Claude Dornier

Claude Dornier in 1931 in front of the Dornier Do K-3

Claude Honoré Désiré Dornier (born May 14, 1884 in Kempten (Allgäu) , † December 5, 1969 in Zug , Switzerland ) was a German aircraft designer. Because of his French father, he was initially a French citizen. In 1913 he was naturalized in Württemberg at the express request of Count Zeppelin , but also retained his French citizenship.

overview

Claude Dornier was an employee of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin and received his own department in the Zeppelin Group. He later became a partner and managing director of a branch plant for aircraft construction, which he took over entirely in 1932 and from which the Dornier works developed. There he mainly built all-metal airplanes, especially land planes and flying boats : Wal , Superwal, Do 18 , Do X. In the National Socialist German Reich , bombers were mainly manufactured for the German Air Force . After the Second World War , the STOL Do 25 aircraft was built in Spain .

From 1956, aircraft production was resumed in Munich-Neuaubing and Oberpfaffenhofen . The Dornier-Werke developed and built the Alpha Jet in a Franco-German collaboration from 1970 onwards .

Life

Dornier was born in Kempten, where a street was later named after him, to a French father and a German mother. He was the fourth of seven children (the oldest from the second marriage). During his youth and school days he was already enthusiastic about technology. Dornier first attended the Kempten Humanist High School , but switched to the 6-class secondary school in 1895. He then attended the Royal Industrial School in Munich, the completion of which entitles him to study at the Technical University of Munich . Dornier studied mechanical engineering there . He joined the Corps Guestphalia (today Suevo-Guestphalia ), but was also a nature lover and passionate mountaineer, played the zither and sang Schnaderhüpferl . He was also a member of the Algovia Kempten holiday association.

At the age of 23, in mid-1907, Dornier found his first job as a qualified engineer in the Nagel machine factory in Karlsruhe . In 1909 he moved to the Luig company in Illingen in Württemberg. There he received a cry for help from his mother. The father's wine shop had gotten into trouble because the father had been seriously ill for some time. Dornier also had to take care of the business and maintenance of the family with their underage siblings. In Illingen, he was still working on bridges for the Württemberg railway and then switched to the Kaiserslautern ironworks before he was hired by Friedrichshafen airship construction in 1910. Dornier had applied there for a long time, and this area of ​​work suited his inclinations. He was also able to support his parents' family in nearby Kempten more easily.

After his first wife Olga, geb. Kramer, with whom he had two sons ( Claudius († 1986), Peter († 2002)) who had died of the Spanish flu in 1918 , married Dornier again. From this marriage with Anna, geb. Selinka, have five other sons ( Silvius , Prosper († as a child), Justus , Donatus († 1971), Christoph († 2008)) and a daughter (Dorothea).

In Claude Dornier, in addition to the ability to visions, scientific genius and entrepreneurial talent were combined, as his numerous technical innovations and economic successes prove. Dornier never forgot what he owed his employees. He knew how to inspire and kept his team together even in bad times. After the Second World War, Dornier provided its engineers with material support from Zug in order to then develop the Do 25 with them in Spain .

Professional career

Claude Dornier, 1930

After working in Karlsruhe, Illingen and Kaiserslautern from 1907, the 26-year-old Dornier started on November 2, 1910 in the test department of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH . After he had invented the rotating zeppelin hall and received a patent for it in 1912, he tried to computationally determine the previously empirical construction of the zeppelin structures, which brought him some resistance from established practitioners. The young engineer even took part in a few zeppelin trips to gain experience and take measurements.

Dornier observed with growing interest France's technical lead in aircraft heavier than air. Count Zeppelin himself also saw the future here and supported, for example, his former employee Theodor Kober , who had started his own business with Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen GmbH and built aircraft, with money and hall space. In 1913 Dornier was allowed to visit the 5th International Aviation Exhibition in Paris . Dornier himself described this visit as the point in time from which his interest turned to aircraft heavier than air. Graf Zeppelin himself recognized at the beginning of the First World War that airships would soon no longer be able to cope with the demands of the war. He therefore pushed his ideas about giant airplanes. The Count proceeded in two ways: on the one hand, he had large land planes developed, and on the other, he initiated Claude Dornier's flying boat designs.

