Station: [5] Life of Otto Lilienthal

At the very beginning of Otto Lilienthal’s life, revolution was in the air. He was born in May 1848, when half of Europe was in turmoil. The spirit of revolution even blew through the quiet little town of Anklam on the Baltic Sea. Gustav was born a year and a half later, and the two brothers would spend a great deal of their lives together. They were just thirteen and fourteen when they built their first pair of wings and tried them out at the old shooting range in Anklam.

"We plan to run down a hill and take off against the wind with them, like a stork."

That didn’t work. But Otto was still brimming with creativity and a thirst for knowledge – even though he was only moderately successful at school. Then his mother sent him to the Provincial Trade School in Potsdam, which focussed on the sciences, and the logjam was overcome. He graduated at the top of his class and soon won a scholarship to study in Berlin. He read mechanics and mechanical engineering and again, was one of the year’s best graduates. Gustav, meanwhile, became an architect.

As a young engineer, Otto visited the coal mines in Saxony when met the daughter of a senior pit foreman. In 1878, Agnes Fischer and Otto Lilienthal were married in Döhlen, since incorporated into the town of Freital. The couple went on to have four children: Otto, Anna, Fritz and Helene.

Soon after, Otto set up his own workshop and became a member of the Verein zur Förderung des preußischen Gewerbefleißes – an association designed to promote Prussian trade. He won awards for his technical innovations. In 1886, when Otto was 38, the family moved to the prosperous Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde, where their house was designed by his brother Gustav. In the garden, the brothers undertook their first aerodynamic experiments, which are recorded in Otto’s book "Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation".

Three years later, in 1889, Lilienthal started his practical flying exercises – first in Berlin, then in the small town of Derwitz, and finally, here in Stölln.

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Zitat: nach Ausstellungstafeln, o.A.