as is the case with bicycles. So one came upon a bicycle with a built-in motor as its source of power: this thought was . . . first conceived in Germany and the precursors of all of today’s motorcycles and mopeds originate from this idea.”¹² While Christenn’s boastful stance on Germany’s role in advancing motorcycle design implies a steady, steep ascent, this was not the case. On an international scale, however, the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade and a half of the twentieth century did witness many new mechanical and technical innovations that increased the reliability and power of the new combustion engines. Nonetheless, these advances were applied mainly to developing airplanes and the four-wheeled automobile rather than to the two-wheeled motorcycle.¹³

To commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the invention, F. Paul Fritsche, a high-ranking member of the leading motorcycle associations in post–World War I Germany and an academically trained merchant, wrote on the origins of the German motorcycle industry, providing a more sober assessment of its development: “The classification ‘motorcycle’ first appears in the year 1894, in which Hildebrand and Wolfmüller mounted their much-improved four-stroke engine and patented this vehicle under the name ‘motorcycle.’ Around the turn of the century, a few leading bicycle manufacturers took up the idea of motorcycle construction and after some stubborn attempts the actual development of the German motorcycle industry began.”¹⁴ Neckarsulmer Fahrzeug AG [Neckarsulm Motor Vehicle Company, NSU], located in in Swabian Württemberg, and the Wanderer Werke [Wanderer Works] in Chemnitz, Saxony, were both important producers of bicycles before adding motorcycles to their product line, and were instrumental in the early years of the German motorcycle industry.¹⁵ Between 1901 and 1903, according to Christenn, whose language often reproduces the conception of the inventor/engineer as the hero of the process of motorization, these two manufacturers were engaged in a “tenacious struggle to gain dominance.” Christenn hyped the manufacturers, claiming that through “standardized production and producing more motorcycles through efficient fabrication from the lessons learned from previous experiments,” NSU and Wanderer had attempted, even before World War I, to “design a rationalized make of motorcycle.”¹⁶

While there were no more than two thousand motorcycles on German streets in 1903, that number had quadrupled by 1905, making it possible to speak of a “motorcycle boom.”¹⁷ A considerable number of technological improvements on the motorcycle had been made in the decades since its invention, such as electric magneto-ignition with spark plugs replacing the hot bulb. The introduction of gear transmission with clutch and chain, belt, or flexible shaft harnessed engine power more effectively. The invention of drum brakes, pneumatic tires, and front forks with suspension improved safety, reliability, and comfort.¹⁸ It was during this time that a new technological style developed that was, in turn, tied to a new culture of mobility.¹⁹ During the prewar era, the symbolic and cultural valence of motor vehicles—cars, motorcycles, and airplanes—coalesced around a combination of “archaic heroic ideals of knighthood and courage with specifically modern qualities, especially a personal relationship with technology.”²⁰ As Cotten Seiler noted, “Early twentieth-century popular culture, art, and political philosophy also celebrated the car as a force-multiplier of the self, facilitator of a gratifying, thrilling transgression, and a fosterer of self-control.”²¹

During the decades preceding World War I, actively partaking in the culture of motorized mobility was limited to a small yet global elite. Even more than cars, motorcycles were a novelty item for the rich and/or inventive. Th...