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MZ Motorrad- Und Zweiradwerk GmbH
Motorenwerke Zschopau GmbH (formerly MZ Motorrad- und Zweiradwerk GmbH) is a German motorcycle manufacturer located in Zschopau, Saxony. The acronym MZ since 1956 stands for ''Motorenwerke Zschopau'' GmbH (German for Zschopau engine factory). From 1992 to 1999 the company was called MuZ, an acronym for ''Motorrad und Zweiradwerk'' (German for motorcycle and two-wheeler factory). Timeline * 1906 Jørgen Skafte Rasmussen (Denmark) buys an empty cloth factory in Zschopau * 1907 engine supplier, producing engines for bicycles, motor-assisted bicycle * 1917 Rasmussen invents the steam-powered car (Dampf-Kraft-Wagen), also known by its trademark DKW * 1920 Release of the 2-stroke engines for motorcycles * 1923 Company is renamed DKW * 1924 DKW buys Slaby-Beringer * 1927 Company starts racing activities * 1928 DKW takes over the Audi factory at Zwickau * 1929 60,000 motorcycles leave the Zschopau factory, and DKW is the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world * 1931 Introducti ...
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Zwickau
Zwickau (; is, with around 87,500 inhabitants (2020), the fourth-largest city of Saxony after Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz and it is the seat of the Zwickau District. The West Saxon city is situated in the valley of the Zwickau Mulde (German: ''Zwickauer Mulde''; progression: ), and lies in a string of cities sitting in the densely populated foreland of the Elster and Ore Mountains stretching from Plauen in the southwest via Zwickau, Chemnitz and Freiberg to Dresden in the northeast. From 1834 until 1952, Zwickau was the seat of the government of the south-western region of Saxony. The name of the city is of Sorbian origin and may refer to Svarog, the Slavic god of fire and of the sun. Zwickau is the seat of the West Saxon University of Zwickau (German: ''Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau'') with campuses in Zwickau, Markneukirchen, Reichenbach im Vogtland and Schneeberg (Erzgebirge). The city is the birthplace of composer Robert Schumann. As cradle of Audi's forerunner ...
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Harley-Davidson Hummer
The Hummer was a motorcycle model manufactured by Harley-Davidson from 1955 to 1959. However, the name "Hummer" is now incorrectly used generically to refer to all American-made single-cylinder two-stroke Harley-Davidson motorcycles manufactured from 1948 to 1966. These motorcycles were based on the DKW RT125, the drawings for which were taken from Germany as war reparations after World War II. The RT125 drawings were also given to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union as war reparations, resulting in the BSA Bantam and the MMZ M-1A Moskva, later known as the Minsk. Model S-125 (1948–1952) The Model 125Harley-Davidson, Inc., "The Legend Begins", 1993 or S-125 Mitchel, D. "Harley-Davidson Chronicle - An American Original",1997, p. 142 was introduced by Harley-Davidson in 1947 as a 1948 model. The 125 cc two-stroke engine produced three horsepower, which was sent through a three-speed foot-shift transmission. The front suspension used girder forks suspended by large ru ...
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BSA Bantam
The BSA Bantam is a two-stroke unit construction motorcycle that was produced by the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) from 1948 (as a 125 cc) until 1971 (as a 175 cc). Exact production figures are unknown, but it was over 250,000 and some estimates place the number closer to half a million. History Despite the Bantam being considered the archetypal 'truly British' lightweight motorcycle outselling all others, it was based on a German design. The Bantam was based on the DKW RT 125, a design that was received as war reparations, with the Bantam as a mirror image so the gearchange was on the right side as with other British motorcycles of the period. The same design went into production in at least two, and perhaps four, other countries. Harley-Davidson started producing their Model 125 in late 1947 (several months before BSA) and the occupiers of East Germany, the U.S.S.R. began building the Москва (Moskva) M1A model even earlier, c.1946. In East Germany the ...
