Original German tracks

[Guest]

This query is slightly aside from the extremely interesting topic currently under debate in regard to Lokstedt. Apart from the designated venue in that thread, what other tracks were there in Germany in the late 1920s early 1930s era? 

[iris123]

Bavarian probably knows more than me.Think he did put something on the Lokstedt topic.As far as I know in the early days after Hamburg in fact on the day of the zeal Street crash,Spencer Stratton opened a track in Cologne 24.11.1929.There was also a track in Breslau(Wroclaw)which at the time was part of Germany.On 23.031930 a track in Berlin opened.Think the first opening meeting was rained off and the top riders weren’t there for the re-arranged meeting,which mainly featured the Germans who rode at Hamburg in 1929 plus Nobby Key and ‘Platts’ from England and a couple of new Germans.The most successful being E.Ziemer

Should be noted that tracks were running earlier,but these were 1,000m+ like Hamburg Farmsen as early as 1924 and some of these riders ended up at Lokstedt on the Dirt Track

Edited January 16, 2019 by iris123

[iris123]

A bit of info on the Cologne Dirt track.Nobby Ley,Gus Platts Maurice Bradshaw and J.H.Barber were riding,but the meeting was cut short due to bad light.The next meeting on 01.12.1929 saw the same riders,plus Bluey Wilkinson in attendance.According to the Auto Magazine the track closed(for the season)within a week due to frost!!

Mentions the speedway(Dirt track) here,which was basically a bike stadium that was then later used for motorsports and the Dirt Track was built inside the concrete bike track

https://www.kuladig.de/Objektansicht.aspx?extid=O-120321-20150330-3

or here under the Riehler  Radrennbahn section

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radstadion_Köln

Edited January 17, 2019 by iris123

[iris123]

There was also a report in Motor Cycling of 23.04.1930 that a track was being built inside the banked cycling track(because of this, there wouldn't be a safety fence!!) in Dudweiler,Saarbrucken!!

Now this is an old banked cycling track,but in the article it states it was built in 1934!!So maybe there was a previous stadium there????

 https://www.saarbruecker-zeitung.de/sport/sz-sport/neben-unkraut-spriesst-auch-wieder-ein-radsport-traum_aid-5375730

a good photo here

http://joergaumann.blogspot.com/2017/09/zum-schanzenberg-und-mit-umwegen-zuruck.html

Edited January 17, 2019 by iris123

[Bavarian]

Interesting topic this !

Well I already knew about the Cologne Dirt-Track, promoted by an Englishman, in November/December 1929, but it did not last long. They staged the opening meeting in late November of 1929, and another two in bitterly cold conditions in early December, before closing for the winter. The Cologne track re-opened on Easter Monday in April of 1930, when Slider Shuttleworth was the winner of the opening main event. The track was 350m long. 

Other tracks popped-up all over Germany like mushrooms, following the huge succcess of the Hamburg Dirt Track, which had been Germany's first purpose built venue for motorcycle dirt-track racing, opening in July of 1929.

But none of the other tracks in Germany would be able to match the success story of Hamburg, and even Hamburg itself closed down for some reason after a few years.

Berlin was always thought to be an even bigger would-be success than Hamburg, but this did not go according to plan. The scheduled opening meeting early in 1930 was "snowed-off" on a very cold day in March. A week later, about 8,000 spectators attended for the re-staging on a Sunday afternoon. Englishmen Nobby Key and Gus Platts, and the New Zealander Spencer Stratton rode in Berlin's inaugural dirt track meeting. The Berlin track was only 333 metres long, much shorter than the Hamburg 1/3-mile oval (532 metres length). Berlin's dirt track was laid inside of an existing concrete banked cycle track at the "Olympia Radrennbahn". This was a similar set-up to the one at Cologne, and just the same as several other German tracks (Breslau, Chemnitz, etc). But somehow these type of racetracks on the infield of a Velodrome did not seem to appeal to the public. It is hard to understand why, because in Paris (France) this exact same type of set-up worked brilliantly and drew big crowds for many a year at the huge Stade-Velodrome Buffalo.  

