Empires of the Sky

by Alexander Rose

  LZ-4 had passed the test with flying colors. After arriving over Zurich at 2 P.M.—outside of which was an artillery range where the airship “was cheered by the troops engaged in field and firing exercises”—it was an easy shot home by way of Winterthur. Along the way, Zeppelin staged an impromptu race against a train, which LZ-4 won handily.

  At 5:30 P.M., the crew caught sight of Lake Constance and saw the Reichshalle “inviting us homeward,” but they resisted temptation and instead turned east “in order to keep our promise to run to another point of the Rhine Valley.” Zeppelin was intent on making the Schweizerfahrt a twelve-hour trip, so they flew to Bregenz, on the eastern corner of the Bodensee, in Austria.

  There was perhaps another reason for the scenic detour: As Hergesell would mention, they had “crossed the borders of different nations, always masters of our ship, always champions in the surging sea of air, true conquerors of the celestial ocean,” a sentiment that could be read in two ways. The Zeppelin had certainly demonstrated that national borders were invisible to an airship and thus fostered an ethos of international brotherhood. Alternatively, and more sinisterly, the count had shown that a German airship could cross borders with impunity and without permission. One day it might be carrying bombs or troops.

  For the time being, the Zeppelin was a peaceful emissary. When it at last arrived over Friedrichshafen, LZ-4 “descended to within 100 feet of the roofs of the houses and was greeted by the firing of a salute from a battery of small mortars.” Zeppelin and his exhausted crew waved and cried out to the people below before heading to Manzell, where at precisely 8:26 P.M., twelve hours and 236 miles after her departure, LZ-4 landed.

  In terms of time and distance, Zeppelin’s airship had come exactly halfway to meeting the government’s requirements for the endurance run without mishap. As “the evening sun shone on [Zeppelin’s] noble features,” rhapsodized the besotted Hergesell, “and kissed them with the breath of immortality,” the count knew that all the world lay within his grasp.4

  * * *

  —

  THE SWISS VOYAGE sparked a global sensation, partly thanks to Eckener, who helped place Hergesell’s resulting article in the popular Die Woche, and Sandt’s in its rival, Berlin’s colorful Illustrirte Zeitung. They were quickly picked up and reprinted in France, Britain, and America, allowing Eckener to cover the political spectrum, from the right to the left, from the upscale to the downmarket, the national and the international.

  Still better, during the trip Baron von Bassus had served as photographer by employing one of his inventions. He had mounted a downward-facing camera to the muzzle of a hunting rifle held horizontally; by pulling the trigger, he could snap a panoramic shot of the spectacular scenery below. Spelterini, the Swiss balloonist who had taught Zeppelin how to fly a decade earlier, had recently pioneered the use of a camera to capture scenery from a high altitude, but it was Bassus who stunned readers with a revelatory bird’s-eye view of the glories of flight in true “as it happened” style.5

  If having a square in Berlin and a park in Frankfurt newly named after him weren’t reward enough, in the days following the trip to Switzerland Zeppelin was gratified to receive congratulatory telegrams from the kaiser, the crown prince, and King Wilhelm II of Württemberg. The latter, having stood by Zeppelin in his darkest years, commanded that he and Queen Charlotte be taken aloft. On July 3, for the first time in history, a monarch flew in an airship. Just in case anything went wrong, the king went up alone for half an hour, followed by his queen. Both times, Zeppelin took them on a voyage around the castle and park at 150 feet. The king responded to the waving of handkerchiefs by his subjects below by waving his own, and after a safe landing, he warmly shook the count’s hand, a signal mark of favor.6

  On July 8, a week after the Schweizerfahrt, Zeppelin celebrated his seventieth birthday. Originally, he’d intended to stay quietly at home with his family, but the public had determined otherwise. On that day alone, he received over a thousand telegrams, while Konstanz, Friedrichshafen, Stuttgart, and Lindau bestowed the freedom of their cities on him, the king of Württemberg awarded him the Gold Medal for Arts and Sciences, and his old comrades at the Association of German Engineers presented him with one of the most exalted scientific prizes in Germany. To cap off a wonderful day, the University of Tübingen, from which Zeppelin had never graduated, awarded him with an honorary doctorate of engineering, followed by a fireworks celebration. Zeppelin, blushing, joked that he’d finally taken his degree ninety-nine semesters after going to college.7

  He also announced that on July 14, God willing, he would captain LZ-4 on its twenty-four-hour endurance flight.

