Walther Bruns

Walther Bruns (right) with Fridtjof Nansen (center) and Ernst Kohlschütter , around 1925.

Walther Friedrich Georg Bruns (also: Walter Friedrich Georg Bruns ; born June 25, 1889 in Hochstrieß , Danziger Höhe district ; † January 30, 1955 in Bonn ) was a German officer and aeronaut . He initiated the establishment of the " International Study Society for Exploring the Arctic with Aircraft " (Aeroarctic), of which he became Secretary General.

Life

Training and military career

Walther Bruns was the youngest child of the landowner and pharmacist Max Wilhelm Friedrich Bruns and his wife Marie Henriette, née Dannien. After the estate was sold, the family moved to Wiesbaden in 1899 , where Walther Bruns attended the humanistic grammar school for a short time , but switched to the cadet corps that same year . In 1909 he passed his matriculation examination at the Prussian Hauptkadettenanstalt in Groß-Lichterfelde near Berlin . On March 13, 1909, he joined the Prussian Army as an ensign . The following year he was promoted to lieutenant in the 3rd West Prussian Infantry Regiment No. 129 . In 1913 he received training as a pilot at the Fokker Flugzeugwerke, first in Berlin-Johannisthal and then in Schwerin-Görries .

Bruns began his deployment in the First World War on the Eastern Front . As early as August 20, 1914, he was shot in the stomach at Walterkehmen in East Prussia and was taken prisoner by the Russians. As a result of the Battle of Tannenberg , he was freed. On April 1, 1915, he was transferred to the airship department in Berlin-Reinickendorf . There he qualified as a free balloon pilot by June 24, 1915 and, after six months of training, as an airship pilot in January 1916. He then served as an officer on various airships until he was given command of the Zeppelin airship Z XII on August 1, 1916 . From December 1916 he commanded the airship LZ 97 . In 1917 Bruns was promoted to captain . In the summer of 1917 he became an adjutant of the 93rd Reinforced Reserve Infantry Brigade and served as an adjutant of the Kiev governorate until the end of the war.

After the war Bruns moved to Görlitz , where his parents now lived. He trained as a commercial apprentice, initially became a trainee at the Putzler Brothers Glassworks in Penzig and then commercial director and partner in the Lower Silesian Construction Company in Görlitz. In the autumn of 1920 Bruns became head of the cash and finance department at the Reich Commissioner for Monitoring Imports and Exports in Berlin-Friedenau . After the authority was dissolved, he worked in a managerial commercial position at the United Chemical Factories Puttendörfer-Moreau & Co. AG and from September 1924 at Siemens-Schuckertwerke .

Founder and Secretary General of the Aeroarctic

Nikolai Knipowitsch , Fridtjof Nansen and Walther Bruns at the General Assembly of the Aeroarctic 1928 in Leningrad

In 1919 Bruns gave public lectures to the Naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Görlitz on "The Development of Guided Airship Travel", in which he developed initial ideas for the use of airships for transpolar traffic. He thus followed up the ideas of the meteorologist Hugo Hergesell , who had already pointed out the potential of the airship for geographic exploration of the polar regions in 1907 and who had undertaken a study trip to Spitsbergen with Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1910 .

Bruns managed to win over important German scientists for his plans. Under the chairmanship of the aerologist Arthur Berson , a "Committee for Exploring the Arctic by Airship" was formed. Together with Berson, Bruns wrote a memorandum published in 1924, in which the possibilities of arctic aviation and the arctic research undertaken with the airship were discussed. Thanks to the worldwide contacts Berson and Bruns' direct approach to Fridtjof Nansen , scientists from abroad were able to be won over to the ideas. On October 7, 1924, the Aeroarctic , the "International Study Society for Exploring the Arctic by Airship", was founded in Berlin . Nansen was elected President and Bruns General Secretary. He was on leave from Siemens-Schuckertwerke until further notice with a salary.

In 1925 Bruns went on a lecture tour to the Soviet Union . He spoke to the Soviet Geographical Society and proposed to the Council of People's Commissars that a regular airship route to East Asia be established. The participation of the Soviet Union was imperative for the Aeroarctic project, as the Arctic route into the Pacific region required a base on the mainland. He then traveled to Japan for further meetings .

The first general assembly of the Aeroarctic took place from November 9th to 13th, 1926 in Berlin. Bruns was confirmed as general secretary of the company and elected to the executive board. He gave a talk on "Practical Ways to Use the Large-Type Airship for Extended Scientific Exploration and Continuous Monitoring of the Arctic". In the spring of 1927 Bruns suggested that a magazine be published with the title Arktis . It appeared between 1928 and 1931 in the Perthes publishing house in Gotha and published articles on scientific questions in polar research and on technical problems of a polar flight in an airship.

At the 2nd General Assembly of the Aeroarctic in June 1928 in Leningrad , a research council was set up at the suggestion of Bruns and Georg Wegener to prepare the scientific program for an Arctic voyage. In November 1928, Hugo Eckener, as director of the Zeppelin Works, confirmed the provision of LZ 127 “Graf Zeppelin” for two trips in 1930. The first trip was to lead from Leningrad to Nome in Alaska and back again. Bruns therefore traveled to America with Nansen in 1929 in order to obtain approval for the construction of a mooring mast in Nome and to publicize the Aeroarctic program overseas.

