Ferdinand von Zeppelin

293
Ferdinand von Zeppelin bigraphy, stories - Airship commander

Ferdinand von Zeppelin : biography

08 July 1838 – 08 March 1917

Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin (also known as Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, When "Graf" or its English translation "Count" is used, it is correct to omit the "von." Thus, "Ferdinand von Zeppelin", but "Graf Zeppelin" and "Count Zeppelin". Graf Zeppelin and in English, Count Zeppelin) (8 July 1838 – 8 March 1917) was a German general and later aircraft manufacturer. He founded the Zeppelin Airship company. He was born in Konstanz, Grand Duchy of Baden (now part of Baden-Württemberg, Germany).

Family

Count Everhard von Zeppelin, Second Lieutenant in the German Lancers, married November, 1895, Mamie McGarvey, daughter of William H. McGarvey, owner of the oil wells of Galicia and his wife, Helena J. Wesolowska. A former Count von Zeppelin married a granddaughter of the 1st Earl of Ranfurly. Morgan, Henry James Types of Canadian women and of women who are or have been connected with Canada : (Toronto, 1903)

Family and personal life

Ferdinand was the scion of a noble family dating back to the year 1400 in Mecklenburg – Pomerania. Zepelin, the eponymous hometown of the family (spelled in German with one "p") is a small community outside the town of Bützow.

Ferdinand was the son of Württemberg Minister and Hofmarschall Friedrich Jerôme Wilhelm Karl Graf von Zeppelin (1807–1886) and his wife Amélie Françoise Pauline (born Macaire d’Hogguer) (1816–1852). Ferdinand spent his childhood with his sister and brother at their Girsberg manor near Constance, where he was educated by private tutors

and lived there until his death. 

On 7 August 1869 Ferdinand married Isabella Freiin von Wolff from the house of Alt-Schwanenburg (present day — Gulbene town in Latvia, then part of Livonia). They had a daughter, Helene (Hella) von Zeppelin (1879–1967) who in 1909 married Alexander Graf von Brandenstein-Zeppelin (1881–1949).

Ferdinand had a nephew Baron Max von Gemmingen who was to later volunteer at the start of World War I, after he was past military age, to become general staff officer assigned to the military airship LZ 12 Sachsen.Lehmann

Notes

Legacy

Count Zeppelin died in 1917, before the end of World War I. He therefore did not 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.

The unfinished World War II German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, and two rigid airships, the world-circling LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, and LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II, twin to the Hindenburg, were named after him.

The British rock group Led Zeppelin’s name derives from his airship as well. His granddaughter, Countess Eva von Zeppelin, even once threatened to sue Led Zeppelin for illegal use of their family name while performing in Copenhagen. at ledzeppelin.com

Other aircraft

  • 1899 unrealised plans for a paddlewheel aeroplane
  • 1912 financial support of Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen which was to supply 850 aeroplanes 1917/1918;
  • 1914 commissions Claude Dornier to develop flying boats
  • 1914 founds Versuchsbau Gotha-Ost with Robert Bosch which built a number of Riesenflugzeug (giant aircraft) such as the Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI

Army career

In 1853 Count Zeppelin left to attend the polytechnic at Stuttgart, and in 1855 he became a cadet of the military school at Ludwigsburg and then started his career as an army officer in the army of Württemberg.

By 1858 Zeppelin had been promoted to Leutnant, and that year he was given leave to study science, engineering and chemistry at Tübingen. The Prussians mobilising for the Austro-Sardinian War interrupted this study in 1859 when he was called up to the ‘ (Prussian engineering corps) at Ulm.

In 1863 Zeppelin took leave to act as an observer for the northern troops of the Union’s Army of the Potomac in the American Civil War against the Confederates, and later took part in an expedition with Russians and Indians to the source of the Mississippi river and he made his first ascent with Steiner’s captive balloon.