Thea Rasche

Thea Rasche, 1930

Theodora "Thea" Rasche (born August 12, 1899 in Unna , † February 25, 1971 in Essen - Rüttenscheid ) was a German aerobatic pilot and at times a journalist . Called The Flying Fräulein in the USA , she was the first German woman with an aerobatic license and one of the most internationally known German female pilots of all time.

Life

Thea Rasche came from a middle-class family. Her father Wilhelm Rasche (* 1865, † 1935), director of the Essen Actien brewery , was a strict man who was not always positive about his daughter's sporting ambitions. Her two brothers died in World War I , after which their mother became depressed. Thea Rasche attended the daughter's school in Essen and completed a year of boarding school in Dresden . Her father urged Thea to marry young so that he could hand over his fortune to a male heir. Thea herself, however, dreamed of independence and self-employment. Against her father's wishes, she went to Miesbach in Upper Bavaria, where she trained as a farmer at the women's agricultural school. Because of her mother's illness, however, she returned to Berlin before the end of it, where she received training in shorthand and typing during a business trip from her father lasting several months.

When the father returned from his trip, he presented his daughter-in-law with the son-in-law. Thea Rasche declined, however, and took a position in Hamburg . The wages were so low that she could not afford the heating costs, she was seriously ill and was brought home a few months later. Grudgingly, she gave her consent to the marriage her father wanted - only to withdraw it half an hour before the wedding planned for May 1923. She sold her jewelry, took the money into an apartment and looked for a job. Soon, however, her father asked her to visit her mother. When she got home, he wouldn't let her leave the house.

Training and first successes

Thea Rasche and Ernst Udet, September 1928

A few months later, acquaintances from Münster invited Thea Rasche over and her father let her travel. The friends ran a flight school and made Thea fly. However, due to the restrictions prevailing after the First World War , the flight school soon went bankrupt. Thea Rasche went to the Rhön , where she was enthusiastic about gliding . There she met Ernst Udet and Paul Bäumer . Bäumer accepted her as a flight student and trained her in aerobatics . On January 23, 1925, she completed the first solo flight by a woman in Germany after the First World War. Then she got severe diphtheria , which led to a heart defect. Against the advice of her doctors, she signed up for the pilot's exam. In order to pass this, she had to fly the Bremen - Hanover - Hamburg route and stop at the respective airport. Because of the lack of money at the Bäumer flight school, her machine was in a desolate condition - she had to pump the gasoline by hand while it was flying. In addition, the weather was extremely bad. When she was banned from starting in Hanover due to the storm, she used the waiting time to repair the fuel pump and the wiring. Despite the adverse circumstances, Thea Rasche was able to receive her flight ticket on November 27, 1925. Immediately afterwards, she became the first German woman to take her aerobatic license.

In the following months Rasche traveled with Udet and Bäumer across Germany and organized flight days and flight demonstrations. On the Berlin Flugtag in September 1926, she was the only woman among 33 male aviators to fly. Then, to her surprise, her father promised her his own plane. In the spring of 1927 she received her Flamingo - a Udet U 12 "Flamingo" double-decker  . The model was a successful German training aircraft in the mid-1920s; designed and built by Ernst Udet. In the 1927 “industrial race” in Essen, Rasche was the only female participant to win first prize in her aircraft class, second prize in the overall competition and first prize in the skill flight. Out of joy at this success, her father gave her a trip to the USA.

Journey to the USA, 1927

The popular aviator had received several invitations from journalists to the USA and accepted them. After a few days she flew from Berlin via Essen to Paris , where she was received for tea by Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd and Clarence Chamberlin and met the pilots Bernt Balchen and Acosta as well as General Ferdinand Foch . Then she flew on to Southampton , where she dismantled her flamingo and brought it on board the ship Leviathan . On the same day she learned that her friend and teacher Paul Bäumer had crashed over the Oresund and was killed. The sea passage to New York was calm. Once there, the American flying heroes Byrd and Chamberlin as well as The Flying Fräulein were welcomed euphorically.

At the time, the Americans could hardly believe that a woman was flying a plane alone. After Thea Rasche had flown a few aerobatic maneuvers over and around the Statue of Liberty, she met a huge amount of enthusiasm. Suddenly everyone wanted to fly with her and offered her a lot of money to be taken along as a passenger. She received hundreds of invitations from all over the country. On her trip through the United States, she gave numerous speeches and called on cities to build airfields. “Girls, learn to fly” was her most frequently uttered sentence. She was the first woman to be accepted into the Quieed Birdman, an exclusive club of American military aviators (besides Rasche, Amelia Earhart and Ruth Elder were the only women to receive this honor).

On August 12, 1927, Rasche had to make an emergency landing of her Flamingo due to engine problems. The aircraft broke while being towed. To prevent industrial espionage, the remains were burned. After a new flamingo had been delivered from Germany , Rasche made a US tour on behalf of the government to promote the construction of airfields. She had an accident in a town: the engine of her plane cut out and she tried to make an emergency landing. However, because there were thousands of people at the airfield, it had to go down in a nearby swamp. She suffered a concussion and severe shock and was unable to speak properly for a few days.

