Brunolf Baade

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Brunolf Baade (2nd row, 3rd from right) at the 5th SED party congress in 1958

K arl Wilhelm Brunolf Baade (born March 15, 1904 , Berlin-Kreuzberg; † November 5, 1969 , Berlin-Buch ) was a German engineer and university professor . He is considered the father of the GDR aviation industry and was the general designer of the first German jet airliner " 152 ".

life and career

According to the birth certificate and the baptismal register, his parents gave him the first name Karl Wilhelm Bruno. From the end of school he began to call himself Brunolf, and this name was also used in official documents. He was the son of Wilhelm and Martha Baade. His father was an employee of the AFA. The mother took care of him and his sister, who was a year younger than him, after giving up her little hatmaker's shop. From 1910 Baade attended the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium in Rixdorf ( Neukölln ), which he graduated with the Abitur in 1922. In line with his career aspirations as a shipbuilder, he then enrolled at the Hamburg University. Alongside his studies, he worked at Deutsche Werft and at Blohm & Voss. There he was involved in the construction of the ship "Waskenwald". The ship's first voyage was to South America. Baade signed on to the “Waskenwald” and went along as a coal trimmer. The trip, which lasted around four months, took him through the Panama Canal to South America and back after bypassing Cape Horn.

From 1923 he continued his studies at the TH Berlin in the field of mechanical engineering and in 1926 passed the diploma pre-examination in ship and aircraft construction. During his studies in Berlin he had contact with the Berlin Akaflieg and became increasingly interested in aviation. In the interruption of his studies that followed from November 1926, he worked until March 1927 in the German Aviation Research Institute in Berlin Adlershof. They send him to the airship zeppelin in Friedrichshafen for four months to carry out altitude tests on engines in the vacuum chamber available here. During this time he took advantage of the offer of the German Commercial Aviation Schools to technical students at technical universities to do pilot training for powered aircraft.

With the prospect of doing a doctorate at the TH Munich, he continued his studies there and worked briefly as a volunteer from March 16 to April 20, 1929 at the Bavarian Aircraft Works (BFW) in Augsburg. On November 14, 1929, he received the academic degree of graduate engineer from the TH in Munich.

Since there was no vacancy at the university, he accepted the offer from the BFW and worked as a technical assistant in the sales department until April 1930. He was also responsible for the occasional flying in front of sports machines of various types. Between the BFW and the US-based Eastern Aircraft Corp. The desired license production of Messerschmidt aircraft no longer came about due to the global economic crisis. This should be under the direct supervision of German engineers at the plant. Baade used the existing contacts and resigned at his own request in order to go to the United States. Here he worked for Crescent Aircraft Corporation, General Aviation Manufacturing Corp. Knoll Brayton Aeronautical Corp. as well as for the US subsidiary of the Dutch Fokker Group , Fokker Airkraft Corporation,

After the 12 month visa had expired, he visited Germany again at the turn of the year 1931/32 in order to settle permanently in the USA with a new visa and a “green card”.

In the autumn of 1932, Baade moved to Goodyear in Akron, where, among other things, he was involved in the development of the “Comet” express railcar. Through contacts with the Junkers factories, he returned to Germany in 1936 and was given a two-year contract. On October 1st, he started as the head of a construction department at Junkerswerke in Dessau until shortly before the end of the employment contract in 1938 he contacted his American employers again to inquire about job opportunities. Using the extension of his employment contract and the promotion opportunities offered at the Junkerswerk, he then continued to work for the company. In the summer of 1939, anticipating the outbreak of war, he tried again to move to the USA with his family. Three weeks before the start of the war, despite the already reserved berths, he was refused entry.  

Baade was involved in the construction of the aircraft types Ju 88 , Ju 188 , Ju 288 , Ju 388 and Ju 287 and rose rapidly in the management hierarchy during this time.

After Dessau was occupied by American army units, he was interned in POW camps for a short time. After his release, he played a decisive role in the Aufbau GmbH of the city of Dessau and in December 1945 was appointed by the President of the Province of Saxony to the board of the Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke Aktiengesellschaft , now under Soviet military administration .

In the Soviet Union

Baade was entrusted with the reconstruction of the Junkers works to provide reparations for the Soviet Union. In addition to the completion of the jet bomber project Ju 287 as EF 131 , reporting on German air armaments in World War II was one of his tasks. This also included some developments that were started before the end of the war and that Baade pursued, such as the unrealized six- engine long-range bomber EF 132 and the attack aircraft EF 126 derived from the V1 , which was tested both in Dessau and in the Soviet Union.

The jet bomber project, operated as a reparation, was continued there in 1946 as part of the Ossawakim operation , bringing Baade and his employees to the USSR . Baade led the further development of the aircraft types EF 131, EF 140 and Samoljot 150 in Podberesje (city of Dubna ) near Moscow . From 1952, Baade campaigned for the state and party leadership in the now existing GDR for the establishment of an aviation industry. The beginning of the repatriation of the employees who had been brought to the Soviet Union formed the personal basis for the further development of the development of the jet airliner “152”, which began in the “cooling phase” in Sawjolowo.

Return to the GDR

Roll-out of the turbine jet passenger aircraft "152 / I V-1" (1958)

After returning to Germany in 1954, he became chief designer of the GDR aircraft industry and was responsible for the development of the "152".

Under the most difficult conditions, a new plant was built in Dresden, where work was carried out on other follow-up projects for the 152 in addition to building the IL 14 under license. On the basis of his scientific achievements and practical experience, Baade was appointed professor for lightweight construction in 1954. He was a candidate for the Central Committee of the SED from 1958 to 1963 and was awarded the GDR Patriotic Order of Merit in 1959 for his achievements.

After the end of aircraft construction in Dresden in 1961, he became director of the Institute for Lightweight Construction and the Economic Use of Materials (IfL). From 1955 to 1961, Baade was a lecturer at what was then the Faculty of Aviation at the Dresden University of Technology . He was also a member of the Research Council of the GDR since it was founded in 1957 .

Personal

Grave of Brunolf and Anna Baade in the Eichwalde cemetery

In 1932 he married Anna Stierle, who was also from Germany, in the USA. He had five children with her. Brunolf Baade died after a long illness on November 5, 1969 in a Berlin hospital of complications from gastric cancer . The couple's grave is located in the Eichwalde cemetery in the Dahme-Spreewald district of Brandenburg . [1]

Publications

  • Farnborough. Dresden 1959.
  • Connected to progress. Leipzig 1957.
  • Helmut Bukowski (ed.): Junkers planes 1933–1945. Armament - testing - prototypes. The illustrated original report by Professor Brunolf Baade to the Soviet military administration, Dessau 1946. Dörfler, Eggolsheim 1999, ISBN 3-7909-0427-9 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence


personal data
SURNAME Baade, Brunolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baade, Carl Wilhelm Brunolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer in the aircraft industry
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 1969
Place of death Berlin