Phoenix from the flames: Introduction
Author
Date
- September 4, 2002
Related articles
- Early post-war German F2, F Libre and sports cars - Phoenix from the flames, by 'Uechtel'
- Part 1: Veritas
- Part 2: AFM
- Part 3: The smaller marques
- Part 4: West German BMW specials
- Part 5: Foreign appearances and guest drives
- Part 6: East German BMW specials
- Part 7: EMW/DAMW
- AFM - Alex von Falkenhausen's brave F2 effort, by Mattijs Diepraam
- Early post-war German F2 cars - The BMW-derived specials that appeared in war-struck Germany, by Mattijs Diepraam
- Veritas - Self-made German privateers to the fore, by Mattijs Diepraam
With the latest chapter about the EMW make now online my series of articles about the top-level German racing categories in the immediate post-war period has finally reached its completion.
During the step-by-step publication of these chapters I have already established contact with quite a number of motor racing enthusiasts from within the Internet community, which in each and every case has been a great pleasure to me. There was one question I invariably had to answer in these correspondences: Why are you doing this? So perhaps it is a good idea to give you my answer here for you to reach a better understanding of my intentions.
Well, the first thing is that it's simply fun! Collecting motor racing data, stats and pictures has always been pleasing to me. Writing these stories has urged me to be much more attentive than ever before and has spurred me on into discovering a lot of new details for my compilation.
I am well aware that my knowledge is far from being complete and my articles still contain errors, speculations and gaps, and that perhaps part of the truth will never be uncovered. But having become acquainted with Web forums such as the Atlas F1 Nostalgia Forum I noticed quite an amount of requests for a comprehensive story on the German Formula 2 Specials of the post-war years - in English. So one day Mattijs of 8W finally succeeded in persuading me to simply make a start with what I already know and hope as many people as possible will join in. Unnecessary to say I am very grateful for this impulse and the assistance I received from the 8W Team.
So another aim of this project is to get in touch with people that can contribute to gradually filling up the present gaps of knowledge in my stories on the different makes.
So do not hesitate to e-mail me if you discover any errors, omissions or other inconsistencies, or if you have some further articles, pictures or anecdotes about the subject.
In particular I am lacking the 1951 to 1952 issues of the East German Illustrierter Motorsport and Hans Peter Rosellen's book Veritas Story, which is long sold out here, to my great regret. So I would appreciate it if any of the dear readers owning copies of these or other literature on the era to allow me to make some photocopies and scan the pictures.
In return I for myself am open to share my archive and help you as much as I can on any further questions you might have on this or any other subject.
This leaves me with giving a big thank you to all who have already contacted me and helped to produce these stories, and again to Mattijs Diepraam and the 8W Team, for their inspiration and strong support for this project.
Feedback
The author appreciates receiving feedback and/or any information to improve his articles. You can reach him at uechtel@gmx.de.