Old wood Slat Roof Rack ID

[gotpatina]

Hello,

Acquired an old roof rack. Trying to find the year it was made or any history on it.

What is found written on the Metal tag.

Bernhard Korner
Hamburg-Wandsbek
Ahrensburger str 46-50
Telefon 28 67 04

D.R.G.M 1606822


So made in Hamburg Germany....

The part that caught my eye was the “D.R.G.M” So I looked up a little history on it in the web article below.

From what I can find it would be 1952 made at the latest……as the patent ran out in 1949. Does anyone know anything about these racks? It fit well on my 1960 bug.

http://www.toledo-bend.com/VCL/info_2/drgm.html

The acronym D.R.G.M. with or without punctuation stands for Deutsches Reichsgebrauchsmuster, meaning that the design or function of an item was officially registered inside all of the Germany states and not only locally registered as it was the case before the introduction of centralized registration. Note that many people quote this acronym as standing for Deutsches Reich Gebrauchsmuster, which is grammatically wrong and also ommits the letter 's' after Reich. This results in shifting the weight of pronounciation on 'Deutsches Reich' alone, but this acronym has nothing to do with the Third Reich as many sellers want to imply so to catch the attention of certain 'collectors'.
D.R.G.M. registration was introduced 1891 and if you are dating items you should hold in mind that even during Allied occupation up until 1949, registration procedures remained untouched and still used the D.R.G.M. registration documents, which of course explains why D.R.G.M. marks can be found on products actually manufactured up until 1952 as the registration itself was valid for three years. As from the end of October 1952, all registrations were definately marked with 'Deutsches Bundesgebrauchsmuster' (D.B.G.M.) or simply with 'Gebrauchsmuster' or 'Gebrauchsmusterschutz', see below.

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Fahrvergnügen

[mandraks]

BeKoWa racks are well known

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=102045
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regards

Uli

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'53 3-Fold Oval, L35 Metallic Blue, looking for a narrow hatch panel

[gotpatina]

Thanks. That does look like the brand.

That link has a LOT of information to sort through. I will go through some of the pages. I hope I can find the exact year.

Thanks
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Fahrvergnügen

[56samba]

thanks for informing us abot D.R.G.M.
I always thought they stopped this slogan with the end of the reich, so I learned something new

[Bob Cropsey]

Yes that is a Bekowa roof rack.

I have the same one on my split.

[D. Haviland]

Nice rack.
It should fit on your 60 beetle. You may find that it needs a little tweaking. It seems that over 70 years they can sometimes get a little racked.

[Brad Ripley]

You might find out more information by contacting the original manufacturer here:

http://www.obft.de/index.html

The key sentence translates as: The first car roof racks were manufactured from 1949 and painted there along with the other items and sold.