The Great War
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Select the portrait to enlarge it.Photo: Nicola Perscheid, CC BY-SA 3.0

Germany

Ferdinand von Zeppelin

1838–1917 Airship pioneer (LZ 1, 1900) and founder of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin

Born in Konstanz in 1838, Ferdinand von Zeppelin was a Württemberg cavalry officer who made his first balloon ascent in North America in 1863, during the American Civil War. He left the army in 1891 and devoted himself to rigid airships. LZ 1 first flew over Lake Constance on 2 July 1900. After LZ 4 was destroyed at Echterdingen in August 1908, public donations of more than 5 million marks kept his work going and funded Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. By 1914 the passenger airline DELAG had carried tens of thousands of people on over 1,500 flights without accident. In January 1915 Zeppelin airships began bombing Britain; accuracy was poor, and the German Historical Museum judges their results far below military expectations. He died in Berlin on 8 March 1917.

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Wikidata Q75780