Melli Beese

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Melli Beese in aviator fur before Poulain-Renneindecker of Charles Boutard; December 1911
Melli Beese on her Rumpler pigeon (1911)

Amelie Hedwig Boutard-Beese (born September 13, 1886 in Laubegast near Dresden , † December 21, 1925 in Berlin ), better known by her nickname Melli Beese , was a German pilot . She went down in history as the first woman in Germany to take the exam to acquire a private pilot's license .

Life

Memorial plaque on the house where Melli Beese was born in Dresden-Laubegast

Beese was the only daughter of an architect. Her parents were wealthy and supported the talented daughter in all areas. From 1906 to 1909 studied Beese at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm sculpture . In Sweden she also got to know her great passion, deep sea sailing. Beese was also fascinated by the reports and technical advances in aviation . She read and collected reports of the Wright brothers' attempts to fly .

education

1910 was a crucial year for aviation: Léon Delagrange had a fatal crash, Thérèse Peltier publicly announced that she did not want to become a pilot, Raymonde de Laroche was the first European to receive her flight permit, followed by Marie Marvingt , who acquired it in November of the same year Belgian Hélène Dutrieu is the third woman to receive a flight permit from the Aéro Club de France .

When Beese returned to Germany in November 1910, she attended external lectures in mathematics, mechanics, shipbuilding and flight mechanics at the Dresden Technical Center . In the same year she was looking for a flight instructor at the Johannisthal airfield . The first thing she did was go to the Albatros aircraft factory . These they sent on to the Wright aircraft factory ('due to lack of experience with female students').

When flying machine Wright GmbH , the balloonist already had Kathe Paulus taken flight hours. However, your flight instructor Paul Engelhard refused to teach a woman again; he sent Beese on to Ad Astra, an early airline based in Johannisthal that also trained pilots and existed until about mid-1912. Their flight instructor, Robert Thelen (1884–1968), finally agreed to accept Beese as a student.

In the 1910s, flights were only used “when an unfolded handkerchief held in the air does not move”. Therefore, student pilots sometimes sat for weeks in the halls of the airfield and waited until an opportunity to climb arose. From then on, the contemporary manliness mania caused her serious problems : Beese's comrades saw her as an unwelcome competitor and tried to prevent her from flying. Only after Beese had confronted Thelen, was she allowed to rise for the first time. Her first flights were with Thelen in a Wright biplane. On the evening of December 12, 1910, a drive chain jumped off the motor shaft during a training flight. Thelen and Beese fell to the ground from a height of 20 meters while gliding and Beese broke his ankle. For the pain, she was treated with morphine , which caused a lifelong addiction. Her father died a few days after the accident.

In January 1911 Beese returned to Johannisthal. For Robert Thelen, who is considered to be superstitious, her crash landing was proof that “women on the plane bring bad luck”, and he refused to teach her any further. Your training contract was then canceled by mutual agreement.

At the beginning of July 1911, Beese signed a training contract with the Rumpler -Werke. Hellmuth Hirth , the flight instructor, was not very enthusiastic about the idea, but gave in to the pressure of the Rumpler management, which expected a lot of publicity through a female works pilot. Beese had to struggle with Hirth's negative attitude: every time it was her turn, another student was already on the plane or technical problems prevented the flight. Once, during a training flight, even her aircraft was sabotaged in such a way that the released tension of the wings would have resulted in a crash if Beese had not noticed this immediately after taking off, which Hirth played as a "prank on men, on a woman, which illegally entered a territory reserved for men ”.

Without sufficient flight experience, Beese finally registered for the test for the first time. The pilot's certificate from the Association of the German Aviation Association (DLV) was necessary in order to be able to take part in races. To acquire this license, 3,000 marks had to be paid and the applicant had to take out separate insurance to cover the risk of a crash landing. The test consisted of three closed sightseeing flights of at least five kilometers in length. After each flight it was necessary to land properly and switch off the engine. The landing had to be done with pinpoint accuracy, with a maximum tolerance of 150 meters.

Beese's first exam almost ended in an accident. As soon as she was in the air, the engine cut out. She immediately initiated the landing and found that the gas tank had been sabotaged and the gasoline had leaked. However, she did not report the incident, it was only mentioned in her autobiography. After that, she did not register for the exam again until classes were canceled due to Hellmuth Hirth's absence. On September 13, 1911, her 25th birthday, she rose in the early hours of the morning with the Rumpler pigeon and flew the prescribed laps and figures. Before the other student pilots arrived at the airfield, she was the first woman in Germany to hold pilot license number 115 in her hands. Your sports witnesses were recognized flight instructors in Johannisthal, namely the holder of the flight license number 4 Ellery von Gorrissen and Cornelius Hintner . Beese acquired the pilot's license just before Božena Laglerová , who at the time had to take a break due to injury and received the number 125 license in October.

