Eduard Boëtius

Crew Member

Age: 27

Hometown: Föhr, Germany

Occupation: Navigator (third officer)

Location at time of fire: Elevator wheel, control car

Survived


Eduard Boëtius (pronounced "Boh-ey-tee-us") was a navigator on the Hindenburg's final flight, along with Max Zabel, Franz Herzog, and Christian Nielsen. Born on the North Frisian island of Föhr in 1910, Boëtius went to sea at age 19, signing onboard the Laeisz Transport Company's four-masted, square-rigged barque Peking. He spent two years serving on the Peking, rated first as an ordinary seaman and eventually as an able seaman. When the Peking was sold in 1932, Boëtius transferred to the Laeisz steamship Poseidon. During his four years as a merchant seaman, Eduard Boëtius made the perilous journey around Cape Horn six times. Having occasionally been allowed to stand at the helm during his time onboard the Peking, and more often when serving on the Poseidon, Boëtius had shown himself to have considerable talent at the wheel of a ship, particularly in difficult waters such as the Straits of Magellan.

In 1934, therefore, Boëtius began studying at the navigation school in Hamburg. After two years of study, he passed his examinations and became licensed as a ship's officer and also as a radio operator. A classmate named Gerd von Mensenkampff, who was employed with the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei and training to be an airship navigator, convinced Boëtius to look to the future and consider a career as an airshipman. The Zeppelin Company was in the process of establishing an international airship service, and was planning to build a fleet of passenger airships – for which they would obviously need a growing number of trained navigators and watch officers.

Eduard Boëtius was hired by the DZR in May of 1936. His first flight was a short transfer flight on May 22nd, 1936 from Frankfurt to Friedrichshafen aboard the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, though he had not yet been assigned duties. Once in Friedrichshafen, he began undergoing training in preparation for a position on the DZR's new ship, the LZ-129 Hindenburg. He would begin as a rigger under Chief Rigger Ludwig Knorr, and move up through the various command crew stations (helmsman, elevatorman, navigator, watch officer) and eventually perhaps even be given a command of his own.

His first flight as a member of the Hindenburg's crew was on June 16th, 1936. The ship had been chartered by the Krupp Company, one of Germany's leading armament manufacturers, for a company outing for various company executives as well as several Krupp family members. During this flight, which was primarily over Switzerland, Boëtius served as a rigger. He progressed quickly, however, and by August of that year he was already standing watch at the rudder wheel in the control car. Shortly thereafter, he shifted over to the elevator wheel, where his natural talents as a helmsman on a seagoing vessel took on a new dimension as he guided the Hindenburg through the vertical plane, using feel and instinct as much as instruments to maintain the ship's pitch.

Eduard Boëtius at the elevator wheel of the Hindenburg.

By the time of the Hindenburg's first North American flight of the 1937 season during the first week of May, Eduard Boëtius had been promoted to navigator. Along with fellow navigators Franz Herzog, Max Zabel, and Christian Nielsen, Boëtius determined the ship's course, drift, position, and speed using the very latest in long-range navigational techniques and weather forecasting methods.

As the Hindenburg came in on its final landing approach to the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, NJ on the evening of May 6th, Boëtius was in the navigation room in the center of the control car along with Nielsen and Zabel. He sounded the signal for landing stations shortly after 7:00 PM. The still somewhat unfavorable weather conditions over Lakehurst prompted the watch officer on duty, Captain Albert Sammt, to order Boëtius, more experienced and steady-handed as an elevatorman, to take over the elevator wheel in place of Ludwig Felber, who had only recently begun to stand watch as an elevatorman. Felber turned the wheel over to Boëtius with the ship about 3-4 degrees light in the bow and slightly tail-heavy, and then proceeded forward to take a landing station in the bow.

Eduard Boëtius' location in the control car at the time of the fire.

As the Hindenburg floated over the landing field and the ground crew was taking up the landing lines, Boëtius felt the ship jerk suddenly. He looked out a window and saw a reddish glow in the air, but was not immediately aware that the ship had caught fire. As the stern dropped and the bow pointed up at a 45-degree angle, Boëtius clung to his elevator wheel as the rest of the command crew lost their footing. Amazingly, however, Boëtius noticed a complete lack of panic in the control car. He looked out the front windows of the car and saw crew members falling from the bow of the ship, some from a fairly great height. As Boëtius later learned, the fire shot out the bow in a great pillar, killing most of the men who had been stationed there, including Ludwig Felber, whom Boëtius had replaced at the elevator at the last moment.

When the ship's bow began to drop, Boëtius climbed up onto a window just aft of his elevator wheel. He hesitated, not wanting to leap too soon and perhaps break a leg and not be able to run clear of the wreck. Captain Heinrich Bauer, standing behind Boëtius and wanting to use the same window for his own escape, called out "Jump, Eddi!" However, Boëtius knew that the ship was still too high in the air yet. He waited until the landing wheel under the control car touched the ground, and then jumped from a height of 10 to 12 feet. He landed on his feet and ran to portside with all his might to get out from under the descending wreckage.

Eduard Boëtius crouches in a control car window (arrow) preparing to jump. Navigator Christian Nielsen is doing the same in the window just aft of Boëtius.

Boëtius (arrow) lands on the ground after jumping from the control car. Nielsen drops to the ground just behind him, having jumped from the navigation room window a split second after Boëtius.