Nansen's sudden death in May 1930 threatened the expedition as it was difficult to find a suitable successor. On September 10 and 11, 1930, there was a test drive of the Zeppelin to Moscow , in which Bruns also took part. The Arctic voyage of the LZ 127 took place from July 24 to 31, 1931 under the direction of Hugo Eckener , the new President of the Aeroarctic, with Bruns assisting him. The airship covered about 10,600 kilometers. The route led from Friedrichshafen via Berlin to Leningrad and on over the Kanin Peninsula to Franz-Josef-Land , where there was a brief meeting with the Soviet icebreaker Malygin . Then the group of islands Severnaya Zemlya was headed for and returned via the Taimyr peninsula and Novaya Zemlya to Leningrad and finally via Berlin to Friedrichshafen. The trip proved the suitability of airships as a means of transport and research platform in the Arctic. The scientific program headed by Rudolf Samoilowitsch , head of the Research Council, focused on expanding knowledge of the geographic and meteorological conditions in the Arctic. For this purpose a photogrammetrically usable panorama camera and for the first time radiosondes were used.

A second voyage planned for the Second International Polar Year 1932/33 did not take place due to a lack of financial means. In the summer of 1932, however, Bruns visited the Soviet research station on Hooker Island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago as a tourist on board the Malygin .

In 1933 Bruns resigned as Secretary General of the Aeroarctic. The Arktis magazine was discontinued for financial reasons . In 1937 the company dissolved.

Activity after 1933

Besides working for the Aero Arctic had (1926-1929) and Hall (1931-1932) Walther Bruns in Berlin Jura studied. On April 20, 1933, he was awarded his doctorate cum laude from the University of Halle . From the summer of 1933 he took part in clothing companies in Württemberg and did not return to Berlin until 1936, where he resumed his military career and was promoted to major in 1937 . From 1938 he headed the Army Clothing Office in Stettin , which was relocated to Silligsdorf in 1943 because of the Allied air raids . At the end of the Second World War Bruns held the rank of colonel .

In 1945 Bruns lived with his family in Görlitz, but soon moved to Hameln . He gave popular science lectures on his trip to the Arctic with LZ 127 and wrote leading articles and columns on political issues for the Lower Saxony Rundschau and the Deister and Weser newspapers . In 1951 he became treasurer in the CDU local association in Hameln. Probably a year later he moved to Bonn, where he died on January 30, 1955 of the long-term effects of his war injury.

family

Walther Bruns was married twice. His marriage to Elisabeth Charlotte Margarete Zabel (* 1895), a daughter of the royal Prussian chief medical officer Rudolf Zabel, was concluded on August 2, 1914 in Graudenz . Her children are Horst Maximilian Rudolf (* 1915), Eckard Dietrich Hans Karl (* 1917) and Helga Marie Albertha (* 1920). Horst Bruns became a sculptor , Eckard Bruns became a fighter pilot . After the divorce, Walther Bruns married Erika Helena Emma Petiscus (* 1894), daughter of the former lieutenant colonel , on December 28, 1921 in Opole . D. Erich Friedrich Victor Petiscus. With his second wife, Bruns had twin daughters Gisela and Ingrid, born in 1923. Gisela died as a toddler, Ingrid became a doctor.

Works (selection)

• Aviation and world transport . In: The air way . Volume 14, 1922, p. 137.
• Practical ways for the large-type airship to be used for extensive scientific exploration and constant surveillance of the Arctic . In: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen , supplementary booklet 191, 1927, pp. 19-25.
• About the status of the preparatory work for the polar expedition . In: Arctic . Volume 2, No. 3, 1929, pp. 95-97.
• Scientific work in the airship over the Arctic . In: Atlantis: countries, peoples, travel . Volume 3, Issue 11, 1931, pp. 696-701.
• The concept of "free airspace" in international law . Dissertation, University of Halle (Saale) 1932.
• Aircraft as an aid in polar research . In: Zeitschrift für Flugtechnik und Motorluftschiffahrt . Volume 23, 1932, pp. 65-72.

literature

• Diedrich Fritzsche: Walther Bruns and the Aeroarctic . In: Polar Research . tape 88 , no. 1 , 2018, p. 7-22 , doi : 10.2312 / polarforschung.88.1.7 .

Remarks

1. ^ Bruns' own spelling after World War II
2. ↑ from 1928 "International Study Society for Exploring the Arctic with Aircraft "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barbara Schennerlein: The aerophotogrammetric research program of the Arctic flight of the airship "Graf Zeppelin" LZ 127 in 1931 . In: Polar Research . tape 84 , no. 2 , 2014, p. 67-92 , doi : 10.2312 / polarforschung.84.2.67 .
2. ↑ Cornelia Lüdecke : German polar research since the turn of the century and the influence of Erich von Drygalski. Dissertation, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich , 1993 (= reports on polar research . Volume 158, 1995), p. 228. doi : 10.2312 / BzP_0158_1995