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[CHEERING CROWDS]
[HUGH ANDERSON]: It's dead silence.
A hundred thousand people there. Didn't register.
It is absolutely another world.
The concentration levels are so high
it's a sort of spiritual mental state.
Nothing can stop you.
By accepting death, you lose the fear of it.
That's Grand Prix racing.
[TOMMY ROBB]: Degner was a spectacular rider.
A very, very fast rider.
[LOTHAR REESE]:
[STROMHARDT KRAFT]:
[OLAF DEGNER]: My father was a racing driver.
It was all racing.
This was his life.
He was a star in East Germany...
but he definitely thought
he would get a better life in the West.
[LOADING AND PLAYING AUDIO CASSETTE]
I was born on 22nd September 1931
in Gleiwitz, which is now Poland.
[DISTANT SOUNDS OF WARFARE]
My father died a few days before the end of the war.
And then we had to emigrate from Poland.
[ROCKETS BEING LAUNCHED]
When the Russians were conquering again
parts that Germans had conquered before,
when they came back,
then all these people who were Germans
flew to be saved from the Russian troops,
and there he was also then with his mother
and his sister, fleeing in this track.
[ERNST DEGNER]: We went to East Germany,
settled down there,
then half a year later my mother died
so, I was 14-years-old without any parents.
He'd had a tough upbringing.
I wouldn't have wanted to be an orphan in East Germany
at the end of the war.
It was a shocking place after the war.
Absolutely awful.
All those eastern countries were bombed and bashed
by the Russians and the Germans.
East Germany was just completely trashed.
[OLAF]: I could see that he had a very tough childhood.
His father was extremely strong.
He tried to educate Ernst by beating him.
I think this is a very dark part of his life.
[WARPLANES FLYING OVERHEAD]
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic
an iron curtain has descended across the continent.
[ARCHIVE REPORTER]: Nikita Khrushchev made it clear
he believed the communist world could bury the West.
Even if there were only one communist
in the State Department,
that would still be one communist too many.
[ARCHIVE REPORTER]: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik One
on October 4th 1957.
[TREMENDOUS SOUNDS OF ROCKET LAUNCH]
[ARCHIVE REPORTER]: Two atomic colossi
are doomed malevolently
to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world.
[ANNA FUNDER]: There was competition at every level.
Eastern bloc athletes competing in the west
was enormously important.
The communist regimes were very intent
on proving that their way of being
and of running things, of running a society
was superior in every way.
[OMINOUS MUSIC]
[MURRAY WALKER]: MZ was an East German
motorcycle racing company.
If you were an East German
you aspired to having a motorcycle
and MZ made those motorcycles.
[ROBB]: Walter Kaaden was an exceptional engineer.
He was probably the person who advanced 2-strokes
faster than anybody else did.
[HAMMER TAPPING]
[NORBERT KAADEN]:
[MUSIC]
[WALKER]: He harnessed the harmonics of the exhaust system,
which made the engine a lot more efficient.
[KAADEN]:
[KRAFT]:
[ROBB]: It was all done so low-key.
They weren't a monied company.
The materials they used weren't the best materials
because they were limited behind the Iron Curtain in those days.
They looked a bit tinny.
[KRAFT]:
[ROBB]: Ernst I could tell admired Kaaden greatly,
so he did,
but I could also tell that Kaaden admired Degner greatly
because of his ability as a rider.
And of course as an engineer.
When you were watching them together
it was almost like a father and son relationship,
he was that close to him.
[KRAFT]:
[OLAF]: They saw that he is not only a good racer,
he would also be a very big part
of the development of the engines.
[KRAFT]:
[ANDERSON]: The innovation was absolutely incredible.
[ROBB]: They were 2-stroke wizards.
[TROOPS MARCHING]
[TANKS ROLLING]
[FUNDER]: East Germany was a small nation
that came out of the ashes of fascism
and the Second World War
and that was, in theory, trying to create
a fairer non-fascist, non-capitalist world.
But East Germany had...
an extreme system of repression of its own people.
In those days, it was frightening.
Quite brutal.
The GDR was an extraordinarily intrusive
malicious surveillance state.
[WALKER]: There was an organisation called the Stasi
in East Germany,
which was in effect the secret police.
Everybody in East Germany was informing on everybody else
because that was the culture, sadly and tragically,
that existed.
