The Retz Bicycle Museum in Austria

The world of cycling is truly diverse, encompassing sports, transportation, technology and social history. Set at a human scale, many of its stories and artifacts have been lost over the last century but much too has been saved. In Europe many of the mainstream state museums, such as transportation wing of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, give short shrift to the two-wheeled past but one finds a surprising number of rather eccentric little museums heroically taking up the slack. Pezcyclingnews has already taken you to museums in Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany but today we introduce you to yet one more, this time in Austria.

Retz is a town of 5,000, located in Lower Austria directly on the Czech border and some 80 kms northwest of Vienna. Dating back to 1180, the town has has seen its fair share of events, including being destroyed during the Hussite Rebellion in 1425 and then again in the 17^th Century during the Thirty Years' War. Located in the Austrian Wine District (Weinviertel) it boasts one of the finest and largest market squares of any place in the country and the Gatterburg Castle, constructed between 1660 and 1670. In the basement of this city castle you will find the Fahrradmuseum Retz (simply “the Retz Bicycle Museum”) and its jovial proprietor/manager, Herr Fritz Hurtl.

 

Austria was of course once much more than Austria alone, ruling over a vast multicultural and multilingual empire until 1918 so it should be no surprise that the country once boasted a significant industrial base which included the manufacture of bicycles. In its collection numbering more than 90 examples the Retz museum covers the history of the bicycle from the days of the hobby horse/Laufmaschine craze of the 1820s up to racing bicycles of the 1980s with a particular emphasis on Austro-Hungarian brands. Some of these names still resonate even in the English-speaking world of models exported in the bike boom of the 1970s: Puch, Steyr, Austro-Daimler.

The basis of what you see in the museum, which includes not only complete bicycles but also accessories, pictures, advertising posters and parts, came from the collection of Herr Hurtl. With a band of supporters an association was formed and space was found in the castle cellar. In 1999 the museum was opened to the public and operates daily in the afternoon from May to October. Herr Hurtl is a great enthusiast and is delighted to discuss the finer points of the collection (although visitors may wish to note he does not speak English and his German bears a very strong Austrian dialect!). He was concerned that the museum may have to eventually relocate, something that seems to be a common problem for these small museums. The lease with the castle landlord was due to end in 2013 but is continuing for the moment but the association, “Verein 's Fahrradl im Schloss," would like to have a permanent location of its own. The current space is not wheelchair-accessible and lacks space for special exhibitions.

Walking through the museum one sees a number of very early two-wheelers, including a replica of Baron Drais' 1817 Laufmaschine, considered to be the first bicycle (at least in the German-speaking world!), and several others from the Iron Age of Cycling. There are some nice highwheelers as well but the major part of the collection covers the safety bicycle, in its myriad forms. There are bicycles with weird suspension systems or peculiar drivetrains and one is again reminded of the myriad avenues, many of them leading to dead ends, of technological innovation that characterized the development of the bike. In addition to the well-known Austrian brands mentioned, there are some quite obscure ones such as Burg, Jacobi and Miesenstöck along with French, Czechoslovak and German models. Particularly pleasing is the Bismarck bicycle with its two-speed bottom bracket transmission.

In the walls of the cellar there are niches which have been used to highlight objects of special interests. One of these features a Puch “Waffenrad” from 1915 and is devoted to the Puch story. Founded in 1889 in Graz by Johann Puch, the company was a successful manufacturer of bicycles under its “Styria” and “Puch” brand names. The first Paris-Roubaix race was won on a Styria bicycle ridden by Josef Fischer in 1896. In 1900 operations were expanded to include mopeds, motorcycles and even cars; by 1908 the company was already producing variable-gearing bicycles. By the time of the founder's retirement in 1912 the Puch factory was producing 16,000 bicycles annually. In 1928 the company merged with Austro-Daimler and subsequently again with Steyr in 1934. Post-World War II the company produced a very wide range and Puch bicycles were ridden to many race successes by Austria's best cyclists in Team ASKO Knittelfeld in the 1970s and 1980s but the collapse of the US export market post-1975 led to disastrous losses. The company was sold to the Italian firm Bianchi in 1987. The merged group is now part of the Swedish Cycleurope group, which includes other historic brands including France's Gitane and Sweden's Monark and is owned by the Monegasque royal family. The “Waffenrad” name is still used by Puch but the bicycles do not have the unique style of the model featured at Retz with it beautiful chainring!

