Lilienthal's Flying Locations @museum.de

Lilienthal carried out his flying attempts at several locations in and around Berlin – places with names such as Südende, Fliegeberg or Maihöhe, Derwitz and Stölln. Many of his flying machines are named after the sites where he tested them.

Lilienthal carried out his first gliding flights in 1891, on a hill called Spitzberg, in the Brandenburg village of Derwitz. So that flying machine is called the "Derwitz Apparatus".

Unfortunately, the maximum distance for flights from the hill in Derwitz was 25 metres – or 82 feet. So the following year – 1892 – Lilienthal moved on to an area of low hills called "Rauhe Berge” in the Südende district of Berlin. There, he launched himself from the steeply sloping edge of a sand pit – with his "Südende Glider".

In the summer of 1893, Lilienthal took off from a rise nearby called Maihöhe. It’s easy to tell which of his photographs were taken there. He’d had a wooden shed built on the edge of a drop-off that was six metres or around 20 feet high – and would actually launch himself from the roof of the shed, which housed his flying apparatus. That craft was called the "Maihöhe-Rhinow Apparatus".

But at the weekends, Lilienthal would head out of the city in a north-westerly direction.

"There is unfortunately a shortage of good training sites for gliding in the area surrounding Berlin. Ideally, [...] you need a sandy hill at least twenty metres high, and sloping down in all directions. That allows you to take off in any direction. For anyone who feels inspired to take up gliding practice, let me note that there is a stretch of land between Rathenow and Neustadt an der Dosse which includes a wide range of such hills. The district is called Rhinow."

The Gollenberg and the Hauptmannsberg offered much better conditions than Lilienthal's local hills near Berlin. From 1893 on, Lilienthal went to Stölln in the summer months to test further refinements.

The following year, in 1894, he created his own “flying hill” in Berlin. This conical “Fliegeberg” was 15 metres or 50 feet high, and he had it made using the spoil from a brickyard. From there, he could launch himself against the wind in any direction. But at the weekends he still regularly travelled to his main training site, the Gollenberg.

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Zitat nach Michael Waßermann, Otto Lilienthal, Leipzig 1985, S. 47.