Boëtius made it clear of the wreck, which collapsed to earth just behind him, and he then ran back toward the ship where he found engineer Raphael Schädler lying unconscious on the ground a short distance from the #4 engine car. Boëtius hauled him over to some sailors who were showing survivors to trucks and ambulances. He then headed for the passenger decks along with Captain Walter Ziegler, steward Fritz Deeg, and fellow navigator Christian Nielsen in an attempt to rescue as many of those trapped in the wreckage as possible. They returned to the wreck several times until the structure had completely collapsed and there was no hope of rescuing anyone else. Boëtius then headed around the bow to the starboard side. There, he found elevatorman Kurt Bauer lying dazed on the ground some distance from the wreck. Bauer got up, and the two of them walked back around the bow to the port side, and saw rescuers carrying a body from the ruins of the ship's nose section.

The next day, Boëtius returned to the wreckage and searched around the general vicinity of his crew quarters, looking for any of his possessions which might have survived the fire, particularly a set of cufflinks that his father had given to him. Normally, Boëtius wore them with his uniform, but since it had been such a warm day as they flew into Lakehurst, Boëtius had opted to wear a short-sleeved shirt under his uniform jacket, and had left his cufflinks in his quarters. Amazingly, he managed to find one of them amid the charred wreckage. He carried it with him for the rest of his life as a memento.

Eduard Boëtius testified before the US Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry into the Hindenburg fire on May 19th, and slightly more than two weeks after the disaster he, along with a number of his fellow crew survivors, sailed home to Germany onboard the steamship Bremen, arriving in Bremerhaven a week later on May 28th. On his return to Germany, Eduard Boëtius was, along with several other crew members, awarded a medal for his efforts in rescuing passengers.

Boëtius continued to work with the DZR, serving aboard the LZ-130 during its short operational life beginning the following year. Not long after this, he was drafted into the German navy, and was made captain of a U-boat supply ship (a converted whaler) in the sea near Norway. The ship was struck by a Russian torpedo while fleeing pursuers, and sank within minutes. After seeing his entire crew into lifeboats, Boëtius leapt into the icy water, and was lucky enough to be picked up before he drowned. It was the second time that Eduard Boëtius had narrowly avoided death.

Eduard Boëtius circa 1984

In an interview with the German magazine "Der Spiegel" in 2000, Boëtius was asked whether he thought it pure chance that he had escaped death twice. He replied, "I think about that to this day. What is chance, what is fate? I can't find an answer, and perhaps that's just as well." When asked if his experiences have affected the way he views death, Boëtius answered, "When the time comes, I'm ready. It's been a long, but never dull life. When I look back, I was always a man who had to do with the end of an era. I experienced the ending of the great sail ships, and then the demise of airships, the end of whaling, and then after the war, the end of traditional parcel service giving way to containerized shipping." When the interviewer remarked that Boëtius sounded resigned to having always come in on the losing end of these things, Boëtius asked him, "Do you know any 90 year-old who isn't resigned?" and continued, "As far as my professional life is concerned, it shows me how rather short-lived so-called progress is."

Eduard Boëtius passed away on November 7, 2002, in Schülp, Germany, where he had retired just down the coast from his home island of Föhr. He was 92.


(Special thanks to Siegfried Geist, whose obituary for Herr Boëtius helped me to fill in a lot of information about Boëtius' post-Zeppelin life. I also was able to glean a great deal about Boëtius' earlier life as a merchant marine and his eventual employment with the Zeppelin Company from the book "Phoenix aus Asche" – titled simply "Phoenix" for its English-language release, by Eduard Boëtius' son Henning, who based his book in part on his father's life story.)

German Zettel

Crew Member

Age: 36

Hometown: Buchschlag, Hessen, Germany

Occupation: Chief mechanic

Location at time of fire: Engine gondola #3, starboard forward

Survived


German Zettel had been a Zeppelin mechanic since 1928, when he was employed by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. Prior to this, Zettel had apprenticed at the Maybach motor company, and was eventually assigned to the Zeppelin engine division. He became familiar enough with Zeppelin engines that he could, he said, "assemble them in the dark." He was subsequently hired by Luftshiffbau Zeppelin.

He flew as an engine mechanic on the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, including the round-the-world flight in 1929. Zettel continued to fly aboard the Graf Zeppelin until 1936, when the LZ-129 Hindenburg was commissioned and Zettel transferred to the new ship, making all flights from the first test flight March 4, 1936 onward.

German Zettel (left) with fellow mechanic Raphael Schädler in the portside aft engine car of the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

German Zettel (left) and one of his crewmates at one of the mechanics' workstations alongside the Hindenburg's lower keel walkway.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

German Zettel was one of the chief mechanics aboard the Hindenburg on its first North American flight of 1937. His primary duty on that trip involved overseeing engine #3, starboard side forward, and supervision of the other mechanics assigned to that engine car. The engine behaved normally throughout the trip, and as the flight neared its end and the signal for landing stations sounded at approximately 7:00 on the evening of May 6th, Zettel was on watch in engine gondola #3, along with mechanic trainee Wilhelm Steeb. Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter had also been in gondola #3 observing, but when landing stations were signaled for, Chief Sauter left the car to take his landing station in the ship's lower tail fin. Fellow mechanic Jonny Dörflein, answering the call to landing stations, arrived in the engine car shortly thereafter, and took over on the engine throttle. Flight engineer Eugen Schäuble then appeared in the doorway to the gondola, but remained out on the catwalk leading to the ship, and watched the landing maneuver from there.

As the Hindenburg made its final approach to the mooring circle at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, Zettel was standing between the engine and the outer wall of the gondola, observing operations. He also occasionally glanced back at engine #1, aft of them, and noted that it was also running satisfactorily. As the ship approached the mooring mast, engine #3 was reversed on orders from the control car, and then set to the idle forward position.

