Georg Baumgarten (airship pioneer)
Ernst Georg August Baumgarten (born January 21, 1837 in Johanngeorgenstadt ; † June 23, 1884 in Colditz ) was a German inventor and aviation pioneer .
Origin, education and family
Georg Baumgarten was the third child of the border customs officer Friedrich August Baumgarten and his wife Adelhaide, nee. Schaarschmidt. Even the father's father was royal. Saxon chief forester . The family later lived in Kamenz , where the father was the chief tax inspector. Baumgarten attended the Dreikönigschule in Dresden -Neustadt, which he left with the school leaving certificate .
From 1857 to 1859 he studied forest science in Tharandt ; after that he first worked as a forest assistant in the Auersberg district and in 1866 became a forester in Borstendorf . There he married Hedwig Auguste Mechler, the daughter of the chief forester, in 1866.
After a job in Böhrigen , Baumgarten was given the post of head forester in Pleißa on July 1, 1870 , as administrator of the Rabenstein forest district. In December 1872 this point was moved to the other side of the Rabensteiner ridge , to Grüna .
Hedwig and Georg Baumgarten had ten children between 1868 and 1883, two of whom died early.
Ideas, attempts and limits
Baumgarten initially dealt with simplifying the German Kurrent script , the general traffic script at the time, and developed his own quick script, which he called Tachygrafie . To this end, he had a 30-page book printed in Chemnitz in 1872 .
When and how Georg Baumgarten came into contact with the airship issue is not documented. His first model was already in the shape of a big cigar, about 1 m long. It was a light wooden frame covered with canvas, in the cavity of which there were gas-filled children's balloons. The forester made his first experience with this: The gas volume and thus the buoyancy was too small in relation to its own weight.
The second model was larger and had a volume of 7.5 m³. It had a gondola powered by a toy steam engine. But the buoyancy was still not enough.
The third model was then significantly larger: length 10.5 m, diameter 3.0 m. This balloon floated about two meters high, kept in balance by means of a tow rope . A spring mechanism drive with 2 × 0.5 HP drove two wings on both sides of the nacelle. These "turning wings", a kind of paddle wheels, were a special Baumgarten invention, after which he named his models "wing airship". Not yet public, this was the first successful model test.
Another specialty of Baumgarten was the goal of doing without ballast and gas emissions and instead also performing the vertical movement with a propeller .
The autodidact Baumgarten also dealt intensively with the theoretical foundations of the then new aeronautics . In Vienna in 1877 his booklet “The Dirigible Wing Airship, the Flight Apparatus, the Vertical Elevation Machine and the Air Thinning Cylinder Propulsion Apparatus” appeared in Vienna in 1877 with 24 pages and 4 panels.
Between 1877 and 1883, Georg Baumgarten was granted seven patents at the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin and assigned to class 77 "Sport". His most important from today's point of view is No. 9137 on April 2, 1879, "wing airship with steering device". Further patents were granted abroad, for example in France, Belgium, England and Austria-Hungary.
Around 1877 Baumgarten was working on a fourth project, which was again larger, and produced the required hydrogen gas on site (from iron filings and sulfuric acid). In contrast to other airship developers such as Giffard , Dupuy de Lôme , Haenlein , Tissandier or Renard and Krebs , Baumgarten had neither a technical education nor a strong economic background. Although he wanted to build a large aerostat early on , he barely had the money for his smaller models.
In addition, Baumgarten was limited by the fact that no engine suitable for an airship was available at that time, so that all of his projects were based on spring force or muscle power propulsion.
Airships, ascents and crashes
November 1878, Dresden
In October 1878, Baumgarten built an airship model (34 meters long and 8 meters in diameter) in public for the first time at the “Zum Weisse Adler” inn in the village of Weißer Hirsch , with which he wanted to fly (or “drive”). Due to technical breakdowns (including gas production), the heavily advertised performance was canceled without replacement.
July and October 1879, Grüna
With the help of the Grünaer Schützenhaus host Franz Hermann Keil an assembly hall was built and a new unmanned airship model was built. With this, Baumgarten publicly demonstrated on July 31, 1879 the function of load capacity, ascent and descent, drive and steering, about which an official protocol was drawn up. For a long time, a manned ascent was mistakenly read from this log and a newspaper report.
A similar successful attempt was repeated on October 26th.
January and March 1880, Leipzig
Baumgarten met the wealthy Leipzig publisher Friedrich Hermann Wölfert in mid-1879 through their shared hobby of “ shorthand ” and won him over for his airship ideas. Both signed a cooperation agreement. In January 1880 a new airship for a manned ascent was built in the Leipziger Schützenhaus (between Leipzig and Lindenau - Plagwitz ): 26 meters long, 6 m diameter, 550 m³ hydrogen. It had a powered gondola in front and behind, and a passenger gondola in the middle.
