COUNT VON ZEPPELIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1938, Page 8

COUNT VON ZEPPELIN

TRIUMPH OF FAITHFULNESS.

MANY DIFFICULTIES OVERCOME.

Recent centenary celebrations for Ferdinand, Count von Zeppelin, recall one of the outstanding Germans of the 19th century, whose experience is that of the triumph of faithfulness to an apparently impossible ideal over indescribable difficulties and in the face of the incredulity of almost all his contemporaries (says the “Christian Science Monitor.” The world remembers achievement but very quickly forgets or does not know of the hardships through which such have been realised? Today, the Graf Zeppelin is a household word throughout the world, but it is not half a century since its inventor was being described as the “mad count.” His experiments in aviation really began in earnest after he had received one of his greatest disappointments. Count Zeppelin resigned from the army when further chance of promotion was impossible. He was then a brigade commander and was told that there were no hopes of his ever commanding a division. Rich and independent, he had chosen the army as his career 35 years before and had lost no opportunity to make himself a capable officer. He had made special studies at Tubingen University in chemistry and technical subjects and had been a military observer during the Civil War in the United States. In the war of 1870-71, he commanded a Stuttgart Ulan regiment before Paris and was later military plenipotentiary of the State Wurttemberg in Berlin.

Aviation had been his hobby long before he resigned nis command. Whether he had been most influenced by nis first baloon trip in America in 1863, by the exploits of the French •balloonists during the siege of Paris or by Reich Postmeister Stephan’s lecture in 1873, on “World Post and Airship Travel,” is immaterial. Probably all three combined to turn a hobby into an all-absorbing interest for the good of mankind. A military commission refused his application to support his ideas and so there was nothing for him to do but to finance his own experiments. His first airship rose to a height of 200 metres over Lake Constance and flew for 18 minutes before running into a post and being wrecked. To build a new airship required money and the count had too little. Four years went by and ultimately funds were raised through a lottery organised by permission of the King of Wurttemberg. The result was “Z-ll.” which travelled as far as the Allgau but was wrecked in a windstorm. The experts and technicians who had always opposed his ideas were now considered to be justified in their criticisms, and the countess pressed him to abandon his ideas.

Only the count’s diaries show what he endured during me next few years, for he kept his private longings, fears, and ambitions to himself. What must have been his anxieties when the “Z--IV,” his last hope, seemed doomed to be destroyed against the outer walls of its shed in which it was housed? But he was successful, and in 1907, the airship made an eight-hour trip over Switzerland.

On August 4. 1908, he made the first long fligni over Germany, and his claims that a navigable airship could be built were established. This being so, his work became generally appreciated and funds for future experiments and airships were forthcoming. From 1909 to 1914, the Zeppelin Company operated a regular service between the principal towns in Germany.

The accomplishments of the Zeppelins which were later built are well known, starting with those which operated during the World War. In 1929, a Zeppelin encircled the globe and the regular and punctual services to South America and some visits to the United States have won appreciation for the German airship.