The following is an email message sent to me (Howie) by Axle Schauff on October 28, 2011. I took a little liberty and modified Axle's text because English is not his first language:  
     I checked your web site - that´s a lot of work you put in it! Congrats! It seems my father, Hans Jr. (now 78 years old), never told you the whole story why we are in bicycles.
     In 1907, a mechanic started a custom-bike shop in Bad Godesberg, a suburb of Bonn, the "old" Capitol, just south of Cologne. His family name was NIERENDORF. He had 2 Kids, one daughter, Barbara, and a son, Walter. I have a picture from around 1912 with the whole family and Barbara is riding a handmade Berceau style 18" bike! Even the tires were custom made, there were no tube-tires available in that size yet; all kid bikes had full rubber tires only.
     Sometime after WW1 they moved to Cologne. The workshop was located in the "Venloer Strasse (street)" in EHRENFELD, in the west part of the city (Cologne is divided by the River Rhine). They were now specialized in Track frames because Cologne had the most indoor bicycle race tracks in Germany at that time (I think Dad once told me of 3 or 4 only in that part of the city)!
     Sometime around 1930, a young mechanic started working in the factory, his name: Hans Schauff (he was my grandfather and was later to become known as Hans Schauff Sr.).
Well, my grandma (Barbara Nierendorf) was quite stunning, (I saw some pictures of her) so he asked her out. It wasn´t easy for him to persuade her, but finally she gave in and he took her out for a dance night. Ok, she took her best friend and he did the same, so the 2 pairs went. But as she told me once, he didn´t behaved well (got drunk as far as I remember) and she dropped him that same night. Sometime later he could persuade her to have a second chance and that time they both went alone and it definitely worked out as we know nowadays.
     But now there was a problem. . . . when they got married in 1932 she sure had to take his name - SCHAUFF - as her family name and he couldn´t just change the name of his father-in-law’s shop, so the young couple officially opened their own shop under the name of SCHAUFF.
     As you see, the "bicycle family" business actually started back in 1907, but there was a family name change in 1932. In 1943/44 the house was set afire and destroyed in a bombing raid on Cologne and so they moved the whole factory to Remagen which was 30 miles up the Rhine-river where the factory still is today.
     My Grandpa was a mechanic in the Army and had early-on caught yellow fever in France from which he never recovered, so he died in 1973 while I was only 5 years old. I only remember 2 occasions when he carried me around in his arm  - one of these we are outside the factory and a STEAM engine was re-arranging the wagons (rail cars) on our own factory rail track.
     Hans Jr. (my father) who now in 2011 is age 78, is still coming to the factory. We have a "breakfast" break every morning in the company to discuss the daily topics and at least once a week we try to remind him to start on his biography... What to say - he prefers to hang out in the factory in the morning and afternoons he supervises the shop. And he has so much to put down on paper.
     So, now before my wife gets upset, I have to put the kids to bed.
              Best regards, from Axel Schauff (third generation bike man)

The front cover of Schauff's BMX catalog in about 1978. Jan Schauff advises that BMX was first started in Germany in the city of Cologne. In 1977 a Bicycle Store purchased 50 BMX bikes from Schauff. The two guys on the catalog cover are stunt riders from Cologne.