Friedrich Karl von Koenig-Warthausen

Friedrich Karl Freiherr Koenig von und zu Warthausen (born April 2, 1906 in Warthausen ; † December 15, 1986 in Munich ) was a German pilot and squire .

Life

Friedrich Karl was born as the first son of Freiherr Friedrich von und zu Warthausen ("Baron Fritz"; † 1948) and his wife Elisabeth († 1961) at Warthausen Castle in what was then the Oberamt Biberach .

He attended the humanistic grammar school with boarding school in Munich. After graduating from high school, he worked as a student trainee at the Esslingen machine factory and undertook ship works trips to America at Hapag . He studied law and economics in Munich, Königsberg and Berlin. In addition, he trained as a glider and powered airplane pilot.

Klemm L20 in the Mercedes-Benz Museum Stuttgart

In the summer of 1928, at the age of 22, he started on a non-stop flight from Berlin to Moscow, setting a world record. His plane was a Klemm L20 with only 20 hp. Without a doubt, he flew on to Persia and then around the world in a year and a quarter. Among other things, he put on this flight stopover in Universal City , in order there, the Universal Studios of Carl Laemmle to visit. In 1929 he received the first Hindenburg Cup and 10,000 Reichsmarks for this ; this enabled him to pay his parents' debts for the plane. He reported on his experiences in two books.

From 1930 he worked in various functions for the German aviation industry. In 1931 he continued his studies in Tübingen and received his doctorate on German aviation to South America . After the war he became a farmer at his parents' castle in Sommershausen . A son was born from his second marriage in 1958. In 1973 he sold Sommershausen Castle and bought a house in Brezzo di Bedero on Lake Maggiore .

Works

• Wings around the world . GP Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, New York, London 1930
• With 20 HP and a flare gun. Adventure of a Hindenburg pilot . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1932; Thienemanns, Stuttgart 1951
• Go on with 20 hp! New adventures for the Hindenburg pilot . DVA, Stuttgart 1933
  • Reissued as: Wonderland and Skyscrapers. Go on with 20 hp! Thienemanns, Stuttgart 1952
• The regular German air traffic to South America in its economic and political-geographic importance. (Dissertation) Verlag der Hohenlohe'schen Buchhandlung Ferdinand Rau, Öhringen 1937

literature

• Hans Angele: King of the Skies. The 1928 world flight of FK Freiherr von Koenig from and to Warthausen . Angele, Ochsenhausen 2000, ISBN 3-9807403-0-7

Web links

• Tabular curriculum vitae ( memento from archive.is , January 3, 2015)
• "Like a moth I flew to the light" report of the Schwäbische Zeitung of September 27, 2008 ( memento from archive.is , February 13, 2013)
• Portrait of the Davis-Monthan Airfield Register (Engl.)
• Der Sommershauser Flieger , Angele Verlag, accessed on March 12, 2011 .
• Soloflights.org website , accessed March 15, 2015