  13. The Flames of Hell

  GOD WAS NOT willing. Instead, after just a few minutes aloft, the Lord wrathfully caused a fan blade to snap on the front engine, and Zeppelin had to terminate the flight. The next day, the divine countenance further tested his faith by compelling Ludwig Marx to misjudge his speed, leading LZ-4 to painfully scrape the side of the hangar as he towed it out. The airship needed two weeks of repairs.1

  Frustrated by the delays, Zeppelin caught everyone off guard early on August 4. That had not been his intention—for such a momentous occasion, the count wanted as many officers and officials as possible present—but it was only after midnight that Hergesell had been able to predict that the coming morning would be a fine one for flying (that is, windless and sultry), as indeed it would be.

  Zeppelin and his eight passengers hurriedly gathered at the hangar at 4 A.M. Among them was his old pal Bassus, as were Dürr (to operate the elevators), an engineer named Stahl, Captain Georg Hacker and an assistant named Lau (who were to man the rudders), plus the veteran mechanics Karl Schwarz, Wilhelm Kast, and Kamil Eduard Laburda, a Czech. Workers, woken from their sleep, were already busy preparing the craft for the rigors that lay ahead. Eckener stayed on the ground to help Marx, somewhat embarrassed by his earlier error, direct the airship from its bay. At 6:26 A.M. precisely, LZ-4 set off on its journey.2

  Among locals, word spread that the Zeppelin had unexpectedly lifted off. Many, along with early-rising summer visitors to the lakeside resort, congregated to wish it well, but their cheering was strangely muted. Given the absence of government and military representatives, most assumed that Zeppelin was simply taking LZ-4 out for a quick trial run.3

  It wouldn’t be long before they realized their mistake. Usually, Zeppelin performed some playful aerial maneuvers to test the steering and impress VIPs, but this time he rapidly accelerated LZ-4 to full speed and aimed it straight at Konstanz across the lake.

  By now, the news was rapidly spreading that something amazing was happening. Over the course of the day, reports that the “Zeppelin kommt!” were excitedly telegraphed ahead, causing increasingly larger crowds to gather to greet it. In every town and village along LZ-4’s route, postmasters and newspaper editors pinned up bulletins recording its progress, each accompanied by cheering and hopeful glances at the sky.4 As the flight continued, newspapers would publish noon editions, then extra editions, then special editions, all selling out within minutes. Those wealthy enough to own a telephone pestered journalists by calling them directly at the office for updates.5

  Spectators had different reactions to the wondrous sight. “Some laughed wildly and apparently without control; others raised their voices in ineffectual cries of encouragement; others wept and still others gazed mutely at the apparition in the air.” As the airship turned a bend in the river beyond Laufen on its way to Basel, a reporter was touched to see “an old man, feeble, white of beard, and wrinkled of face,…crawling painfully to the top of a hill. He reached the crest all out of breath just in time to see it disappear. ‘Ah, I have seen it,’ he exclaimed.”6

  A sudden emotional outpouring at the sight of a Zeppelin was becoming a common phenomenon. For the faithful, like the old man, witnessing one of the count’s celestial creations was like being presen
t at the Ascension of Christ or, as the stoutly atheistic and classically educated Eckener put it, like seeing a “fairy-like apparition…coming from another world.” It was “an emissary from the [Elysium] in which so many humans still believe in the inmost recesses of the souls.”7

  LZ-4 proceeded on its way through a succession of cities, but mechanical problems plagued the airship. Owing to troublesome engines, at 5:24 P.M.—eleven hours and two minutes after takeoff—LZ-4 gently touched down upon a quiet tributary off the Rhine at Oppenheim, a small town just fourteen miles south of Mainz. They were temporarily fixed, but at 1:27 A.M. the front engine finally quit for good, the rear engine was sputtering and smoking, and the count had almost run out of fuel and oil.8

  Zeppelin made a tough call, though Stuttgart was temptingly near, after which home was just eighty miles away: He would set LZ-4 down in a field outside Echterdingen, a town 6.5 miles southwest of Stuttgart. There, the Daimler people (from nearby Untertürkheim) could repair the engines properly while LZ-4 was replenished with gas and the men could take a rest. The celebrations and congratulations in Friedrichshafen could surely wait a little.

