age expectation

[Coop]

I have come to realize that Ducati never intended the 250 Scrambler to be running 50 yrs later. The electric system and design is not for longevity. But, still a neat old bike. Anyone know whatever happen to the Berliner Importers?

[JimF]

I believe the Berliners were two brothers, one named Joe an I can't recall the other brother's name off-hand.

I seem to recall news of the last surviving Berliner brother passing several years ago.

Jim

[Ventodue]

A bit more about Joe and Mike Berliner:

Source: Car And Driver Magazine, April 1966
By Barry Brown

Joe Berliner is a truly modest and charitable man - charitable in a quiet way that does not necessarily involve giving away vast amounts of impersonal money.

“You sleep only in one bed, wear only one suit. I have tea and melba toast for breakfast. Everyone calls me Joe - we all eat at the same table. I haven't changed since I came to America. I'm grateful and fortunate to be In the U.S. My biggest richness is my citizenship. If I die today, I die as a U.S. citizen, not as a rich man. This is more than I could imagine during the dark days of 1944.”

Joseph Berliner is Berliner Motors - the largest independently owned motorcycle and motorcycle parts distributor in the world. In the tough, competitive world of motorcycle sales and service, Berliner has earned himself a reputation as the very best - and he’ll fight fiercely to keep that reputation. Just as, in 1944, he fought day and night to stay alive.

Sevlus is a small town in a part of the world that has been changing hands for centuries. The people are a mixture of Hungarian, Russian, Ukrainian and German, and it was in Sevlus, fifty-four years ago, that Joe Berliner was born. At that time, Sevlus belonged to Hungary. In 1918, President Wilson made it part of Czechoslovakia.

Joe was the first child of a crippled Hungarian war hero who had settled down with a radio-bicycle-motorcycle store, and as the family grew into five sons and a daughter, Joe took over more and more responsibility for the business. He attended high school, and later studied mechanics and business administration to help his father.

Joe married when he was 25, two children came along, and the future looked serene. A healthy business, a healthy family - what more could you want?

But in 1939, the world's major powers assembled in Munich, and the democracy of Czechoslovakia was no more. Sevlus once again became a part of Hungary - under a dictatorship. And then the squeeze began.

"We began to feel persecution. Stores were closed and windows smashed. Jewish people had their property taken away from them. One Sunday in 1941, I was dragged from my home in chains and taken to a slave labor camp. During the years 1941 to 1944 I spent 14 months in this camp, on and off.”

“Then came the occupation by units of the German Army. All Jews were sent to Auschwitz. My whole immediate family, 22 of us, arrived on May 22, 1944, a Monday afternoon”

There, in one hour - only 60 minutes - Joe Berliner lost 16 members of his family: his son, his daughter, his father, mother, grandparents, mother-in-law ... all burned as he watched. Joe and a brother were saved and became auto mechanics. The two convinced the S.S. that the youngest Berliner boy, Mike, was also a mechanic, and the three of them were safe for a time, maintaining a fleet of German Army trucks.

As he recounts his tale, Joe Berliner's voice emerges calm and clear. The images are as strong as yesterday's. He relives every date, every hour, each minute Is remembered. But there's no self-pity, no remorse, no hate and no evasion.

"Then came the Russian offensive. Auschwitz was evacuated. We walked 43 miles in two days, through deep snow. Then into open railroad cars from January 20 to February 5, eating only snow. Imagine - you talk to a man and then an hour later, you are undressing his dead body to use his clothes to try to keep warm. We stacked the dead to make room. Eighty per cent died before we arrived at Dora, the new camp.”

At Dora, the prisoners worked in a tunnel, mining stone for two and a half months. They were then carried along the Elbe River on barges for nine days, and finally, after a 16 mile march to Neustadt Holstein, they were herded into a cold, windswept stable.

"Two hundred were left alive out of thousands. There, on April 25, my brother died of hunger and typhus. I buried him beside the stable.”

Three months later, the liberation was at hand.

"On May 3, the S.S. put 8.000 people on boats. We drifted out into the harbor and U-boats shot torpedoes at us. Our boat was hit, but somehow we drifted onto a sand bar under a bridge. The other boats were sunk only two miles out of the city. Only 2,200 were saved."
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The brothers ended up in Frankfurt, helping Jewish refugees. Joe fortuitously met up with his wife who had been saved by the Swedish Red Cross. They emigrated to New York in 1947. In 1951, Joe became the Zundapp concessionnaire for the states east of the Mississippi. In 1957, impressed by the new 175 at a trade fair, they became the US Ducati concessionnaire.

Joe ran the business, Mike was the sales and publicity man.

Joe.jpg

The company eventually stopped trading in 1984.

[rustynuts]

Amazing story... wonder if there is a fuller version in print ..will need to check that out .Being on the east side of the pond the American marketing of bikes tends to get ignored in the Classic bike magazines in the UK.