German Zettel's location at the time of the fire (diagram is top view of the ship.)

Shortly after this, Zettel felt a jolt and looked aft, out the back of the gondola. He saw that the ship was in flames above the #1 engine car. The ship almost immediately went down by the stern, and as he hung on, he saw Dörflein shut the engine down. The engine car hit the ground, and the impact caused Zettel to fall to the floor between the engine and the outer wall of the gondola. He got immediately back to his feet and jumped out through the outboard window, ran away from the ship for about 60 feet, then turned back around to look and saw the ship's framework collapse over the engine gondola. Glancing forward toward the bow, Zettel saw Captain Lehmann and another member of the command crew emerging from the ship somewhere near where the control car had been.

Three of the men from engine gondola #3, German Zettel, Eugen Schäuble, and Wilhelm Steeb (shown in probably just about that order, left to right) stumble away from the Hindenburg as it settles to earth. Their engine car can be seen lying on the ground just to the right of them.

Zettel managed to escape the Hindenburg wreck with only minor injuries. He gave testimony to the Commerce Department’s Board of Inquiry on May 19th, returning home a couple of days afterwards with a group of fellow crew members on the steamship Bremen. The next year, Zettel joined a number of other Hindenburg crew survivors on the maiden flight of the Hindenburg’s sister ship, the LZ-130 Graf Zeppelin, stationed in the #2 portside aft engine.

German Zettel later retired in Friedrichshafen, and passed away in the 1980s.

German Zettel circa 1984

Dr. Kurt Rüdiger

Age: 27

Hometown: Bremen, Germany

Occupation: Ship's doctor

Location at time of fire: Passenger decks - portside dining salon

Survived



Dr. Kurt Rüdiger was the ship's doctor on the Hindenburg. He was a member of the same Flensburg sailing club as Captain Ernst Lehmann, Director of Flight Operations for the Zeppelin Company and former commander of the Hindenburg. In January of 1937, Lehmann received a report from Willy von Meister, the Zeppelin Company's representative in the United States and vice president of the newly formed American Zeppelin Transport Company. In his report, von Meister made specific mention of the need for the Zeppelins to begin carrying a doctor. This was of particular concern since the Hindenburg's passenger decks had recently been expanded to accommodate 72 passengers, and future ships might carry as many as 110. Sooner or later, a passenger or crew member was bound to suffer an injury or illness that would require more than the basic first aid in which several crew members were trained. Von Meister suggested that the Zeppelin Company find a doctor without a private practice who might wish to take on the position of ship's physician.

Shortly after this, the subject came up in conversation between Lehmann and his young friend from the sailing club, Dr. Rüdiger. Rüdiger, not long out of medical school, was very much what Lehmann and von Meister were looking for, and he was hired as the first physician to ever be carried aboard a commercial aircraft as a regular member of the crew.

Dr. Kurt Rüdiger flew as the Hindenburg's doctor for the first time in March of 1937 on a short flight over Frankfurt, and then was aboard for the Hindenburg's first round-trip flight of the year to South America between March 16th and March 27th.

There had been some concern, expressed in von Meister's January, 1937 report to Lehmann, that with the increased passenger load Heinrich Kubis would not be able to carry out the wide range of duties that fell to him as Chief Steward. Therefore, Dr. Rüdiger would also serve as ship's purser, writing up invoices for passenger's bills for drinks and other incidentals and settling them at the end of the flight, et cetera.

In addition to tending to his medical and purser duties, Dr. Rüdiger also conducted tours of the ship for small groups of passengers. He would lead them through Chief Kubis' office near the smoking room on "B" deck, out onto the main gangway running along the keel of the ship. First they would walk aft, where Rüdiger would show the passengers the intricate interior structure of the ship, as well as the various storerooms and engineering stations located along the keel. He would often take them down into the ship's lower fin for a look at the auxiliary control stand, and sometimes he would even lead them along one of the lateral catwalks that led out toward the engine gondolas. He would then take them forward for a tour of the control car, and then finally back to the passenger area.

On Dr. Rüdiger's third flight – the Hindenburg's first North American trip of 1937, during the first week of May – his duties were fairly light. Aside from passenger Philip Mangone, who was suffering from a nasty cold, the only patient Rüdiger had to treat was cook Alfred Grözinger, who had scalded himself when he accidentally spilled soup on his foot. He led passenger tours as usual, but later stated that on this trip he never took any of the tour groups any further aft than the cargo rooms midway between the engine gondolas.

Dr. Rüdiger also personally accompanied photographer Karl Otto Clemens throughout the ship on several occasions (the last one being at roughly noon on the last day of the flight) as Clemens took photographs of the Hindenburg's interior. Rüdiger's main concern here was to make certain that Clemens didn't use any flash bulbs, which were forbidden aboard the ship because of the obvious fire hazard they posed.

As the Hindenburg approached the landing field at Lakehurst at the end of the flight, on May 6th, Dr. Rüdiger was looking out the observation windows in the lounge on the starboard side of the ship along with a group of passengers, and watched as the landing lines were dropped and taken up by the ground crew. Shortly after this, a gust of wind blew across the port beam and caused the ship to drift to starboard, obscuring Rüdiger's view of the ground crew. He walked over to the portside observation windows, and watched as the men on the ground fastened one of the mooring lines to a small rail car.

Dr. Rüdiger's location at the time of the fire.