In December 1914, Claude Dornier and his “Do” department left the office of Count Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen and moved with his small staff of designers and draftsmen a few kilometers further to Seemoos . A spacious wooden hall was built on the Seemooser Horn, high enough for a three-decker and 50 m wide. The barracks for Dornier's office and the design office were used - almost unchanged - by the Württemberg Yacht Club as the "Claude Dornier Youth Home" until 2014. In February 2016, after implementation and restoration, it was put back into operation in the Dornier Museum as a Thursday laboratory and is now used to impart knowledge.

Here, under his direction, the giant flying boats Rs I to Rs IV were built , and from 1917 onwards, in the Reutin plant of Zeppelin-Werk Lindau GmbH, the land aircraft Cl I , a two-seater biplane, Cs I , a two-seater float plane designed as a low-wing aircraft, and DI , a fighter plane, which, as a cantilever one and a half decker, combined the shell construction of the fuselage with a wing designed as a torsionally rigid box.

While the giant flying boats were still built according to static principles that Claude Dornier had already developed for zeppelin constructions before the war - heavily elongated support systems made of drawn steel profiles, later combined with the shell construction of the fuselage - the land planes went beyond that. In the DI finally Eckpatente aircraft statics were united, the Claude Dornier had signed in recent years: for the einholmigen wing (1916), the spantenversteiften hollow body made of metal (1917) and the supporting metal skin of aircraft fuselages (1917).

Under Claude Dornier, one of the most important and future-oriented construction traditions of metal aircraft construction emerged, and his employees Hanns Klemm , Alexander Lippisch , Adolf Rohrbach and Richard Vogt also helped to establish it. The other great guide in metal aircraft construction , Hugo Junkers , used trusses as a static basis, which were only stiffened with corrugated iron as planking.

In January 1917, Dornier's department became an independent company in the Zeppelin Group as Zeppelin-Werk Lindau GmbH, and Dornier became its managing director. The company built its main plant in Reutin near Lindau , but also stayed in Seemoos. The end of the war brought the closure of the Lindau plant. Only 80 employees remained at the Seemoos plant. Dornier was able to prevent the company from being liquidated.

Interwar period

The construction of the reconnaissance flying boat GS I had started in Seemoos on behalf of the Imperial Navy . This flying boat already had all the hallmarks of the later Dornier flying boat family: high-wing, far from the splash water above the wing arranged engines in tandem and fin stubs. After the end of the war, Dornier had it converted into a 6-seater passenger aircraft. The first flight took place on June 30, 1919. The flight tests went extremely well. Dornier then recruited customers at demonstrations in Switzerland and the Netherlands. On the way to a demonstration in Scandinavia, the flying boat was in Kiel-Holtenau when the mandatory delivery of aircraft according to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty came into force. Dornier therefore had the flying boat sunk in the Bay of Kiel on April 25, 1920 in order to forestall delivery to the Allies.

Since the aircraft construction prohibition of the Versailles Treaty was initially considered to apply only to military aircraft, three more aircraft could be designed and - at least partially - built in Seemoos in 1920, the small commercial flying boat Delphin I, the commercial aircraft Komet I and the small flying boat Libelle .

In the autumn of 1920, however, the Allies' stance tightened massively. The construction ban was extended to all aircraft. It should apply for up to three months after the Allies have confirmed that German demilitarization has been completed. The German Reich government was ultimately forced to legislate for this with retroactive effect in the spring of 1921. All aircraft manufactured since July 10, 1920 were to be confiscated.

Claude Dornier managed to rent a boat shed with a slipway in Rorschach, on the Swiss shore of Lake Constance. Aircraft parts that had already been produced were carried across the lake in the “Praxedis” sailing boat operated by his employee Heinrich Schulte-Frohlinde and assembled in Rorschach. The "Libelle" was able to take off on its maiden flight on August 16, 1921 off Rorschach. The first Komet I had already been assembled in Dübendorf in Switzerland in autumn 1920.

Dornier whale

With a small team of designers working at home, Dornier has since continued to develop the Gs I because the Spanish Navy had expressed interest. The result was the Dornier "Wal" , "the airplane that Dornier made", as Claude Dornier himself put it. In addition to the characteristics of the Gs I, the whale also had a simple vertical tail, another characteristic of the Dornier flying boat family.