After sabotage by the workers involved, the filling had to be replaced with luminous gas and the launch site relocated to Lindenau-Plagwitz. A first attempt at flight was successful, but the balloon was enlarged: from 26 to 40 meters in length, from 6 to 7 meters in diameter and to 1400 m³ in volume. 32 "reversible blades and propellers" on three nacelles were now used for propulsion.
This led to an ascent on Easter Sunday 1880, which however failed. As a result of a chain of unfortunate circumstances, the three-person airship with Baumgarten unintentionally rose by itself, the hull tore open at high altitudes as a result of the lower external pressure , and the vehicle returned relatively gently to earth. Baumgarten was unharmed.
October 1880, Vienna
Baumgarten's superior authority, the Saxon State Treasury, did not agree with the extent of the airship experiments. Since the chief forester “had to take advantage of the whole man”, they forbade him to attempt any further attempts when threatened with dismissal. These now ran under Wölfert's name, and Baumgarten stayed in the background.
In October 1880 the press reported that "several lucky trips had been made" near Vienna with Baumgarten's winged airship, including one from Hietzing to Baden over approx. 25 km in half an hour.
April 1881, Altendorf
This was followed by unmanned tests again, which were publicly demonstrated in Altendorf by a “committee of the steerable wing airship”. Neither Baumgarten nor Wölfert were mentioned by name in the press, but an official protocol certified the model's drive and controllability even in fairly strong winds.
February / March 1882, Charlottenburg
Baumgartens and Wölfert's next rise should take place again with publicity and before the eyes of the military, which both saw as a potential client. The location was the “ Flora-Etablissement ” in Charlottenburg .
A non-public test on February 10, 1882 was relatively successful, but the decisive attempt at ascent on March 5, 1882 ended in a crash landing, triggered by surrounding trees, and life-threatening for Baumgarten.
Illness, insane asylum and death
Georg Baumgarten had been excitable for a long time and tended to be quick to anger. He was impoverished and had labor law problems. His airship projects were deadlocked without an engine and his research had been denied recognition. There were increasing differences with his partner Wölfert.
In May / June 1881 a manufacturer from Grüna publicly insulted him, so that Baumgarten challenged him to a duel and fired a shot at him (without hitting). Even before a scheduled court date, Baumgarten's incapacity was determined and he was incapacitated . The result was his retirement on January 1, 1882 and the termination of his official residence. The family moved to Siegmar .
After the last attempt at advancement in Charlottenburg, Baumgarten's mental health deteriorated; he formed z. B. illnesses with which he also plunged his family into misery. During an official medical examination on December 6, 1882, he was diagnosed with "madness", and on January 13, 1883, Baumgarten was admitted to the Colditz insane asylum . Without recognizable efforts to treat the patient, even a temporary leave of absence was refused. Georg Baumgarten died of tuberculosis on June 23, 1884 .
Merits
After Teichmann / Schulz, Georg Baumgarten and Hermann Wölfert are considered the most important German airship pioneers of the 19th century. As lateral entrants , they gained experience that would be useful for future aeronauts.
Baumgarten's patented findings were u. a.,
- that not only the drive and the horizontal control are carried out by propellers and so-called reversible blades. The vertical movement is also carried out by means of propellers and not by releasing ballast or gas. In addition, the airship is slightly heavier than the amount of air displaced (principle of today's Zeppelin NT ).
- In order to transmit the forces, the gondola hangs directly under the balloon and is rigidly connected to it by means of an internal suspension, the carrying ropes penetrating the envelope and being attached to the ridge of the balloon.
- The gas filling of the balloon should take place in individual cells ( ballonets ).
- Baumgarten is said to have worked on a new project at the end, a rigid balloon with an internal skeleton - the later Zeppelin principle.
Baumgarten's saying “What I have in my head now will be something that the world will marvel at in 50 to 60 years!” Already 20 years later, the first zeppelin rose from Lake Constance.
Honors
Georg Baumgarten's end in an insane asylum was evidently a reason for many people, long after his death, to deny him an honor for his achievement and to forget him. It was not until 1911 that a newly built street in Grüna was named after the inventor.
At the height of the zeppelin enthusiasm in 1929, people remembered him and founded the "Baumgarten Airship Interest Group". Members were u. a. Baumgarten's son Georg and his grandson, who was also called Georg. In 1937, on Baumgarten's 100th birthday, the group organized memorial plaques on the house where he was born in Johanngeorgenstadt and on his temporary home in Siegmar.