In Washington she was received by President Calvin Coolidge and there she also met Charles Lindbergh and Orville Wright . The voices calling on them to take an Atlantic flight grew louder and louder. After Lindbergh managed to do this, it was only a matter of time before the first woman dared to venture into this venture, and Thea Rasche received numerous sponsorship offers - on the condition that she was naturalized in the United States.

Atlantic flight attempt

Thea Rasche with Clarence Chamberlin , May 1928

In August 1927, when Ruth Elder and Anne Löwenstein also announced that they would try the Atlantic flight, Thea Rasche returned to Germany to find donors for the venture. The German government was not interested - especially if the plane was being piloted by a woman. In the end she raised 15,000 marks in donations with which she ordered an airplane in the USA. Back in the US, she began to market her name to raise more money: she sold Thea-Rasche aviator goggles and Thea-Rasche aviator suits. When she went to pick up the plane she had ordered, she learned that her money had been misappropriated and that the plane had never been built.

The millionaire society lady Fifi Stillman heard about Rasches Bad luck and spontaneously decided to support her. Within a few days, Thea Rasche had a fully equipped Bellanca aircraft . But first bad weather prevented the start, then a court order that forbade the Germans to start. Fifi Stillman acted again and brought the pilot and plane from New York to Canada . After several false starts on the runway unsuitable for the heavy aircraft, Mrs. Stillman lost interest in the venture and withdrew her support from Thea Rasche. Rasche was once again stuck on the American continent and was not allowed to fly.

In the meantime, in June 1928 , Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger and part of the flight crew. Rasche returned to Germany disappointed with a steamboat. In Germany she was not welcomed in a friendly way: Her former financial partners (the ones who cheated on her) had spread the rumor that she hadn't started out of cowardice and had thus robbed her partners of their money. In order to be able to travel to New York for the trial of her former partners, she sold her plane. She won the case and since she had no more money for the return trip, she decided to stay in the USA. In her opinion, the opportunities there for a female pilot were considerably greater than in Europe.

Powder Puff Derby, 1929

For participation in the Cleveland Women's Air Derby , the first air race for women, the US American Moth Aircraft Corporation Rasche offered an aircraft and cover the costs. When she arrived in Santa Monica , Rasche saw immediately that she would have no chance with her moth against the competitors equipped with better machines.

For Rasche it was the first time that she had contact with other female pilots. So far she had felt little respect for them, especially Earhart and Elder , both of whom were very popular in the USA, viewed them with suspicion and did not trust them to perform well in flight. But being together with them soon taught them better: “My competitors were very good girls, and we all enjoyed a wonderful camaraderie. [...] In general, I got respect for American girls. Without much flying experience, some only after a few solo flights, twenty were ready to take off. ” Rasche was particularly impressed by the way the pilots stood together“ like a man ”against the organizing committee when it was decided to make the stopovers on the racetrack. The organizers wanted to stop in the cities that offered them the most money for this "promotion"; the aviators in those with the best airfields. Although the organizers threatened to be disqualified, the female pilots went on strike and were able to prevail.

The start of the race went badly for Rasche. Already during the first stage she had engine problems and had to make an emergency landing before she reached the stage destination Calexico . During the emergency landing on a meadow, the chassis broke and Rasche had to wait eight hours for a replacement. When she got to Yuma , the second stage destination, she learned that Marvel Crosson had crashed and died in the process. On the rest of the race track, Rasche had to turn around once because of a sand storm ; she also suffered from dysentery . Despite the adversity, she was able to keep up with the field. Towards the end of the race, Rasch's flying skills far outweighed the technical disadvantage of her weak machine: “It often looked too fun when the big and fast machines with their 200 hp followed mine small boxes were attached when they had lost their way and now zigzagged and curved around my machine in order to keep up with me. "

The good camaraderie among the participants in the race, but also the problems they encountered as female pilots, led them to found the Club of Ninety-Nine immediately after the race , of which Thea Rasche was the first foreigner to become a member.

Back in New York, the enthusiasm quickly evaporated. She had to cancel her flight to South America, which was planned for autumn 1929, due to renewed financial problems: Her main sponsor, American Aeronautic Corp. did not want to support a "German propaganda flight" and asked her to take on American citizenship. Since they did not want this, the company withdrew from the business.

After 1930: back on the ground

Rasche returned to Germany in November 1929 to find financial support for her South American flight. Despite the honorable reception in her hometown of Essen, the time did not seem ripe for it. In order to get a machine for the first German aerobatic championship for women, she finally signed a contract for advertising flights for the Pfeilring company, although she was deeply repugnant of this type of flight. When she wanted to pick up her BFW M23 from the Bavarian Aircraft Works, the engine was not working properly and she had to watch from the ground as Elly Beinhorn , Marga von Etzdorf , Liesel Bach , Vera von Bissing and Melitta Schiller competed. Despite all the efforts, while Beinhorn and von Etzdorf set out on their spectacular long-haul flights, she had to perform aerobatic maneuvers and advertising loops over German skies.