It was then that the explosion occurred, and Rüdiger, along with a number of other people, was thrown towards the aft wall of the passenger deck as the Hindenburg's stern dropped. As he got to his feet and looked for a way out of the ship, he was aware of the brightness of the fire, but oddly enough not of the actual flames. Noticing that people were moving toward the windows, Rüdiger made his way to the nearest window and paused as Chief Steward Kubis warned that the ship was still too high off the ground. Rüdiger waited until he saw others jumping and followed them, dropping out of the ship from a height of about 6 or 7 meters. He landed heavily and broke his leg (and it's possible that he was the unidentified person who reportedly landed on passenger George Grant.) Rüdiger proceeded to crawl away from the wreckage, only then looking back and noticing that the entire ship was in flames.

After a preliminary stop at a nearby hospital, probably Paul Kimball Hospital in Lakewood, Dr. Rüdiger was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He was interviewed for the Board of Inquiry in his hospital room on May 18th by Inspector Sommers, who was dispatched with a questionnaire to get Dr. Rüdiger's statement for the investigation so that Rüdiger could sail back to Germany on May 19th.

Dr. Kurt Rüdiger, on crutches due to his broken leg, shakes hands with nurse Alice Moore as he leaves Paul Kimball Hospital on or about May 7th, 1937, bound for Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

After a couple of months recovering from his injuries, Rüdiger went to sea as ship's physician onboard the steamship Oakland, sailing the Pacific route from Vancouver down along the western coast of the United States. A conscientious objector, Dr. Rüdiger managed to avoid being conscripted into the German military, and remained a civilian physician throughout WWII.

After the war, Kurt Rüdiger maintained a practice at the health spa, Bad Schwartau, near Lübeck, northeast of Hamburg. He and his wife Oda had two daughters.


Special thanks to Barbara Waibel, head archivist for the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin archive at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen. Barbara was kind enough to provide me with the relevant section of Willy von Meister's January 1937 report (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin archive, LZA 17/196, p. 7) in which the need for a ship's physician was discussed.

Albert Stöffler

Crew Member

Age: 25

Hometown: Friedrichshafen, Germany

Occupation: pastry chef

Location at time of fire: Crew's mess

Survived




Albert Stöffler was one of the Hindenburg's cooks, and his speciality was preparing pastries and other confections. Having flown one flight on the Graf Zeppelin a year or two previously, Stöffler had been hired on March 1st, 1936 to serve onboard the Hindenburg, making all of her flights from the first test flight on March 4th, 1936 onward.

Albert Stöffler in the Hindenburg's electric kitchen.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Stöffler was aboard the Hindenburg on its first North American flight of 1937, and as the ship came in to land at Lakehurst on the evening of May 6th, he was in the kitchen down on B-deck. He heard the signal for landing stations shortly after 7:00 PM, and about 15 or 20 minutes later he heard radio officer Franz Eichelmann (who was manning the telephone in the kitchen foyer) relaying an order to the men in the crew's mess from the control car: "Six men forward." The ship was tail heavy, and the commander wanted the men to go to the ship's bow to help balance it out.

Since this effectively emptied out the crew's mess, Stöffler walked aft to the mess room so that somebody would be there. He found a bench near the windows cut into the floor, and laid down to watch the landing operations on the ground below. Stöffler saw the two landing ropes dropped from the bow, and saw the landing crew connect the port rope up to the mooring tackle near the mast. He noticed that the port rope was tightening as the ship drifted to starboard.

Albert Stöffler's location at the time of the fire.

Suddenly, Stöffler felt a strong vibration run through the ship and initially thought the ship's bow was being connected up to the mooring mast. As he stood up, Eichelmann ran into the crew's mess and called to him "Come out! Come out!" Stöffler followed his colleague out into the keel hallway, but lost track of him almost immediately. With the ship tilting steeply aft, Stöffler went back into the crew's mess. He noticed that hot water from the kitchen had spilled all over the floor, and sat up on one of the tables so that his feet wouldn't be scalded. From here he turned and looked out of one of the observation windows in the floor and saw on the ground below him the reddish glare of the fire. When the ship neared the ground, Stöffler knew it was time to get out. He jumped through the nearest window from a height of several meters, picked himself up and ran, with the ship's burning frame crashing to the ground just behind him. He escaped almost completely unharmed.

One of the Hindenburg's cooks (arrow), either Xaver Maier or Albert Stöffler, just barely visible by his kitchen whites, runs to safety as the ship's hull collapses behind him.

Stöffler stayed in the United States long enough to testify before the US Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry on May 13th, a week after the disaster. He then sailed for Germany on May 15th, along with the rest of the surviving kitchen staff and stewards, aboard the steamship Europa. They docked in Bremerhaven a week later on May 22nd.

Albert Stöffler passed away in July of 1997 at the age of 85.

Robert Moser

Crew Member

Age: 23

Hometown: Winzeln, Germany

Occupation: mechanic

Location at time of fire: Engineering room, amidships

Died in wreck


Robert Moser was born in Winzeln near Rottweil on November 29, 1913. His siblings recalled him as being a brave, precocious child, once jumping off the top of the family barn on a bet. When he was slightly older, Moser traveled to France and was detained and searched by French military police for trying to take photographs, which he did not realize was prohibited.