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German Reparations For World War II
After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947. Austria was not included in any of these treaties. Payments According to the Yalta Conference, no reparations to Allied countries would be paid in money (though that rule was not followed in later agreements). Instead, much of the value transferred consisted of German industrial assets as well as forced labour to the Allies. The Allied demands were further outlined during the Potsdam Conference. Reparations were to be directly paid to the four victor powers (France, Britain, United States, and the Soviet Union); for the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence, the Soviet Union would determine its distribution. To coordinate the distribution of the reparations between the victor powers, the Allied Control Council was establi ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 October 1990. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from eleven states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The FRG's provisional capital was the city of Bonn, and the Cold War era country is retrospectively designated as the Bonn Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided between the Western and Eastern blocs. Germany was divided into the two countries. Initially, West Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, representing itself as t ...
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Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total land area of Germany. With over 13 million inhabitants, it is second in population only to North Rhine-Westphalia, but due to its large size its population density is below the German average. Bavaria's main cities are Munich (its capital and largest city and also the third largest city in Germany), Nuremberg, and Augsburg. The history of Bavaria includes its earliest settlement by Iron Age Celtic tribes, followed by the conquests of the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC, when the territory was incorporated into the provinces of Raetia and Noricum. It became the Duchy of Bavaria (a stem duchy) in the 6th century AD following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It was later incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, became an ind ...
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Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt (, Austro-Bavarian: ) is an independent city on the Danube in Upper Bavaria with 139,553 inhabitants (as of June 30, 2022). Around half a million people live in the metropolitan area. Ingolstadt is the second largest city in Upper Bavaria after Munich and the fifth largest city in Bavaria after Munich, Nuremberg , Augsburg and Regensburg. The city passed the mark of 100,000 inhabitants in 1989 and has since been one of the major cities in Germany. After Regensburg, Ingolstadt is the second largest German city on the Danube. The city was first mentioned in 806. In the late Middle Ages, the city was one of the capitals of the Bavarian duchies alongside Munich, Landshut and Straubing, which is reflected in the architecture. On March 13, 1472, Ingolstadt became the seat of the first university in Bavaria, which later distinguished itself as the center of the Counter-Reformation. The freethinking Illuminati order was also founded here in 1776 . The city was also a Bavari ...
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Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau
''Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau'' ("Industrial Association for Vehicle Construction"), usually abbreviated as IFA, was a conglomerate and a union of companies for vehicle construction in the former East Germany. IFA produced bicycles, motorcycles, light commercial vehicles, automobiles, vans and heavy trucks. All East German vehicle manufacturers were part of the IFA, including Barkas, EMW (which made Wartburg cars), IWL, MZ, Multicar, Robur, Sachsenring (which made Trabant cars) and Simson. Car production IFA cars were based on pre-war ''DKW'' designs and made in the former Horch factory in Zwickau. The F8 had a two-cylinder engine, and the F9 had a three-cylinder unit. The F8 bodies were straight copies of the pre-war models, and rapidly looked old-fashioned, but some had more modern coachwork by Baur of Stuttgart, then in West Germany. The three cylinder cars (F9) had not got into production before war broke out in 1939, and so had more up to date bodies similar to ...
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East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state was a part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state".Patrick Major, Jonathan Osmond, ''The Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany Under Ulbricht 1945–71'', Manchester University Press, 2002, Its territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR. Most scholars and academics describe the GDR as a totalitarian dictatorship. The GDR was establish ...
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RT 125
The RT 125 was a German two-stroke motorcycle made by DKW in Zschopau in the 1930s, IFA and MZ in the 1950s and early 1960s, and DKW in Ingolstadt in the 1950s and 1960s. "RT" stands for "Reichstyp" or "National Model". In the 1930s DKW pioneered the Schnürle two-stroke loop scavenging process to dispense with the use of a deflector piston and improve efficiency of the combustion chamber. DKW also developed a highly efficient arrangement of transfer ports. These two features were included in the RT 125 to great commercial advantage. Competitor companies such as Adler and TWN copied the adoption of flat-topped pistons and strove to develop equally efficient transfer port arrangements without infringing DKW's patent. Copies and variants Copies of the RT 125 were built by at least eight different entities in at least six countries. War reparations After World War II the Soviet Union took plans, tooling and even several dozen personnel as war reparations to M ...
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