Due to technical problems, Thea Rasche got more and more financial difficulties. The advertising flights did not yield enough to pay for living expenses, spare parts and the rent for the plane. In the spring of 1933, she finally had to sell her aircraft in order to be able to settle the installment payments. But even that was not enough and "grudgingly" she asked her father for the money to pay the remaining installments. He only did so on the condition that she promised him that she would never fly again. Instead, she found a job as a journalist for Deutsche Flugillustrierten . Contrary to expectations, she enjoyed the work, and especially the close contact with many personalities from the aviation and recreational aviation sectors.

For the 100th anniversary of the Australian state of Victoria and the city of Melbourne in 1934, the most famous and daring aviators of the time wanted to organize an "International Airplane Race for Peace" (the so-called MacRobertson Air Race ) from England to Australia. Since Thea Rasche had no money for her own aircraft and she learned that the Dutch KLM was sending several machines into the race, she used her new contacts to get at least one place as a passenger in their Douglas DC-2 called Uiver .

Rasche was enthusiastic about the race, because a global air race for peace was one of her longstanding dreams. From every Uiver stopover , she sent reports and articles to newspapers and magazines across Europe and overseas, becoming the only reporter to witness the race first hand. In addition, she was enthusiastic about the comfort of travel in the DC-2, the operation by a real cook and the professionalism of the crew. It was these reports, among other things, that contributed to the great boom in civil aviation and, in particular, the Douglas Aircraft Company .

After landing in Melbourne , where Rasche was the only woman who reached the destination, received as enthusiastically as if she had flown the DC-2 herself, she flew on to the USA. When she arrived in Los Angeles , she was also greeted with cheers - after all, the Uiver was an American aircraft. Rasche received numerous invitations to give lectures and present their photos of the race. She was also made an honorary member of the Women's International Association of Aeronautics and invited to the White House by Eleanor Roosevelt . She also met Amelia Earhart, who presented her with a trophy with the inscription Wings around the world for peace - won by Thea Rasche, 1934 , on behalf of the Club of the Ninety-nine .

She traveled from Washington DC to New York to receive the German record pilot Elly Beinhorn and to take the steamer to Germany with her. She had hardly arrived in Germany when she found out about her father's death. Her financial problems were now over and because he had deducted the money he had lent her to the last penny from her inheritance, she no longer felt bound by her promise to no longer fly. She got her glider license and continued to work as a journalist. From 1935 Rasche worked as a freelance journalist and book author, but sometimes earned very little money, in 1940 even nothing.

In 1947 Thea Rasche was denazified. The denazification chamber confirmed that it was only a nominal member of the NSDAP and that it had not identified with its goals.

After the Second World War she lived in the USA for a few years. She later returned to her hometown of Essen and lived there until her death in 1971. Rasche last lived there in a small apartment on social welfare . The grave of the Rasche family in the cemetery in Essen-Bredeney , where Thea Rasche is also buried, was converted into a grave of honor on April 23, 2008 by decision of the Essen City Council . So the resting place is preserved.

Streets are named after her in the Gateway Gardens conversion area near Frankfurt Airport , in a new residential area near the former Berlin-Gatow airfield, and in Sindelfingen and Freudenstadt .

Works

• Start in America - published in 1928 by Wilhelm Kolk, Berlin
• And flying above us. - autobiographical notes and flight reports, published in 1940 by Schützen-Verlag, Berlin

literature

• Gertrud Pfister:  Rasche, Thea. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 157 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Rolf Italiaander : Three German female pilots . Gustav-Heise-Verlag, Berlin, p. 43-71 .
• Karl Sabel: Thea Rasche - first female aerobatic pilot in the world . Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Essen.
• Franz Kurowski : Famous Aviators . W. Fischer-Verlag, Göttingen, p. 37-53 .
• Evelyn Zegenhagen: dashing German girls . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen, ISBN 978-3-8353-0179-5 .
• Klaus Seifert: Pilot Thea Rasche. The “Flying Fräulein” from Unna. The unusual career of an upper-class daughter . Yearbook of the Unna district 2012, vol. 33, Unna, p. 15-24 .
• Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads . Ed .: City of Essen - Historical Association for City and Monastery of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 .
• WDR television documentary (2016) by Christopher Gerisch and Annika Seemann - The Flying Fräulein from Essen: The adventures of Thea Rasche
• Astrid Röben: The Flying Fräulein: In 1927 Thea Rasche traveled to the USA for the first time. In: AERO International , No. 11/2018, pp. 74–75

Web links

Commons : Thea Rasche  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Thea Rasche in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Thea Rasche in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

References and comments

1. ↑ Grave details cemetery guide Essen with photo of the grave , accessed on October 2, 2014
2. ↑ Theodora Rasche. In: Friedhofsführer. Historical association for the city and monastery of Essen e. V., accessed February 20, 2016 .  
3. ^ After denazification form in: Evelyn Zegenhagen: "Dashing German Girls": Fliegerinnen between 1918 and 1945 . Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0179-5 , p. 469 f.
4. ↑ Thea Rasche . In: Der Spiegel . No.  22 , 1947, pp. 9 ( online ).
5. ↑ Felix Rentzsch: How the flying Miss Thea Rasche lived. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . October 3, 2014, accessed February 20, 2016 .