Wolf Hirth

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Wolf Hirth autograph card (probably 1931)

Kurt Erhard Wolfram Hirth (born February 28, 1900 in Stuttgart ; † July 25, 1959 in Dettingen unter Teck ) was a German engineer , glider pioneer and holder of the silver glider badge No. 1. He was a two-time winner of the Hindenburg Cup , motorcycle racer and first President of the German Aero Club after the Second World War.

Short résumé

biography

Wolf Hirth was born on February 28, 1900 in Stuttgart. His father, the engineer and entrepreneur Albert Hirth , was enthusiastic about flying; later he produced a. a. an aircraft engine. His brother Hellmuth, who was 14 years older than him, was a popular aviation pioneer before the First World War. This gave Wolf good prerequisites to devote himself to his two passions of aviation and motorcycle racing, unencumbered by material problems and with the support of his father.

Wolf Hirth co-founded the Aero Model Club, built models and organized a model flying competition at the beginning of 1914 in which his own model flew 56 meters. In addition to attending school, he dealt with the theory of flight and tried to build a glider . In 1918 he passed the secondary school diploma. Then he went for a short time as an intern at the Junghans watch factory in Schramberg, where his father had already worked, and then at Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft in Stuttgart.

In Germany, after the First World War, the Versailles Peace Treaty banned motorized flight, but glider flight was not affected. Some aviation enthusiasts took advantage of this gap and called for a gliding competition on the Wasserkuppe in the summer of 1920 . The Dresden-based Wolfgang Klemperer and CW Erich Meyer got the ball rolling , the journalistic and organizational work was mainly done by "Rhönvater" Oskar Ursinus , the editor of the magazine "Flugsport" . 25 young pilots took part in this first “Rhön competition”. The first competition was financed by the Frankfurt patron Karl Kotzenberg , who later repeatedly supported the glider movement financially.

Wolf Hirth visited the Wasserkuppe on his motorcycle to attend the gliding competition as a spectator. Enthusiastic, he immediately drove back to Stuttgart, where, together with Paul Brenner and Eduart Ulbert, he completed a double-decker glider within four days, which the Stuttgarter Flugverein had already started in 1919, but was never fully completed. (According to reports that he would have built this aircraft completely within only five days, it is not true.) This aircraft could be transported to the Wasserkuppe in time, so that on the last day of the competition a few short glides could be carried out out of competition. Only flights from Paul Brenner are recorded in writing, but there is a photo showing Wolf Hirth at the start.

In 1922 Wolf Hirth learned to fly with a Messerschmitt S 12 on the Wasserkuppe and then took part in the competition with this aircraft. He suffered an accident due to a technical defect in which he was seriously injured in his legs and larynx. These injuries resulted in a hospital stay of several months and never fully healed. Nevertheless, Hirth was later a regular participant in the Rhön competition, which he won in 1932.

On July 8, 1925, Wolf wanted to pick up a generator from Bosch for his brother with a 1000 cc NSU with a sidecar ; while doing so, he brushed the sidecar of a tram. The left leg was badly injured and had to be amputated above the knee. During this hospital stay he founded Akaflieg Stuttgart. Despite his prosthetic leg, Wolf Hirth remained an active glider pilot and continued to drive motorcycle races with the prosthesis (1926: 1st place at the Avus race in Berlin).

On May 1, 1928, he completed his studies. He then took part in a glider competition in Vauville, France, where he won four times. At this time he turned back to powered flight and won the Hindenburg Cup , among other prizes . In 1930 he undertook a powered flight with a Klemm machine, which was to take him to North America with stops in England, the Orkney Islands, Iceland , Greenland , Labrador and Québec . In Iceland, however, he had to find out that, contrary to earlier promises, the Danish government insisted on a deposit of 10,000 kroner (to secure the costs of a possibly necessary search) in order to be allowed to land on Greenland. Since Wolf Hirth could not raise this amount, he had to give up his plan.

In 1930 Hirth traveled to the USA . There he discovered during a flight in blue thermal , the technique of "steep circling", as a prerequisite for the efficient use of thermal updraft chimneys. (Until then, it was believed that one had to fly wide, flat circles in order to keep the glider's own sinking as small as possible.)

Wolf Hirth in a glider, 1931

On March 10, 1931, shortly before 4 p.m., Hirth started in New York with a rubber rope on the banks of the Hudson and flew for half an hour in the wind on the slopes of the Hudson and then climbed to over 300 meters in the high-rise buildings (original Wolf Hirth records).

When he returned to Germany, Wolf Hirth took over the management of the gliding school in Grunau , where 19-year-old Hanna Reitsch and 19-year-old Wernher von Braun were among the flight students. At the “Rhön Competition” in 1931, Hirth flew from the Wasserkuppe to Koblenz and landed on the Moselle - a distance of almost 200 kilometers. In the same year Hirth was awarded the newly created International Silver Glider Badge (Silver-C) No. 1 and one year later - in 1932 - the Hindenburg Cup was awarded for his scientific and sporting achievements in gliding . This makes Wolf Hirth the only pilot who received this trophy for both motor and glider flights.