[RITA PERRIS]: "Shut your mouth. Don't speak."
You have to live like a mouse.
You just keep schtum.
[FUNDER]: You could do nothing without being spied on.
You could do nothing without having it reported back
to the government.
They wanted to keep everything literally under control
and everyone under control.
[OLAF]: My father was observed by the Stasi all the time.
If my father was meeting a known or unknown,
some Stasi person,
this person was writing down
all the conversation he had with him.
To give it to the party members.
[CLICKETY-CLACK OF OLD TYPEWRITER]
[FUNDER]: People tried to live a normal life
in abnormal or extreme circumstances.
[KRAFT]:
[OLAF]: He had a very special status in East Germany.
He enjoyed getting special treatments.
[OLAF]: They also gave my mother a job at MZ
so they both could be together in the same company.
He had a better car than everybody else,
and he could travel to the west, which normal people couldn't.
But compared to what he saw in West Germany
it was still very little.
[PASSPORT STAMP]
[TRAVELLING MUSIC]
[KRAFT]:
[ROBB]: For Ernst then to come back
from behind a restricted country,
that must have been like us going to Disneyland.
I remember them feeling very out of place.
Chelira and Mondal and MV
and all the top names in Italy were there then,
so you were really going into the country
and the world
that was at the top of the Grand Prix racing scene.
[WALKER]: MZ were hardly known and little thought of
and certainly not thought highly of.
They were persona non grata
in the motorcycle racing world after the war.
[ROBB]: Jimmy Matsumiya was an absolute gentleman.
He came over as Suzuki's representative.
He was always dressed immaculately.
My name is James Akira Matsumiya.
And for the British, I'm Jimmy.
I was at the Italian Grand Prix circuit of Monza.
Suzuki wasn't successful.
I had to bring Suzuki's performance up,
but I didn't know what to do.
[ROBB]: Ernst got a very good start.
He was first into the first corner.
[OLAF]: He won by inches against the Italian hero Ubbiali
in a very nose to nose race.
"It was very exciting" he said.
He was telling me the story quite often.
[JIMMY MATSUMIYA]: I was trying very hard
to find out the secret of why MZ is so strong.
My job is to make Suzuki company successful.
So I started to look at Ernst Degner.
[ROBB]: That was making Ernst a star rider.
This high speed missile
that was coming out of East Germany.
The name Degner and the name MZ were becoming rapidly known.
People were starting to look at these...
hand-beaten aluminium bikes
from behind the Iron Curtain.
[CLACKING OF OLD TYPEWRITER]
Ernst Degner was projected into a world
of international motorcycle racing,
which took him out of East Germany
into countries all over the world
where the standard of living
was infinitely higher than the one he was used to.
I believe that Degner,
as a member of the Communist State
and as a top motorcycle racer
was actually paid a sort of basic wage.
So seeing people like Jim Redman, Tom Phillis,
Mike Hailwood, Phil Read
who had loads of money, loads of status,
must have hit Degner
like throwing a bucket of cold water at him.
[SLOW WHIRR OF OLD CINE PROJECTOR]
[TYPING]
[ROBB]: He would've liked to have been in the west
because of the freedom that we had.
He would love to have been with us
every weekend with no restrictions.
Not being watched. Not being kept back.
[OLD FASHIONED TYPEWRITER]
He could see then...
that life on the other side of the curtain
might be interesting.
I think this was a time when they started to think about
trying to find a way to escape.
[LIVELY MUSIC]
[WALKER]: The Isle of Man TT
is the greatest motorsport event in the world.
It is totally and absolutely unique.
The circuit goes through towns and villages.
[ROBB]: The hazards were the fact that you had hedges,
ditches, trees, garden gates, ordinary roads.
And it's hurt me so many, many times.
When you hit something solid, that was it.
[MATSUMIYA]: Mr Suzuki came to the Isle of Man.
And he said, "Jimmy, we must win the motorcycle racing in Europe.
Then people will recognise that
Japanese motorcycle is worth buying."
So, my job was...
to try to bring Suzuki's performance up to
the level of MZ.
[ROBB]: At the TT, I was staying in the same guest house,
the Fernleigh Hotel,
along with Jimmy, Degner, and the other riders.
Jimmy Matsumiya - he was ambitious.