  In the meantime, tens of thousands of curious people headed for Echterdingen to catch a glimpse of, and perhaps even touch, the famous airship. “You don’t have to ask where the airship is stranded,” said a local reporter who’d endured a packed train to the station. “A stream of humanity clearly shows the way. It is difficult to move ahead in this unbelievable confusion of people and cars. At the church square, the masses make for the country road. We march along a lane, across fields and meadows, always in the same direction.”9 Others traveled by bicycle, car, carriage, and wagon, causing chaos and traffic jams—never before seen in quiet Echterdingen.

  Now that LZ-4 had landed, said Karl Schwarz, the mechanic, the first thing that urgently needed doing was to secure the airship. He recruited a horde of sightseers to bury a wagon and attach the nose cable to it. Soon afterward, a contingent of soldiers and police officers came to keep onlookers, now numbering fifty thousand, at a safe distance and prevent them from clambering aboard the gondolas.

  The Daimler mechanics arrived with a portable workshop and removed the front engine. As they worked on it, the exhausted crew were driven to the picturesque eighteenth-century Hotel Hirsch in Echterdingen to refresh themselves.

  Schwarz had volunteered to stay behind to safeguard the airship. He went to the rear gondola to have a nap, not realizing that his Czech colleague Laburda and a soldier had also remained, but were in the front gondola. They were refilling the water ballast and keeping a Daimler mechanic company as he checked the engine fittings.

  At around 2 P.M., the ominous roar of a thunderstorm approaching jolted Schwarz awake. Thunder meant wind, and wind meant disaster. Within a minute, a forceful gale slammed into LZ-4 and began lifting it into the air as violent gusts tore away the jerry-rigged moorings. The soldiers ordered to hold the ropes, not knowing what to do, let them go for fear of being whipped into the air as they lashed to and fro. As he raced along the catwalk to the front gondola, Schwarz was surprised to see the Daimler man leap from it. He didn’t spot Laburda and the soldier, but he kept going until he reached the bow controls and pulled the valve releases. Usually, this was a gentle procedure of releasing just a little at a time, but Schwarz cranked them with all his might to try to deflate the ship and prevent it from being swept away. Gas hissed out but not rapidly enough to stop LZ-4 from drifting wildly.

  As Schwarz recalled, “The crowd faded away beneath me, and I found myself about half a mile away from the anchorage.” LZ-4 struck the ground and the bow smashed into a clump of trees, tearing open the skin and rending several gas cells, but kept on going. A shaken Schwarz leaned over the rail of the gondola and saw the most terrifying sight in the world: “Within the airship envelope there was a suspiciously bright light which seemed to grow and come closer. And suddenly I knew. Fire. The airship was burning.”

  He paused for the right moment to jump, but the airship was moving too fast to attempt it even as “fifteen thousand cubic meters of hydrogen gas were burning” and the gas cells were “bursting with loud reports. The rings, supports, and struts of the metal frame were glowing, bending, and breaking; the envelope was being torn apart in blazing shreds; and soon the flames were eating through to the gasoline tanks. The heat was becoming unbearable; it was Hell itself in which I was burning alive.”

  From a distance, a journalist heard a dull thud, and “flames shot up from the hull, a second, a third detonation….A column of fire rose to the sky, immense, horrible, as if the earth had opened up releasing the flames from Hell. Huge flames ate their way up the balloon, piece by piece….An enormous cloud of black smoke marked the spot where the elements had sacrificed the creation of man.”10

  Schwarz lost track of time. The next thing he knew, he was lying outside flat on his face: “Gas-cells, the envelope, and the whole net of girders crackled in livid red above me. As well as I could, I protected my head, breathing fire and trying to sit up and look around. Just then another mass caved in upon me. At such moments, one has terrific strength—I pushed the burden high, wound myself like an eel through the bent girders, slipped under the net of cloth covering me like a shroud, and I did not even feel the flames tonguing at me from all sides. I came free, stumbled to my feet, and said grimly to myself, ‘Now, run like hell!’ ”

  With his lungs filled with smoke Schwarz, gasping for cool air, stumbled on for another hundred feet. “When I looked back,” he said later, “the proud giant airship was no more; the terrifying pyre had burned itself out, and only a few weak flames rose from the stern of the smoking ruin.” In less than three minutes, LZ-4 had been utterly destroyed.

