Just a quick outline of my opinion. I can supply sources for all of what I´m writing here if needs be, many off-hand, some after looking
more intensely.
Before WWI, track racing, and especially motor paced track racing, was
the biggest pro sports in Germany. Riders were attracted from all over
the world, including the US.
Then soccer came up and became the most watched sports during the 1920s. Germans still are soccer crazy and have only become mildly interested in cycle racing with the rise of Jan Ullrich (sp?). Among young people, especially from the lower strata of society, cycle racing
is definitively the most uncool thing to do, only slightly surpassed by
developing spots in your face.
At the same time, Germany was by no means the super developed country it is today. Industrialization on a big scale had started a full generation later than in the UK, and even during the nineteen-thirties
the numbers of cars or radio sets per capita were the lowest in Western
Europe, let alone the US. Mass motorization only arrived during the early sixties. Not many people had any funds to spare to spend on an expensive racing bike, and to have a black roadster bike was the dream
of any kid over here.
With the late advent of industrialization, German cycle manufacturers during the 1880s were assembling British parts. Only later parts were manufactured in Germany, and by then British threads had been established. You still find spanners in German fleamarkets that have both inch and metric sizes on them; the latest date from the thirties.
I´m not confusing the German made ones with those which have found their way out of British barracks, or even those marked with the WD arrow.
Also with the invention of the Torpedo coaster brake hub and its perfection around 1908, Germany had found her role of a manufacturer of
black roadster bikes. Those single speed Torpedos were used in roadster
bikes until about 15 years ago (I have one in an ex-Postal Service transport bike I keep for errands and shopping) and even in racing bikes as late as the late forties. Back pedalling brakes are favourites
with the German utility cylist even today, if in multi-speed hubs. You
frequently see bikes with three brakes on German roads: Two cable brakes as per international Chinese standards, plus the coaster brake hub which is insisted on by German importers. A derailleur still is ogled with a considerable amount of suspicion by many German cyclists,
especially around here in the flatter regions of Northern Germany.
Lastly, German racing cyclists were cut off from international developments during the thirties when the Fascist government started to
save up for the war and forbid any imports of goods not needed urgently
or for military purposes. This was a blow that could still be felt when
I started cycling during the seventies. Campag? Maxi Car? Stronglight?
Alloy rims? Caliper brakes? How awful. Gimme a good old Torpedo three speed any time. You needed to be lucky and to grow up in one of the few
and far between hot spots of cycle racing in Germany not to be confronted with this attitude. Things have changed a lot since then, I´m happy to say.
Regards, Toni Theilmeier, Belm, Germany.