You’ve probably seen one of Anny Deim’s old-school stunt-riding photos circulating online in the last ten years. A woman standing on a chrome motorcycle is pretty iconic, after all. The photos rarely have any information with them, and if they do, it’s usually wrong. We don’t know much about Anny besides that she rode motorcycles in the mid-1930s. She was hailed as an “artistic driver,” an old-timey term for stunt riding… she also raced in offroad challenges.
Many people throughout history made an indelible impact on their world in small and large ways. There’s no telling how many have been lost to time. After all, just 30ish years ago the internet became a common tool for storing and transferring information. Before that, it was up to people who had the passion to catalogue and share historical data and stories in physical collections. It’s so easy for a set of negatives to be destroyed that it’s kind of amazing any of this stuff survives. Even now, in the information age, Museums, Libraries, and other archives are responsible for keeping the leftover fragments of these people and their achievements safe for future generations.
This preamble brings context to the work that goes into these MotoLady history stories and explains why there are often glaring holes of missing information. These days, we are pressured to churn out work as fast as possible. Some writers might jump right to filling those gaps with fanciful ideas. I end up digging deeper… and deeper. I’ve spent days searching library archives and skimming pages and pages of German newspapers, trying to get more background info on Anny Deim. I can say the same about many other pieces I’m researching. I am compelled to round up all the scattered details into one story. I don’t want them to disappear into nothingness.
We know she was a woman who raced motorcycles in Austria from 1934 through 1936. We know she sometimes rode with her brother Ferdinand “Ferry” Deim. It’s said they owned Calthorpe motorcycles– a 350cc and a 500cc, and no, Anny didn’t use the smaller of the pair. In each of the four races we know about, she was photographed using the 500cc. Those four races were:
Since people don’t usually start racing motorcycles out of nowhere, it’s more than likely that Anny and Ferry rode around town or even in other races before it was finally reported on. Those records may not have been saved and scanned if they ever existed. It’s so likely that I’d bet money on it. Heck, I bet she started out on two wheels as a kid and performed at fairs for money with her brother or something… but we may never know for sure. The photographs in which she’s riding with her brother feature him on a Velocette, so it seems likely they owned that bike at another time as well.
Almost everything we think we know about Anny is nebulous. We know she raced in Austria, but we don’t know if she was originally from there. Her name, Anny, might be a nickname, a shortened version of Annabelle, or similar. We know she had a brother named Ferdinand who went by Ferry and sometimes they did displays of “artistic driving” together. She seemed to effortlessly showboat while wearing a skirt with kitten heels on her chrome motorcycle. We also know that all the photos we currently have of her and Ferry were taken by photographer Artur Fenzlau. Who he was to her is yet another mystery… ugh! He could have been a friend, a beau… another question we may never know the answer to.
Like all other “facts” about the mystery lady… we don’t even know her age. She appears to be anywhere from 18 to 35 in the photos by Artur Fenzlau. That means she was (likely) born between 1898 and 1916. She could have been born in Germany, Austria, Hungary, or another nearby country. I’ve looked for possible birth and death records and have come up with bupkis so far. The reasons for this are likely terribly tragic. You may have already tuned into the scary reality of what was happening in the area when Anny was bravely competing against men on her motorcycle. Hitler had been appointed as chancellor in January 1933 by President Hindenburg, and the Nazis had turned the country into a dictatorship shortly thereafter.
The same year in 1933, the Nazi Party created laws that forced Jews out of positions of power, including universities, law and court positions, and civil service jobs. At this time, the population of Jews in Germany was less than 1%, but that didn’t deter them from the horrors that would come. By 1934, the neighbor to Austria was already pulling some scary moves… and the bans were only growing in number and scope.
Researching the surname Deim, it seems possible Anny and Frederick were of Jewish heritage. FamilySearch shows the last name as having Ashkenazic ancestry and Yiddish roots, “from the Yiddish personal name Kayem. …based on the Hebrew adjective qayom ‘tough, enduring.'” FamilySearch also showed German roots, though the last name Deim has been much more prevalent in Austria and Hungary by comparison. Her brother’s first name, Ferdinand, became popularized in Europe during the 16th century thanks to the Habsburgs ruling over the Holy Roman Empire (which included Austria, by the way). Based on all that, it seems likely they were born locally.
If Anny and Ferry were Jewish, it becomes evident why there may be no other records. Even if they weren’t… the Nazi party controlled information with a high level of censorship. The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda controlled the press, film, radio, and theatre. A LOT of this media and propaganda was held tight to their chests in an attempt to keep their crimes on the down low and out of view of the global public eye. And when the holocaust was finally put to an end, Nazis desperately destroyed as many of their records as possible in a bid to avoid prosecution for war crimes. They disappeared evidence, including documents that could be used to trace their victims, internal reports, documentary videos, knocked down crematoriums, and even dug up mass graves.
I obviously have no idea if Anny and Ferry vanished from records because their census information was caught up in WWII, if they fled, or met a sad and horrific fate. Between 1934 and 1936, when we know Anny was racing in Austria, the threat of Germany grew more and more imposing. Violence and deaths inspired by political ideologies in Austria were not a rarity. Engelbert Dollfuss (Dollfuß), chancellor of Austria, was creating his own brand of fascism after 1932. The short version of the story is while Dolfuss was pro-fascist, he was anti-Nazi. In February 1934, Austria broke out in a civil war. Before the first event we know Anny raced on June 23, 1934, 17 people had already been killed and another 171 injured from Nazi terrorist attacks.
The struggle came to a fever pitch in July when the Austrian SS attempted a coup. Some 150 SS forced themselves into Englebert Dolfuss’ office and shot him. The uprising only partially succeeded… for a time. It wasn’t until March 1938 that Austria fell to Germany in the “Anschluss” when the Nazis annexed the area and took control. On November 9, 1938, the real horrors hit– war was declared against German and Austrian Jews known as Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass.” The attack made it crystal clear they were not safe, and in 1938 many began to flee to nearby countries like Poland. Sadly though, they often found themselves in the path of the Nazi war machine again down the line.
So what happened to Anny Deim and her brother Frederick? Did they flee? Were they Jewish? Were they senselessly murdered in the holocaust? Were they on the wrong side of history and become Nazi sympathizers, only to fade away into anonymity in an attempt to hide from their transgressions? This is a mystery I truly hope to solve.
If anyone has any tips or information, please get in touch. Anny Deim may be the first recorded woman to be a stunt rider, and she likely took part in many more European races. Perhaps she and her brother made their way to Shanghai, China, which had open borders despite Japanese occupation. There are many possibilities that I hope to unearth and sift through in the coming months (and maybe years).
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Photos: Artur Fenzlau | Vienna Museum of Science & Technology
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Posted on February 28, 2025 in Blog, History by Alicia Mariah Elfving