{"id":16308,"date":"2021-06-21T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=16308"},"modified":"2025-04-08T10:19:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T10:19:00","slug":"does-the-man-make-the-motorcycle-or-the-motorcycle-the-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/does-the-man-make-the-motorcycle-or-the-motorcycle-the-man","title":{"rendered":"Does the Man Make the Motorcycle or the Motorcycle the Man?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sasha Disko<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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In celebration of World Motorcycle Day (21 June), we are featuring the following excerpt from Sasha Disko’s THE DEVIL’S WHEELS: Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Someone, or something, sowed the flaming desire in your\nyoung male heart to become a disciple of motor sport. . . . Your desire was\ninitially borne of envy at the daily experience of seeing a friend race noisily\nby on his jalopy, while you must travel cumbersomely and slowly by foot. . . .\nThe desire eats and gnaws and nourishes itself from thence on within your\nbreast . . . Fills all of your senses and thoughts . . . Follows you in your\ndreams.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2014Alexander B\u00fcttner, Motorrad-Sport,\n-Verkehr und -Technik <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loosely crafted in the form of a Bildungsroman, Alexander\nB\u00fcttner\u2019s short story from 1924 portrays a male protagonist in his journey from\npedestrian to motorcyclist, culminating in his evolution into a \u201creal man.\u201d\nSparked by an irresistible desire, the \u201cmotorcyclist\u2019s development\u201d is\npunctuated by acts of consumption, first by ordering catalogs, then in\npurchasing a motorcycle. Once a motorcycle owner, a number of accessories\nsuddenly appear indispensable to the rookie motorcyclist. \u201cYou mount the bike\nand race through the city . . . and all the while you notice that a hundred\nthings are missing that you absolutely need: a gruff horn, an odometer, a\nspeedometer, and especially electric lights, and good tires . . . spare parts\nand a well-sprung pillion seat.\u201d Participation in consumer culture was a\nrequirement for the overwhelmingly male owners of motor vehicles during the\nWeimar Republic. Yet most contemporary observations, as well as subsequent\nanalyses, have consistently linked consumption to femininity, while studies of\nmasculinity during the Weimar Republic have focused predominantly on\nmilitarized masculinity as the hegemonic form. Indeed, in B\u00fcttner\u2019s short story\nand in the discourse of motorcycling as a whole, proper masculinity was\nrhetorically disassociated from conspicuous consumption. The act of masculine\nconsumption was concealed behind the twin pillars of modern manliness:\nproduction and possession. As the motorcyclist progresses through the stages\nfrom \u201cnovice\u201d (intoxicated with speed until he crashes) to \u201cconnoisseur\u201d (a\ngourmet of beauty in both landscapes and motorcycles), he is not depicted as\nmerely consuming passively. Instead, the motorcyclist is portrayed as mastering\ntime, space, and the machine. The emphasis is on acquiring skills and\nknowledge, rather than new gadgets or accessories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the \u201cmotorcyclist\u2019s development\u201d may appear idiosyncratic at first glance, the themes B\u00fcttner addresses are emblematic of modernity and masculinity in Germany during the first decades of the twentieth century. Although the dream world of mass automobility was in its infancy, increasingly affordable, domestically manufactured motorcycles swelled the ranks of German motorists. The number of two-wheelers, including two-stroke motorcycles with low engine capacity, steadily rose, surpassing the number of automobiles on German roads in 1926. By the end of the 1920s, with motor vehicle registrations totaling well over a million, motorcycles outnumbered automobiles by three to two. While individual automobile ownership continued to be a privilege of the upper classes, by the late 1920s the working classes were taking to motorcycling in droves. Skilled and unskilled laborers, alongside new white-collar workers so astutely analyzed by Siegfried Kracauer in The Salaried Masses: Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany<\/em>, were able to participate in motorization through buying mass-produced two-wheelers, sometimes making use of layaway plans or the extensive used-motorcycle market. This book explores how the everyday choices that men and women made expressed their desires to partake in the social and spatial mobility offered by motorization, and how their actions also produced and reflected anxieties about inhabiting an increasingly elastic and plastic world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About the book<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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THE DEVIL’S WHEELS<\/a>
Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic
Sasha Disko

\u201cA \ufb01ne study of the gendering of motorcycles in the inter- war years, Sasha Disko\u2019s<\/em> The Devil\u2019s Wheels offers an important interpretation of a mass-produced technology, the motorcycle, and how it came to embody masculinity as well as new forms of consumerism.\u201d<\/em> \u2022 American Historical Review<\/strong>

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\u2019s 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\u2019s Wheels<\/em> teases out the intricacies of gender and class in the Weimar years.

Purchase the eBook<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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