Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel, 1900
1958—The German Cycling Federation (Bund Deutscher Radfahrer) lifts the ban on competitive cycling for women that had been in place since 1896.
1984—Women’s cycling becomes an Olympic sport.
1984—The inaugural Tour de France for women takes place but is discontinued a few years later.
For those wanting to find out more about the state of long-distance riding today, I would recommend visiting the website of my technical advisor for this book, extreme cyclist Christian Mayer: www.christian-mayer.net (in German). Through his diary entries, one can experience what it is like to take part in races like Paris–Brest–Paris (PBP), the Kelheim twenty-four-hour race, or the biggest of them all, the Race Across America (RAAM).
From Christian, I learned that, from a technical standpoint, bicycles have improved tremendously in the last hundred years. Long-distance races, however, are still a long slog; ultimately, they start and end in the cyclist’s head.
Schömberg’s role as a location for mountain-air sanatoria really did begin in 1888. It was Hugo Römpler, a businessman from Erfurt, Germany, who recognized the potential of Schömberg’s healthy climate. More sanatoriums began to appear starting in 1890. “Germany’s Davos” was brought to my attention in a nice letter from one of my readers, M. Vögele from Schömberg, and I would like to thank her here and now for the information she sent!
The two cycling clubs mentioned by name in my book are fictional. It is true, however, that Berlin was a mecca for competitive cycling at that time.
Women’s cycling also had its beginnings in Berlin, and it found a very popular spokeswoman in journalist Amelie Rother.
The Marschütz & Co. bicycle factory in Nuremberg really did exist, producing bicycles in large numbers from 1896 onward. Their Hercules bicycle soon became a well-known brand.
The idea of sending Adrian Neumann to America was suggested by the book Meine Radreise um die Erde—Der Bericht des ersten deutschen Fahrrad-Weltreisenden anno 1895 (My Bicycle Journey Around the World—The Report of the First German to Travel the World by Bicycle, 1895) by Heinrich Horstmann. A reprint of Horstmann’s book was published by Maxi Kutschera Verlag, Leipzig.
The Western Wheel Works in Chicago and the Crescent Bike both really existed. The founder of the Western Wheel Works, Adolph Schoeninger, who originally came from Württemberg in Germany, introduced a form of assembly line ten years before Henry Ford did.
The Pope Manufacturing Company of Boston, founded by Albert Augustus Pope, was likewise real. Thanks to aggressive tactics, the company grew to become the largest manufacturer of bicycles in America. However, the company’s fortunes waned following a fire in 1896 that destroyed the offices and a large number of bicycles.
Susanne Lindberg and her fiancé really did organize a one-thousand-kilometer (approximately 621-mile) race in Denmark in 1897. Josephine’s participation is fictional. The actual route they followed is unknown; at least, I was unable to find any unequivocal source. I have described what I imagine to be the most probable route.
The Barnim Road Women’s Prison was officially called the Königlich-Preußisches Weibergefängnis (Royal Prussian Women’s Prison). It had maternity and mother-and-child wards, but I was not able to discover whether it really had a juvenile division. Such institutions for young offenders were first established during the German Empire.
My cycling hero, Leon Feininger, is based on the real racing cyclist Josef Fischer, who first rode from Vienna to Berlin in 1893.
The fortunes of Jo, Clara, and Isabelle continue in volume two of the trilogy, to be published in 2016.
About the Author
Photo © Privat
Petra Durst-Benning is one of Germany’s most successful and prominent authors. For more than fifteen years, her historical novels have been inviting readers to go adventuring with courageous female characters and experience their exciting lives for themselves. Her books have enjoyed great success overseas as well, and several have been adapted for television. Petra Durst-Benning lives with her husband in Stuttgart.
About the Translator
Photo © 2012 Ronald Biallas
Born in Australia but widely traveled, Edwin Miles has been working as a translator for more than ten years, primarily in film and television.
After studying in his hometown of Perth, Western Australia, Edwin completed an MFA in fiction writing at the University of Oregon in 1995. While there, he spent a year working as fiction editor on the literary magazine the Northwest Review. In 1996, he was shortlisted for the prestigious Australian/Vogel Literary Award for young writers for a collection of short stories.
After many years living and working in Australia, Japan, and the United States, he currently resides in his “second home” in Cologne, Germany, with his wife, Dagmar, and two very clever children.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Start Reading
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Epilogue
Notes
About the Author
About the Translator
While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Page 41
