German bicycle builders are revered for their engineering excellence, inventive spirit, and tireless commitment to craftsmanship.
From avant-garde custom frames to iconic brand designs, Germany’s bike industry merges tradition with innovation—earning acclaim from discerning riders and frame enthusiasts worldwide.
We’re fans of boundary-pushing creators such as Ozon Cyclery, known for its DIY bamboo bicycle kits that challenge conventional frame materials. And Hollad-Rad, whose pinion‑geared 29er MTB marries modern drivetrain engineering with bold lugged construction.
Builders like Big Forest Frameworks, under the creative eye of Robert Piontek, bring an avant-garde flair—each frame is a poetic response to staid design through expressive craftsmanship.
Vogel Fahrradrahmenbau continues the tradition of ornate steel craft, producing lugged road, cyclocross, and mountain bikes that harken back to architectural influences and detailing. Meanwhile Standert, the Berlin boutique, delivers pragmatic innovation with aluminum gravel bikes like the Kieswerk—offering ample tire clearance, bikepacking-ready mounts, and thoughtful weight-conscious engineering.
Here we celebrate Germany’s diverse cadre of builders—from experimental material innovators to design-conscious boutique ateliers. Delve into profiles of custom steel, aluminum, and gear-driven MTB creators, and discover the stories behind the bikes that make Germany a standout in both classic and contemporary cycling culture.
We love all bikes on The Spoken, but sometimes the most impressive ones are those that push the boundaries of frame design and materials. Right now, we’re totally bugging out on these bamboo bikes from Germany’s Ozon Cyclery.
On this day, the tenth anniversary of The Spoken, we present one of the most interesting custom mountain bikes we’ve seen: a lugged 29er MTB whose lugs were investment cast from models that were 3D-printed — all wrapped around a Pinion gearbox.
Each of the bikes by Germany’s Big Forest Frameworks that we’ve featured on The Spoken is a middle finger in the face of staid methodology.…
Dan Pleikes probably builds the nicest titanium bikes in Germany. That doesn’t stop him from being the victim of bicycle theft so when his beloved…
With the 2019 Le Tour de France currently being played out, it’s time to look at a tall skinny bike. Like the race, this one…
While the rest of the cycling world is going gah-gah over carbon fiber wunderbikes, data trackers and power meters during the third stage of Le…
Designing a bike for a tall rider presents a range of challenges and it takes a proficient frame builder to still build a bike that’s…
Leave it to the Euro crowd to come up with quirky variations of sports for everyone to get involved with. Germany’s Mawis Bikes just finished…
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here, thanks to Germany’s Big Forest Frameworks and a special holiday edition of their Disc Racer…
It seems there are a plethora of frame builders in Berlin, and Thomas Becker produces some of the city’s most elegant bikes. His firm, Meerglas,…
When are too many skulls not enough? Halloween, of course. In celebration of one of the high points of the cyclist’s calendar, we present a…
It took years of riding BMW GS motorbikes and a new build from Berlin’s Cicli Bonanno to draw a correlation between all-road bikes and the…
Yuji Kimura is a Japanese industrial designer who studied in Germany — and now lives there — and now designs beautiful bicycles under the moniker…
The catalog of models available from Germany’s Bombtrack has included some popular and versatile machines for the past couple of years now, like the road-going…
In a world of fancy paint work and electronic groupsets, it’s easy to forget about what lies underneath it all: the craft of the frame…