The museum is packed with interesting artifacts although one must admit that the racing component is a bit weak. Nonetheless, everything is accessible (Herr Hurtl will move bikes for you if you want to take some photos—take that, Deutsches Museum!) and the whole project is one of great charm. It is worth the short trip from Vienna and provides the opportunity not only to enjoy the museum but also the very attractive town and the Weinviertel, whose attractions are quite obvious.

Fahrradmuseum Retz

Verein " 's Fahrradl im Schloss"
Schlossplatz 5
A-2070 Retz
Österreich / Austria

Tel: 0664/ 6431791
Skype +43-664-6431791
website (primarily in German, but with English and Czech sections): http://www.fahrradmuseum-retz.com/
The museum is open daily from 14:00-17:00 May to October but can be visited otherwise by appointment. Admission is 3 Euros for adults.

In Velo Veritas: A Retro-Ride in Austria's Weinviertel

Arriving in Berlin years ago I was bemused to discover there were Austrian restaurants, which were perceived as foreign and exotic by the German locals, themselves no strangers to permutations of Schnitzel. But the Austrians were seen as having a lighter touch, possessing a flair with diverse ingredients and spicing it all with a knowing, sly humour.

A few years ago Horst Watzl and fellow enthusiasts Martin and Michl, admittedly inspired by Tuscany's great L'Eroica retro-ride, felt that that own country offered many of the same features that made the Italian ride so wildly popular: superb tarred roads; bad gravel roads; the odd cobblestone and nasty climb; and really excellent wine and food. Test runs were carried out with increasingly large groups until the first In Velo Veritas (IVV) was officially run in 2013, attracting 291 cyclists on old steel bicycles from 14 countries.  Here is a video of the 2013 event:

In Velo Veritas 2013 vimeo from Lensscapes on Vimeo.

News of the event spread and in 2014 well over 400 cyclists, representing 17 nationalities, came to ride one of three courses: the Epic (210 km); the Ambitious (140 km); and the Pleasurable (70 km). The majority of the riders are local but 40% make the trip from Germany.

The event is spread over two days on a June weekend. On Saturday registration was set up and the area around Korneuburg's Hapsburgian Rathaus on the Hauptplatz was given over to the arrival of cyclists, who came not only to sign in and get their numbers but also to look at the Flea Market, check out the display of some of the truly ancient bicycles brought over from the Bicycle Museum in Retz, enjoy an Eiskaffee in the afternoon sunshine the adjacent café, chat with other cyclists and admire a lot of cool racing bikes.

The rules are straightforward: you need a pre-1987 classic racing bicycle with downtube shifters and pedals with toeclips and straps. My participation was with my glorious 1975 Rickert Spezial built in his Dortmund workshop by the great Hugo Rickert with classic Reynolds 531 tubing, a SunTour Cyclone drivetrain and with slightly shakey pinstriping applied by Frau Rickert. I really need to do a post about Rickert's bicycles.  And “a suitable outfit for the riders would be very much appreciated” which meant wool jerseys for sure.  So I had my favourite RSV Vagabund '13 jersey to show off.

Besides the usual Colnagos and Peugeots one sees at these events there were there were many interesting Austrian bicycles—Puch, Austro-Daimler, Select, RIH and Steinmayr. (For more about Austrian bicycles, check out my review of a book about them here .) One of the unusual twists of this event is that you are photographed on Saturday in a “before” photo and then again on Sunday in an “after” version as the organizers were hoping for the gaunt and sweaty style of true “convicts of the road.”

At 4 pm the cyclists present were organized into the In Velo Veritas prologue and the group of about forty happy riders churned off westwards and soon reached the mighty Danube, A wide bikepath brought us along the river for 8 kms before turning northwards at Stockerau where we began what was first a rather gradual climb that became progressively steeper until it topped out at Km 21.6. A super-fast downhill came next, accompanied by the usual squealing of ineffective vintage brake blocks and we continued downhill more or less until we returned to the Hauptplatz after riding 32 kms in all, with a gain of 270 m. Time for dinner!

