By Laura Fleischmann
Published on •Updated
The water level in the Danube has never been this low. The low water level is exposing what lay hidden on the riverbed for decades, including a Wehrmacht motorcycle of the DKW NZ 350-1 type from the Second World War. DKW is short for “Dampfkraftwagen”, a former German car and motorcycle brand from the Saxon motor city of Zschopau that was later taken over by Auto Union.
The motorcycle was found on the riverbed in the centre of Hungary’s capital Budapest, level with the Hungarian Parliament building. For staff at the local Institute and Museum of Military History it is a real once-in-a-century discovery. According to the institute, the vehicle is almost completely intact. It was effectively preserved in the Danube’s mud.
The motorcycle found is a model developed specifically for wartime use and produced from 1944 onwards. It was powered by a single-cylinder two-stroke engine delivering 11.5 hp. Thanks to their robustness and reliability, these so-called Kräder, or military motorcycles, were popular with the troops. One of the key identifying features of the DKW 350-1 is the metal side pannier, also found on the machine recovered from the Danube.
Around 12,000 units were built by the end of the war in 1945. The predecessor model, the DKW (source in German) NZ 350, reached a top speed of 105 km/h, according to the ADAC. In the Wehrmacht, motorcycles were usually used as dispatch, reconnaissance or courier machines, carrying orders, reports and information materials such as maps.
The motorcycle was manufactured by Auto Union AG, a car and motorcycle producer founded in 1932 that was then the second-largest German manufacturer after Opel. Auto Union AG was created through the merger of several brands, including Audi.
On earlier models from the company, the frame components were still bolted together; on the NZ series they were welded. Because welding required a high power supply, this work could only be carried out at night, when the electricity grid was not under strain from other uses.
German Tellermine 35 anti-tank mines, remnants of hand grenades and artillery shells have also been found on the Danube riverbed. This stretch of the Danube may have been used as a “war debris dump”, according to the Hungarian Institute of Military History.
From March 1944 German troops occupied Budapest. Between October 1944 and February 1945 the Battle of Budapest was fought between the Soviet Red Army and German and Hungarian forces. Around 30,000 German, more than 17,000 Hungarian and some 80,000 Soviet and Romanian soldiers were killed. On 13 February 1945 the remaining German units surrendered.
After the war the DKW production facilities were dismantled and transferred to the Soviet Union as part of war reparations. In Moscow and other locations they were used to build, in large numbers until 1951, the largely identical ISCH-350.
Human remains were found beneath the motorcycle. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the German War Graves Commission, took charge of the recovery and said the remains belong to two Wehrmacht soldiers. Were they the motorcycle’s crew? Their identity tags are well preserved, so they should be able to be identified. The two dead men are to be buried at the German war cemetery in Budaörs, west of Budapest. More than 16,000 German soldiers are buried there.
The Volksbund is a non-profit association which, on behalf of the German federal government, searches for, recovers and buries war dead abroad. In 2025 alone it dealt with more than 5,500 cases.