Ferdinand von Zeppelin

This page is about the German aviation pioneer, for other meanings, see Graf Zeppelin (disambiguation)

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (April 8 or July 8, 1838 - March 8, 1917) was the founder of the Zeppelin airship company. He was born in Konstanz, Grand Duchy of Baden (now part of Baden-Württemberg, Germany).

Military career

Zeppelin attended the 'war school' in Ludwigsburg and became a lieutenant in 1858. The following year, 1859, he was enlisted in the engineer corps and participated as an observer in the American Civil War (from 1863), the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). He acted as commander of the Ulanen regiment in Ulm from 1882-1885 and afterwards was Württemberg's envoy in Berlin. In 1906 he was promoted to general of cavalry.

Airships

From the 1880s, Zeppelin was pre-occupied with the problem of guidable balloons and in 1899 he started constructing the first guidable rigid airship which he used for three ascents over the Bodensee. The flights became more and more successful, igniting a public euphoria which allowed the Count to pursue the development of his vehicle. In fact the second version of his airship was entirely financed through donations and a lottery. The final financial breakthrough only came, ironically, after the Zeppelin LZ4 crashed in 1908 at Echterdingen, sparking a wave of helpfulness. A subsequent collection campaign raised over 6 million German marks and the money was used to create the 'Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin GmbH' and a Zeppelin foundation.

The same year the military administration bought the fully functional airship LZ 3 and used it as Z1. From 1909, zeppelins also were used in civilian aviation. Up until 1914 the German aviation association (Deutsche Luftschifffahrtsgesellschaft, DELAG) transported nearly 35,000 people on over 1500 flights without an incident.

Count von Zeppelin died in 1917, before the end of World War I. He therefore didn't witness either the provisional shutdown of the Zeppelin project due to the Treaty of Versailles or the second resurgence of the zeppelins under his successor Hugo Eckener.

Finally, the crash of the LZ129 Hindenburg 20 years later, on May 6, 1937, at Lakehurst closed the chapter of these enormous rigid airships.

See also

• Airship
• Zeppelin
• Graf Zeppelin
• Hindenburg disaster