Richard Fiedler (engineer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard Fiedler (* 19th century ; † 20th century ) was a German engineer and inventor .

Life

Fiedler studied before the First World War, engineering and worked as an engineer in Berlin. The rediscovery and development of the first modern flamethrower in the modern sense is attributed to him. The starting point was his preoccupation with the design of nozzles for spraying liquids.

Fiedler originally performed at folk festivals with the “Burning Lake” in Berlin-Weißensee , where he poured a flammable liquid onto a surface of water and ignited it. In 1901 he received his first patent, he turned to the German army with a prototype of his flamethrower and received funding for further development. In 1905 he presented his flamethrower to the Prussian Engineering Committee at the Guard Pioneer Battalion in Berlin, which suggested further improvements.

Independently of Fiedler, Bernhard Reddemann (1870–1938) began developing flamethrowers, inspired by reports on kerosene pumps that the Japanese had used against bunkers near Port Arthur . He and Fiedler met for the first time in 1908 and cooperated at the beginning of the First World War to develop the flamethrower. During the war, Reddemann made it to a major in the pioneers, was a fire chief in the fire brigade in Breslau and Leipzig and author of relevant books on fire fighting. After the war he wrote a book on the history of flamethrowers.

Fiedler founded the Fiedler Flammenapparate GmbH named after him in Berlin , of which he was managing director until 1917. His successors were Captain Arthur von Steynitz, businessman Arthur Bock and businessman Kurt Mayen. He held a total of 11 German patents on flamethrowers, beginning in 1901 and most recently in 1918 for a flamethrower in aircraft.

literature

  • Bernhard Reddemann: History of the German Flamethrower Troop. Association of former members of the d. Guard Reserve Pioneer Regiment, Berlin, around 1933 (53 pages).
  • Thomas Wictor: German Flamethrower Pioneers of World War I. Schiffer Publ., 2007, ISBN 978-0-7643-2772-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Markus Lippold: Stahlhelm, poison gas and 08/15, world war makes inventive. n-tv, June 23, 2014.
  2. Thomas Wictor Flamethrower! The death head pioneers
  3. ^ Wolfgang Fleischer: Military technology of the First World War. Development, commitment, consequences. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-613-03706-9 , p. 178.
  4. Successful tracker - Reddemann exhibition at the Fire Museum, East Hessen-News, August 11th 2010, Fulda
  5. ^ The little picture story , Welt am Sonntag , June 19, 2011
  6. Automobiltechnische Zeitschrift Vol. 20, 1917, p. 25; "Fiedler + flammenapparate" preview