One of the more successful conventional dirt track set-ups in Germany was the one in Munich (Bavaria). This was a big 400m track around a football pitch at the Postsport Stadium, located not far from the Munich Central Train Station. A 15,000 crowd saw Nobby Key take the win in the international event of the Munich dirt-track season opener on the last Sunday of March, 1930.   

Another rather successful German dirt-track, a big and pacey oval of originally 440m length, was the one at the Niederrhein Stadium in Oberhausen (Rhineland). This was in fact the only one of the German pre-war tracks that was re-opened again after the war years and continued to stage speedway, even FIM World Championship rounds, up until the 1960s.

In 1930, all in all  there were at least about another dozen or so dirt-track venues in Germany, for example at Stuttgart, Hannover, Breslau, Dortmund, Essen, Mannheim, Chemnitz, etc., but none of these lasted long.

Germany's pre-war Dirt-Track "craze" came and went very fast, within a year or two, starting in 1929, reaching its climax in 1930, and then dying out very fast and nearly completely in the next couple of years.  

 

By the way, I had no knowledge about the Saarbrücken track You mentioned here. Do You have any more info about any race meetings at Saarbrücken-Dudweiler ?         

 

Edited January 17, 2019 by Bavarian

[iris123]

No.I received a mail about the early days some years ago and that was just about the last piece of info.I hadn’t even searched any further on that until yesterday,as I was really concentrating on Hamburg

[Bavarian]

Nothing compares to the magnificent Hamburg dirt-track, no other track received such good publicity and newspaper coverage, and no other had so many and such great international riders, as You will find out. The Hamburg promoters payed out fortunes to these international stars, which eventually led them to bankrupcy.  

I am sure that there were some other tracks in Germany in the early 1930s boom years, such as Saarbrücken, that are still unknown to me.

 

By the way, another pre-war German dirt-track venue I just remember and forgot to name yesterday was this one here at Gladbeck https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadion_Gladbeck

Edited January 18, 2019 by Bavarian

[iris123]

There was also an interesting announcement in the 28.11.1928 issue of Motor cycling which stated 'A Manchester company,of which Fred Fearnley is a director,will give Germany its 1st dirt track in March 1929.It will be at Preußens football ground in Berlin.It is rumoured Clem Beckett and Ron Johnson will be riding there

Guess nothing ever came of this

[iris123]

Came across a report that some time in April 1930 the Dortmund track record was broken by Herbert Drews in poor conditions to 1:38,2 and Easter Monday in Copenhagen Sprouts Elder broke Ginger Lees track record from 1:28,4 down to 1.25,2 !!!

[iris123]

Any chance this place held Dirt Track meetings ? Seems to be mention of motorcycle races as well as greyhounds here

From 1906 racing bets could be accepted; In the years that followed, until it was incorporated into Munich in 1930, the tax to be paid by the Trabrennbahn was the main source of income for the municipality of Daglfing . In 1909 a second grandstand was built for 1,000 spectators. Racing was restricted during the First World War , but not given up. During the Munich Soviet Republic in 1919, the trotting course was briefly occupied by Spartacists - equestrian sport was the domain of the nobility and the well-to-do bourgeoisie. In the times of crisis in the 1920s, greyhound races , car races and motorcycle races also took place on the trackinstead of. In the 1930s, when sport was heavily promoted by the National Socialist regime , a lighting system that enabled evening races and a new restaurant were built. The "Silver Horse of Germany", advertised from 1937, was conceived as an international trotting award. In April 1938 the main stand was destroyed by fire.

https://second.wiki/wiki/trabrennbahn_daglfing

[Bavarian]

On ‎1‎/‎30‎/‎2022 at 8:33 PM, iris123 said:

Any chance this place held Dirt Track meetings ? Seems to be mention of motorcycle races as well as greyhounds here

From 1906 racing bets could be accepted; In the years that followed, until it was incorporated into Munich in 1930, the tax to be paid by the Trabrennbahn was the main source of income for the municipality of Daglfing . In 1909 a second grandstand was built for 1,000 spectators. Racing was restricted during the First World War , but not given up. During the Munich Soviet Republic in 1919, the trotting course was briefly occupied by Spartacists - equestrian sport was the domain of the nobility and the well-to-do bourgeoisie. In the times of crisis in the 1920s, greyhound races , car races and motorcycle races also took place on the trackinstead of. In the 1930s, when sport was heavily promoted by the National Socialist regime , a lighting system that enabled evening races and a new restaurant were built. The "Silver Horse of Germany", advertised from 1937, was conceived as an international trotting award. In April 1938 the main stand was destroyed by fire.

https://second.wiki/wiki/trabrennbahn_daglfing

 

Great Picture of Munich's two most famous horse racing tracks.