Moser apprenticed with Junghans, a watch and clock manufacturer in Schramburg and in 1933, while visiting his half-brother in Friedrichshafen, he took a job working in the construction sheds of the Luftshiffbau-Zeppelin. He was hired on November 24, 1933, initially as an instrument mechanic. He showed such talent that when his father visited him at the Zeppelin works, one of Moser's superiors remarked, "If you have any more sons like Robert, send them to us." When mechanics were being chosen for the newly-built LZ-129 Hindenburg, Moser's abilities made him a natural choice, though at the time he was one of the youngest mechanics onboard. He was hired by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei on February 15, 1936, and his first flight on the Hindenburg was on March 4th, 1936, the ship's very first test flight.

It was not only a perfect job for a skilled mechanic, but the fact that he stood watch for a couple hours at a time in the Hindenburg's outboard engine gondolas meant that it was also a prime opportunity for Moser to indulge in his passion for photography. The view from the engine gondolas was one of the best on the entire ship, and during his travels Moser took numerous photographs from this unique vantage point.

He also took full advantage of his time spent in port in the United States and Brazil. According to fellow mechanic Eugen Bentele, on one occasion when the Hindenburg was moored at Pernambuco, Moser was between watches (with at most only four hours until he was due to go back on watch again.) Rather than sleeping, he instead rented a horse, took his camera, and rode off into the jungle to explore, later showing Bentele the photos he'd taken during his little adventure.

Moser seemed, however, quite conscious of the danger of his chosen profession as a Zeppelin mechanic. Once, not long before his death, Moser brought home a Dornier propeller and said "If I should be killed somewhere, use this as my gravestone."

Robert Moser (left) and an unidentified mechanic (behind girder) at one of the engineering work stations alongside the Hindenburg's lower keel walkway. (photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Moser was on the last flight of the Hindenburg, and as the ship came in to land, Moser was at his landing station, along with flight engineer Wilhelm Dimmler, in one of the engineering rooms, amidships between the two forward motor gondolas. He apparently tried to jump out as the ship crashed to the ground, but he was trapped under the wreckage. He was later identified by his wallet, and by some self-addressed mail that he had in his pocket.

Robert Moser's location at the time of the fire.

Robert Moser's body was returned to Germany with those of the other German crash victims, and he was laid to rest in his home town of Winzeln. Family and friends all turned out to mourn him, but the church was also noticeably full of brownshirts and Nazi flags. Local politicians took full advantage of Moser funeral as an excuse to proselytize on behalf of the Nazi regime. Local Ortsgruppenleiter Theodor Heimburger spoke to the congregation at Moser's funeral, saying, "Robert Moser, your death is not in vain. Your death compels us to defend our Führer and our Fatherland at a moment's notice, to always be true and strong, and to remain unified." Kreisleiter Arnold added, "The German people have suffered a blow of fate, which the rest of the world believes will weaken them. But through the strength and fortitude that God has given them, this shall be overcome. The death of Robert Moser will give us new strength to march forward in his spirit."

While the Nazi propaganda machine sought to bury a national martyr, the town of Winzeln buried a son, a brother, and a friend. Many decades later, his brothers and sisters still treasured photo albums filled with the many photographs that Robert Moser took with his Kodak Retina during his flights onboard the Hindenburg. The camera itself, salvaged from the Hindenburg's wreckage at Lakehurst, found its way to the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen.

(Many of the details of Robert Moser's life come from this excellent article on the cameras recovered from the Hindenburg wreck: http://www.3d-historisch.de/Zeppelin-Retina/Hindenburg-Kameras.htm )

Thanks also to Herr Manfred Sauter of the Freundeskreis zur Förderung des Zeppelin Museums e.V., whose memorial article on the Hindenburg crew members who lost their lives at Lakehurst (Zeppelin Brief, No. 59, June 2011) provided additional details on Moser's career, and to Dr. Cheryl Ganz for providing me with a copy of the article.

John and Emma Pannes

Passengers

Ages: John Pannes - 60
Emma Pannes - 56

Residence: Plandome, Long Island, New York

Mr. Pannes' occupation: New York manager of Hamburg-America Line

Location at time of fire: B-deck passenger cabins

Died in wreck

John Pannes was the New York manager for the Hamburg-America Steamship Line, which also handled arrangements for the Hindenburg's flights to Lakehurst. He and his wife Emma were born on the same day, four years apart – John in New York on September 14th, 1876, and Emma (born Emma Romeiser) in Belleville, IL on September 14th, 1880 – and had been married since sometime around approximately 1910. They had two children: Natalie, 22, and Hilgard, 19, and lived in Plandome on Long Island, New York where they had maintained a home for many years.

John Pannes (arrow) at a meeting between officials of the Hamburg-America Line and the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei in summer of 1936. The tall gentleman to the left of Mr. Pannes is Willy von Meister, the United States representative for the DZR. In the front row, fourth from left, is Dr. Hugo Eckener, chairman of the DZR's Supervisory Board and former commander of the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin.

John and Emma Pannes had sailed to Germany in April onboard the Hamburg-America Line steamer Bremen, intending to fly back on the Hindenburg's first North American trip of the 1937 season. In his capacity as a manager with the Hamburg-America Line, Mr. Pannes had flown to Europe on the Hindenburg the previous May.

During the Hindenburg's flight across the ocean, John and Emma Pannes befriended a number of their fellow passengers including Margaret Mather, who subsequently included the couple in an article she wrote about the Hindenburg's last flight for the November 1937 issue of Harper's Magazine (though she omitted their names for publication.) Miss Mather spoke of having after-dinner coffee with them and passing the time with Mrs. Pannes in the ship's reading lounge.

The afternoon of May 6th, the Pannes' son Hilgard drove from Plandome down to Lakehurst to meet his parents, although he was somewhat concerned about the fact that he had to leave his grandmother Hilda Pannes, 87 years old and ailing, alone at their Long Island home.

