The Devil's Wheels: Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic by Sasha Disko

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Devil's Wheels: Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic by Sasha Disko Nathaniel D. Wood (bio) The Devil's Wheels: Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic. By Sasha Disko. New York: Berghahn Books, 2016. Pp. 374. Hardcover $120. This book, the second in the series "Explorations in Mobility," edited by Gijs Mom, Mimi Sheller, and Georgine Clarsen, follows Mom's book Atlantic Automobilism (Berghan, 2014) and precedes a forthcoming text on Fascist motorways. It also fits nicely with Peter Fritzsche's A Nation of Flyers (Harvard, 1992), which explores similar sources, as well as the numerous studies of automobiles and culture in Germany, the birthplace of the automobile. What makes The Devil's Wheels innovative and worthwhile is its fresh take on consumption, masculinity, mobility, and modernity in Weimar Germany, using the lens of the less-considered topic of motorcycling, which was much more widespread than aviation or automobilism. By the end of the Weimar Republic, motorcycle ownership had increased eightyfold and Germany produced more motorcycles than any other country in the world. Motorcycles were particularly important harbingers of the economic and social changes of the era, and unlike automobiles, which remained too expensive for ordinary people to afford, functioned as the true vehicles of mass motorization. Disko positions her book as a counter-perspective to the majority of [End Page 635] studies of masculinity in the Weimar Republic that have largely considered the militarization of society, or studies that have tended to associate consumption with femininity. With motorcycling, she argues, consumption is obscured "behind the twin pillars of modern manliness: production and possession," yet she shows how motorcycles were much more than mere machines for those who purchased them (p. 1). In idealized versions of themselves, motorcyclists conquered nature, space, time, and the machine. Using a source base ranging from trade publications and club journals, maps, insurance policies, races and rides, ownership statistics, registration records, legal records, films, drawings, song lyrics, and fiction all the way to Heidegger and a few other cultural theorists, Disko explores ways that Germans articulated their relationship with the noisy and thrilling motorcycle. The book advances the overall argument that "for many Germans during the Weimar Republic, motorcycling became a vehicle for negotiating the modern world," by showing how depictions and discussions about it reflected the thrills and danger of modern mobility, sexuality, and consumerism (p. 16). In seven chapters and an epilogue, the book explores the growth of the motorcycling industry, engineers and advertising, the role of motorcycles for the "everyman," debates about motorcycling as a sport, deviant behaviors on motorcycles, women motorcyclists, sexuality, and motorcycling's gradual decline under the Nazis and after WWII. In her chapter on the first forty years of motorcycle manufacturing in Germany, Disko asserts that WWI had, on balance, a negative impact on motorcycle production. Yet in the years following the war, industrialists sought an outlet for their factories and motorcycles offered an attractive option. Smaller two-stroke engines were louder and messier than four-stroke engines, but cheaper. Rationalization of assembly methods, which many Germans sought to differentiate from Fordism by asserting its "German" twists, made the production of a true volksrad (people's motorcycle) possible. Chapter three offers a deep exploration of "Motorcycles for the 'Everyman,"' noting the shifting demographics of motorcycle owners, before turning to their "habitus" by discussing "ideal types," as defined by motorcyclists themselves in club journals. Here Disko disputes "the concept of a uniform, singular concept of German motorcyclist masculinity," noting the differences between various ideal types (p. 149). Notions of the "new man," who was clean-shaven, slender, strong, mechanically competent, and a consumer of gadgets, predominated, but there was room for differentiation, as marked by consumer choices and behavior. Debates around sportsmanship or deviant behaviors like drunk driving, joyriding, noise pollution, and violence, discussed in the next two chapters, further this point. Letters about how motorcyclists should treat dogs on the road, some of which seem remarkably cruel by today's standards, reflect contested notions of violence, entitlement, and masculinity. [End Page 636] The next two chapters, about women motorcyclists and sexuality, likewise note contestation and differentiation. "[Female] motorists during the Weimar Republic both...