Construction in Germany was out of the question, and the boat storage hall in Rorschach was unsuitable. Dornier was able to find an abandoned shipyard in Marina di Pisa at the end of 1921 , where a subsidiary of the Zeppelin group (the majority was held by Italian shareholders) was founded, Costruzioni Mechaniche Aeronautiche SA ( CMASA ) . The Dornier Wal made her maiden flight in Marina di Pisa on November 6, 1922.

On January 22, 1922, the shareholders' meeting decided to rename the company to Dornier-Metallbauten GmbH. Dornier was able to take over a ten percent share of the business. Also in 1922 the Zeppelin Group acquired the properties of the now liquidated Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen GmbH in Manzell. The operations of Dornier-Metallbauten GmbH were relocated to this larger site next to the shipyard in Seemoos.

In the years that followed, Dornier implemented a large number of aircraft projects in Manzell. Of the flying boats, the further development of the Dornier whale to versions with higher take-off weights as well as the twin-engine Superwal I and the four-engine Superwal II should be emphasized . The whale proved extraordinarily successful in both the civilian and military versions; Licensed productions began in the Netherlands, Spain, Japan and the Soviet Union. Dornier went to Japan for a few months to prepare for Japanese production at Kawasaki; his colleague Richard Vogt stayed there as head of aircraft development at Kawasaki until 1933.

Of the land planes of those years, Comets I, II and III and Mercury I and II were particularly successful; they played an important role in the beginning air traffic. At Do K , Dornier experimented again with a different construction method, a fuselage structure made up of steel tubes and dural profiles and a light metal wing structure; Fuselage and wing each with fabric covering. However, he only used this design once, namely on the military floatplane Dornier Do 22 intended for export . Incidentally, it remained true to its all-metal construction.

Claude Dornier, 1927

In the second half of the twenties, the third production facility alongside Manzell and Marina di Pisa was built in Altenrhein on the Swiss shores of Lake Constance. With the support of the German Empire, which initially also remained the main shareholder, the AG for Dornier aircraft (Doflug) was founded. The Reichswehr issued in the twenties again orders for the development of military aircraft to the German aircraft company. Because of the Versailles Treaty, this armament could only be financed covertly through the budget of the Reich Ministry of Transport. Testing with armament was not possible in Germany. Dornier was also involved in this concept with a number of projects.

After the completion of the Altenrhein plant, the production of the Dornier Wal in Marina di Pisa was given up. The shares of the company there had been completely passed into Italian hands for a number of years; the connection with Dornier-Metallbauten GmbH was limited to a license agreement.

In 1928/29 the Dornier Do X , a flying ship, the largest variant of the flying boat concept that had started with the Gs I ten years earlier, was built in Altenrhein . It was the largest airplane of its time.

At first, he only sketched Claude Dornier's numerous, sometimes technically very different, aircraft designs and handed them to Eugen Jäger - his colleague since 1914 - to work out the details. The final aircraft project was then created in a step-by-step process. This collaboration continued over the next few decades. Mostly after work or on Sundays, Dornier went to the design engineers' drawing boards and left comments on the drawing boards and instructions to the bosses on his ideas.

The Zeppelin Group had already developed into a fragmented group of companies during the First World War. In the 1920s there were differences of opinion in the management about his entrepreneurial development. While Alfred Colsman represented the balanced development of airship construction, aircraft construction, engine construction and gear construction, Hugo Eckener called for all means to be concentrated on airship construction. In Dornier's view, Colsman's concept already provided insufficient consideration of aircraft construction. When Colsman finally lost the power struggle and retired prematurely in 1930, Claude Dornier and Dornier Metallbauten GmbH found himself in a marginal business position in the Zeppelin Group. There was an opportunity to get away from the company.

With the start of the global economic crisis in autumn 1929, the situation in the aircraft industry deteriorated dramatically worldwide. Dornier Metallbauten GmbH also had to give up production in Marina di Pisa and sell CMASA , which, however, was bearable in view of the new shipyard in Altenrhein.