In 1954 the community of Grüna set up a Baumgarten memorial room in the former forest ranger's office.
In 1982 a new "Georg Baumgarten Working Group" was founded in Grüna. In 1984 he installed a memorial plaque on Baumgartenstrasse. In 1987, on the occasion of his 150th birthday, a new exhibition was opened in the after-school care center.
In 1990 the Karl Marx School in Grüna was named "Baumgarten School". A granite stele was erected at the Oberrabenstein reservoir (where an airship assembly hall stood).
In 1994 a Baumgarten-Wölfert memorial exhibition was opened in the newly built "Folklorehof Grüna" and the Baumgarten circular hiking trail was set up in the Rabensteiner Forest. In 1997 the community of Grüna organized a folk festival on the occasion of Baumgarten's 160th birthday and the 100th anniversary of Wolfert's death. In 2007 the three-day festival “Grüna goes in the air” followed. Since 2008, the "Baumgartentag Grüna" has been held annually on the last Saturday in September.
In 2009 the AWO “Kinderhaus Baumgarten” was opened in the old forest ranger's office, the listed former home and work place in Baumgarten. According to Mayor Barbara Ludwig, it was the “most beautiful kindergarten in Chemnitz”. On January 21, 2012, Georg Baumgarten's 175th birthday, a memorial plaque was attached to the building.
The parade for the 750th anniversary of Grüna in August 2013 was led by the "Oberförster Baumgarten" with a fantasy model called "Baumgarten NT - Grüna / Sa." (10 m long). It belongs to the Heimatverein and is shown on various occasions (Day of the Saxons, etc.).
In 2015 a new pharmacy opened in Grüna under Baumgarten's name. After the Baumgarten-Wölfert exhibition was closed in 2015 for fire protection reasons, a new exhibition was set up in the Grüna Town Hall by the Heimatverein Grüna and opened on September 21, 2019.
Georg Baumgarten and Hermann Wölfert are also represented in the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen and in the Chemnitz Industrial Museum .
See also
literature
- Horst Teichmann, Günter O. Schulz: A dream comes true. Georg Baumgarten and Dr. Wölfert, the most important German airship pioneers of the 19th century . Publishing bookstore in the receptingen book center, Empfingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86755-206-6 .
- Peter Kleinheins: Motorized aviation began a hundred years ago . Pestalozzi-Kinderdorf Wahlwies publishing house, 1988, ISBN 978-3-921583-04-3 (on Baumgarten: pp. 20–33).
- Carl Graf von Klinckowstroem : Baumgarten, Ernst Georg August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 660 f. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- Fritz Stengel: Georg Baumgarten, the flying chief forester from Grüna , Heimatverein Grüna, Baumgarten working group, 2019. To reach:
- ders .: Georg Baumgarten, the flying chief forester of Grüna , Grüna 2019. (PDF; curriculum vitae in tabular form, typescript, 2 pages)
- ders .: Georg Baumgarten - the flying chief forester of Grüna. Life and personality of an unusual person , Grüna 2019 (PDF; detailed curriculum vitae, typescript, 11 pages, with contemporary documents)
- ders .: Oberförster's airships - a chronicle of inventors , Grüna 2019. (PDF; representation of Baumgarten's undertakings, typescript, 28 pages, with contemporary documents)
Remarks
- ↑ Reprint in: Horst Teichmann, Günter O. Schulz: A dream comes true - Georg Baumgarten and Dr. Wölfert, the most important German airship pioneers of the 19th century . Verlagbuchhandlung im Buchzentrum Empfingen, Empfingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86755-206-6 , Annex I (cf. ibid .: Peter Kleinheins: Attempt to appreciate Baumgarten's writing from 1877 - Das steerable wing airship , Esslingen 1991, reprint in Teichmann / Schulz 2007, Annex II).
- ^ Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, Archivale in inventory 10736 (Ministry of the Interior); Dating: 1847–1889, archival number: 15085a, aerostatic devices: air climbing machines
- ^ Emil Vieweg, Mittelbach: The dirigible airship of the chief forester Baumgarten in Grüna . In: From the home - contributions to local history . 4th year, No. 9, Hohenstein-Ernstthaler Tageblatt and Anzeiger Sept. 1929
- ↑ This NDB entry from 1953 is evidence of the professional reception of Baumgarten's efforts as well as evidence of life data and genealogy; however, much of the content is out of date.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Baumgarten, Georg |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Baumgarten, Ernst Georg August (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German inventor and aviation pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 21, 1837 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Johanngeorgenstadt |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 23, 1884 |
| Place of death | Colditz |