International Press Correspondent, 1963-1977
Anke-Eve was born in Berlin in 1929, and the family moved to Prague at the start of WWII, only returning in 1945 to a city in ruins. Life was hard; they lived in one room as there was no heating. However, the house was in the American sector and the Americans ran a youth club where Anke-Eve learned not just English, but also about printing and journalism. She then taught German for ten years to children of American military personnel stationed in Germany. Meeting husband-to-be Hans von Kimmel marked a huge change in Anke-Eve’s life – she discovered motorcycles. Anke-Eve started riding in 1953, on a BMW R67/3 which they traded for what is believed to have been the second production BMW R69 built, in 1955. She tells an amusing story of being stopped by the German police while speeding on her BMW (without a licence). They were so astonished to discover she was a woman, that they just asked her about the bike and not for her papers! She only passed her test in 1956, on a Vespa.
In 1958 Anke-Eve found a newspaper article about WIMA. In the Netherlands, in Scheveningen at the Zandvoort racetrack, Jopy Deijs-van Dinter was organising an international rally for motorcycle women. Anke-Eve and Hans rode over. She was one of nine participants at the rally which went down in history as the beginning of WIMA in Europe. She later participated in the 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1963 rallies, becoming WIMA’s international press correspondent. As well as attending WIMA Continental rallies, Anke-Eve was a regular at the mid-winter Elephant Rally in Germany, wrote articles for numerous international magazines and even designed her own leather motorcycle suits with the German manufacturer Harro.
In 1959, Anke-Eve beat eleven other WIMAs on her home circuit, the Nürburgring, and in 1961 she came first at the Hockenheimring in the pouring rain. Average speed: 125.9 km/h. The same year, Anke-Eve and Hans married, and she became a full-time housewife. It was the end of work and of financial independence, but she continued to ride motorbikes for another decade. After her son came a daughter – when her daughter was born, the following message came out at the 1965 WIMA Rally ‘Anke-Eve has given birth to a girl! Behold! The future of WIMA is settled!’
(Written by Sheonagh Ravensdale from Trui Hanoulle’s interview with Anke-Eve in Wiesbaden in 2024)