Beese had contractually agreed with Edmund Rumpler , the owner of the Rumpler-Werke, to take off for him at the Johannisthaler Herbstflugwochen (September 24 to October 1, 1911) if she would acquire the necessary flight license in good time. Two of the master pilots, Josef Suvelack and Hans Vollmöller , threatened the designer that they would not take off if a woman was flying in the works team. Before Beese came to an airplane, the airport director Georg von Tschudi had to intervene with Rumpler, who had advertised his event with the presence of a woman in the run-up to the flight weeks and feared for its attraction.

Beese took her chance. The inexperienced pilot and her Rumpler pigeon came in 5th out of 24 participants. After the fourth day she was in second place, but on the fifth day she was not allowed to start because the bad weather meant that “flying could no longer be expected of a woman”. On the same occasion, she set a new all-time world record for women with two hours and nine minutes. On September 27, 1911, Beese set a new altitude record for women at 825 meters while flying with a passenger; the old one had been standing at 400 meters. On October 15, Beese took part in a flight day on the Jerxerheide near Detmold. The organizers were the Detmolder Rennverein and the Berliner Gesellschaft für Luftschiffahrt und Flugwesen e. V. The air show took place on what was then the racecourse. In addition to Beese, Hans Vollmöller and Gustav Witte were also invited as pilots . The show flights were announced in the program booklet for 4 p.m. Just as Melli Beese was about to fly, fog and wind came up. The audience became restless due to the time delay and ultimately broke through the barricade fences. Beese had to cancel the flight.

Flight school Melli Beese GmbH

Memorial plaque on Haus Sterndamm 82 in Berlin-Johannisthal
Melli Beese grave
Sculpture pigeon , Melli-Beese-Anlage, Berlin-Halensee

In 1912, Beese founded the Melli Beese GmbH flight school together with Charles Boutard and Hermann Reichelt , with financial support from the manufacturer Karl August Lingner . Reichelt brought one of the monoplane he had built himself, and Boutard provided a monoplane that he had also built himself. Beese used her old Rumpler pigeon as a training aircraft.

When she founded her flight school, Beese sharply criticized the previous training system: “Following various suggestions, I decided to set up my own flight school at Johannisthal Airport. I started from the consideration that it is time to put an end to the unregulated conditions in many flight schools by having a really proper and strictly organized institute take over the training to become a pilot according to established principles. Above all, the lessons should be carried out quickly, and on request on machines of various types [...]. Since, on the one hand, I only want to accept a limited number of students under all circumstances and, on the other hand, I have three machines and three flight instructors at my disposal, the inconvenience that has been torn down almost everywhere, that the students spend weeks and months at the airfield without even flying, will be eliminated get."

Beese's flight school office and apartment were initially located in Johannisthal on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße 45; Sterndamm 83, after the street was renamed. After her marriage to Boutard, residential and flight school offices were located at No. 82 Sterndamm.

In addition to the flight school, Beese and her partners set out to recreate the Rumpler pigeon. Soon they were able to offer the Beese pigeon from their own production at a low price of 12,000 marks. In addition, she planned the construction of a flying boat .

On January 25, 1913, Melli Beese married her partner Charles Boutard in Berlin and took on French citizenship . The couple moved into a villa near Johannisthal Airport.

When the First World War began to emerge, the large aircraft factories in particular received state funding. Beese and Boutard put all their hopes in their flying boat , which they registered for an event in Warnemünde in August 1914 . The finished aircraft was already on the Warnow when the war broke out on August 1, 1914 and Melli Beese and her husband were arrested as enemy aliens . The flying boat was destroyed by the authorities.

First World War

When the war broke out, Beese and Boutard had to close their flourishing factory and flight school. They were no longer allowed to enter the airfield, their flight sheds or the factory. Charles Boutard was interned and Melli Beese was placed under house arrest. After her husband was temporarily allowed to return, the couple were interned in Wittstock / Dosse .

Isolated, without work and eyed suspiciously by guards, both of them contracted tuberculosis . Melli Beese increased his consumption of morphine.

After the end of the First World War, Melli Beese returned to Johannisthal. Their aircraft sheds had been cleared and their planes dismantled. The establishment of air forces was forbidden to the Germans in the Versailles Treaty in 1919 and Beese was faced with financial nothing. Boutard was taken to France, where he had to justify himself for staying in Germany during the war. Beese tried to get government compensation for her factory and planes. She invested the money she received, but the automobile company she was helping went bankrupt.

“Flying is necessary. Do not live"

The devastated woman, addicted to morphine, did not give up yet. Together with the returned Charles Boutard, she planned to fly around the world in two planes. The two had to look for sponsors for their company for a long time. The Fokker -Werke agreed to provide them with a disused war machine, but the project then failed due to insufficient funding.

