Customer Reviews

A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fritzsche's writing feels considerably less like formal academic history and more like an entertaining narrative of the rise of aviation in fin de sicle Germany. At times his sweep is so large that the historical details get lost, but at the same time the added perspective keeps the often dry subject matter (Airships, Zepplins, gliders, the rise of nationalism from German aviation) moving in a lively manner. Particularly interesting is his narration of the rise of gliding as a German response to the aviation restrictions in early 1920's Germany. I often feel that authors writing on Nazi-era Germany try too hard to view all aspects of pre-WWII German culture as logically leading to the rise of the Nazi horror, but in the case of gliding the parallel is both applicable and well drawn.

It is not a text of technical details, like how zeppelins were built, or what the actual range of the Bremen trans-Atlantic flyer was. Instead, it gives a general portrait of the importance of aviation in the popular mind of that era, and how certain ideas and issues became dominant. This actually explains a lot, that might be obvious to someone growing up in Germany, but that can be hard to understand from the outside. For example, how the popularity of the zeppelin before WW1, and of Count Zeppelin - both as a technological wonder, and as a celebration of Southern Germany - was such that when an early zeppelin crashed - a replacement was built with the outpouring of private donations, not government money. How Count Zeppelin was always depicted as a smiling white haired "Father Nicholas" character, in contrast to the stern Prussian leaders that dominated the government. How the WW1 aces BEFORE von Richtofen seized the public imagination, and made the fighter pilot a romantic hero (Boelcke is NOT a household word in the US). How the informal glider movement on the Wasserkuppe rapidly grew to a national obsession, and made a series of aeronautical discoveries. How the whole idea of the glider club as a healthy outdoor activity available to all boys (sort of like the Boy Scout movement in the US) was part of the redevelopment of German aviation in general. How the aces were transformed into popular aviation figures who flew stunts and showed what a plane could do - (I never before understood why Udet was such a popular character) It is not all positive. The last chapter also explains how in the 1930's, this took on a much darker color - how the "airmindedness" = fear of aerial attack on cities was taught in schools and clubs to make the public accept the idea, and believe that they could survive it.

Models played a role in this. For those that could not join a club to build and fly their own glider, there were school-based clubs in the 1930s, that built models, to spread the idea of modern aviation as much as possible. I bet many of them were paper models. p203: "Schoolrooms acquired a completely new intellectual scenery - model airplanes hanging from the ceiling: air war murals on the walls; dozens of airplane books on library shelves- -a miniature design for the mobilization of the nation under the banner of airmindedness."

As a long term "wing nut" and one time Air Scout myself, I enjoyed this book a lot - but had to pause to finish it. The 1930's were not pretty, and the degree to which the heroes old and new were transformed into the new politics was painful to read about. Painful but certainly necessary to describe, I think.

For anyone who wants to better understand the long standing love affair with aviation in German popular culture, this is a good beginning. It wants a volume 2, that starts in the 1950s, with the HD 153, the Hansa jet, and the resurgence of the zeppelin idea.