Ernst Schlegel

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Ernst Schlegel 1913

Ernst German Schlegel (born June 21, 1882 in Konstanz , † January 4, 1976 there ) was a German aviation pioneer , aircraft designer and engineer .

Career

After attending the Oberrealschule in Konstanz, Ernst Schlegel, the son of a locomotive driver, initially embarked on a middle career as a civil servant and became a railway worker like his father. Enthusiastic about aviation, he experimented from 1908 with self-made flying machines and made his first flight attempts on the parade ground of the Constance Regiment 114. In 1909 he moved to Mainz to attend engineering school there. Together with his Swiss friend Robert Züst, he constructed the “Schlegel-Züst flying machine” based on his own designs and plans.

The "Schlegel-Züst flying machine" was based on a monoplane manufactured and built by the Aviatik Automobil- und Aviatikwerke (Leipzig- Heiterblick ), which was a replica of a French "Hanriot". Tensioned wings with control by twisting, wooden-steel tube fuselage with fabric cladding and rigid landing gear with auxiliary runners are characteristic features of the very rare apparatus of this time.

Back in Constance, further flight attempts followed. In April 1910 Ernst Schlegel took off with the self-built motorized aircraft, making short straight flights (flight altitude 3 meters, distance 150 meters), but when attempting a traffic pattern the machine with Schlegel on board broke. While some contemporaries smiled at the first attempts at flight by the "aviators" ("The glittering phantom, by imitating the flight of birds, to carry people through the air without a gas balloon, haunted some heads again and again ...") Schlegel received encouragement from Graf Zeppelin, who supported his aircraft project in October 1910 with 3,000 gold marks.

In 1911 Schlegel was appointed by the Aviation Society in Mulhouse as a “theoretical teacher for the first German aviation officers” and in return received training as an aviator at the Alsatian automobile and aviation works. On May 20, 1912, he passed his pilot's exam in an aviation biplane in Habsheim in Alsace and is one of the Old Eagles (No. 209), the pilots who had passed their flight test before the outbreak of World War I.

In 1912 Schlegel was appointed director of the " Herzog-Carl-Eduard-Fliegerschule " in Gotha and carried out numerous training flights as a flight instructor for monoplane . In Gotha Schlegel built a double-decker together with Karl Grulich .

On July 25, 1912, he flew the first airmail in Thuringia , on the Gotha - Erfurt route . Flugpost Gotha issued a semi-official flight stamp for this flight, which was marked with a stamp with the name “E. Schlegel "canceled. The postage stamp to be stuck next to it was used normally.

Schlegel built the first seaplane, took part in numerous city flights, won many prizes, came first or second in the “Prinz-Heinrich-Flug” competition and gave lectures on aviation. Schlegel experienced his greatest triumph when he received the national price of 60,000 gold marks in October 1913 at the “Prinz Heinrich flight” . In this extremely difficult and dangerous competition, it was important to cover the longest flight distance from midnight to midnight. There were no reliable instruments for flying at night. Schlegel managed to cover a distance of 1606 kilometers, but had to make an emergency landing near Labiau in East Prussia and suffered serious injuries.

Schlegel became famous and became a flight instructor for a whole generation of German pilots, there were cigars with his name and the play “Die Fliegerbraut” dedicated to him was performed in the Konstanz City Theater. The "Flieger Schlegel" was on everyone's lips, he took numerous guest flights with prominent contemporaries.

Schlegel was a mail pilot, test pilot, water pilot and then a war pilot with numerous missions in the First World War. He was promoted to lieutenant and received the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class.

In 1916 he suffered a nervous breakdown during the war. Soon afterwards, he received the order to found the first German foremen's school and to head a test department. Later he was a senior technical employee at Rumpler-Flugzeugwerke in Berlin and in 1917 was transferred from the army administration to the aircraft factory in Speyer as a chief engineer.

In April 1918 Schlegel officially opened the Konstanz airfield , which soon fell victim to the general flight ban due to the war .

In his memorandum on the organization of German aviation , written in January 1919 , he suggested a Reich air organization and the establishment of air offices and advocated a transition from "originally purely military flight operations to traffic-related" ones. “The tasks of commercial aircraft lie in the meaning of the word 'traffic'. People, parcels, mailbags, letters are to be transported. The commercial aircraft should benefit trade, industry and science ... First and foremost, the aircraft as a 'means of transport' is intended to be expanded. The 'traffic-related' design of our aviation is not a purely Baden or German one, but rather an international one. ”Schlegel recognized the opportunities of civil aviation early on. “School machines” (13 machines) and “C machines” could easily be used to build up air traffic after World War I. Thousands of the latter would be housed in halls and would perish in dust and rust if not used, Schlegel justified his initiative for Development of commercial aviation after the war.

