Otto Lilienthal's Fliegeberg

[lethargic_man]

Most people probably think of the Wright brothers as the first to successfully pull off powered heavier-than-air flight, but the reality is more that they were the first to reach the finishing line, so to speak, without succumbing to an aviation disaster along the way.

Amongst those who were ahead of the Wright brothers in the field was the British aviation pioneer Percy Pilcher, who was planning a trial flight with a motor-driven aeroplane in 1899 when a strut broke on his hang-glider and he plunged to his death. (Some of you might have, along with me, seen a fascinating Horizon about him in 2003.)

But Pilcher in turn had his researches influenced (as did the Wright brothers) by German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, who was the first to fly a heavier-than-air aircraft, after studying (and publishing a book on) the avian wing as the basis for artificial flight. Lilienthal developed eighteen different glider types, and carried out more than two thousand flights, but died when he was unable to recover his hang-glider from a stall in 1896.

Lilienthal used the rubble from a brickworks near where he lived in Lichterfelde, near (now in) Berlin, to construct a 15m high hill from which to conduct his flights, and I went for a look at it as part of a bike ride the other day.

The area was converted to a park in 1900, and the brickworks' quarry turned into a carp pond.

A monument to Lilienthal was erected in 1932 atop the hill; the bronze globe is a replacement of the original, which was melted down during the War.

Here's the view from the top.

Leicht ist es wahrlich uns Menschen nicht gemacht, frei wie der Vogel das Luftreich zu durchmessen. Aber die Sehnsucht danach lässt uns keine Ruhe; ein einziger großer Vogel, welcher über unserm Haupte seine Kreise zieht, erweckt in uns den Wunch, gleich ihm am Firmament dahinzuschweben.

It is truly not made easy for us humans to sweep, free as a bird, through the airy realm. But the desire for it leaves us no rest; a single large bird describing its circles above our heads awakes in us the wish to float along in the firmament like it.

—Otto Lilienthal, „Weshalb ist es so schwierig das Fliegen zu erfinden“, in Prometheus Nr. 261, Berlin, 1895