Thanks to the pilots
The Luftfahrerdank Foundation , based in Berlin, was a German organization to support the relatives of aviation pioneers who had had an accident .
The aviation thanks was founded in October 1913 by Colmar von der Goltz . The background to this was the great danger for pilots in the early days of aviation to be killed by crashes and accidents or to become disabled by injuries. Since the early aviators could hardly or not at all cover themselves for such cases, because insurance companies generally refused to do so, their families were under constant threat of sudden poverty. Thanks to the pilots, this risk should be countered by services for those affected, such as support payments or the assumption of the costs of medical treatment.
Organizationally, the Luftfahrerdank was divided into the Luftfahrerdank eV association , which was responsible for the actual support and care tasks, and Luftfahrerdank GmbH , which was supposed to raise donations and generate profits through business ventures that were used to finance the association's tasks . One of the first activities, which also served to promote the foundation and its purpose, was the issuance of a series of 120 collective stamps with motifs from the aviation industry.
The organizational division never turned out to be satisfactory: The regular business activities of the GmbH only provided the means for running the office and advertising for the association, but the hoped-for profits that should flow to the association were not achieved. In fact, the GmbH was operating at a loss, which put an additional burden on the association's work.
After the outbreak of the First World War , the pilots thanks also participated in war support measures. Among other things, the Luftfahrerdank GmbH was the initiator and implementing institution of the donation organization Deutsche Luft- und Unterseefahrt-Kriegshilfskasse as well as the war nailing of the Iron Hindenburg .
In May 1918 the Luftfahrerdank GmbH went bankrupt and the donations collected up to that point were lost; In 1919 the company was last listed in the Berlin address book. At the same time the association Luftfahrerdank eV announced its complete separation from the insolvent, loss-making GmbH and underlined its distance by changing its name to Luftfahrerspende eV ; the newly elected board of directors for this occasion consisted of the meteorologist Arthur Berson , the director of the Reich Association of the German Civil Engineering Industry Adolf Dietrich and Major Georg von Tschudi . After 1924 the association did not develop any more activities, so that it was dissolved during this period.
literature
- Günter Schmitt / Werner Schwipps: Pioneers of early aviation , Gondrom 1995. ISBN 3811211897
- Aviation , Year X, No. January 1, 1919: Sharp separation of Luftfahrerdank eV and Luftfahrerdank GmbH