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’s 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’s Wheels teases out the intricacies of gender and class in the Weimar years.
Tabella dei contenuti
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Does the man make the motorcycle or the motorcycle the man?
Abbreviations
Chapter 1. From Pioneers to Global Dominance: The First Forty Years of the German Motorcycle Industry
Chapter 2. Engineering and Advertising a Motorized Future
Chapter 3. Motorcycles and the “Everyman”: Exploring the Motorcycling Milieu
Chapter 4. “Is Motorcycling Even Sport?”: Strength and the National Body during the Weimar Republic
Chapter 5. Deviant Behaviors: Inclusion, Exclusion, and Community
Chapter 6. Motoring Amazons?: Women and Motorcycling During the Weimar Republic
Chapter 7. Sex and the Sidecar: Sexuality, Courtship, Marriage and Motorization
Epilogue: The Will to Motor
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
Circa l’autore
Sasha Disko is a historian and independent scholar. She received her Ph D in History from New York University, and she has been associated with the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, since 2008. Her research interests include motorization, industrialization, and leisure.
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