As a child, Otto Feick, the son of a blacksmith, rolled down the mountain in front of his grandfather's forge in two connected wagon tires in Reichenbach (Palatinate). During his imprisonment in the military prison in French-occupied Mainz in 1921, he remembered the experiments in his childhood and developed the basic conceptual concept for the sports equipment. He was soon released from prison and built it in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. A first photo was also taken on the premises of the Volksgesundheit e.V., which he co-founded in 1919 (now VSK Germania Niederfeld 1919 e.V.), which was later used in the patent application. The first roll tests took place on the meadows at the small Blies in Ludwigshafen-Gartenstadt.
In 1923, Feick and many other railway workers were expelled from the Palatinate by the French occupiers and moved to his wife's hometown of Schönau a.d. Brend in the Bavarian Rhön, where he opened a metal processing workshop. From there, in 1925, he applied for a patent for the 'tyre, gymnastics and sports equipment', which was issued to him under the number 442057 on November 8, 1925. He did not register the name 'Rhönrad' until 1926. At the beginning of 1926 he presented the wheel at the German University for Physical Education in the Sportforum Berlin. He also presented it at an inventor and novelty fair in 1926 in Ebertpark in Ludwigshafen.(...from Wiki)