In fact, both tracks seen in this picture were tried for motorcycle racing before WW2. The track in front is the 1000m Trabrennbahn in München-Daglfing, and this track is in fact the cradle of "Sandbahnrennen" = long track racing in our country. The very first such meeting with motorcycles racing on a lose dirt/sand surface oval racetrack was held at Daglfing in conjunction with a bicycle race in the summer of 1921. The motorcycle races were most exciting and easily outshone the cycle races. The bicycle races were in the following years altoghether dropped from the program in favour of the motorbikes. The biggest international motorcyle track racing events at Daglfing were the annual Golden Helmet of Germany (Goldhelm von Deutschland) meetings, inaugurated in 1933, when the Führer AH himself was the donator of the trophy. The first Golden Helmet was won in pouring rain by the sidecar driver Josef Möritz, in a handicap race final that featured the day's fastest solos and sidecars of all the various classes.  

The track in the background of the picture is the much larger (2000m) Galopprennbahn in München-Riem. This track was used only once for a motorcycle grass track meeting in the autumn of 1931. The racing there on a very soft track surface was not nearly as good as at Daglfing, and as the turf was quite damaged by the bikes ,and cars racing in that one-off meeting München-Riem, it was not to be repeated.  

[Bavarian]

On ‎1‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 1:54 PM, iris123 said:

There was also an interesting announcement in the 28.11.1928 issue of Motor cycling which stated 'A Manchester company,of which Fred Fearnley is a director,will give Germany its 1st dirt track in March 1929.It will be at Preußens football ground in Berlin.It is rumoured Clem Beckett and Ron Johnson will be riding there

Guess nothing ever came of this

No, apparently nothing came of this in 1929.

There seems to have been a least three consortiums of would be dirt-track promoters tryign to run the Sport in the German capital. But it wasn't until March of 1930 until a dirt-track speedway was acutally opened in Berlin. That was at the Olympia Radrennbahn in Berlin-Plötzensee. It was a tiny 350m track inside a steeply banked concre surfaced cycle track and did in no way match the amazing success of the pacey one-third-of- a- mile Hamburg Dirt-Track. Failing to attract big enough crowds to make it pay (the grand opening meeting in March was "snowed-off" and had to be delayed for a week), Berlin's track was shut down again after only three months, never to be re-opened. 

At the same time, long-track motorcycle racing (Sandbahnrennen) with much higher speeds, at a couple of Berlin's 1000m venues for horse racing (Berlin-Mariendorf and Berlin-Karlshorst) became popular and somehow outshone the slower speeds of the riders racing on the cinder track.  

[Guest]

This reply deviates from the set topic but I have great memories of two meetings on my only visit to Germany 'sometime in the late 1950s.' They were international events with riders from Germany, Holland, Poland and the UK. They took place at Bremen and Oldenburg.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Guest

[iris123]

3 minutes ago, JohnHyam said:

This reply deviates from the set topic but I have great memories of two meetings on my only visit to Germany 'sometime in the late 1950s.' They were international events with rides from Germany, Holland, Poland and the UK. They took place at Bremen and Oldenburg.

Maybe more appropriate here ?

 

[chunky]

15 minutes ago, iris123 said:

Maybe more appropriate here ?

 

If I were you, I'd start a New, New, Original German Tracks thread...

[Bavarian]

1 hour ago, JohnHyam said:

This reply deviates from the set topic but I have great memories of two meetings on my only visit to Germany 'sometime in the late 1950s.' They were international events with riders from Germany, Holland, Poland and the UK. They took place at Bremen and Oldenburg.

iris123 has already posted some info about Bremen http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/91176-bremen-hansastadion/ and I will add some info about Oldenburg:

 

The Oldenburg Speedway operated for twelve years from 1952 until 1963, but they held only fifteen speedway meetings in total. The venue was the "Viktoria Kampfbahn" at Osternburg, which was a quite narrow 400m cinder track surrounding a football pitch.  