At our table was the Guest of Honour, former pro Rudi Mitteregger, a Very Cool Guy. Three-time winner of the Tour of Austria and an unmatched quadruple winner of the King of the Grossglockner competition, Herr Mitteregger is a very very fit 70 years old and he rode the prologue with us on his newly-restored green and white Puch bicycle. One of Austria's cycling legends, he is famous for a quote when leading the 1974 Tour of Austria he was left holding a wheel at the side of the ride when his team car was nowhere to be seen and shouted (in enraged and frustrated Austrian dialect): “Where are the monkeys? Still at the start?” He lost the stage but won the overall and immortality.

 

After dinner he took the stage for a Q&A and showed himself to be a gracious and entertaining speaker. A highlight had to be the arrival of a bike collector with one of Rudi's old Tour of Austria bikes, a silver Select (actually a relabelled Alan from Italy). It was carefully researched and restored and Herr Mitteregger enthusiastically agreed to sign it. And the very fit Austrian ace was looking forward to the 70 km ride the next day which was appropriate given his age!

Also at the dinner table was Hannes Weitscheider who is the manager of the Weinviertel tourism agency and he explained to us how his organization has been keen to work with IVV to develop the entire program to encourage visitors to come to the region. The routes were chosen to highlight the lovely scenery of rolling landscapes, historic small towns and villages and impressive castles but also to show off local products, of which wine was the most obvious but not the only one by far.

The evening program ended with the showing of a 15 minute experimental video, “In Velo Veritas,” which was shot on 16 mm film last year by filmmakers Milena Krobath and Johannes Schrems. Accompanied by the sounds of spinning spokes only, the video was in black and white and sepia and reversed images and had a timeless if fey quality.

Sunday and time to get serious, although I had plenty of time for breakfast.  Startlingly, someone in my little B&B at the next table recognized me from "Travels with a Tin Donkey," the first time this has ever happened.  A thrill to start the day!

The Epic riders had already assembled and ridden off from the Hauptmarkt at 6:00 am and headed northwards on a route that would take them into Moravia and the Czech Republic. The more modest Ambitious riders set out en masse at 08:00 am in what was claimed to be a neutral start but some of the more antsy riders were pushing the pace. The Rickert began to shift strangely as we almost immediately began to climb but the real problem was when we reached Stetten 13 kms into the ride and suddenly turned onto a “Weingasse.” This is a unique feature of the Weinviertel, an alley of small buildings that are used by vintners to store wine but also are opened up to serve wine and simple food during special events. The Weingasse in Stetten was paved with flat stones with surprisingly big gaps between them packed with earth. This was very difficult to ride and not helped by the steepness of the grade. But we pulled through and we rewarded with, oops, another long climb but one on dirt and gravel tractor path before a nice descent on smooth asphalt to Grossrussbach and the first control point at Km 37.

This had to be one of the highlights of the day. Unlike the usual organized long-distance rides where you can really only expect some bananas, energy bars and fluids, we found ourselves in a real restaurant. There was a fantastic variety of food, from three different soups to cakes, all-natural apple cider and grape juice, fruits and hot savoury strudel, either spinach or meat. Little signs explained where the products originated: for example, the milk for the coffee came from a particularly family farm.

We all sat together in the shady garden enjoying ourselves but eventually realized we had to go or else explain to friends how we had gained so much weight on a single ride. And in the parking lot was stationed a friendly mechanic, a cheerful Berliner, who put the Rickert shifting to rights in about 30 seconds. So no excuses now!

We had a bit of a laugh that the next control/food stop was only 15 kms away but laughed a bit less when we began to feel the effects of a headwind, coupled with a gradual but relentless climb. A very cool thing was crossing railway tracks and seeing four people using a draisine, a self-propelled railcar named after but not invented by Baron Drais, the generally accredited inventor of the bicycle.

We rode by the first castle of the tour, Schloss Niederleis, which dated back to the 12^th Century but had seen a number of reconstructions due to war and fashion and even served the Russian occupation administration from 1948-1955. But we were now climbing more steeply.

Some hard turns and we found ourselves, breathless, at the highest point in the Weinviertel, the Buschberg, which towers, relatively, 491 m ASL. The hut where we had our cards stamps and enjoyed a cold drink is the lowest-situated mountain hut maintained by the Austrian Alpine Club at 484 m.

Blasting down the descent of the Buschberg at 70 km/h with not-so-useful brakes was fun on the superb road and we rode through the green and lush landscape into the northwest headwind. But the sun was shining and we were having a great time. We passed another Weingasse near Mailberg, the third for the day and thankfully not involving cobblestones before pulling up to control point No.3, Schloss Mailberg at Km 78.