John Pannes and his son Hilgard

Meanwhile, as the Hindenburg cruised over New York that same afternoon, Emma Pannes tried to see their house in order to point it out to Margaret Mather. Unable to spot it, Mrs. Pannes was at least able to show Miss Mather the bay where their hometown of Plandome was located. As the afternoon progressed and the Hindenburg passed over the airbase at Lakehurst and flew out to the Jersey coast to wait for the stormy weather to clear, Emma Pannes and Miss Mather kept an eye on Lakehurst's massive Zeppelin hangar, visible for miles around from the air. Occasionally the storm clouds would obscure the hangar, and Miss Mather would playfully chide Mrs. Pannes for having not kept a close enough eye on it. They watched deer scatter from beneath the ship as they flew over the Jersey pine barrens. One of the stewards brought them sandwiches at about 6:30 that evening, informing them that it might be another hour or two before they landed.

As the Hindenburg approached the mooring mast at Lakehurst shortly after 7:00 PM, Mr. and Mrs. Pannes were standing by the observation windows in the dining salon on the portside of the ship along with other passengers, Margaret Mather among them. With the ship apparently just minutes away from landing, Mrs. Pannes decided to go downstairs to their cabin to get her coat. Contrary to the way the story has been told in various airship history books, with Mr. Pannes remaining at the dining room window while his wife went downstairs, it seems that Mr. Pannes in fact went with her.

Once downstairs, Mr. Pannes apparently remained in the main hallway on the starboard side, probably watching the landing through the windows set into the B-deck floor while his wife went to their cabin. The Pannes' cabin was in the new passenger cabin area that had recently been built just aft of the main B-deck hallway. As Mr. Pannes waited, fellow passenger Karl Otto Clemens came downstairs to get his suitcase, pausing next to the windows to take photographs of the landing crew on the ground below.


The approximate locations of John and Emma Pannes on B deck at the time of the fire.


When the ship caught fire moments later, Clemens called to Mr. Pannes to jump through one of the windows. John Pannes turned instead towards the door to the new passenger cabin area, saying that he first had to find Emma, and rushed off. It was the last time either of the Pannes' were seen alive.

Marie Kleemann

 

   Passenger
 
   Age: 61
 
   Residence: Bad Homburg, Germany
 
   Occupation: Retiree
 
   Location at time of fire: Passenger decks -
   portside dining salon
 
   Survived




Mrs. Marie Kleemann was born Sophie Marie Zeuner in Liegnitz on December 8th, 1875. Her father Friedrich Zeuner was born in Breslau on January 4, 1848 and her mother Sofie Zeuner (née Kliegelhöfer) was born on April 18, 1849, also in Breslau.

 The Zeuner family sometime around 1885 or 1890. Back row, from left: Ida, Sophie, Albert, Karl, Marie.
Front row, from left: Sofie (mother) holding Heinrich on her lap, Fritz (standing between his parents),
Luise (sitting between her parents), Friedrich (father), and Helene (in front of Marie.)

Marie Zeuner married Friedrich Kleemann in 1894, and they lived in Bad Homburg, just outside of  Frankfurt. Friedrich Kleemann was born in 1878 in Oberstedten, on the western outskirts of Bad Homburg. He owned the Rex Konservenglas Gesellschaft (a manufacturing firm that made preserving/storage jars) and, with their son Fritz, also founded the Horex-Fahrzeugbau AG, in Bad Homburg. Horex (a combination of the town name HOmburg and the REX glass company) produced motorcycles from the mid-1920s until World War II. After the war Horex resumed production until 1959 when it was bought out and liquidated by Mercedes.

Interestingly, one of the more prominent motorcycles in the Horex line, the 500cc Imperator, ended up being the forerunner of the Yamaha XS 650, one of the best-selling bikes of the 1970s. In the 1950s, Horex had licensed the Hosk company to produce its motorcycles in Japan, which it continued to do until being bought by Showa in about 1957. When Yamaha absorbed Showa in 1960, they acquired plans for a Showa-designed 650cc upgrade of the old Horex Imperator. This was later used as the basis for the design of the popular Yamaha XS 650, which was first produced in 1970.

Marie Kleemann with her grandson, Hans Joachim (John) Bolten circa 1921.

In late April of 1937, Maria Kleemann received word that her daughter Katharina, who lived in Andover, Massachusetts, had undergone a serious operation and would be recovering at home. Mrs. Kleemann wanted to be with her daughter during her recovery, and obviously wanted to find the fastest way across the ocean. Her daughter Katharina and her husband John Bolten, a manufacturer of vinyl and plastic goods with factories in Lawrence, Massachusetts as well as in Germany, had previously flown across the Atlantic on the Hindenburg in July and early August of 1936, and spoke very highly of their experience. Mrs. Kleemann therefore decided to book passage on the Hindenburg. It was certainly the fastest way of crossing the Atlantic at the time, two days faster than the top-of-the-line steamships, and it happened to be departing on its first flight of 1937 to the United States just when Mrs. Kleemann needed to leave.
  
She therefore telegraphed her daughter and son-in-law that she would be arriving at Lakehurst aboard the Hindenburg on Thursday, May 6th. Her son-in-law would meet her at the airport in Newark, where she would make a connecting flight from Lakehurst aboard an American Airlines DC-3. Katharina would be home from the hospital by then, and there was a small gathering of friends and family planned for that evening to welcome Frau Kleemann.
 
