2-702-103 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mittelholzer's flight to Africa, 1926, (1932). Swiss aviation pioneer and photographer Walter Mittelholzer (1894-1937) made the first North-South flight across Africa. He left Zürich on 7 December 1926, flying via Alexandria and landing in Cape Town on 21 February 1927, a journey of 77 days. On 15 December 1929 he became the first person to fly over Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). He later became technical director of the airline Swissair. In this image he is flying a Junkers A 20 floatplane. From "Die Eroberung Der Luft", (The Conquest of the Air), cigarette card album produced by the Garbáty cigarette factory, 1932. Eugene and Moritz Garbáty, who were Jewish, were driven out of business by the Nazis in the late 1930s, and forced to sell their factory which lay empty for over 70 years. [Garbaty Cigarettenfabrik, Berlin-Pankow, 1932]