Hans Schifferle

by Todd Halterman from https://www.autoevolution.com Hans Schifferle, the film critic and essayist, died at the age of 63 in April of this year, and during the 1980’s he cut an imposing figure. Schifferle walked the streets clad in leather and often arrived on one of his motorcycles. Hans Schifferle moved through the world in an unpretentious way and loved films and actors like Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Schifferle spent his days writing, talking smack in the foyer of the Munich Film Museum, or tipping a drink on the stairs of the workshop cinema. Schifferle, born in 1957 in Munich, spent a good stretch of his career writing the Süddeutsche Zeitung and for fan and trade magazines like Steadycam. He also penned innumerable articles for books and catalogs and, like so many cinéphiles of his generation, he found inspiration from the writings of Frieda Grafe. As a ticket-taker at the Munich Film Museum, Schifferle tore off the stubs before he attended screenings himself. And if you had the pleasure of drinking a dark beer with him and listening as he raved about films, you began to understand cinema as a school of life. He was a child of privilege and lived in an apartment which also served as a salon of sorts. His means also allowed him to collect some of the most interesting and fantastic motorcycles in history. And his obsession with motorcycles allowed him to put together a superb collection. One of those bikes was a Ducati 750SS, a version of the bike Paul Smart rode to his famous victory at Imola in 1972. That machine put the esthetically beautiful and speedy Ducati v-twin on the map. During that race, Smart defeated a long list of the hottest machines of the day, from the Triumph Tridents to […]