Hooptedoodle #469 - Hitler's Motorbikes, and Their Part in My Upbringing

 The title, of course, is a joke. This is just going to be the usual self-indulgent stuff about me, me, me, but let's sustain the pretence for a minute, and start with the motorbikes.

Most of you will recognise this as the iconic Zündapp KS750 sidecar unit, of which the Wehrmacht bought some 18,000 during WW2.  Zündapp were the most successful German maker of motorcycles; it is less well known that they were also the sponsors of the experimental Porsche 12 of 1931, which was one of the forerunners of Hitler's People's Car. The Zündapp effort was very advanced, having a flat-5 watercooled engine, and it may have been dropped on the grounds of cost. Here's a postwar reconstruction of the Porsche 12, which never made it into production; I understand that there were 3 running prototypes, of which the last was destroyed in a bombing raid on Stuttgart in 1945.

After the war, Zündapp moved their operation to Munich, and production was restricted to small, 2-stroke engined motorcycles. They produced a range of what became known as "mo-peds", and also introduced the excellent Bella scooter, which in the 1960s should by rights have been a very serious challenger to the Vespa and the Lambretta - maybe it was too ugly?

 Changes in regulations and international trading agreements meant that Germany's protected motor cycle industry was suddenly thrown open to competition from Japan, and Zündapp eventually went bankrupt.

Right, back to my own history.

My family moved to a more suburban district of Liverpool when I was 10, and my dad got a better job, at English Electric, in Aintree. This was too far to cycle, and he detested public transport, which he always considered to be primarily an uncomfortable way to spread infection. So he bought himself a 50cc moped - a Zündapp, in fact - for his commute. This would do something amazing like 150mpg on 2-stroke fuel. The build quality was exceptional, and the device was very strong (and heavy, of course). Officially it would do 35mph, but my dad fitted his with steel leg guards, and with a mighty perspex windscreen, which had a clear apron hanging down to the leg guards, so it had the aerodynamics of something very like a garden shed. He also fitted it with an improvised pillion seat; with me on the back, 25mph was about the limit, and up anything like a significant slope I would often have to get off and jog up the hill behind him. It was not a huge amount of fun, as I recall.

Since I have given the general impression that this was no kind of sophisticated or comfortable means of transport, it makes obvious sense that the first serious run my dad took me on with his noisy, stinking, wheezing moped should be a 3-day jaunt to the Lake District "and beyond" (which I think meant "whatever we can manage"). I spent a lot of this trip jogging up steep hills, as you might imagine, thinking silent, dark thoughts. We went on the old A6 road over Shap Fell; we got as far as the Scottish border (just about); neither of us had been to Scotland before, so never mind the physical torture and the driving rain. Then we came back via the Pennines (he wanted to take a photo of the waterfall, High Force, near Middleton in Teesdale, with his ridiculous little Ensign box camera), cut back into the Lakes for our second night, and dawdled our way home the following day. How we survived, and why no-one ever murdered him, remain topics of wonder to this day.

During that trip, apart from my first sight of Scotland, I recall that we also spent a night's bed and breakfast upstairs in a pub in Stainton, Penrith - I had never been in a pub before!

This all comes to mind now because I recently rescued some of my mother's old family photo albums from her care home, and I now have some evidence. Here am I, with the moped, on the shore at Coniston Water, in the Lake District, on that very trip. Note short trousers, school socks and non-aerodynamic hairstyle.

And here, just to prove we got there, is the ritual photo of Gretna Green. I think that the wretch in the plastic mac in the middle is me.

 

A year or so later the Zündapp was replaced by a Lambretta scooter (by this time we are getting into the age of crash helmets), but serious upgrades to the transport situation waited until I had gone away to university, after which my mum and dad owned motor cars, and started going on nice continental holidays. [I've always wondered about that...].

It was interesting for me (if not for you) to find these old snapshots, which I haven't seen for 60 years at least. I should keep them handy, in case I am ever guilty of thinking that life gets a little tough some days.

 

Tonight I propose to work on touching up my growing collection of gabions. I may also paint some chevaux de frises. I have some excellent CDs of the Danish String Quartet playing folk music to keep me entertained, of which I may say more on another occasion.