BERLIN CALENDAR (HOLIDAY EDITION): STEPPING ON IT - THE FIRST POST-WAR NEWSPAPER COURIER RACE IN BERLIN
This Week in Berlin: 21 July , 1945
From that sunny day in August 1881 when the first cycling track opened in Charlottenburg’s pleasure gardens at the Gartenlokal “Flora”, Berlin’s passion for cycling races only kept growing.
Over the next century or so cycling tracks popped up around the capital city as both temporary and permanent structures. The apex was reached (by bike, how else?) in the still running annual competition called Sechs-Tage-Rennen (Six-Day-Races) - an event so popular that it got its own tune. The Sportpalast Walzer with the Berlin Whistler-in-Chief, Reinhold Habisch - better known as Krücke (The Crutch).
So keen were Berliners on bicycle races that even Berlin paperboys held their own dash. On 21 July 1945 Berlin’s first post-war newspaper bike-couriers’ race took place at the sports stadium in Neukölln, a popular sports venue just about to be renamed Werner-Seelenbinder-Kampfbahn.
The event, known as Meisterschaft der Berliner Zeitungsfahrer, had had a long tradition in the city. Organised by the legendary Berlin cyclist and cycling journalist, Fredy Budzinski, it was first held on October 24, 1920.
Budzinsky found his inspiration literally on the street: he witnessed a group of newspaper couriers, who had to deliver freshly printed editions to private clients and small newsagents before 6 AM, race up a steep street in Berlin-Schöneberg. They passed him, an experienced cyclist, and vanished with their cargo before he could reach the top.
Meisterschaft der Berliner Zeitungsfahrer participants - all professional or semi-professional newspaper delivery couriers - gathered in today’s Straße des 17. Juni at the Siegessäule (mind you, back then Berlin’s “Victory Column” still stood before the Reichstag) and would pedal their way down to the Heerstraße railway station. From there they would set off on their 22-kilometre long race through the Grunewald Forest. While sporting heavy rucksacks filled with up to 20 kilograms (40 pounds) of newspapers on their backs.
The winner of the first 1920 Meisterschaft - the champion of the day - was Otto Tietz.
The 1945 race attracted crowds of curious, if still shell-shocked, Berliners, who yearned for a bit of normalcy. They cheered the racing newspaper couriers, undoubtedly envious not only of their skills, but also of the bicycles as such - in 1945 in Berlin a bike was one of the most precious belongings a local could have.
Erich Golz, the alleged winner of the first post-war race (“alleged” as he might have still been a prisoner of war at the time - which, understandably, would have limited his chances of winning the competition), received a special licence permitting him to purchase a bike AND preventing the said bike from being “confiscated” by any member of Berlin’s occupation forces.