This castle has been owned by the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta since 1146 and, like most castles, has had many periods of reconstruction following numerous wars. It presently is an impressive hotel and we were treated to soup, yogurt and juice or, for those indulging, wine. We were joined now by the Epic riders heading on their way back and coming to Mailberg for a second time on their loop.

We had more climbing and descending, with not much of the hoped-for tailwind as we also turned back on our loop and by the time we returned to Grossrussbach at Km 114 the Rickert rider was feeling a bit rickety. We had already reached the amount of climbing claimed by the organizers for the whole route but fortifying ourselves with coffee and cake we attacked the last 30 kms of our route.

The organizers clearly had not wanted us to miss any chance to do more climbing before we saw a road sign showing the way to Korneuburg was only11 km. Of course our route took us a different way as we needed to ride another long stretch of gravel and then a nasty short climb of perhaps 16% grade through what appeared to be someone's backyard—oh! It was a backyard! Wrong direction! Finding the correct 16% section took us over the top and now, mercifully, we were on the main road from Leobendorf for a fast, flat straight-in ride back to the Hauptmarkt.

Greeting joyfully by those who had arrived before, we happily if sweatily posed for our portraits before receiving a bag which had lots of printed material (promos for retro-rides in Italy, a very good Austrian bike advocacy magazine, bike route maps, tourism information and a nice certificate personally signed by organizer Horst Watzl, the Mayor of Korneuburg and Rudi Metteregger) but, most thrillingly, a bottle of local white wine which made up for the fact that the promised 1400 m of climbing were more like 1800 m. 

 

We had had beautiful weather, fine roads with little traffic, great company and the Austrians are even organized enough that you can take a shower at the end before heading for home. The small team that runs the event has built a total package in a remarkably short time, with community buy-in, enthusiastic sponsors, professional graphics and a useful website. If you register early enough you can enjoy Horst's entertaining build-up e-mail newsletters. They ignored their own rules (no mechanical check to see if you had spare tubes, or time stamp at the controls) because, well, somethings are less important. One had the sense that everyone was there to have fun. The organizers are aware of the dangers of letting an event get too big and lose its charm but I don't think there is much risk of that at IVV.

Getting to Korneuburg and the Weinviertel from Vienna is very easy (almost a suburb of the capital) and for those planning to visit there are excellent wines to sample and a whole range of events around them—even for children! Of course, the area is rich in history and lovely architecture and there is a whole lot more than schnitzel and strudel so be prepared to be charmed at one of the best retro-rides yet.

Riding with my new friend Bernd

For more information, go to www.inveloveritas.at. The attractive website is multilingual.

Book Review: “Wiener Mechanikerfahräder 1930-1980”

 

Vienna: it conjures up images of schnitzel, strudel and Johann Strauss waltzes but a new book from a tradition-rich publishing house in the Austrian capital reveals another aspect of the city now nearly forgotten: the construction of bicycles, often in tiny workshops and to a surprisingly high technical and aesthetic standard.  The book “Wiener Mechanikerräder 1930-1980” confirms its authors’ contention that “Vienna is big but the range of its bicycle manufacturers was once even bigger.”

In 1930 Vienna had more than 100 makes of bicycle and for the next half-century brands would come and go.  The marques in this book, teutonically organized from “Alpenrad” to “Ziel” by the four (!) authors, have been painstakingly researched and the heading of each chapter indicates when the company existed, who owned it, how long the brand was in production, the location of the workshop, whether the firm produced its own bikes or brought in bikes under its own name from elsewhere and sources of information.  The effort to uncover all of these things must have been daunting and indicative of the fanatical obsession of collectors of which the authors are representative.  One of them owns 85 racing bikes.  Reference is made to the “tide of bikes” occupying basements and that during research for the book the authors managed to accumulate 16 more bicycles and eight frames!

 

 

From the number of brands it seems as if pretty much every Viennese bicycle shop must have had its own production as the beautifully-produced volume is over 350 pages in length.  This is understandable perhaps as in the Age of Steel building up a bike was a fairly straightforward tube-brazing operation with components coming from a few large suppliers.  In the winter months the shops could be occupied with production for the coming year.  However, the imaginative Austrians were not limited in their cycling vision and some of the bikes featured here have aluminum lugs screwed into lightweight steel tubes or aerodynamically-shaped tubing or even a leaf spring suspended frame.  There were folding bikes and aluminum children’s bikes and bicycles with jewel-like paint finishes.  It is proper that this book is Volume 2 in the series “Austrian Technical History.”

