Franz Kruckenberg

Kruckenberg (2nd from left) in front of the rail zeppelin

The rail zeppelin powered by an aircraft engine

Kruckenberg memorial plaque on the house where he was born in Moltkestrasse in Uetersen

Friedrich Franz Kruckenberg (* 21st August 1882 in Uetersen , † 19th June 1965 in Heidelberg ) was a German Mechanical Engineering and Railways - designer . He was a pioneer of express rail traffic ; one of his works is the propeller-driven rail zeppelin presented in 1931 .

Life

Franz Kruckenberg comes from an old merchant family from Uetersen near Hamburg . He studied shipbuilding at the Technical University in Gdansk . As a newly qualified shipbuilding engineer, he began his career at Heinrich Lanz in Mannheim at the beginning of July 1909 . Under the leadership of his former professor Johann Schütte , he played a major role in the construction of the airships at Luftschiffbau Schütte-Lanz OHG . The airship SL II, built in 1914, is one of his groundbreaking aerodynamic creations, which also influenced the design of the Zeppelin airships during the First World War. Nevertheless, he criticized the airships because of their explosive gas filling and the civilian use of aircraft because of their high operating costs.

In 1922 Franz Kruckenberg left the Schütte-Lanz company in Brühl near Mannheim, which had been weakened due to the Versailles Treaty, and opened an engineering office with six engineers in his villa at Unter der Schanz 1 in Heidelberg. At first he designed a kind of suspension railway , but could not raise the capital for a prototype.

In 1928, together with Curt Stedefeld, Kruckenberg patented a "Standschnellbahn vehicle with a car body that can be swiveled transversely on the running gear" as the first (unrealized) conception of an active tilting technology .

Later he founded the Flugbahn-Gesellschaft mbH with Hermann Föttinger to build the "Schienenzeppelin" with propeller drive . The first test drives were carried out on September 25, 1930 on the Kreiensen – Altenbeken railway line .

On May 9 and 10, 1931, longer operating lines of the Reichsbahn were used for the first time ( Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk Leinhausen - Hanover - Plockhorst - Lehrte ). Members of the Reichsbahndirektion Hannover, including Vice President Fritsche, observed the test drive near Lehrte during which Franz Kruckenberg and his employees were in the propeller car. The vehicle reached 110 km / h after one minute and 150 km / h after two minutes. The first drive reached 170 km / h after six minutes, the second even a top speed of 205 km / h. This was a speed previously unattainable for the Reichsbahn (twice the speed of the express trains at that time), which is why all conceivable safety measures were taken; i.a. all level crossings were closed.

On June 21, 1931, the rail vehicle designed with Curt Stedefeld had its maiden voyage on the Berlin-Hamburg railway line between Ludwigslust and Wittenberge. This rail car was a two-axle aerodynamic car in lightweight construction with a propeller drive . During this trip, the vehicle set a world speed record of 230.2 km / h that lasted for 24 years.

With the rail zeppelin, the engineer developed a vehicle that was revolutionary for the time. His idea of streamlined profile continues to influence the design of high-speed railcars .

In 1932, the toy manufacturer Matador published instructions with which one could build a model of the rail zeppelin from the wooden blocks of this company.

After the rail zeppelin, Kruckenberg and Stedefeld developed the also pioneering SVT 137 155 . This prototype of a three-part multiple unit was characterized by a power car and a diesel-hydraulic drive. During a test run on June 23, 1939, the train reached a new speed record of 215 km / h on the Hamburg – Berlin route. After the war, the design led to the DB series VT 10 ⁵ ("Senator" and "Komet") and VT 11 ⁵ ("TEE") and in the GDR to the DR series VT 18 ¹⁶ .

In 1949, the Karlsruhe Institute of Railways and Roads examined Kruckenberg's concept of a floating zeppelin , which envisaged the connection of all major European cities by a suspension railway with propeller drive. The cars should have a capacity of 80 people and reach a speed of 300 km / h.

In 1963 he presented a concept for a high-speed railway from Frankfurt to Cologne , which was to run on the right bank of the Rhine and largely based on the motorway and airports.

Franz Kruckenberg died in Heidelberg in 1965 at the age of 82. His grave in the Heidelberg mountain cemetery has not been preserved since the mid-1980s.

Honors

• 1953: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1975: The former street 422 in Berlin-Mariendorf is renamed Kruckenbergstraße.

Works

• Franz Kruckenberg: Long-distance express traffic and museum of transport . Heidelberg 1959

literature

• Alfred Gottwaldt : The rail zeppelin. Franz Kruckenberg and the Reichsbahn express railcars from the pre-war period 1929–1939. Freiburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-88255-134-1 .
• Hans-Erhard Lessing: Franz Kruckenberg in Heidelberg - traffic planner versus Reichsbahn . In Peter Blum (Hg): Pioneers from technology and economy in Heidelberg , Aachen 2000
• Julian Landmann: Kruckenberg, Franz . In: The Uetersen Lexicon . Schmidt & Klaunig, Kiel 2012, ISBN 978-3-88312-421-6 , pp. 68-71
• Sigfrid von Weiher:  Kruckenberg, Franz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 94 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen: "Scientific Yearbook 2007", ISBN 978-3-86136-126-8 ; Pp. 142, 296

Video

• Railway romance - current and interesting news from the world of the railway. Episode 282

Web links

Commons : Franz Kruckenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Description of SVT 137 155 (PDF, 532 KiB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Document DE000000609415A , German Patent and Trademark Office
2. ↑ The propeller car. In:  Salzburger Chronik für Stadt und Land / Salzburger Chronik / Salzburger Chronik. Tagblatt with the illustrated supplement “Die Woche im Bild” / Die Woche im Bild. Illustrated entertainment supplement to the “Salzburger Chronik” / Salzburger Chronik. Daily newspaper with the illustrated supplement “Oesterreichische / Österreichische Woche” / Österreichische Woche / Salzburger Zeitung. Tagblatt with the illustrated supplement “Austrian Week” / Salzburger Zeitung , May 12, 1931, p. 3 (online at ANNO ).
3. ↑ Horst Weigelt : On the history of express traffic on German railways . In: Theo Rahn, Hubert Hochbruck, Friedrich W. Möller (eds.): ICE - train of the future . Hestra-Verlag, Darmstadt 1991, pp. 16-34.
4. ↑ 1418. Rail zeppelin. :  Matador Newspaper / Matador Newspaper. Company magazine: Matador-Haus Johann Korbuly Pfaffstätten near Vienna , year 1932, p. 15f. (Online at ANNO ).
5. ↑ "Schwebezepp" with propeller drive. In:  Salzburger Volkszeitung , August 27, 1949, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).
6. ^ Wilhelm Blind: Setting the course for the new Cologne – Rhine / Main line . In: The Federal Railroad . No. 2 , 1990, ISSN  0007-5876 , pp. 189-194 .