1950’s West Germany was a nation in flux. It struggled with the aid of a $1.39 billion handout from the U.S. via the Marshall Plan (equivalent to $24 billion today) to recover from the internal depredations of warfare brought about by Adolf Hitler’s psychotic delusions of grandeur. Thanks to the hard-working determination of its populace, the astute leadership of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and, especially, his Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard, West Germany rebounded from devastation to economic dominance in Western Europe in little over a decade, via the so-called Wirtschaftswunder, aka the Economic Miracle.
Before this, just as in war-ravaged Italy and bombed-out Britain, post-war West Germany initially saw a significant hunger for cheap personal transportation. This meant a huge demand for whatever motorcycles could be produced by an industry struggling to recover in the aftermath of war. In many cases, this meant rebuilding factories which had been obliterated by Allied bombing — which is where that Marshall Aid money proved so useful. And one of the many firms which benefitted from that was Victoria Werke AG, one of the country’s major motorcycle manufacturers, whose Nürnberg (Nuremberg) factory had been severely damaged in a 1945 bombing raid.
Like so many other firms, especially in England and Germany, Victoria’s entry into the motorcycle industry came in consequence of its foundation as a bicycle factory in 1886 by Max Frankenburger and Max Offenstein. It duly flourished, and by the time that the partners built the first Victoria motorcycle in 1899, it was already one of Germany’s leading cycle makers. They used proprietary single-cylinder engines bought in from Fafnir, Minerva, FN and Zedel, but post-World War I with its own power plants, Victoria swiftly became one of the leading brands in the expansion of Germany’s motorcycle industry. Ironically, this meant building the first BMW-powered motorcycle before BMW did so itself!
The November 1918 Armistice and ensuing Treaty of Versailles ending World War I stipulated a ban on the German manufacture of aircraft or aviation engines. This threatened the survival of Munich-based BMW,company boss Franz Josef Popp should form the platform of a new business for BMW. Popp thus instructed his chief engineer, Max Friz, to produce a carbon copy of the Douglas motor known as the M2 B15 — “2” for a twin, “B” for a boxer layout — sharing the same sidevalve configuration, outside flywheel and 68 x 68mm dimensions, but with a trademark BMW roundel on the crankcase. Friz did however enclose the valves, unlike Douglas, and incorporated force-fed lubrication in a design which delivered a dependable 6.5 horsepower at 3,000rpm.
