2-369-428 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Dr Hugo Eckener, manager of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, c1917-1933 (1933). Eckener (1868-1954) took over the running of the Zeppelin company after the airships' designer, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, died in 1917. He was a successful Zeppelin pilot, despite crashing Zeppelin LZ8 trying to launch in a strong wind on his first flight in 1911. In the 1920s and early 1930s Eckener made the Zeppelin into a symbol of German national pride and became a national hero himself, piloting the airships on successful flights to America, the Arctic and around the world. Firmly anti-Nazi in his politics and a vocal critic of the regime after they came to power in 1933, he was marginalised at the Zeppelin company. In 1928-1931 A photograph from Zeppelin-Weltfahrten, Vom ersten Luftschiff 1899 bis zu den Fahrten des LZ127 Graf Zepplin 1932, Dresden, 1933.