In 1929, before the Great Depression began , Dornier had signed a license agreement with General Motors (GM). In 1931, GM declared that in view of the economic development it was no longer willing to use the license it had acquired and would withdraw from the license agreement in return for a severance payment. According to his employment contract, Claude Dornier was personally entitled to a considerable share of the license income for his property rights. Dornier therefore suggested to Hugo Eckener to take over all the business shares in Dornier-Metallbauten GmbH. Eckener accepted the suggestion. In 1932, Claude Dornier became the sole shareholder of Dornier Metallbauten GmbH at a favorable price in view of the generally poor economic situation.

The idea of ​​creating a location on the German coast had long been considered. In 1933 the plan was realized with the establishment of the subsidiary Dornier-Werke Wismar GmbH , later renamed Norddeutsche Dornier-Werke (NDW). Another plant of this company was built in Berlin-Reinickendorf. The lightweight construction Lübeck GmbH was founded to increase the capacity, which was legally separate but organizationally integrated into the NDW.

In southern Germany, plants in Friedrichshafen- Löwental and Friedrichshafen-Allmannsweiler, in Pfronten -Weißbach and Lindau-Rickenbach and in the Munich area in Neuaubing and Oberpfaffenhofen were built near the Manzell site .

To remedy the housing shortage in Friedrichshafen, which was contributed by the expanding plant in Manzell, created on the initiative of Claude Dornier starting from 1924 in Manzell the Dornier settlement . More Dornier settlements there later in Wismar, Lübeck-Siems and Neuaubing.

time of the nationalsocialism

With the appointment of Hermann Göring as Reich Commissioner for Aviation on February 2, 1933 and the establishment of the Reich Aviation Ministry (RLM) in April 1933, the aircraft industry was brought into line with a planned economy. Free entrepreneurship was now severely restricted. Decisions about the production of prototypes were made centrally and Dornier built Junkers W 34 , Heinkel He 111 , Junkers Ju 88 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 one after the other for the NDW , while Dornier aircraft e.g. B. the Weser-Flugzeugbau GmbH (Weserflug) in Bremen, the Hamburger Flugzeugbau GmbH or Siebel were assigned for production.

The aircraft developments commissioned by the Army Armed Forces Office before Hitler came to power enabled the RLM to quickly begin building the air force . With the Do F 1931/32, Dornier had developed an aircraft that was declared as a cargo aircraft; it was actually a bomber. After the first flight in spring 1932 some changes were made. The Do 13 bomber flew in early February 1933. After further changes, the aircraft went into series production as the Do 23 in 1934 .

Dornier Do 17Z of KG 76 , 1940

Dornier's main development in the field of bombers during this period was the Dornier Do 17 . In 1932 the Heereswaffenamt issued a tender for a "light express airliner". Dornier's first draft fell through. He then began developing a new type of aerodynamically particularly well-designed aircraft that caused a sensation at the International Flight Meeting in Zurich: it was faster than the participating fighter aircraft. Several thousand copies of the Do 17 were built by Dornier and several licensees over the next few years.

In addition to military developments, Dornier continued to work on the development of flying boats in the 1930s, with his main focus being on transatlantic traffic. The whale was further developed for Do 18. The Do 26, a four-engine flying boat for postal traffic in the South Atlantic, was created as a larger flying boat. It was designed for a catapult launch .

Model of the planned Do 214

Dornier also had success with developments for foreign countries during these years. In the Dutch East Indies inserted "Wal" the Dutch Navy Air Force Marine Luchtvaart service should be replaced in large numbers. The Dutch rejected Dornier's Dornier Do 18 as too light and inefficient, and they also demanded a departure from the tandem arrangement of the engines and a double rudder unit. They wanted space for a third machine gun turret in the rear and a better field of fire for the middle machine gun turret. Dornier received the specifications in 1935 and had to face a competition with Fokker and Sikorsky , which he won brilliantly with the Do 24 design . In return, Dornier had given up some of the principles of interpretation that it had always upheld. From summer 1937 to autumn 1939, Dornier Friedrichshafen supplied three and Doflug Altenrhein 26 Dornier Do-24 flying boats, others came from the production of the licensees Aviolanda and De Schelde. After the occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, the Luftwaffe continued this Dutch production line and used the flying boats in an unarmed version primarily for sea rescue, where they proved themselves extremely well.