 

"Wiener Mechanikerfahräder” has a charming, personal touch to it, perhaps because the companies and framebuilders really were so individual.  One is struck by the brand names.   Some, such as “Williams,”  “the Champ,” “Sussex” or “Champion” were meant to convince buyers that they perhaps reflected the glory of English manufacturers.  But a larger group used the names of the builders, usually taking the first two initials of the first and last names.  Hence: BBW (Bruno Beranke Wien); Capo (Otto Cap); Elan (Eduard Lachnit); Er-We (Eduard Reininger); FAB (Fahrradhaus Adolf Blum); FH (Franz Hrabalek); Frado (Franz Dorfinger); Frigo (Friedrich Gollerstepper); Friha (Friedrich Hamedl); Geoga (Georg Gartner); Igro (Josef Grosstab); JoWi (Josef Wilfing); Mipf (Michael Pfeiffer); and so forth. 

 

In addition to the racing bicycles one would expect to find there are plenty of lady’s road bikes, the odd bike used for indoor ball games and some very cool children’s bikes, including one that could alternatively be used as a scooter.  Some of the companies offered a wide product line.  The producers of the “Select” brand, which made its own bicycles from 1947 until at least the 1980s, offered track and road bikes of excellent quality and the book features thirteen of them, including a remarkable bike meant for mountain road racing and built with a split seat tube to allow a very short wheelbase by moving the rear wheel forward, an idea taken up in these later times of composites by others using curved seat tubes.  “Select” enjoy the services of a virtuoso framebuilder, Michael Steinkellner, whose “S” initial was placed on the seatstays.

 

In addition to the excellent full colour photographs of Philipp Horak there are vintage black-and-white photos showing the cycling scene in Vienna in the period covered in the book, with lots of local race meets and local heroes.  The accompanying text is quite interesting as well and often reveals the sly humour of the Viennese.  If you don’t read German you will miss that but the quality of the book and the wealth of photos certainly obviates the need to go for language classes.

 

The old bike hobby is a niche within the greater cycling community, which in itself (at least as far as racing bicycles go) is simply a larger niche.  Upon learning of this book we thought that this must be the most obscure topic that anyone could write about (and we own three books on the history of variable gearing).  French, Italian and English builders have had global fame but, as the book admits, the brands highlighted here were “world-famous in Vienna.”  The book is of very high quality and not inexpensive but the publisher has told us that more than half of the print run of “Wiener Mechanikerfahräder” has already been sold although the book only was published this year.  And of course if you don’t want to shell out the 59 Euros (approx. US$ 83) plus shipping for the book you can order a lovely calendar featuring photographs from it for 19.95 Euros and shipping. 

The subtext of the book is “From Zero to One Hundred to Zero.”  Of the 100 different brands described only one company, Capo, still exists.  Yet there is hope as there is a brief chapter on the brave few framebuilders who are working in Vienna today, including Peter Gross although another, Hans Pöllhuber, who operates a store and workshop, has given up framebuilding himself as uneconomic. 



Many of the builders and brands in the book are known only from a single frame and the authors present a number of mystery frames they have found and invite readers to send them any information about them they might have.  Another personal touch.

 

“Wiener Mechanikerfahräder 1930-1980” might be about an obscure era to anyone outside of Vienna but this book is a true labour of love and a source of great entertainment if you like old bicycles and want to dip into a different world around them.  “World-famous in Vienna” deserves to be just world-famous and would make an excellent gift, ideal for browsing through on those long winter evenings while enjoying a Café Melange mit Schlagobers.

For more information and to order the book or calendar go to:

http://www.wiener-machanikerraeder.at/ or http://www.hollinek.at/

“Wiener Mechanikerfahräder 1930-1980”

by Michael Zappe, Walter Schmidl, Martin Strubreiter and Werner Schuster,

 with photos by Philipp Horak

347 pp, ill. With text in German

ISBN 978-3-85119-342-8

Verlag Brüder Hollinek, Purkersdorf, Austria, 2013

59 Euros, plus shipping