Walter Spengler
Walter Spengler (born May 14, 1896 in Jena , † September 18, 1930 in Böblingen ) was a German aviation pioneer. He became famous as a Harz aviator .
Life
Spengler was born the third of three children to Hugo and Auguste Spengler. During the First World War the family moved from Coburg to the Harzer Eckertal , where the mother stayed in a sanatorium to recover . The family soon took over the Hotel Wendt , the so-called Brockenkrug, in Torfhaus . Walter Spengler volunteered for military service at the beginning of the First World War and was initially deployed in the infantry . After being wounded with a subsequent stay in the hospital , he finally joined Manfred von Richthofen's squadron as a pilot . He was used, among other things, on the Western Front in France and in the Balkans .
After the war he left the military as a captain and worked in his parents' hotel in Torfhaus, which he then took over in 1923. On the occasion of a lecture in Bad Harzburg , he made friends with Colonel General Walter von Eberhardt , war inspector of the aviators. In 1925 he became the father of a son. He attained in Hannover civil ticket and went in 1925 as a flight instructor for Boeblingen near Stuttgart in the South German sports Flug GmbH . He lived in Böblingen at the address Galgenbergstrasse 1 and married in 1928. He continued to visit Torfhaus regularly, arriving by plane, which attracted considerable attention in the region. In the summer of 1928 he landed for the first time with a Klemm Kl 25 I on a meadow near Torfhaus. It was the first landing of an airplane in the Upper Harz. The machine was dismantled and taken to Wernigerode , from where Spengler later flew back to Böblingen. In the winter of 1928/29 he landed on the snow-covered Torfhausmoor near Torfhaus and also conducted sightseeing flights with guests from here. This winter it landed once on the Oder pond .
Spengler belonged to a group around the acrobat Fritz Schindler . On September 18, 1930, the group intended to carry out an aerobatics flight, which was actually prohibited at Böblingen Airport . Schindler was supposed to transfer at a height of 300 meters from a Udet U 12 double-decker aircraft flown by Spengler via a steel ladder to a monoplane with two people flying above it. Another plane accompanied the two planes and filmed the action. With Schindler's switch, however, the lower plane became lighter and the upper plane heavier. Both planes moved toward each other, crashed into each other and crashed, killing four people, including Walter Spengler. The third aircraft remained undamaged. Spengler is said to have been fatally hit by a propeller in the air. Another report describes that Spengler still managed to jump off with a parachute, but the planes crashed on him.
Spengler's funeral took place in Böblingen. In Torfhaus was built in 1931 on the parents' hotel to commemorate the Spenglerstein .
literature
- Eike Bruns, A Fliegerstein on the move in the Goslarschen Zeitung from October 19, 2013
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Walter Spengler. In: flughafenbb.wordpress.com. Retrieved February 6, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Spengler, Walter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German pilot |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 14, 1896 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Jena |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 18, 1930 |
| Place of death | Boeblingen |