Dornier Do 217

The end point of Dornier's flying boat developments was the Dornier Do 214 transatlantic flying boat . Since he had been involved in the work on the airship with which Graf Zeppelin wanted to travel to the 1916 World's Fair in Chicago before 1914, Dornier had always been interested in this task. In the 1930s he had worked out several drafts for flying boats for this route, and from 1939 he was finally able to start developing the flying boat that he had planned the previous year on behalf of Lufthansa. The Do 214 had eight engines, had a take-off weight of 150 t and was supposed to transport 40 passengers across the Atlantic with a comfort equivalent to that of the Zeppelin airships LZ 127 and LZ 129. From 1940 the military version took precedence. In 1942 the RLM broke off development; the bulkheads that had already been built up for the first boat had to be scrapped. This long adherence to a civilian project during World War II earned the Dornier-Werke the name “Sleeping Beauty Works” in NSDAP jargon.

Meanwhile, the war determined the development of the Dorniers company. The types assigned by the RLM were built, primarily bombers and reconnaissance aircraft at Dornier. Dornier developed the Do 17 further into the Do 217 , which was built in combat, reconnaissance and night hunting versions. With the Do 317 , the take-off weight of the 17 types rose from the original 6.5 t to 20 t.

The last surviving Do 335 (VG + PH)

From 1942 onwards, Claude Dornier began developing an aircraft that embodied his tandem arrangement of the engines in its purest form, and that was based on a patent that he had registered in 1937. The Dornier Do 335 was a heavy fighter-bomber with a take-off weight of around 10 t, powered by an engine with a towing propeller in the bow and an engine behind the pilot that moved a propeller in the stern via a long-distance shaft. This design required both a nose wheel landing gear and an ejection seat, two design elements that appeared here for the first time. As the technical highlight of Claude Dornier's aircraft developments, the Do 335 had, in addition to many exemplary details, a whole range of unsolved problems and weaknesses. After all, the Do 335 was the fastest piston-engined aircraft in the world to be produced in (small) series.

In 1934 Dornier received honorary citizenship of the city of Friedrichshafen. In 1940, after long pressure from local and regional party officials, he joined the NSDAP, was appointed military manager and head of the aircraft construction department of the aviation industry group.

After 1945

After the Second World War, Dornier and some of his leading employees were imprisoned and interrogated in France for a few months. After his release, he moved to Switzerland. During the denazification in December 1948 in Lübeck , the seat of the North German Dornier works in the British zone , he was classified in category V "relieved". The British military government lifted this classification, however, and instructed Dornier to be denazified in the French zone, in Friedrichshafen or Tübingen. Here he was classified as a “ fellow traveler ” (group IV), since an NSDAP member is only seen as “exonerated” if there is evidence of active acts of resistance. The French military government sentenced Dornier to an atonement. The then President of Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Lorenz Bock, refused to publish the judgment . He knew Claude Dornier's political stance and believed the verdict to be wrong. Bock finally had to be forced to publish by order of the French military government.

Dornier Do 27 in the livery of the Swiss Army

Claude Dornier was facing economic failure. The Manzell plant was destroyed, the plant premises sold on the orders of the military government. The works in the Soviet zone were lost, while those in the American zone had largely been confiscated by the military government. Claude Dornier finally relocated to Zug, Switzerland, as his house in Friedrichshafen was also destroyed. He tried a fresh start with a small office in Rorschach. Finally, he founded an engineering office in Madrid, the Oficinas Técnicas Dornier (OTEDO) and developed the Dornier Do 25 liaison aircraft with a small German team .

Dornier Do 31 , 1968

In Germany, his companies started over in Lindau, Oberpfaffenhofen, Neuaubing and Immenstaad on Lake Constance. In 1950, Dornier founded the Lindauer Dornier Gesellschaft in Lindau and successfully started designing and manufacturing looms. From 1955, Dornier was able to build on earlier economic successes in aircraft construction with short take-off planes and vertical take-offs. He became president of the Federal Association of the German Aerospace Industry BDLI . Due to his experiences during the war, he always tried to put the work on a broader basis. In 1959 a “special construction” department was created to open up areas of diversification. Just as Claude Dornier had his own company in the Zeppelin Group in 1917, he made this department independent in Dornier System GmbH in 1962, which later became the aerospace , defense , electronics and medical technology divisions . In the same year, Dornier withdrew from active management at the age of 78 and left the management to his sons. Through the “Development Council”, however, he continued to play a key role in decisions, particularly in the area of ​​aircraft development, for several years. During this time he also rebuilt his house in Friedrichshafen after having had a second home at the Immenstaad plant for a few years. In 1964, Federal President Claude Dornier awarded the Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

