Weird and Wild World of Werner
German cartoon sensation worth a look.
The last time I hung out in person with Ola Stenegärd, the Director of Design for Indian Motorcycle, was at the 2020 One Moto Show in Portland, Oregon, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everyone down. Our weekly interactions since consist of idea and anecdotal exchanges on WhatsApp or Instagram, and recently the topic of Werner — the popular German cartoon character created by Brösel (born Rötger Feldmann) in the 1970s — caught my attention.
“They were a maaaassive cult in Germany!” Ola shared a few days ago. “Spun out of control. Beyond huge! Television shows, movies, rallies, drama, fallouts. The whole shebang! You should read up. Fascinating!”
Read my interview with Ola from February 2021 here.
So read up I did. I asked Ola for some base information before diving deep.
“The Feldmann brothers built this crazy Horex thing in 1988 and put on a three-day sprint race against Holger Henze driving his 1967 Porsche 911T.”
“More than 100,000 tickets presold but 200,000 people showed up and it turned into Woodstock chaos!” Ola added. “Finally they had to open the gates and let everyone in…it was mayhem! Bones MC (who was the gnarliest motorcycle club in Europe at that time) was called in to bring order; hahaha!”
“Weirdly, not many outside Germany (here in Sweden we never heard of them) knows this amazing story. The Feldmanns were total chopper crazy nutters and were always in conflict with the police and the TÜV. A lot of the cartoons are based on true stories.”
Thirty years after that historic drag race, Feldmann and Henze met for a rematch with the same vehicles.
Check out the official Werner website for more zaniness.