In 1925, Beese had to renew her pilot's license, but made a crash landing, which she survived unharmed. At that time she was living separately from her husband in a guesthouse. On December 21, 1925, she shot herself after saying “Flying is necessary. Life not. ”Wrote on a piece of paper - a paraphrase of the old seafaring saying“ Seafaring is necessary, life is not necessary ”. She was buried in the Berlin-Schmargendorf cemetery. The burial site is located in Dept. L2-73. It has been dedicated to the State of Berlin as an honorary grave since 1975 .

Late honors

In 1971 a park in Berlin-Halensee was inaugurated in honor of Beese (Melli-Beese-Anlage, corner of Storkwinkel / Schwarzbacher Straße) and a sculpture dove created by Annelise Rudolph in the same year was unveiled.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of death, an iron medal was cast in 1975. The front shows the pilot Melli Beese; the back of the birthplace in Dresden-Laubegast .

In 1982, the GDR postal administration issued a special letter with a special postmark, reminding of the German pilot.

In 1975 Melli Beese was given a Berlin grave of honor at the Schmargendorf cemetery.

Since the 1990s, a primary school in the Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick has borne the honorary name of the German aviator. There is also a primary school of the same name in Dresden-Neustadt .

The streets of a settlement built in 1994 in the Johannisthal district of Berlin bear the names of some well-known aviation pioneers. There is also Melli-Beese Street there.

In 2004 the Tempelhof district office decided to name a previously unnamed path in Melli-Beese-Promenade .

There are now Melli-Beese streets in several German cities , including Bremen , Dresden , Falkensee , Frankfurt am Main , Fürth , Heilbronn , Cologne , Sindelfingen and Saarbrücken as well as in the Berlin-Kladow district .

The main access road of Berlin Brandenburg Airport was named Melli-Beese-Ring.

A Berlin motor sailing club named itself Aeroclub "Melli Beese" e. V. in the German Museum of Technology .

literature

  • Gertrud Pfister: Flies - your life. The first female pilots. Orlanda-Frauenverlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-922166-49-0 .
  • Astrid Röben: “Flying is necessary, not living” (female pilots series, part 1) In: Aero International No. 1/2018, pp. 76–78
  • Günter Schmitt, Werner Schwipps: Pioneers of early aviation. Special edition. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1995, ISBN 3-8112-1189-7 .
  • Günter Schmitt: When the classic cars flew. transpress Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-344-00129-9 .
  • Dietmar Sehn : Dresden street stories. Interesting, entertaining and curious things. Wartberg Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 2006, ISBN 3-8313-1620-1 .
  • Barbara Spitzer: Melli Beese. Sculptor, pilot - an unusual woman. District Office Treptow, Dresden 1992. (Accompanying volume to the exhibition Melli Beese, Sculptor, Pilot - an Unusual Woman , Berlin 1992.)
  • Peter Supf:  Beese, Amelie. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 738 ( digitized version ).
  • Livia Käthe Wittmann , Barbara Zibler: Melli Beese and the "wings on the horizon". The story of the first German female pilot. Trafo-Literaturverlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-89626-814-3 .

Web links

Commons : Melli Beese  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Homepage of the Melli Beese School in Berlin-Adlershof: Who was Melli Beese? ( Memento of December 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Calendar sheet from 2004: Melli Beese passes her pilot's test ( Memento from September 10, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ a b Günter Schmitt: The history of the airfield Johannisthal. 2nd, revised edition. transpress VEB Verlag for Transport, Berlin 1987, p. 103.
  4. ^ Günter Schmitt: The history of the Johannisthal airfield. 2nd, revised edition. transpress VEB Verlag for Transport, Berlin 1987, p. 104.
  5. ↑ In: At home. A German family paper. Edition of October 14, 1911, year 48, No. 2, p. 3.
  6. ↑ The only surviving program booklet is archived by the State Archive of North Rhine-Westphalia. It can be viewed on the website of the Heimatverein Jerxen-Orbke .
  7. ↑ Annette Heuwinkel-Otter, Wolfgang Schwesig: A village writes village history (s): Jerxen-Orbke in Lippe. Lippischer Heimatbund, 2014, ISBN 978-3-941726-34-5 .
  8. ^ Günter Schmitt: The history of the Johannisthal airfield. 2nd, revised edition. transpress VEB Verlag for Transport, Berlin 1987, p. 106.
  9. ↑ johflug.de (PDF; 984 kB)
  10. ↑ a b Melli-Beese plant . Website of the district office of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, accessed on March 10, 2018.
  11. ^ Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, inventory number: N 90/4242 / Deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de, accessed on July 13, 2016.
  12. ↑ Schaubek catalog, GDR.
  13. ↑ Birgitt Eltzel: The path becomes the Melli-Beese-Promenade. In: Berliner Zeitung. September 22, 2004, accessed September 22, 2014 .
  14. ^ Website of the aeroclub "Melli Beese"
personal data
SURNAME Beese, Melli
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boutard-Beese, Amelie Hedwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pilot, first woman to take the pilot's exam in Germany
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Leaf guest
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1925
Place of death Berlin