"Of all the men who attacked the flying problem in the 19th century, Otto Lilienthal was easily the most important. His greatness appeared in every phase of the problem. No one equaled him in power to draw new recruits to the cause; no one equaled him in fullness and dearness of understanding of the principles of flight; no one did so much to convince the world of the advantages of curved wing surfaces; and no one did so much to transfer the problem of human flight to the open air where it belonged."
These words were spoken by Wilbur Wright, who successfully accomplished the first powered flight together with his brother Orville in 1903 on the sand dunes of the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina. Wilbur was talking about the most important of their predecessors, Otto Lilienthal.
Lilienthal attracted worldwide attention due to the spectacular photographs showing him in flight, made possible by technology that had only just been developed by him. This fortuitousunion between a pioneer of aviation and the pioneers of so-called “instantaneous photography” is responsible for the immense contemporary popularity of Lilienthal’s flights around the globe, the first ever free flights performed by man. This book traces the life of the German aviation pioneer, focusing on the designs of his many aircraft and the photographic documentation that has survived. The presentation ends with a remarkable research project conducted by one of the authors, right up to and including his own training exercises with Lilienthal’s “normal soaring apparatus” and “large biplane”. This project offered new insight into Lilienthal’s work, and also led to a spectacular aerial meeting of Lilienthal's 1895 biplane and the Wright brothers’ 1902 biplane at a historic location on the Outer Banks. The book provides access to video material, largely stemming from this project.
Markus Raffel (*1962) is Professor of Aerodynamics at Leibniz University of Hanover and Head of the Department of Helicopters at the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology at DLR, the German Aerospace Center. He started at DLR in 1991, working in the field of experimental aerodynamics. He has published over 150 journal and conference papers, and is the leading author of the widely distributed textbook “Particle Image Velocimetry”, about the most common optical flow diagnostic technique today. After a short flying course with glider aircraft, he obtained his private pilot certificate and flies single-engine and light-sport aircraft in Europe and the US. After practicing hang gliding in France and California, he built an authentic replica of Otto Lilienthal’s patented monoplane and was the first pilot to fly it since Otto Lilienthal’s deadly crash in 1896.
Bernd Lukasch (*1954) studied physics in Berlin and worked in the experimental department “atomic collisions in solid state physics”, where he received his doctorate in 1984. In 1988, he took on the task of founding a museum dedicated to Otto Lilienthal. It was opened in 1991. Lukasch took over the management of the museum in 1992 and remained its director until 2019. Under his leadership the museum was awarded the title “National Memorial” by the State Minister for Culture and Media of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the title “European Museum of the Year Award – Special Commendation” by the European Museum Forum. In 2005 Bernd Lukasch published a biography about both Lilienthal brothers (“Erfinderleben” - inventors’ lives) and is also author or editor of numerous publications in popular and history journals.
