Otto Lilienthal, the Birdman: Pioneer of Flight

Otto Lilienthal was the first successful aviator in the history of mankind and the first man to launch himself into the air, fly and land safely. He was able to make sustained and replicable flights for the first time in history. Otto Lilienthal was born in 1848 into an old Lutheran family in Anklam, Pomerania, where famous German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann spent his childhood. Along with Otto’s architect brother, Gustav, who later became his assistant, he built flying machines in his youth. He received a degree in mechanical engineering from Berlin University in 1870, then served in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

He was a successful businessman and factory owner as well as an inventor, and in 1877 he took out the first of his 25 patents on everything from on a machine used in mining to aviation concepts. He married and had four children, but between his business and busy home life, he seriously studied the principles of aerodynamics. He used birds, especially storks, as his models for flight research. He made detailed studies of their flight patterns for over 20 years and repeatedly tested his observations in experiments and by building models. In 1889, this resulted in his book ‘Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst’ (Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation).

He built his first glider in 1891, the Derwitzer Glider, which was constructed of rods of peeled willow covered by highly stretched strong cotton fabric and had a wingspan of 25 feet. He initially used a springboard and then a shed to launch himself in his garden, gradually increasing the height from which he began his launch. After a while he could glide almost 80 feet. To fly his more perfected gliders, Lilienthal had to crawl under the craft, put his arms in a set of cuffs, hold onto a bar near the front edge of the wings and run down a slope. As in all of his gliders, he controlled direction by shifting his weight which demanded considerable physical strength.

He went on to develop far more sophisticated gliders and before his death in 1896, he had built eighteen other models, fifteen monoplanes and three biplanes and he had also taken more than 2,000 glider flights. In 1894, he built an artificial hill from where he could run down and jump into the wind, gliding more than 150 feet. Wanting more height, Lilienthal began launching flights from the Rhinower Hills near Berlin where he could glide up to 1,150 feet.

Lilienthal was regularly joined by photographers so as to document the development of his flight techniques, and photographs of Lilienthal in flight were famous worldwide. In 1893 and again in 1896, he built gliders with small engines and flapping wings. He piloted with great skill, and was regularly visited by aerodynamic experts from all over the world. He began designing the gliders with a prellbugel, or flexible willow rebound bow to reduce the impact in case of a crash, and on one occasion this saved Lilienthal’s life.

His fundamental research on birds and artificial wings laid the foundation for the science of wing aerodynamics and he greatly influenced the Wright Brothers and others. On August 9, 1896, as he was piloting one of his “Normal” gliders with no prellbugel to protect him, his glider went through a heat eddy and stalled, then went 56 foot into a nosedive. He died the next day of a broken spine. His last words were “Sacrifices must be made.”

Brilliant pioneer in field archaeology, German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, 1822-1890, was born to a poor minister in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He is best known for his excavations at ancient Troy and Mycenae and his valuable discovery of “Priam’s Gold.” Schliemann, an unlikely adventurer, was born to a pastor in Mecklenburg, Pomerania. He left formal school at age fourteen and taught himself at least seven foreign languages in ancient and modern form.

Entirely self-educated, he was spurred on by a childhood passion for legends told by Homer and Vergil. He developed a remarkable aptitude for business, which enabled him to amass a large fortune early in life and to retire at the age of 41 to devote himself fully to archaeology. He began to dig at Troy, his most famous excavation taking place in 1870, and later he also made extraordinary discoveries in Greece at Mycenae, the legendary home of Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War.

Although greatly underrated today, Schliemann made remarkable achievements. Before Schliemann, the pre-classical Greece (6000-1000 BC) civilization was not even known to have existed. He established new standards for archaeological research, including the first application of the ‘stratigraphical method’ in archaeology. Schliemann and his seventeen-year-old Greek wife, Sophia Engastromenos, above

Johann August Heinrich Heros von Borcke (1835–1895) was known as the “giant in gray.” He was a big man, over six feet in height and well over two hundred pounds, with curly blond hair and laughing eyes. Born to an aristocratic German family, his childhood was spent in Berlin and Halle before receiving a superb Prussian military education. Von Borcke was commissioned an ensign in 1853 and admitted to the Cuiraisser Regiment of Guards as a cadet. In 1860, he was posted as second lieutenant to the Second Brandenburg Regiment of Dragoons, but saw little action. After his release from the Prussian Army, he embarked upon the adventure of his life: he sailed for Bermuda intent on joining the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.

Speaking almost no English, he had managed to secure letters of introduction to Confederate authorities, and he slipped into South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor on a blockade runner on May 24, 1862. He next traveled to Richmond where he met with Confederate Secretary of War George Randolph who presented him with a letter of introduction to Major General J.E.B. Stuart.

A deep friendship developed between the two men immediately and von Borcke was made a captain in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States and soon promoted to the rank of major. Von Bourcke could be entertaining and told wonderful stories with his thick accent, but he could also be a bit vain and difficult to get along with at times, especially for his servants. His horses were as big as his extra long sword, a beast of a blade forged in Solingen of Damascus steel. He rode with Stuart, who affectionately called him “Von,” during the Northern Virginia Campaign and the Maryland Campaign, acquiring a reputation for bravery, and he served with Stuart in the Battle of Middleburg on June 19, 1863, where he suffered a severe wound. The examining doctor somberly declared the wound, which pierced the lung, mortal, but von Borcke woke up the next morning determined to live and he did, although he was incapacitated for the rest of the year. He resume his duties in the spring of 1864, and was present at the Battle of Yellow Tavern in which J.E.B. Stuart was killed, and he sat by Stuart’s side at his deathbed. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in December of that year, and was voted the official thanks of the Confederate Congress and sent on a diplomatic mission to England by President Jefferson Davis.

When the Confederacy collapsed in 1865, von Borcke returned to his native Prussia and resumed his military career. He fought in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, receiving the coveted Order of the Red Eagle for his gallantry, but his old wounds always plagued him, and he retired from the Prussian Army as Captain in 1867, settling in Neumarkt, East Prussia. While in London, he had written articles for the pro-Confederate ‘Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine’ and he published them in book form as “Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence” in 1877.

He inherited a castle at Geisenbrugge in Pomerania, and he proudly flew the Confederate flag alongside the Prussian flag from its battlements. He and his wife Magdalene Honig had three sons and, when she died in 1883, he married her sister and they had a daughter named Karoline Virginia, in honor of his adopted and beloved southern state back in America. In 1884, he sailed back to the United States for a reunion with many former friends and comrades.

He presented his famous Damascus sword to the State of Virginia, where it was later placed in the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. Von Borcke moved to Berlin and died there from blood poisoning, probably due to the after-affects of the injury received at Middleburg, on May 10, 1895.

Von Borcke’s estate “Stargordt” in Pommern was built between 1717 and 1720. Heinrich von Borcke added additions in 1743. The stately manor house, above then and now, contained a highly valuable collection of 18th century art. When the Russians invaded Germany in 1945, they thoroughly looted the place before burning it down. Von Borcke’s descendants were forced to flee in a hunting wagon, leaving their ancestral lands and all of their possessions behind forever. His original gravestone was smashed during the frenzied communist movement to erase all evidence of German culture and history in stolen German lands. Once the Germans were expelled, the area decayed into poverty.