He was determined to get Suzuki to the top.
[MATSUMIYA]: I was at the bar.
And then I bumped into Ernst Degner.
I said, "Entschuldigung".
He said, "You, you spoke German!"
So I said, "Yes. I learnt German in school."
So my association with Degner had started.
[ROBB]: In those days, they had a chief commissar with them,
Herr Hartmann, who watched their every move.
And he had the ability to stop that race meeting for them
and take them back home.
[COMMENTATOR]: These East German 2-strokes,
radically altered in the engine departments
are sounding terrific.
[ROAR OF MOTORBIKE]
And here's Ernst Degner on his East German MZ.
Degner had broken the lap record in practice.
[WALKER]: The BBC did the TT in the Isle of Man...
and I used to go round all the individual camps
and I talked to Degner.
And he certainly had a lot inside his head
as a rider and a mechanic
and someone who had worked very closely with Walter Kaaden.
[MOTORBIKE ROARS PAST]
[WALKER ON COMMENTARY]: There were three
Japanese Suzukis,
but they had been in trouble during practice.
None of these seemed to have any chance of winning.
[ERNST]: Well, we had known in the MZ team
two or three people from the Communist Party.
So Matsumiya and I had to talk together
very secret.
[MATSUMIYA]: One day, when he was in my room
Degner said, "Jimmy, I love jazz, do you like jazz?"
So I said, "Yes, I used to play drums."
[HE IMITATES DRUMS]
I got the gramophone.
[JAZZ MUSIC]
I intentionally made the volume of the jazz music higher,
and we are talking.
[JAZZ MUSIC]
I never thought he knew jazz song.
[MELLOW JAZZ]
Degner and myself put together through the music.
Degner was trying desperately to escape from Eastern Germany.
[CIGARETTE LIGHTER]
At that time, I'd made up my mind
that we must get some technology from MZ
one way or another.
We must have a better engine.
So I was trying to build up the relationship.
I thought that Degner is important to us.
Degner started to feel that I am trustworthy friend.
One day after dinner,
Degner and myself went to the top of the cliff,
to the edge of the land.
You can see there's nobody around.
I still remember it was very windy
and the sea was very rough.
[CRASHING WAVES]
And when we are looking at the sea...
Degner said, "Jimmy, beyond there,
there's civilisation.
Britain, America, even further you have Japan.
I have only one way to go back.
To the small cage called Eastern Germany,
where I don't have any freedom whatsoever."
[CRASHING WAVES]
I feel sorry for him.
So I said, "Ernst, I can give you my word of honour...
you have money waiting for you when you defect.
Now, how shall we construct your defection plan?"
Everybody is compromised
in the way that the State is compromised.
And in that sense it broke people.
Both the people who worked for it,
who were kind of... morally broken
and the people that they oppressed.
We know now that Kaaden was a part of the Stasi.
So even, let's say, one of his friends, his team mate,
who was always around him
was observing him.
He didn't have a choice, did he?
He wouldn't have been in the job if he hadn't said yes.
If he'd said, "No, I don't agree to doing all this",
Kaaden wouldn't have been an engineer.
This was a regime
that effectively used fear as fuel
and it ran on betrayal.
It asked of people to betray themselves
and to betray the most fundamental relationships
in their lives.
[ROBB]: Any top rider
desired the World Championship.
And Ernst was a very, very determined person.
[KRAFT]:
[WALKER]: Because East Germany and the Iron Curtain countries
were deprived of the spectacle
of top international motorcycle racing
they got the most enormous crowds there.
[KRAFT]:
[OLAF]: He was so close to being world champion
but he was sick of not doing what he wanted to do
and when he was doing something
then it was only Kaaden and the higher people
that was getting the benefit out of it.
He wanted to have his own decisions
rather than be controlled by them.
[ARCHIVE REPORTER]: The attention of an anxious world
is focussed on East and West Germany and Berlin.
The last great exodus of refugees from the east
is processed at the Marienfelde Centre
as the Communist German regime moves to close their border
against further flights.
Once the East Germans are processed
they are absorbed
into the hungry West German labour market.
Young people were leaving in droves.
Some ex-East Germans have described it to me
as a haemorrhage.
There were checkpoints,
but they were very permeable on a daily basis.
People went back and forth.
