Melchior Bauer

Melchior Bauer (born October 19, 1733 in Lehnitzsch near Altenburg , † after 1770) was a German aviation pioneer .

life and work

Cover of Bauer's airplane manuscript (1982)

GDR postage stamp, 1990

Farmer was the son of a hand farmer and learned the trade of gardener. He was pious and spent his spare time studying the Bible. From quotes written there he concluded that it is man's destiny to be ruler over the three elements earth, water and air:

“For it is the advice of the righteous God that we men should go three ways; Namely, on earth, water, and air: His word is testimony enough for us, and also the creatures and beasts on earth: Should then the stupid flights, mosquitoes and locusts, have an eternal privilege over rational men and children of God? Aren't people worth as much as the "ravens", geese, swans, and storks? Should then with God's help, such things are not also possible for man, as well as to drive over the water? Because no matter how God has given us instruments to drive over the water, He can also give us instruments to walk in the air: For he is powerful and wise enough to do it "

Melchior Bauer describes in his aircraft manuscript from 1765 (rediscovered in the Thuringian State Archives Greiz in 1921), illustrated by construction drawings, a glider . The technical structure of his “mercy seat” (which by God's grace can let people fly) is described in detail. It has a large rigid wing, called the "sky", with a V-position and small movable flapping wings. The shape of the wing consisted of a rectangular frame made of fir wood strips and spars and ribs. On the underside it should be covered with silk. The strength of the construction was to be provided by a sophisticated bracing of brass wires and tombstones. Interestingly, this tensioning system was used in the early days of aviation before the First World War, although Melchior's writing was still lost at that time.

Melchior Bauer went to England shortly after the end of the Seven Years' War to live with the local King George III. However, asking for money for the construction of his planned flying machine was not even allowed. He then sent a corresponding letter to the Prussian King Friedrich II and was also rejected. So he sent his "aircraft handwriting" in 1767 to Count Heinrich XI. von Reuss-Greiz , who neither sent the script back nor registered its receipt. Bauer's handwriting disappeared in the Greiz archives and did not appear again until 1921 in the archives of the Upper Castle in Greiz . Melchior Bauer, however, left his hometown Lehnitzsch in 1770 with an unknown destination.

Bauer's construction, together with the glider designed by the Swedish scholar Emanuel Swedenborg around 1716 , is one of the two noteworthy written aircraft projects of the 18th century in which the creators deliberately abandoned wing flight and suggested rigid wings for the formation of lift. Without being able to influence the history of flight, Bauer, who had no previous training in this field, developed techniques 125 years before Otto Lilienthal , which today have become basic components of modern aircraft (rigid V-shaped wings). He was the first to combine the kite principle with the motor principle.

literature

• Melchior Bauer's aircraft handwriting from 1765 . Introduced and transcribed by Werner Querfeld, editor: Greifenverlag Rudolstadt
• Gerhard Wissmann: Adventure in wind and clouds - The history of gliding . transpress, Berlin 1988.
• Matthias founder: The "aircraft handwriting" from Melchior Bauer . In: Flieger Revue . 12/93
• Book of German flight history
• Peter Supf:  Farmer, Melchior. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 644 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Scans and transcripts of the handwriting