With the exception of Dorothea, who had been paid out, the descendants from his two marriages formed a community of heirs with his widow Anna after Dornier's death in 1969, with shares of voting rights allocated by Dornier in his will, under which the Dornier Group continued until it was taken over by Daimler-Benz was conducted. When Anna Dornier, who had appointed Claude Dornier as executor, died, a dispute broke out over the inheritance and voting rights. Dornier had stipulated in the will that after the death of the widow a new executor should be appointed by the President of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court (OLG). The widow had appointed two co-executors to assist her. When the President of the OLG appointed a new executor, this decision was challenged in court by some of the heirs; they considered the co-executors appointed by the widow to remain in office despite the widow's death and the appointment of a new executor to be inadmissible. In court, however, the new appointment by the President of the OLG, corresponding to Claude Dornier's will, was declared legal. This dispute contributed to the fact that Daimler-Benz AG, mediated by the Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Lothar Späth , took over the management of the Dornier group .

See also

• List of Claude Dornier's aircraft , Dornier Museum , Dornier-Werke .

literature

• Dornier, Claude, H., D. In: Robert Volz: Reichs Handbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 , p. 341.
• Claude Dornier: From my engineering career. Private print, Zug / Switzerland 1966.
• Brigitte Kazenwadel-Drews: Claude Dornier - aviation pioneer. Delius Klasing Verlag, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-7688-1970-1 . (not reliable in all details)
• Martin Ebner: Claude Dornier and denazification. In: Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators, helpers, free riders. Volume 5. Nazi victims from the Lake Constance area. Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2016, ISBN 978-3-945893-04-3 , pp. 65-77.
• Hartmut Löffel among others: Claude Dornier. In: Hartmut Löffel (Ed.): Upper Swabia as a landscape of flying. An anthology. (= Bibliotheca Suevica .) Edition Isele, Konstanz and Eggingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86142-429-1 , pp. 313–353.
• Wolfgang Meighörner (Ed.): Zeppelins Flieger. The aircraft in the Zeppelin Group and its successors. Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen 2006, ISBN 3-8030-3316-0 .
• Renato Morosoli: Dornier, Claude. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . 2004.
• Lutz Tittel: 100 years of Claude Dornier, metal aircraft construction. 1914-1969. Städtisches Bodensee-Museum, Friedrichshafen 1984, ISBN 3-926162-70-8 .
• Joachim Wachtel: Claude Dornier. A life for aviation. Aviatic-Verlag, Planegg 1989, ISBN 3-925505-10-5 .

swell

• Heinz Michaels: power struggle of the heirs. The family quarrel at Dornier endangers the existence of the company . In: Die Zeit , February 15, 1985, No. 8.
• Joachim Wachtel: Claude Dornier. A life for aviation. Aviatic Verlag, ISBN 3-925505-10-5 .
• Acta Studentica , episode 94/1990

Movie

• Claude Dornier - aviation pioneer. Documentary, Germany, 2018, 89:32 min., Book: Thomas Wartmann and Kerstin Horner, director: Thomas Wartmann, production: Filmquadrat.dok, SWR , arte , first broadcast: September 15, 2018 on arte, synopsis with video excerpt from Filmquadrat.dok.

Web links

• Literature by and about Claude Dornier in the catalog of the German National Library
• The story of the Dornier family. In: dornier.co.za (German)
• Newspaper article about Claude Dornier in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Denazification files Claude Dornier as digital reproduction ( files 1 and 2 ) in the online offer of the Sigmaringen State Archives
• Christian Keun: The richest Germans: the Dornier family. In: Spiegel online , March 24, 2001.
• Claude Dornier in the German biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ralf Lienert : One of the oldest schools in Bavaria: The Carl-von-Linde-Gymnasium celebrates its 200th anniversary on October 2nd. In: Allgäuer Zeitung , August 30, 2004, accessed on October 8, 2018.
2. ↑ Short message: Claude Dornier. In: Der Spiegel , February 12, 1949, No. 7.