[MATSUMIYA]: During that period, Berlin Wall is not created yet.
So the people in East Berlin
can commute with western Berlin
through the underground.
It was before the government started
to tighten up the loophole.
[ERNST]: It was easy, you just took the underground
from East Berlin to West Berlin, and you were there.
[MATSUMIYA]: My idea was to meet with Degner
in the western side of Berlin.
And one day Degner said,
"Jimmy, we will try to come out to the west."
Now, Degner started to prepare for the defection.
They wanted to leave as soon as possible.
[MATSUMIYA]: So, I went to Berlin...
and meet with him in the western side
of the underground.
So, about 10 o'clock I went to the station.
Not this train, OK, next train, next train, next train.
I was just sitting there, waiting.
He did not come.
When I came back to the hotel, I received a telephone call
from somebody unknown,
who claims that actually he's a friend of Degner.
And he said, "You are waiting for Degner, aren't you?
And Degner isn't coming."
He said, "It is too dangerous."
"The wall will be built within two days."
Degner stopped talking to me.
So I had to come back to the UK.
[FUNDER]: Overnight, the guards came
and started building a wall through the city,
the heart of the city of Berlin
and around the eastern sector
to wall in the eastern part of the capital.
And at the same time then they fortified the border
between East Germany and West Germany.
[FUNDER]: People were leaping from windows
in their apartment buildings
when they could see the guards and the sandbags
and the dogs and the barbed wire outside their window.
People were separated from their jobs.
They were separated from family members
for years, for decades.
It was a desperate measure
and that really cut through people's lives.
[KRAFT]:
[OLD-FASHIONED TYPEWRITER]
His family, his wife and his children
were not allowed to accompany him.
They were in effect the ransom.
[ROBB]: Gerda wasn't one of those people
who you would notice.
She stayed very much in the background.
Very quiet, very reserved.
Spent a lot of time with her little boy
at the race meetings, obviously.
She was devoted to Ernst.
[OLAF]: My mother is a strong personality.
She would influence you that you do it
without her telling you to do.
She was putting pressure on him
when they saw that the wall was going up.
Then she, she thought it is time now to go.
My father also wanted to go
but I think my mother was pushing.
[ERNST]: The western side is completely closed.
Nobody is able to go over to West Berlin or West Germany
and then I had to change my plan.
I had to concentrate,
not only for raising up to the end of season for MZ,
but also to bring my family over
and try to leave in the best way from East Germany
via Sweden for the Swedish Grand Prix.
The he started to tell me,
"OK, next possibility is Kristianstad in Sweden."
But at the same time, his wife and children will be defecting
from Eastern Germany to Western Germany.
The plan on the defection Degner told me in detail.
Eastern Germany exports lots and lots
of large tree trunks.
And there are special transporter
and in the centre, there's a small cavity
that was made which is not accessible
through the outside.
And his wife and sons are supposed to be inside.
[FUNDER]: That had to be
an absolutely secret operation.
Or you could be in prison just for planning it.
The risks were enormous.
If Gerda had been caught trying to defect
the children would be separated from their parents.
They were put into state institutions
and often they were adopted
by leading SED, Communist Party or Stasi cadre.
And then brought up as good model socialist citizens.
[OLAF]: The border was pretty drastic.
They didn't want people going out or coming in.
[ROBB]: From West Germany to East Germany
we had to go through guards
with sub machine guns
sticking the machine gun through the window to question you.
When you looked out the other window
there was a gunning tower
with a machine gun watching all the traffic coming in.
[FUNDER]: If you were in a vehicle
there would be a check
underneath the car with a mirror.
They would check the boot for its contents
and also take out the bottom of the boot to check
there were no people lying in secret compartments.
[OLAF]: There was a massive place.
One control. Second control. Third control.
It was pretty scary.
[KRAFT]:
Of course the elections were utterly sham.
There was only one party.
The so-called opposition parties were fictions or fronts.
And the ruling SED Party won every election
with margins of about 98, 99 percent.
[KRAFT]:
[OLAF]: We drove from Berlin
towards the West German border.
Stopped somewhere at a parking place.
[ERNST]: I brought them to a special place
where they had to change over to the other car.
I went back to Stralsund
which is the point where the ferry went to Sweden.
He had this race in Sweden.
It was all part of the plan.