In August 1919, the Deutsche Luft-Reederei began its first regular flight operations on the Konstanz - Berlin route. Ernst Schlegel organized a flight passenger service with six military double-deckers between Constance, Stuttgart , Berlin , Freiburg, Munich and Friedrichshafen with a connection to the Zeppelin traffic .

In 1921 Schlegel set up air mail traffic between Constance and Stuttgart. From April 11, 1921, air traffic from Konstanz to Munich was also started, daily air mail was taken.

In 1934, the Reich Aviation Ministry appointed Schlegel as an experienced aviator to the higher engineering service in Stuttgart. But the chief staff engineer was repeatedly transferred to punishments for critical remarks and was charged in 1944 with a violation of the "treachery law". His proceedings were held up by lawyers and at the end of the war he escaped a judgment by the Nazi judiciary.

In the post-war years Schlegel worked as an engineer for various companies in Germany and Switzerland. He retired in his hometown of Konstanz, where he died at the age of almost 94.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birth register of the city of Konstanz, No. 207/1882
  2. ↑ Chronicle in Old Constance
  3. ↑ J. de J., “But you have a wobbly wagon”, Südkurier Konstanz from June 19, 1957, City Archives Konstanz
  4. ↑ Züst and Schlegel flying machine . In: Flugsport magazine - year 1910 . Editing and publishing house Flugsport, Frankfurt am Main 1910, p. 139 ( Preview in Google Book Search).
  5. ↑ a b The pioneering days of aviation Chronicle of the Konstanz airfield. Accessed January 30, 2018
  6. ↑ Aviation monoplane: Airy pilot seat with "Navi" airplane Classic, edition 11/2015. Accessed January 30, 2018
  7. ↑ a b c Helmut Jacobsen: Melody of a pilot's life. "Old Eagle" Ernst Schlegel 80 years old - falling for a "pipe dream". Südkurier Konstanz, June 20, 1962, City Archives Konstanz
  8. ^ Personal letter from Ernst Schlegel dated May 3, 1933, City Archives Konstanz, SII 4269
  9. ↑ Old Adler list of German pilots before the outbreak of war in 1914. Accessed on January 30, 2018
  10. ^ History of aviation in Erfurt 1909–1914 Chronicle on luftfahrt-erfurt.de. Accessed January 30, 2018
  11. ^ History of aviation in Erfurt 1956–1966 Chronicle on luftfahrt-erfurt.de. Accessed January 30, 2018
  12. ^ Luftpost Gotha - Erfurt Article by Thorsten Berndt from May 23, 2012 on briefmarkenspiegel.de. Accessed January 30, 2018
  13. ↑ German stamp newspaper 26/2012 articles by Thorsten Berndt of 13 December 2012 in the DBZ. Accessed January 30, 2018
  14. ↑ Gotha Air Mail. Semi-official postage stamp Airmail Gotha 1912
  15. ↑ Hans Schuhmacher: The "Old Eagle" no longer flies ... Obituary Südkurier Konstanz from January 9, 1976, City Archives Konstanz
  16. ↑ WQ: The plane from Lake Constance. Südkurier Konstanz from June 21, 1952, City Archives Konstanz
  17. ^ Personal letter from Ernst Schlegel dated May 3, 1933, City Archives Konstanz, SII 4269
  18. ↑ a b From the exe to the airfield Festschrift Flughafen-Gesellschaft Konstanz GmbH. Accessed January 30, 2018 (PDF)
  19. ↑ Aviator Ernst Schlegel, Konstanz, January 1919, memorandum on the organization of German aviation, Baden-Württemberg State Archive, Stuttgart ( digitized )
  20. ^ Munich City Archives: City Chronicle 1921 - Airmail from Munich
  21. ^ Wt, The Konstanzer Lilienthal is called Schlegel, Südkurier Konstanz, January 4, 1986
personal data
SURNAME Schlegel, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schlegel, Ernst German (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aviation pioneer and engineer
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Constancy
DATE OF DEATH 4th January 1976
Place of death Constancy