Showcases with Model Gliders @museum.de

The age of aviation began with Otto and Gustav Lilienthal. The two brothers watched the flight of birds and transferred their findings to the first flying machines. They hoped to inspire many other people to take up gliding...

... and in that, they were successful! If you take a look at these display cases, you can follow the development of gliding – starting with the models of the early 1920s, until around the turn of the millennium. Due to his untimely death in an accident, Otto Lilienthal didn’t live to see his dream come true, but his brother Gustav saw more and more people benefiting from the brothers' observations and investigations – and developing new, streamlined flying machines. The sport of gliding emerged. Countless aircraft now glided silently across the skies. Or... did they soar?

What is the difference between gliding and soaring? It’s quite simple: in gliding flight, the aircraft is constantly moving closer to the ground, steadily losing altitude and gradually gliding lower. If it’s soaring, it’s managing to gain altitude – for example by making use of thermals, columns of rising air. The aircraft climbs and can vary its altitude.

Otto Lilienthal had already succeeded in making the transition to soaring. In the biplanes he designed during the last months of his life, he had enlarged the lift surfaces, which meant he was able to rise to a slightly higher altitude.

And the glider pilots of generations to come followed his example. At Lilienthal's former training site – on the Gollenberg here in the Havelland region – a flying school has operated since 1910 and is still in business. So the world’s oldest airfield is right here: in Stölln.