[MATSUMIYA]: I hired a car and drove to Kristianstad.
I went to the hotel where MZ was also staying.
[ERNST]: We stayed all in one hotel, the MZ people
and I took a single bedroom.
I waited for, for their call.
If they wouldn't have crossed,
I wouldn't have moved from Sweden.
[OLAF]: We took tranquilisers so that we would be calm.
My brother was a small baby and I was two.
[GERMAN VOICES]
[BARKING GUARD DOGS]
[ENGINE STARTS]
[TELEPHONE RINGS]
[MATSUMIYA]: That actual information he got
that his family managed to cross over the border
was given to him before he started racing.
That's when he knew now he can defect,
because his family is already in the safe side.
There's no more going back,
because when he goes back, he'll be caught.
His wife is no longer there.
He has to go one way or another.
I give him my key of my hired car.
[KRAFT]:
[WALKER]: He was going to be world champion
and he was going to be world champion
for East Germany!
[KRAFT]:
[ROAR OF MOTORBIKES]
[WALKER]: He took full advantage of the performance
of his MZ bike
and got light years ahead of everybody else.
[MATSUMIYA]: He was very fast, placed number one.
[WALKER]: The eyes of the world were on him.
So the mental pressure on him
must have been absolutely gigantic.
[OLAF]: In Sweden, he would have liked
to win the world champion,
but on the other hand it would have been
even more difficult to escape.
[ROAR OF MOTORBIKE]
[KAADEN]:
[COMMENTATOR]: The last lap, the last corner,
the first gear jumped out and the engine quickly overran.
And the chains were broken, and that was it.
When I want to do something
and I want to achieve something...
I will do anything.
I think after so many years, 50 years,
I'm sure it's OK to say it now...
he over-revved intentionally.
And machine seized over, broken down.
If he'd won the race
he was gonna be involved in the podium,
getting the adulation of the crowd,
being interviewed.
And, most important of all,
having his Stasi minder or minders
within controlling reach of him.
[MATSUMIYA]: He had key of my hired car.
So he drove straight away.
[OMINOUS MUSIC]
[ROBB]: The secrecy they must've lived in that week
because we were there with them all.
We knew nothing of it.
[WALKER]: He disappeared. It was absolutely mind blowing.
[MATSUMIYA]: After racing, a few hours later...
everybody said, "Where's Degner?"
So I said, "Maybe Degner has gone back to his room
and is sleeping or something like that
because he must be very depressed
by not scoring the world champion, the title.
[OLD FASHIONED TYPEWRITER]
I was hanging round until midnight.
So I was drinking, drinking...
and the MZ people are drinking, drinking, drinking.
Degner's car was there in front of bar!
So nobody suspected
I had something to do with Degner,
because Degner's car is there.
And nobody's thinking Degner's driving my car.
And after everything's getting quieter,
I left with Degner's car.
My heart is beating.
It's a dark night. I started, gone.
[WALKER]: For Degner to give up the world championship
must have been an enormous sacrifice.
But it showed that his wife and children, his family
were more important than
his craft, his calling, his living, motorcycle racing.
[MATSUMIYA]: I met him in Denmark.
The ferry boat was about to set sail.
I said goodbye to him.
When he left...
on the ferry towards Western Germany...
he's a defector.
And from that time onward,
Degner was free to go anywhere else.
He was happy.
[OLD-FASHIONED TYPEWRITER]
Everybody's down for breakfast and Kaaden comes up to Frank
and he says, "Have you seen Ernst this morning?"
And Frank said, "No." Which is true, Frank hadn't.
I mean, we've been to bed
and we didn't know anything of what was going on.
He was like a chicken with his head cut off.
[OLD-FASHIONED TYPEWRITER]
[ROBB]: Can you imagine Kaaden's feelings...
when the whole story eventually came out
when he found what had happened.
That all his secrets were going, you know?
[PERRIS]: It must have been devastating for him, of course.
[KRAFT]:
We know the consequences for him going back without Ernst
would be totally unacceptable.
"You didn't look after him.
You should've brought him back."
[PERRIS]: And everybody said he treated him like a son
and you do everything for them, don't you?
He taught him everything that Ernst knew.
And that would have hurt when Ernst went.
Would have hurt a lot.
[KAADEN]:
After Degner left, it was very bad for us.
We had no help from the government.