Here are some old photos http://www.oldenburgermedienarchiv.de/detail/media?page=1&mediafilter=all&container=tag&cid=1144  

 

The inaugural speedway meeting at Oldenburg on July 21, 1952, was a four team event, with a packed 12,000 sell-out crowd in attendance. This meeting was won by MSC Neumünster (59 Points) from MSC Oldenburg (57 Points), MSC Bremen (44 Points) and MSC Hamburg (37 Points). Oldenburg's local hero Hans Jäger set a one lap track record (from a flying start) averaging 62.2 kph.

 

For all the other fourteen individual meetings held at Oldenburg, these are the dates, the winners and placegetters:

2nd Meeting (July 19, 1953): 1st Hans JÄGER (Oldenburg), 2nd Fritz RINGEL (Hamburg), 3rd Hermann HUSS (Neumünster), 4th Walter GERNERT (Hamburg).

3rd Meeting (June 17, 1954): 1st Alfred DANNMEYER (Hamburg), 2nd Hans JÄGER (Oldenburg), 3rd Fritz RINGEL (Hamburg), 4th Hermann HUSS (Neumünster).

4th Meeting (May 19, 1955): 1st Heino RODICK (Oldenburg), 2nd Sedan GRAF (Hamburg), 3rd Walter GERNET (Hamburg), 4th Hans ZIOLKOWSKI (Hanover).

5th Meeting (July 29, 1956): 1st Hans JÄGER (Oldenburg), 2nd Paul CORDANG (Holland), 3rd Hans ZIERK (GDR), 4th Fritz RINGEL (Hamburg).

6th Meeting (July 28, 1957): 1st Hans JÄGER (Oldenburg), 2nd Hans ZIERK (GDR), 3rd Fritz RINGEL (Hamburg), 4th Nico VAN GORCUM (Holland).

7th Meeting (May 4, 1958): 1st Marian KAISER (Poland), 2nd Fritz RINGEL (Hamburg), 3rd Hans JÄGER (Oldenburg), 4th Ray HARRIS (England).

8th Meeting (September 14, 1958): 1st Hans ZIERK (GDR), 2nd Horst FEIST (Bremen), 3rd Manfred ZIERK (GDR), 4th Fritz RINGEL (Hamburg).

9th Meeting (May 3, 1959): 1st Ray HARRIS (England), 2nd Tommy SWEETMAN (England), 3rd Nico VAN GORCUM (Holland), 4th Hans JÄGER (Oldenburg).

10th Meeting (August 16, 1959): 1st Kurt W. PETERSEN (Denmark), 2nd Erik KASTEBO (Denmark), 3rd Fritz RINGEL (Hamburg), 4th Hans JÄGER (Oldenburg).

11th Meeting (May 8, 1960): 1st Kurt W. PETERSEN (Denmark), 2nd Erich LUTHER (Austria), 3rd Ray HARRIS (England), 4th Josef BÖSSNER (Austria).

12th Meeting (May 7, 1961): 1st Han VAN DER SLUIS (Holland), 2nd Erik KASTEBO (Denmark), 3rd H. P. BOISEN (Denmark), 4th Kalevi LAHTINEN (Finland).

13th Meeting (September 23, 1961): 1st Han VAN DER SLUIS (Holland), 2nd Alois FRACH (Oberhausen), 3rd Fritz RINGEL (Hamburg), 4th Kurt SCHWINGENSCHLÖGL (Austria).

14th Meeting (May 6, 1962): 1st Kalevi LAHTINEN (Finland), 2nd Bo HAKANSSON (Sweden), 3rd Han VAN DER SLUIS (Holland), 4th Alois FRACH (Oberhausen).

15th Meeting (April 21, 1963): 1. Poul WISSING (Denmark), 2nd Kurt W. PETERSEN (Denmark), 3rd Erik KASTEBO (Denmark), 4th Glyn CHANDLER (England).