Devil's Wheels

Sasha Disko is a historian and independent scholar. She received her PhD 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.

• List of IllustrationsPreface and AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Does the man make the motorcycle or the motorcycle the man?AbbreviationsChapter 1. From Pioneers to Global Dominance: The First Forty Years of the German Motorcycle IndustryChapter 2. Engineering and Advertising a Motorized FutureChapter 3. Motorcycles and the “Everyman”: Exploring the Motorcycling MilieuChapter 4. “Is Motorcycling Even Sport?”: Strength and the National Body during the Weimar RepublicChapter 5. Deviant Behaviors: Inclusion, Exclusion, and CommunityChapter 6. Motoring Amazons?: Women and Motorcycling During the Weimar RepublicChapter 7. Sex and the Sidecar: Sexuality, Courtship, Marriage and MotorizationEpilogue: The Will to MotorAppendixBibliographyIndex

“A fine study of the gendering of motorcycles in the inter- war years, Sasha Disko’s The Devil’s Wheels offers an important interpretation of a mass-produced technology, the motorcycle, and how it came to embody masculinity as well as new forms of consumerism.” • American Historical Review“All in all, Disko offers a pronounced multi-perspective analysis of the motor-cycle as ‘cultural commodity’ in Weimar Germany, demonstrating impressively what a modern mobility study can achieve… Disko’s study is innovative and highly readable…[it] makes an important contribution to the cultural history of motorcycling and even opens up a new perspective on the cultural history of the Weimar Republic.” • Journal of Transport History“Sasha Disko’s study provides a treasure trove of exciting themes for those interested in leisure time activities, gender, consumption but also interactions between the state, through the police, and the motorcyclists on the streets in Weimar Germany.” • German History“Disko offers a new and exciting interpretation that challenges our understandings of gendered consumption, modernity, and the role that motorcycles played in defining and defending masculinity, femininity, and the nation during the interwar years.” • Jennifer Lynn, Montana State University“This is a fascinating, engagingly written, and illuminating book that resonates well beyond its immediate national and historical context. Its exploration of the anxieties and opportunities surrounding identity in the Weimar Republic will be greeted enthusiastically by scholars in cultural history, mobility studies, gender studies, and a host of other interdisciplinary fields.” • Cotten Seiler, Dickinson College