Government was not interested to have motorcycle sport.
[OLAF]: I admire what they did,
because at this time it was quite a thing.
It takes a lot of courage to have the decision to defect,
because it was so dangerous.
[ARCHIVE INTERVIEWER]:
The official line by the SED government
and by the Stasi
would have been - it's a crime.
You are leaving us. You are going over to the enemy.
The air of the fascist state.
-Daddy! -Aah!
[OLAF]: I remember them, these Japanese people
were coming to our house.
They met up with my father.
It could be that these were the people from Suzuki
that just wanted to make a contract with him.
[WALKER]: He goes to Japan, a foreign country.
And not just a foreign country, a totally foreign culture.
And he goes from a starvation level
in terms of facilities to develop the bike
that he had at MZ to...
you name it, and you can have it with Suzuki.
Because Suzuki was a big company and they wanted success
and they'd got all the money and facilities that he needed.
[WALKER]: He works over the winter
in those circumstances, and develops a bike.
[ERNST]: I'm just making the final touches
to finish the first cylinder
ever I have done for Suzuki.
When Mr Okana saw that cylinder,
he rushed to Mr Suzuki to show him.
And they looked at it and, well,
they have seen what I was able to do.
[WALKER]: And the Japanese were not stupid.
They only needed a lead
from a knowledgeable, intelligent, experienced
and successful chap like Degner
to pick that up and go with it.
[ANDERSON]: Once Ernst brought the knowledge out
and Suzuki gained that,
the MZ's then didn't have a chance, really.
He had everything in his head. Yeah?
He didn't have to take any papers.
It was all... They had part of the development of the MZ.
[RHYTHMIC MUSIC]
[COMMENTATOR]: Degner was the favourite
for Friday's two-lap, 76.5 mile race.
Right from the fall of the flag, Degner rode like a man inspired.
Degner had increased his lead.
The last lap was a scorcher.
[COMMENTATOR 2]: Degner of Suzuki
has beaten his competitors
and broken the 30 minute lap record.
The winner is Suzuki's Degner of Japan.
Ito, Ichino and Suzuki have also won prizes.
All of the Suzuki team are winners.
[KRAFT]:
And it's a mark incidentally of not only his ability
and his acumen as an engineer,
but his skill and brilliance as a rider.
[MILITARY DRUMBEAT MUSIC]
[ARCHIVE REPORTER]: Suzuki has gained the championship
with an unbelievable maximum record speed
of 144.84 kilometres per hour.
These outstanding records have brought glory,
not only to Suzuki Motor Company,
but have also made a deep impression
in business circles throughout the world.
Increasing Japanese foreign trade.
[MATSUMIYA]: We were the fastest.
And in the end, when we won that race,
I cried. It was fantastic.
At long last, we won.
We Japanese. Every Japanese. We want to be equal to Europe.
This is how we are so strongly motivated.
[ERNST]: I was the first guy who ever won
the Isle of Man on a Japanese motorcycle.
I can remember that there was a good prize.
He got a Mercedes.
There was his brand new white convertible Mercedes, lit up.
And this was the prize.
So the whole neighbourhood came.
Because at this time,
to have a Mercedes was something very special.
Maybe. Anybody's life.
Must, you must do something crazy.
[OLAF]: Suzuki never did anything good
or was big enough to compete.
And from one year to the other with my father's help,
they were at the top. Yeah, for years.
[OLAF]: He was a friendly man
and he got friends in Japan.
He immediately started to learn a little bit of Japanese.
Spoke a few words.
And so he could communicate with them. Not only in English.
And I think that made also a big difference.
For Suzuki he was a hero.
And I think Suzuki was a very big part of his life.
[ROBB]: Speed is something that...
once you've sampled it once, you want more of it.
It's an addiction that you can't give up.
In the '60s, we were probably losing...
a rider every couple of months.
[WALKER]: He gets to Suzuka...
and crashed at a double right hander.
[ERNST]: I had a very bad start
and I had to risk a lot in the first lap
to get the connection to the top.
And it was on the second corner I went off the line
and I hit with my head, I hit the ground.
Your first instinct if you're a motorcycle racer
or a car racer
and you go off the course, is to rejoin it.
You are taking part in the race against your rivals
because you want to beat them.
You want to win.
That's the thing that's driving you all the time.
