Oct 31 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2684 -

Sale 2684 - Lot 134

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(MOTORCYCLE RACER)
A scrapbook with 14 photos of Hanni Köhler, a famous 1920s German motorcycle racer with 10 world records. Circa 1926-29.
By 1928, Hanni Köhler had set ten world records on her motorcycle, and she was repeatedly celebrated in Echo Continental, among other sport magazines, for her success in an almost all-male sport. The scrapbook records several "etapes" or racing stages she took part in 1926, 1927, and 1928 by mixing photographs and German newspapers clippings. Hanni Köhler also owned a motorcycle shop that she sold before fleeing Germany in 1935. Shortly after, she emigrated to the USA. Silver prints, the images measuring 3¼x4⅜ inches (8.3x11.1 cm.) to 4½x6⅜ inches (11.4x16.2 cm.), glued recto/verso to black pages. Folio, gilt-lettered leather boards, worn; backstrip partially perished; contents in very good condition.

Provenance
Köhler's friend and motorcycle shop owner, Kurt Birnholz, who was forced to sell his shop in 1939 and immigrated to the United States where he settled in Putnam Vally, New York; by descent to the Present Owner