D That is something she could never have dreamed. In 1883 she rode a bicycle for the first time and, as Germany’s first female cyclist, achieved great fame. She and her husband had, at the time, bought a so-called tricycle for 700 marks and apparently immediately took great pleasure in the device imported from England, although they fell on the very first ride and the bicycle broke. Two years later the couple, together with other cycling enthusiasts, founded the club R. V. Neisse. A historical photo shows several men with unicycles and a woman sitting on a tricycle named “Choralist Schneider”.
Whether Mrs. Schneider minded that in newspaper reports about her, her first name was not mentioned but her husband’s professional title was, is not known. One can, however, assume that she would have resisted if it had bothered her. Mrs. Schneider seems to have been clear in her statements. In an article about her 25-year bicycle anniversary in the Berliner Tageblatt of 21 August 1908, which had even been translated by the liberal Dutch weekly De Amsterdammer, she is extensively quoted.
Cycling, according to the report, was by no means pure pleasure. Lohnkutscher, for example, were “deadly enemies” who, with their carriages, often deliberately and amid howls drove into cyclists, “so that we often had to come to terms with the roadside ditch.” The woman Schneider, equipped with a whip for self-defense, reports dogs that were set upon her by their owners, and children who threw mud lumps at her. “But that was far from the worst, at least for me as a woman. A woman on the bike! Grinning, they stood there in town and country, watched me go by, and mocking phrases, mean curses, if not worse, struck my ears and made me blush with shame despite my age.”
Even in private life she was subjected to attacks: “My relatives declared war on me if I stopped cycling. I gave up contact with them and remained faithful to my bicycle.”
Stopped Only by a Driving Ban
In 1915, her eightieth birthday was noted in the cycling news column of the Austrian Allgemeinen Sport-Zeitung. Her given name was not mentioned on the occasion of the round jubilee of the “first and oldest female cyclist in Germany.” However, it was written in an approving tone that she continued to ride in winter as well as in summer “on every fine day.”
With a given name, according to Wikipedia research, she was presumably Bertha Anna Augusta. This is supported by the fact that Bertha, in 1856 in Neisse, had married Hermann Louis Hugo Schneider, whose occupation was listed as “oboist of the 4th Oberschlesischen Infanterie-Regiments Nr. 63.” Mr. Schneider was there employed as an oboe player, to which his possible later profession, chorister or church musician, would fit. Just as the Golden Wedding, which Mr. and Mrs. Schneider had reportedly celebrated in 1908, according to the Berliner Tageblatt.
In 1917, the Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung reported the death of “Cycling Mother Mrs. Schneider.” On December 1 she died at the St. Joseph-Stift in Neisse-Neuland. She was on the bike until the end. Only the general riding ban prevented her from riding, according to the obituary. From 1916 onward, bicycle tires and inner tubes had to be surrendered, as rubber was scarce in Germany and the material was needed for the tires of the transport vehicles that supplied the troops at the front.