[ERNST]: So I run up to the bike.
I wanted to pick it up
but the motorcycle inside the cover
it was burning but I didn't see it.
But when I start to pick up the motorbike,
then I went unconscious.
And then a big flame sprang into the tank.
The tank exploded and that was the end.
[PERRIS]: For Frank, that was the worst thing
that he's ever seen.
And so luckily the Japanese chap came over
and the two of them pulled Ernst out of the fire.
All he could remember is Ernst's face bubbling.
Yeah, it was burning away, bubbling away.
He was very, very badly burnt
and had umpteen operations subsequently
and was never the same again physically or mentally.
[ROARING FLAMES]
The transplants were sometimes accepted in a good state
and sometimes the skin from somewhere else,
I think from the back,
didn't get accepted in the face
and it was hard, for one year
he was in the hospital to recover.
[KRAFT]:
[OLAF]: We moved to visit him every day.
As a 3 or 4-year-old child
I had to go every day to the hospital
to visit my father.
He doesn't have the perfect face for perfectionists anymore.
He never got over this.
And no wonder why depression came.
And with depression comes everything else, yeah?
Somehow you get hooked on drugs cos you can't help it anymore
or whatever and you go deeper and deeper and deeper.
From then on, although Degner won races,
basically his life went downhill.
[OLAF]: The competition is big. Young drivers are coming up.
So you have to push right to the limit,
and he had so many accidents.
He broke his arm...
I think 12 times.
He showed me X-rays, so it was a mesh
and he was saying they were putting some metal pieces inside
to keep them straight
and this must have hurt all the time.
[PERRIS]: Things didn't work so well for Ernst
with the bikes.
You know, he was riding and it wasn't as good
like he used to feel,
you know, and all that sort of thing,
he's always not quite as happy.
He accused Gerda of looking at other men all the time.
This is what broke up their marriage,
because he then felt so insecure.
You know, he's no longer good-looking
so, you know, she's not...
And it was the opposite. She would do anything for him.
[OLAF]: She was always with us. For her, the family came first.
But I could see that my parents start to separate
more and more and more.
And my mother was lacking quite a bit
of him being away all the time.
This I think was sometimes really hard on her.
He was mostly of racing, I have to say.
Yeah?
It went to the point that his own dog
didn't recognise him and was barking at him
when he came home.
He had a very tough childhood.
And this is why probably he was missing this,
holding together family part. Yeah?
[ANDERSON]: Nothing seemed to go his way.
He retained his place in the team for another year,
but the following year, he was dropped.
Because he wasn't riding well enough.
They didn't need his knowledge anymore.
Income was shrivelling up.
The relationship with Gerda and Ernst
had sort of gone.
So he left.
[OLAF]: At this time I saw my father less and less and less.
He had his life and we had our life.
And there was always a big gap in between.
For years.
[GENTLE SPANISH GUITAR MUSIC]
He left Suzuki and he ended up in...
doing all sorts of odd jobs
including running a garage in Tenerife,
I think it was.
[OLAF]: After he spent almost everything
he earned in his racing career,
there was still some money left over.
And so he tried to find a business he could do
so that would give him some money easily.
And there were some friends there
wanted to sell rent-a-car.
In the beginning he thought it's a good idea.
He bought it and he tried to work it
but he could see that this is not his business.
His business was racing.
And as he never had a real good contact to us later on,
we also didn't know his state.
Yeah?
Because he was also a good actor.
Acting nicely to everybody else,
but then pulled back to be on his own.
[GENTLE MUSIC]
I have to say, he never asked the family to help him.
I don't know why. Maybe he didn't trust us.
Maybe he thought we couldn't help him.
He wanted to go his way.
He wanted to do it all by himself.
He stayed in this apartment
and we got these calls
that he can't control his medicine
and it is better when somebody is coming
to check what he's doing.
And as my mother was working and my brother as well
and I was a student and I had holidays in the summer,
it was me who got sent out to see how he is.
So I came here
and all I found was a dead body.
I came too late.
[GENTLE MUSIC THROUGHOUT]
[MUSIC]
[WALKER]: I think it's pretty fair to say that
if Degner hadn't defected
and taken his knowledge to Suzuki,
as a result of which they were able to achieve racing success
that it dramatically affected
the whole worldwide motorcycle industry.