Description

1955 DKW RT 250H Motorcycle with Binder Sidecar - Photo taken by a river in the town of Zschopau East Germany.

The name DKW was trademarked in 1922 and the firm went on to become one of the largest manufacturers of motorcycles in the world. By 1928 they were building some 65,000 engine units annually, and DKW engines could be found powering some 60 German marques of the interwar period.

DKW bought out the ailing Audi company in 1930 and the similarly afflicted Horch in 1932. The Horch acquisition was made in conjunction with the wealthy Wanderer marque. As the senior partner, Wanderer appointed Baron Klaus von Ouertzen as managing director.


DKW motorcycles employed mostly two-stroke engines and often were technically advanced.

The French Manurhin was a version of the DKW Hobby scooter.

During the late 1920s and until WWII broke out, DKW was both the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer, as well as Europe's pioneer of front-wheel drive automobiles with their successful 1931 and later DKW Front models, before the 1932 Adler Trumpf and the 1934 Citroen Traction Avant. In 1931, Arnold Zoller started building split-singles and this concept made DKW the dominant racing motorcycle in the Lightweight and Junior classes between the wars. This included off-road events like the International Six Days Trial where the marque scored some considerable inter-war year successes alongside Bavarian Motor Works At the same time, the company also had some success with super-charged racing motorcycles which because of their light weight were particularly successful in the ISDT.

The motorcycle branch produced famous models such as the RT 125 pre- and post-World War II, and after the war with production at the original factory in GDR becoming MZ, it made 175, 250 and 350 (cc) models. As war reparations, the design drawings of the RT125 were given to Harley-Davidson in the US and BSA in the UK. The Harley-Davidson version was known loosely as the Hummer (Hummer is really just a few specific years, but generally people call the Harley lightweights Hummers), while BSA used them for the Bantam. IFA and later MZ models continued in production until the 1990s, when economics brought production of the two stroke to an end. Other manufacturers copied the DKW design, officially or otherwise. This can be seen in the similarity of many small two-stroke motorcycles from the 1950s, including from Yamaha, Voskhod, Maserati and Polish WSK.

Jorge Rasmussen founded Motorenwerke Rasmussen in Zschopau, Germany in 1906, and entered the motorcycle industry with a 30cc bicycle motor in 1921 and shortly thereafter introduced 122cc Golem and 142cc Lomos scooters. The company was further restructured after the war, joining Victoria and Express in 1958 to form Zweirad-Union, which in turn was absorbed by Fichtel & Sachs in 1966.