Marie Kleemann and the rest of the passengers boarded the Hindenburg in Frankfurt on the evening of May 3rd, and spent the next three days crossing the North Atlantic. "The trip over the ocean was wonderful," she later recalled. "Over Newfoundland, we saw a tremendous number of icebergs, like swimming castles. When we came over Boston Thursday noon, Captain Lehmann said, 'Sorry I can't let you down here.'"
 
The Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst later that evening, and as the ship approached the landing field, Marie Kleemann went to her cabin, which was one of the new deluxe passenger cabins that had been added over the winter on the lower level of the passenger accommodations. "I had gone downstairs to my cabin, and a stewardess [Emilie Imhof] had helped me change my clothing. Then I went upstairs to the social hall. The stewardess stayed below - and was killed."

Marie Kleemann's location in the portside dining room at the time of the fire.

As the Hindenburg hovered over the landing field, just beyond the mooring circle, Marie Kleemann was sitting on one of the benches next to the giant observation windows in the dining room on the ship’s port side, watching the ground crew. When the fire broke out a few minutes later, she stayed seated throughout the entire disaster.

"Everything was so sudden and so confusing. I was sitting next to the window, when it happened, all so suddenly," she later told a reporter from the Boston Globe. "I was sitting in the social hall, looking out of the windows at the ground close below when two big explosions came. The detonation was schrecklich - horrible. Everything was mixed up. Big men, bigger than John [Bolten, her son-in-law] were thrown against me. Everything was noise and shrieks and screams. I don't remember much of what happened until one of the stewards, who had jumped out at first but then returned, came into the burning [dining] hall and pulled me out."

Once the ship was on the ground, the steward Frau Kleemann mentions (probably Fritz Deeg) and other rescuers helped her out of the wreck via the gangway stairs in the ship's belly and she was led to safety, clutching the pair of gloves that she'd managed to hold onto the entire time. Amazingly, she suffered only a cut lip and a bruise on the side of her face, and the hair on top of her head was slightly singed. Her gold-rimmed glasses, which had fallen off during the crash, were recovered from the wreck the next morning by one of the Hindenburg's stewards, who saw to it that they were returned to her.
 

A US Navy sailor leads Marie Kleemann away from the wreckage of the Hindenburg.

John Bolten, meanwhile, was waiting for her at the Newark Airport. When news of the disaster reached him, he immediately made his way down to Lakehurst. In the confusion following the disaster, however, it took him hours to find out that his mother-in-law had survived the disaster, and where she had been taken for medical treatment. Finally, at about 4:00 the next morning, he was able to locate her at the Royal Pines Clinic in nearby Pinewald, NJ, and they returned to Newark the next morning. Bolten had booked a 10:30 AM flight for the two of them from Newark to Boston, but after they boarded the plane and were seated, a shaken Frau Kleemann realized that she was not yet ready to fly again so soon after the horrors of the night before. They took a train up to Boston instead.

 

Marie Kleemann with Nurse Melvia Taylor at Royal Pines Clinic.

Marie Kleemann and her son-in-law arrived at the Bolten home in Andover that evening at approximately 6:30, almost 24 hours after the crash. Still wearing the clothes she'd been wearing at the time of the disaster, a souvenir Zeppelin Company pin still attached to the lapel of her coat, she sat with her family, still in shock from her ordeal. A reporter from the Boston Globe was allowed a short interview with her, with her son-in-law interpreting. She told him her impressions of the flight, and gave him a brief account of her narrow escape. She stopped to take a telephone call from her grandson, John Jr., who was at school in Stoney Brook, in New York. Then, her daughter and granddaughter led her to her bedroom for the first sleep she'd had in a day and a half.

Marie Kleemann and her daughter, Katharine Bolten are reunited at the Boltens' home in Andover, MA, the evening after the disaster.
 

Ten years later, in 1947, Marie and Friedrich Kleemann's grandson, John Bolten, Jr., flew to Germany and brought them both back to the United States to live. Friedrich passed away on December 18th, 1949. Marie became a naturalized US citizen on June 14, 1954. She passed a few years later, on August 9th, 1959, at the age of 83. Both she and her husband are buried in Andover, Massachusetts.
 

 

Marie Kleemann - circa 1947

 

 

Marie Kleemann and her brothers and sisters pose for a group photo, probably sometime in the early/mid 1950s.
Brothers in the back row, from left: Heinrich, Karl, Fritz, Albert.
Sisters in the front row, from left: Sophie, Ida, Helene, Marie.

Special thanks to Mark Bolten, great-grandson of Marie Kleemann, who provided information about his great-grandmother as well as a great deal of material on the Horex motorcycle company. He also provided the photo of his grandmother from 1947.

Many thanks also to Dan Hogan, another of Marie Kleemann's great-grandsons, who was kind enough to share the photo of his great-grandmother and his grandmother the day after the disaster.

Thanks also to Brigitte Diefenbach, granddaughter of Marie Kleemann’s brother, Karl Zeuner, for providing the two family group photos.

Thanks also to Karlo Müller, a historical expert on Friedrich Kleemann’s home town of Oberstedten, for providing me with the correct year of Friedrich and Marie Kleeman’s marriage.

Alfred Grözinger

Crew Member

Age: 20

Hometown: Friedrichshafen, Germany

Occupation: Cook

Location at time of fire: Keel catwalk, base of stairs leading up to bow.