  Then “a man in a singed uniform leaped towards me from the wreck, ran around blindly for a few seconds, and then stopped and stared. I got to my feet. He was a soldier. ‘Where did you come from?’ I asked. He fought for breath, and said, ‘I was in the airship; there’s someone else back there.’ ” At this point Schwarz saw the unconscious Laburda lying near the edge of the ruins.

  He and the soldier dragged him out of danger, near “an excited crowd of people gathered to stare with dumb horror at the pitiful jumble of ruins which, only a few minutes before, had been a triumph of human endeavor and the symbol of German aspiration.”

  Ambulancemen helped Laburda away, but Schwarz refused to go. Still dazed, he walked by himself into Echterdingen and wandered around helplessly. Someone noticed that his head and hands were burned and rushed him to a doctor’s surgery. The physician had left for the disaster site, but his wife expertly dressed his injuries.11

  Meanwhile, an army officer had gone to the Hirsch to inform Zeppelin of the dreadful news. “The Count clasped his hands over his head, and then put on his cap and went downstairs, reeling and staggering. The other guests in the hotel, who were still unaware of the catastrophe, gave him a rousing cheer.” Outside, a crowd—equally ignorant—surged toward the hero and threw their straw boaters in the air as children tried to crane over the shoulders of adults. Zeppelin “turned as he entered his motor-car, and, greatly moved, motioned away the crowd which was pressing round him, and then drove at full speed to the scene of the disaster.”12

  In Friedrichshafen the mood turned somber when a reporter attached a telegram to the blackboard in front of the newspaper building. Expecting glad tidings that the Zeppelin had left Echterdingen and was on its way, a crowd gathered to read the latest news. One man began to read the message aloud but suddenly stopped, stunned by its contents. Then he cried out, “The balloon has burned up! The balloon has burned up!” Some around him jeered at the tasteless joke, but the doubters soon themselves realized the magnitude of the disaster.

  “Perhaps some rascal set the balloon on fire,” someone volunteered, and then, with the worst possible timing, Zeppelin’s daughter, Countess Hella, drew up in her carriage. She had not he
ard the news, wrote a reporter, and “a hush fell over the masses as the countess alighted and in wonderment at their strange attitude towards her she went inside her father’s office. Soon afterward, through an open window, she was heard to cry, ‘That will kill him.’ ”

  Countess Hella had decorated the Zeppelin office with flowers in the count’s colors (blue and white), organized a banquet, and hired her father’s favorite regimental band to play. When subsequent bulletins confirmed that LZ-4 was no more, “the musicians silently packed away their instruments, and the villagers immediately began taking down the flags and festoons that had been hung in honor of the expected homecoming of the daring aeronaut.”

  When Ludwig Marx heard of the disaster he raced to the office on his motorcycle and found it closed. He saw only a morose Eckener, tears streaming down his cheeks. Too upset to investigate further, Marx jumped back on his motorcycle and sped off. He didn’t return until nightfall.13

  At the crash site, Zeppelin gazed sorrowfully at the terrible scene before him. Both gondolas had survived, but only a streak of charred grass marked the spot where LZ-4 had died. Nearby there was a twelve-foot-high section of the torn-off bow and a large tree split down its trunk to the roots. Scattered everywhere were remnants of half-burned cloth and twisted splinters of blackened aluminum, which the police and soldiers were trying to protect from relic hunters, not altogether successfully. Taking photographs was forbidden, but one fellow captured a couple of snaps before being arrested by the commander of the Stuttgart garrison, who demanded the negatives. The rascal handed over two of no value and kept the good plates in his camera. The images were soon published worldwide.14