The Derwitz Glider 1891 @museum.de

It’s almost like a swarm of butterflies! On this side of the room, we’re showing you Lilienthal's main aircraft types. If you look at the long, lit panel below, you’ll see that the colours of the aircraft models correspond to sections in the same colours on the panel. The tracing in black on the left wings of the models represents the view of the underside, the while the white tracing on the right wings shows the top.

Lilienthal's practical flight experiments had started in 1889. At first, they didn’t go beyond lifting exercises, standing attempts and small hops. It was only when he came up with the Derwitz Glider – in pale green – that Lilienthal took to the skies for the first time and covered a distance of 25 metres – all of 80 feet!

Lilienthal's exercises in the summer of 1891 marked the beginning of the age of human flight. The place where it all happened was the village of Derwitz between Potsdam and Brandenburg an der Havel, a little over 50 kilometres – roughly 30 miles south-east of here. In Derwitz, Lilienthal found a hill from which he was able to launch himself into the wind and glide gently to the ground. He was able to control the angle of the wings in relation to the wind by shifting his body.

He’d managed to prove that human flight was possible! So now, it was only a matter of perfecting the apparatuses. Countless measurements, experiments and new designs followed. Until they were patented, the flying machines were named after the places where Lilienthal tested them. Three years after his first flights, he designed the Normal Soaring Apparatus, which he patented. It’s the pale pink aircraft just beyond the second window.