Survived



Alfred Fritz Grözinger was one of the ship's cooks, and had served in this capacity on both the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin and the LZ-129 Hindenburg. Apprenticed as a cook at the Zeppelin Company's Kurgarten Hotel in Friedrichshafen when he was 14 years old, Grözinger was soon "on loan" to the Graf Zeppelin for five flights to South America in 1932. This was likely in no small part due to the fact that his father, August Grözinger, who had been a mechanic with the Zeppelin Company since the early years, and who later became chief engineer on the Graf Zeppelin, was on good terms with Dr. Hugo Eckener. Eckener himself apparently pulled some strings on behalf of young Alfred, who had become a regular member of the Graf Zeppelin's kitchen crew by 1934, making numerous flights to South America.

During the Graf Zeppelin's winter service break of 1934-35 Grözinger, acting on Dr. Eckener's advice, took a job in the kitchen of a hotel in Rio de Janeiro which operated in conjunction with Brazil's Syndicat Condor airline. During his winter stay in Rio, Grözinger lived with the family of his uncle, Karl Rösch. Rösch was an engineer on the Graf Zeppelin who was temporarily living in Rio and supervising the expansion of the airship facilities in nearby Santa Cruz. Grözinger returned to the Graf Zeppelin once it resumed service in early 1935, and was later assigned to the Hindenburg when it began operations in March of 1936. He flew onboard the Hindenburg throughout the entire 1936 season.

Grözinger was aboard the Hindenburg on its first North American flight of 1937, working with the kitchen staff to prepare food for 36 passengers as well as 61 crew members. As the ship approached the mooring circle at Lakehurst on the evening of May 6th, Grözinger was in the kitchen down on B-deck. It had become apparent to the command crew that the ship was tail-heavy, despite several ballast drops from the stern. A few minutes before the fire, the captain ordered six men from the crew's mess to take positions in the bow of the ship, in an attempt to bring the ship into trim for the final approach to the mast. Three off-watch crewmen and three cooks answered the order.

Grözinger, still in his kitchen whites, was one of those who made his way forward, along with fellow cook Richard Müller, assistant cook Fritz Flackus, electrician Josef Leibrecht, and engine mechanics Alfred Stöckle and Walter Banholzer. Grözinger took a position about halfway between the control car and the bow, just forward of the crew quarters at Ring 218. Of the 12 men stationed forward of the control car, Grözinger (along with elevatorman Kurt Bauer, who was standing directly across the keel walkway from him) was furthest from the bow. He found a triangular ventilation hatch a meter or so to the port side of the catwalk through which he could see the activity on the ground below, and he laid down on his stomach to watch the ground crew take up the landing lines. He saw the sailors haul one of the lines over to the mooring circle and attach it to a large winch.

Alfred Grözinger's location at the time of the fire.
(Hindenburg structural diagram courtesy of David Fowler)

Suddenly, Grözinger felt a massive jolt run through the ship, and thought, "Oh my God, something's happened." He immediately looked overhead and saw fire above him. As the ship tilted down by the stern and sent several drinking water tanks tumbling aft down the keel past him, Grözinger thought to himself, "This is the end." He was never entirely sure what happened next, remembering only vaguely that he had hung by his hands from the hatch through which he'd been looking, and then when the ship descended low enough he dropped to the soft, sandy ground below. He picked himself up and ran away as quickly as he could, with the ship collapsing to the ground right behind him.

Alfred Grözinger (arrow) hangs from the portside vent hatch just forward of Ring 118. He is just barely visible due to his white kitchen tunic.

Grözinger drops to the ground as the Hindenburg's hull rebounds slightly into the air.

Visible as before thanks to his white tunic, Grözinger can just barely be seen here as he runs past the front of the Hindenburg's control car, with the ship's framework beginning to collapse above him.

With the Hindenburg's framework crashing to the ground almost literally at his heels, Grözinger (extreme right) sprints to safety. Members of the ground crew can be seen in the foreground already running back toward the ship to begin rescue operations.

Alfred Grözinger (right) walking away from the Hindenburg's wreckage, his kitchen whites barely singed after his narrow escape. US Navy sailors assist senior helmsman Kurt Schönherr at left.

Grözinger was virtually unscathed in the crash, though he was hospitalized briefly for shock at the Royal Pines Clinic in nearby Pinewald. 9 of the 11 other men stationed in the bow of the Hindenburg weren't so lucky, with only Kurt Bauer and Josef Leibrecht surviving the fire along with Grözinger. He stayed in the States for about a week and a half after the disaster, testifying through translator Karl Loerky before the US Commerce Department’s Board of Inquiry on May 15th. Grözinger sailed for Germany on May 15th with the rest of the Hindenburg's surviving kitchen staff and stewards aboard the steamship Europa, arriving in Bremerhaven on May 22nd.

Alfred Grözinger in hospital after the fire.

After Lakehurst, with Zeppelin operations quickly waning, Grözinger took on a job as ship's cook for a yacht owned by a Frankfurt cosmetics manufacturer, and after WW II (during which he served in the German military and was captured and placed in a POW camp) he toughed out some lean post-war years before opening his own restaurants. He later retired to suburban Friedrichshafen. In his later years he was a founding member of the Freundeskreis zur Förderung des Zeppelin-Museums (Friends of the Zeppelin Museum) in Friedrichshafen, and was interviewed a number of times for various Zeppelin documentaries, as he was one of the last remaining Zeppelin old-timers by the beginning of the 21st century.

Alfred Grözinger passed away at his home in Friedrichshafen - Oberteuringen on Christmas Eve, 2002, just four weeks short of his 86th birthday.

Alfred Grözinger circa 2000

(Many thanks to Siegfried Geist, whose detailed obituary for Herr Grözinger was invaluable to me in rounding out this article.)