The vintage motorcycle literature and photo archive

For many years I had gone through my father’s “journalistic apprenticeship”, and later I also worked in journalism myself. Therefore I wanted to continue my father’s legacy — after all, this collection of reports and photographs documents the history of two‑ and three‑wheeled vehicles from around 1890 onwards, with a special focus on the period from 1930 to 1960. The archive was eventually integrated into a collection of several historical archives and thus continues to live on.

Personal memories

Around 1965 my father began creating pencil drawings of famous motorcycles and writing motorcycle books as well as articles for magazines. Even though the archive may only have been fully usable in my father’s hands — together with his incredible knowledge of detail — it nevertheless represents his life’s work and its content.

I personally associate many memories with the pictures and documents found in his files. As children we accompanied our father almost every weekend to motorsport events around Salzburg, where he served as “speaker to the audience”. There is a photo of me as an eight‑year‑old boy at a speedway race in Mühldorf, Bavaria … a photo of the airfield race in Langenlebarn, Lower Austria … and many photos of the unforgettable Oldtimer Grand Prix on the Salzburgring — surely worth a story of its own.

And then there were the last hillclimb races on the Gaisberg near Salzburg at the end of the 1960s, where my father again served as “speaker to the audience”. He was positioned near the grandstand for honoured guests, halfway up to the finish at the “Zistelalm”. All results were still reported to him from the finish line via field telephones. Incidentally, there was also a motocross competition at the Zistelalm in the 1960s.

Do you still remember the speedway races on the horse‑racing track at Salzburg‑Liefering? Or the “Grand Prix of Austria” for motorcycles on the motorway at Salzburg‑Liefering, later in Anif, and eventually on the Salzburgring? I still remember how the chief timekeeper, Fritz Stengl, scolded anyone who crossed the photoelectric timing beam without permission. In those early days of road racing in Salzburg, the timekeeping crew was “accommodated” in old public buses.

And did you know that in the first start‑finish building on the Salzburgring, the “speaker to the audience” sat on the top floor — a floor that was statically miscalculated, so that only a maximum of three people were allowed to be up there at the same time?

Some photos of the archive

Four motorcycle greats playing cards. The photo shows, from left: Wilhelm Herz, German motorcycle champion and world record holder on NSU; H. P. Müller, multiple German motorcycle champion, world champion and world record holder; Reg Armstrong (Ireland), five‑time motorcycle world champion; and Rupert Hollaus, the only Austrian solo motorcycle world champion (1954). An unimaginable scene today, photographed in 1954.