Soviet Zone Scooter Debacle, Der Speigel 1954

Germany in 1955 was the front line of the Cold War between the US and Soviet Blocs. Relations between the East and West German administrations had become frosty and both sides resorted to sniping at each through their newspapers. Der Spiegel was founded by the British Occupation Authority in 1947 as the mouthpiece of the Western powers. As part of Der Spiegel's propaganda campaign against the East German regime, they published on June 22, 1955 an expose of the chaos surrounding the development of the IWL scooter, the Pitty, based on the reports of defector. The original article can be found in Der Spiegel's archive here: https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-31970549.html

"The Tragedy of the Pitty

"Now it will not be long before the Pitty is finally seen in the streets” the 'East Berliner Zeitung' advised curious readers a few months ago. Pitty is not a Soviet-zone film star, but a scooter, an achievement that the First Secretary of the central committee of the SED, Walter Ulbricht, had promised the grumbling population two years ago – just after the unsuccessful June uprising - as a highlight of the now dwindling better care in the Soviet zone.

The tragedy of this scooter began when the former designer of the Junkerswerke in Dessau, Roland Berger, 45, and his colleague engineer Werner Deglau, 36, imported into the GDR three West German motor scooters of the types NSU Lambretta, Goggo and Bella. There they disassembled them into their individual components. After long digging and tinkering with the West German scooter parts, Berger and Deglau finally "invented" a new type of Eastern scooter, the original design of which has since been changed 1700 times.

The reconstructors had to change crucial parts again and again so that they could be manufactured with Soviet zone tools. The two-person scooter collective received construction bonus of 5,000 Marks for the prototype Pitty.

A planned production target of 5,500 Pittys for 1954 looked optimistic. On May 1, 1954, two engineers from the state-owned Ludwigsfelde industrial plant, which took over the scooter construction, scooted past President Wilhelm Pieck on Pittys. But the parade scooters stopped just a few hundred meters behind the grandstand due to ignition failure.

A pilot series of 125 units was expected be completed by June 1954, but the state-owned companies Emaillierwerke and Schweißgerätewerk of Leipzig had only produced a hundred frames by October, most of which also proved to be unusable because the welded seams did not hold. Despite these material difficulties, by the end of November 75 scooters were hand built and sold to the workers of the Ludwigsfelde industrial plant for testing for 1840 Marks.

They were devilish machines. Designer Berger literally experienced this when his test scooter plunged into a ditch due to a broken fork and broke his right arm. All 75 trial Pittys were soon returned to the factory. The forks, which were welded together from two parts, had to be replaced. Shortly afterwards, the 75 old scooters and 39 newly built Pitty’s made the streets of Central Germany unsafe again.

The Ludwigsfelde worker, Günter Lange, almost broke his neck when the front wheel rim suddenly flew around his ears in December 1954. SED comrade Lehm, the special representative of the Minister for Auto and Tractor Construction, was to blame for this accident. He had pushed through an’ improvement proposal’ to rivet the otherwise bolted rim halves together in order to save scarce screws.

The technicians in Ludwigsfelde had hardly remedied this problem before numerous Pitty’s were sent back to the factory. The complaints from angry Pitty buyers about ignition, chain and frame damage did not want to end. Only one Pitty scooter survived 6000 kilometers, then its frame broke. The company's supervisor, Karl Roske, 38, who also had an accident with his Pitty, finally lost his nerve due to the many breakdowns. He demanded an immediate halt to production and criticized the poor quality construction so loudly that the police wanted to arrest him. Roske fled to West Berlin a few weeks ago, where he reported extensively on the costly Pitty tragedy.

Contrary to Roske's suggestion, Ulbricht's special commissioner for the Pitty production, the five-time activist graduate engineer brother, decreed that at least 10,000 Pittys should be produced this year. Refugee Roske says that the existing reserve of West German steel pipes (from Kronprinz AG, Solingen) is sufficient for a maximum of 6,000 scooters, and new pipe deliveries are hardly to be expected, since West German steel deliveries have been severely curtailed as part of the inter-zone trade agreement for several weeks.

In the state-owned HO car shop in Unter den Linden in East Berlin, there are currently only three of the renowned Pittys for the price of 2,300 marks. However, the pure manufacturing costs amount to 4,000 to 5,000 marks per scooter, so that the Industrialwerkes in Ludwigsfelde closed their balance sheet last year with a deficit of 9 million marks. This deficit had to be compensated with government grants."

Such slander would not have to wait long for a response. The East German magazine 'Neues Deutschland' (central organ of the state party SED) would respond with a 'correction' in the usual overblown socialist language of the time:

"The capitalists' West German mouthpiece, the journal Der Spiegel, wants to mislead their readers with luridly made slanders about the scooter production that the GDR population was very happy to undertake. Der Spiegel quotes an unscrupulous person who has turned his back on his peaceful homeland and now wants to treat himself with abuse and lies. However, the facts speak for themselves. These are:
• Several thousand Pitty scooters from VEB Industriewerke Ludwigsfelde are already on the roads of our republic to the complete satisfaction of their owners.
• In the socialist trade shops, these scooters can be purchased by everyone.
• The workers and engineers at VEB Industriewerke Ludwigsfelde are constantly and successfully working to improve their products.
• Unfortunately, it is a fact that the ‘cannon kings’ who reign over West German steel production do not abide by the contracts agreed in intra-German trade and thus try to harm the population in democratic Germany.