On March 18, 1933, Hirth von Grunau saw Hans Deutschmann sailing over the village of Hirschberg for a long time and thereby reaching an astonishingly high altitude, although there was obviously no thermal and - in the plain - it could also not be a slope updraft. Hirth let himself be dragged there in a Grunau baby and began to systematically explore the updraft. Hirth correctly interpreted the phenomenon as a lee wave and published his findings. This finally explained the Moazagotl cloud that appeared regularly there . So far there had been theories about this, but all of them were unsecured, as they were based solely on measurements from the ground and on theoretical considerations. These flights by Deutschmann and Hirth are therefore to be regarded as the first conscious wave flights. (Presumably earlier flights on the dune of Rossitten had been wave flights , but were not recognized as such.)

A few years later, when there were waves during a gliding competition in Grunau, Wolf Hirth interrupted the competition for that day and instead instructed the participating competition pilots to systematically fly the area and carefully document the updraft values ​​encountered, assigning each pilot a sub-area for investigation . With this action it was possible to precisely map the updraft values ​​of the primary and secondary waves as well as the downdraft zones in between, whereby not only the basic existence of a wave system was finally proven, but also its dimensions and the updraft values ​​were documented quantitatively.

Hirth then called the glider he built in 1933 " Moazagotl ". With this he took part in a South America expedition in 1934, which had been organized by Walter Georgii and in which Heini Dittmar , Peter Riedel and Hanna Reitsch also took part.

In 1935, Wolf Hirth was invited to Japan to advertise gliding and work as a flight instructor. There he was received by Emperor Hirohito .

In 1935, Hirth supported his friend Martin Schempp in founding the company Sportflugzeugbau Göppingen Martin Schempp . The first gliders produced by Schempp were the aerobatic single- seater Gö-1 "Wolf" and the performance glider Gö-3 "Minimoa", both designed by Wolf Hirth. In 1938, Wolf Hirth, mainly responsible for construction, officially joined the company as a partner, which then also adopted the new name Sportflugzeugbau Schempp-Hirth . In the same year it moved to Kirchheim unter Teck .

Since Hirth had been pursuing the idea of ​​a people's airplane for a long time, he built the motor glider " Hirth Hi-20 MoSe" based on his patent filed in 1935. It was the first glider with a swiveling auxiliary power unit.

All developments came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of World War II. After the end of the war, Hirth bridged the time until the demand for gliders reappeared with the production of plastic bowls, prams, armchairs, kitchen equipment and caravans. In 1950 the German Aero Club was founded and Wolf Hirth became its first president. As early as 1951 he resumed production of the Gö-4 glider (designer Wolfgang Hütter ). His continued great commitment to the idea of ​​aviation was honored in 1958 with the award of the Lilienthal Medal by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

On July 25, 1959, Wolf Hirth suffered a heart attack while gliding in a Lo 150 and fell fatally near Dettingen unter Teck . He was buried in the forest cemetery in Stuttgart-Degerloch .

Honors

In numerous villages in Baden-Württemberg , streets were named after Wolf Hirth. In Bartholomä , Bettringen , Böblingen , Ditzingen , Leinzell , Leonberg , Kirchheim / Teck and Schramberg , among others , there is a Wolf-Hirth-Straße, outside of Württemberg in Gersfeld (Rhön) . There is a Hirthstraße in Kiel-Holtenau .

Fonts

  • Manual of gliding. Franckh'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1938. (numerous editions)

TV documentaries about Hirth

  • Big ideas - small flops. Flashes of inspiration from A to Z. Documentation, Germany, 2016, 90 minutes, authors: Andreas Kölmel and Jürgen Vogt; Production: SWR TV , first broadcast: May 16, 2016; Documentation information

literature

  • L. Heiss: Hirth - father, Hellmuth, Wolf. Verlag Reinhold A. Müller, Stuttgart, 1949
  • Gert Behrsing:  Hirth, Wolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 237 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Stefan Blumenthal: Greetings from the air. 100 years of aviation on old postcards. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-613-01336-3 .
  • Stefan Blumenthal: Albert Hirth and his sons Hellmuth and Wolf. A Swabian family of inventors. In: Jörg Baldenhofer (Ed.): Swabian inventors and inventors. DRW-Verlag, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-87181-232-3 , pp. 112-121.
  • Karl Buck: Wolf Hirth. Racing driver, glider pilot legend, aircraft designer, entrepreneur. Buck, Ulm 2017, ISBN 978-3-00-057860-1 .
  • Lisa Heiss: inventor, racing driver, aviator. Hirth. Father. Hellmuth Wolf. Verlag Reinhold A. Müller, Stuttgart 1949.
  • Bernd Sternal: Conquerors of Heaven - Pictures of Life - German aerospace pioneers . 1st edition. Part 2. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2017, ISBN 3-7431-8133-9 .

Web links

Commons : Wolf Hirth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Helmes : And they stayed in the air for days. In: Die Rhön (= Merian , Jg. 17 (1964), No. 4), pp. 53–54 and 95, here p. 54.
  2. ↑ Werner Helmes: And they stayed in the air for days. In: Die Rhön (= Merian , Jg. 17 (1964), No. 4), pp. 53–54 and 95, here p. 95.
  3. ↑ Andreas Volz: "For the sake of the beauty of flying". In: The Teckbote online. July 27, 2009, accessed March 5, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Hans-G. Hilscher, Dietrich Bleihöfer: Hirthstrasse. In: Kiel Street Lexicon. Continued since 2005 by the Office for Building Regulations, Surveying and Geoinformation of the State Capital Kiel, as of February 2017 ( kiel.de ).
personal data
SURNAME Hirth, wolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hirth, Kurt Erhard Wolfram (full name?)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German glider pilot
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1959
Place of death Dettingen under Teck