This advertisement for German bicycles was published in 1913 by the firm of August Stukenbrok (in Einbeck), “The largest bicycle shop in Germany.” Bicycles were prime examples of the modern goods produced for the consumer market (both domestic and export) in the second wave of German industrialization. This advertisement, suitable for inexpensive reproduction in a newspaper, depicts a well-dressed bourgeois couple, presumably husband and wife, on a bicycle tour of the countryside. (A large “S” for the firm’s name winds through the composition.)  The couple is well-off, based upon their clothing, and the woman is dressed quite conservatively in sun hat and full-length dress. Despite the conservatism of dress and posture shown here, middle-class women in particular often described the purchase of a bicycle as liberating, in that it allowed a much greater degree of mobility, and hence independence.