Our struggle for peace, unity, democracy and socialism cannot prevent such smearing in the West German press."

In truth, the development of the first East German scooter was not a smooth path. East Germany had to restart its motoring industry from scratch. What hadn't been destroyed in the war had been stripped of all usable assets by the Soviets for reparations. The IWL plant, which had formerly been a Daimler Benz marine and aero engine facility had been completely stripped and then demolished. Unlike their counterparts in the West, the East German government received very little assistance from the Soviets to get back on their feet. Consequently, IWL was struggling from the outset in terms of design, construction and quality of components.

In 2009 Manfred Blumenthal, historian of the development of the IWL scooters shared with the IWL Forum some of the facts behind the Der Spiegel article.

"The information from the West German journalists was very poor. The article was published in June 1955 and testifies to the existence of three "renown" Pittys for the price of 2,300 Mark in the HO car shop Unter den Linden in East Berlin. But the facts are very different:

• Series production only started on February 6, 1955. The first presentation of vehicles occurred in March 1955 at the Leipzig Spring Fair.
• In the GDR magazine 'Der Deutsche Straßenverkehr', the journalists would have found the first hint in the report about the Leipzig fair with sufficient research. The scooters were already in stores in Berlin and Leipzig!
• As of March 31, 1955, 2502 Pittys were delivered, but the dubious accounts begin in the second paragraph of the article. Here are the facts:
• A Lambretta scooter was briefly at the factory in 1953. It was owned by the technical manager Laszig of the shipbuilding department in the Ministry of Transport and Agricultural Machinery in Berlin. There never was a Goggo scooter at the Ludwigsfelde industrial works. A Zündapp Bella was purchased by the factory in 1957 and this remained the property of the company until 1965. However, two employees of the plant visited a Heinkel representative in Berlin at Potsdamer Platz in 1953 and received the note from the house boss in attendance.
• The development engineers Berger and Deglau mentioned were not 'lone warriors.' Other names are mentioned in the “Berliner Zeitung” article from December 23, 1953 mentioned by Spiegel. The magazine 'Illustrierter Motorsport', issue March 1954, depicts the collective team. There are seven people named but a lot more were involved.
• The terms tinkering and reinvention suggests the theft of ideas. However, a comparison of the designs which can be carried out at any time at classic scooter events, confirms the technical independence of the Pitty construction.
• The Minister was shown three Pittys in Berlin on February 10, 1954. In accordance with the parade plan of March 31, 1954, five motor scooters were in the demonstration ride in Ludwigsfelde on May 1, 1954. As of May 1st there were no scooters for Berlin.
• The VEB Emaillierwerke Leipzig was to manufacture frames for Ludwigsfelde and even complete scooters as early as 1954. It remained with a faulty frame production. In March 1954 the quoted Karl Roske had the task to check the frame production in the VEB enameling plant. Literally in the minutes of the plant manager meeting No. 11/55 from March 14, 2005 it states:
“Coll. Roske failed in the enameling plant. It must be checked whether he can be used as a control master at all.”
The VEB welding machine and apparatus construction Böhlitz-Ehrenberg was intended for the production of the drive arm swing arm. Frame breaks with accident-prone consequences never occurred with the Pitty. However, up to the end of the Pitty series, there were frequent breaks on the support tubes near the rear hood lock. These were often discovered accidentally during maintenance work.
• The stated retail price of 1,800 DM was only valid for the pre-series. These vehicles were not sold through dealers. As a result, the state-ordered factory sales price was DM 1,840. In December 1954, including a profit of 3% and a production charge of 4.76%, the plant calculated a manufacturing price of DM 3,986.23. In the first months of 1955 the cost price decreased to DM 3,041 per scooter. The reason was the inefficient production due to the lack of tooling and organizational defects.
• The scooters manufactured in 1954 had no approval from the design department due to changes that were still to be implemented (i.e., they were pre-production test vehicles), which is why they limited sale of the 75 scooters for testing. These were later retrofitted to a newer design (e.g. pressure blowers instead of suction fans).
• There were actually problems with the rims in the start-up phase, also the rivets. The first rim variant had split rims for easier assembly, which were screwed together with the three wheel bolts. This variant did not prove itself and was converted to a five-hole fastening with a larger pitch circle and riveted rims. Special Representative Lehm, previously deputy mayor of Karl-Marx-Stadt had the task to advance the series production of the scooter.
• An accumulation of accidents due to technical defects with the scooter has not been documented, however, it is known that due to the poor road conditions at the time, the small 12-inch wheels and the hard rubber compound of the tires, led to problems and damage to suspension.
• West German steel deliveries, as part of the inter-zone trade, there were often delays in delivery or restrictions as a result.
• The annual output in 1955 was 8,014 Pittys of the 10,000 were planned."

IWL Pitty brochure: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/04/1954-iwl-pitty-brochure.html
IWL Pitty manual: https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2020/07/1955-iwl-pitty-owners-manual.html
Photos of the Pitty production line come from Deutsche Fotothek archives.
Reporting on the Pitty in the GDR Illustrierter Motorsport
https://dkwautounionproject.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-iwl-pitty-through-pages-of.html