Bruno Poelke

Bruno Poelke (* 1883 in East Prussia ; † August 9, 1975 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German aviation pioneer from Frankfurt am Main. Together with the Wright brothers in America, some French and Otto Lilienthal, Poelke was one of the first to construct flying machines.

biography

Poelke had received thorough training in all technical subjects in Koenigsberg and tried for the first time in 1900 to fly with a model of two meters span with flapping wings that opened like a blind when moving upwards.

Poelke came to Frankfurt in 1902. In 1908 he founded an aircraft workshop and constructed motorless flying machines. Carl Oskar Ursinus helped him with this and in the same year he dared to make the first real jump in the air with a glider from the four-meter-high Kuhwald railway embankment, where the Zeppelin memorial stone still stands today. He floated ten meters with the device and then put the glider down hard, which broke it. From then on he was also called the "Eagle from the Cow Forest" in Frankfurt.

Poelke caused an international sensation in 1909 at the first International Aviation Exhibition , which took place in the Kuhwald (today's Rebstock). Poelke reached a height of six meters above the ascent point when attempting to fly from the gliding hill on July 9, 1909, the day before the official opening of the ILA. In 1910 he designed a double-decker and in 1911 a low-wing aircraft, both of which he was one of the first to equip with a seven-cylinder rotary engine. In 1912 Bruno Poelke gave up his professional independence and flew in the new types from various aircraft factories.

In 1917 the aviation pioneer field pilot was first used as a flight instructor in Darmstadt and then on the Western Front. Four months later, an artillery shell hit his machine. A splinter injured his arm and Poelke escaped behind the German lines.

When the victorious powers in Germany forbade motorized flying after the war, Poelke became a glider pilot on the Wasserkuppe . With his self-made “Rhönvogel”, Poelke is the first to take off a glider with just one landing skid and land safely.

Poelke lived for years as a pensioner in Bockenheim. When Neil Armstrong came to Germany in 1970 , he also shook Poelke's hand. Six weeks before his death, the 92-year-old accepted an invitation from French flight veterans to Paris.

Honors

In Frankfurt am Rebstockbad, Bruno-Poelke-Straße is named after him.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Aviation pioneer Bruno Poelke is dead . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . Frankfurt am Main August 13, 1975.