At 10:43 PM +0000 12/31/09, Norris Lockley wrote:
>I read in an article recently that Andre Reiss, the builder of the renowned
>REYHAND frames, was arrested by the German army in the early 1940s, possibly
>in 1940 itself, deported and shot.
Reiss was not arrested and deported, but he died in battle during the German invasion. The sources for this are the first post-war edition of Le Cycliste, which lists the "disparus," as well as Raymond Henry's article on Reyhand in Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 1. Raymond Henry did a lot of research on Reiss, including talking to many of his friends when they still were alive.
Since you apparently read something different, please give us the
source. There are a lot of myths, half-truths and fabrications out
there, and we should try to keep the record straight.
>While it appears that some of the Paris-based cycleframe builders were able
>to carry on much as usual, the same could not be said of others in other
>parts of France.
>
The assumption that all life stopped in France with the invasion simply isn't true. During the war in France, there was no draft, and few people were interested in working for the Germans, so most simply carried on what they had been doing... as well as they could.
Even in Lyon, builders continued to work during the war, for example, Paul Charrel continued to make bicycles, as you can read in the profile of this builder in the last Bicycle Quarterly (Winter 09).
Charrel's shop was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid on Lyon, so he moved his shop into his mother's kitchen. Clearly, he can't have made too many bikes there, but that is all he did to earn a living. What else could he do? It's not like anybody was hiring in those days...
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
2116 Western Ave.
Seattle WA 98121
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com