A Bosch W 175 T 1 spark plug and bakelite plug holder, an oil bottle, a grease tube, insulating tape, a cylinder-head spanner, a spark-plug wrench, a small wire brush and a tyre-pressure gauge were among the items recovered from the pannier of a Second World War-era German motorbike, which emerged from the rapidly receding Danube last weekend alongside the remains of a German soldier, the Institute and Museum of Military History said in a Facebook post on Friday.
Human remains found beneath the German motorbike
The glue and patch material from a puncture-repair kit had also survived intact. The institute’s experts additionally found a drive-chain link, several bolt heads, a hammer head and Y-straps when they opened the side box of the DKW NZ 350-1 German motorbike, the Hungarian news agency wrote.
Museum specialists will clean and conserve the artefacts, and restore those suitable for restoration, they added.
One comment beneath the post said the remains and identity tags of a Wehrmacht soldier and a Waffen-SS soldier had been found next to the motorcycle, along with a decoration known as the Kuban Shield. The medal was awarded to soldiers who successfully defended the Kuban bridgehead in Russia and along the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov during fighting between February and October 1943.
A passer-by spotted the motorbike
The Institute and Museum of Military History had previously announced on social media that cleaning and urgent conservation work had begun on the Second World War motorcycle discovered at the weekend in the bed of the Danube, where water levels had fallen to a record low.
This is how it was taken out from the mud of the Danube: Valuable WWII German motorcycle, human remains and explosives pulled from the Danube in Budapest – photos
It recalled that a passer-by had spotted the motorcycle’s front fork protruding from beneath the rocks on the embankment at Batthyány Square the previous weekend. Museum experts identified the machine and excavated it together with its associated items. The rare find was transported to the institution’s hangar on Kerepesi Road in the early hours of Monday, and work to clean and conserve the motorcycle began during the week.
The work was inspected on Wednesday by László Kürtös, the Ministry of Defence’s parliamentary state secretary, and Colonel Roland Maruzs, commander of the Ministry of Defence’s Institute and Museum of Military History, the post said.
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Source of the photos: Facebook/HM Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum
