Erich glue ball

Erich Leimkugel (born August 8, 1877 in Schöppenstedt , † March 22, 1947 in Essen ) was a German pharmacist , free balloon driver and politician .

Live and act

pharmacist

Erich Leimkugel was born the son of a manufacturer. After elementary school in Schöppenstedt, he attended the Wolfenbüttel grammar school , where he reached the upper secondary level. In Bielefeld he graduated from 1894 with Dr. Oelze completed an apprenticeship as a pharmacist and took the apprenticeship pharmacist examination on March 30, 1897. This was followed by the years of traveling in which he took on activities in various pharmacies in Germany and abroad. Among his destinations were Switzerland and the Côte d'Azur . From 1899 to 1901 he studied pharmacy at the Technical University of Braunschweig . After the state examination, he worked as a pharmacist in Ostend . Then he bought the Adler pharmacy in Gevelsberg , which he sold again after two years. In October 1907 he married Gertrud Klingemann from Gevelsberg. Leimkugel came to Essen in 1907, where he bought the Einhorn-Apotheke on Markt in the city ​​center , which was founded in 1619 . In 1913/14 he built a new building next to the old patrician house in which the pharmacy was located and moved his pharmacy to it. After it was destroyed in an air raid on March 5, 1943 in World War II , it reopened on May 2, 1946. From 1918 to 1933 he was chairman of the Essen Pharmacists' Association. After 1946, after spending the last months of the war in his hometown, he returned to Essen in 1945 and was appointed district pharmacist after 1946. The Essen Health Department appointed him to be a trusted pharmacist.

Balloonists

Leimkugel promoted balloon sport together with Karl Bernhard Bamler and Ernst August Schröder. From 1909 he took part in 149 balloon ascents and numerous national and international races, some of which he organized himself as a ride manager of the Niederrheinischer Verein für Luftfahrt (NVfL) . In part, he used the balloon flights for meteorological observations. He attracted attention when he crossed the Central Alps with the Tyrolean balloon from Innsbruck . In 1910 he and Ernst Milarch from Bonn undertook a balloon ascent to observe Halley's Comet . As one of the first balloonists, glue ball developed a simple method of radio alignment to enable location determination during night and cloud trips. In 1933 he made his last balloon flight in St. Louis , USA. After that he was no longer allowed to practice this sport due to his democratic beliefs.

In the First World War he was a volunteer registered war participant from 1914 to 1918, where he was a meteorologist with the 34th Field Aviation Department in Cunel near Verdun . He made true-to-size aerial photographs (balloon photogrammetry ) of this front section. After this time he returned to Essen.

Politics and other activities

On June 30, 1920, he entered the city council of Essen for the German Democratic Party , which he co-founded . He became a member of the Executive Committee.

For the period of National Socialism , he joined in 1935 the "Steffen Meier-circle" in Essen, a resistance group, led by former member of the Center Party , Heinrich Steffen Meier had been established.

In 1940 he founded the Till Eulenspiegel Museum Schöppenstedt as a collector and donated it to his hometown in 1947. Among other things, it was housed in a part of his parents' house, but is now in a new building.

In 1945 Leimkugel was one of the founders of the Essen FDP . After a heart attack on March 13, 1947, he died in Essen, but was buried on March 30, 1947 in his native Schöppenstedt.

Awards

Erich Leimkugel received the sports badge for free balloon pilot in gold no.2 in 1929.

There is a Leimkugelstraße named after him in Schöppenstedt and in the north of Essen .

literature

• Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads . Ed .: City of Essen - Historical Association for City and Monastery of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} On the 125th birthday of Erich Leimkugel; in: Deutsche Apothekerzeitung from July 28, 2002