Xaver Maier

Crew Member

Age: 25

Hometown: Walldorf, Germany

Occupation: Head chef

Location at time of fire: Kitchen

Survived



Xaver Maier was the head chef on the Hindenburg. Having previously been head chef at the Ritz in Paris, Maier had been flying as a Zeppelin cook since 1933, first aboard the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, and then when the Hindenburg was commissioned in 1936 he was assigned to the new ship.

Xaver Maier preparing lobsters in the galley of the Graf Zeppelin, circa 1934. (photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Maier flew on every flight the Hindenburg made in 1936 and early 1937, and during the first weekend in May of 1937 he oversaw the provisioning of the ship for the first North American flight of the 1937 season. He would later recall how on the day before the ship's May 3rd departure, officials from the Gestapo and the SS's security division, reacting to the increasing number of bomb threats that the Hindenburg had been receiving and conducting an exhaustive pre-flight search of the airship, had made an unusually thorough inspection of the kitchen and particularly the food storage compartments. Maier guided the security officers back along the lower keel walkway to the three storage areas. He noted with some exasperation that they made a special point of spending what Maier considered to be an inordinate amount of time in the compartment where the canned and preserved goods were kept, opening and sampling tins of game meat, caviar, and other expensive delicacies – all of which would need to be replaced before the ship sailed the following day.

Other than this comparatively minor annoyance, however, Xaver Maier noticed nothing particularly out of the ordinary during the flight to the United States. He had his two main chefs with him, Alfred Grözinger and Albert Stöffler, as well as two new kitchen assistants, Richard Müller and Fritz Flackus. Between the five of them, they would provide three meals a day, not including incidental snacks, for 36 passengers and 61 crew members (themselves included.) On the return flight they would have almost twice as many passengers to feed, as the Hindenburg was fully booked with people traveling to England for the coronation of George VI the following week. At least, as Maier would later note, there were no problems with the equipment in the ship's all-electric kitchen during the westbound flight.

Xaver Maier (left) and Alfred Grözinger (right) working in the Hindenburg's kitchen during one of the ship's 1936 flights.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

As the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst at the end of the flight on the evening of May 6th, Maier was in the kitchen down on B-deck, just below the portside dining room. Maier heard the landing signal sound at approximately 7:00 PM, and a short while later he saw radio officer Franz Eichelmann take a call on the ship's phone nearby, relaying an order from the control car for six of the off-duty men in the crew's mess to take positions forward. Three of Maier's cooks, Grözinger and the two young trainees, Flackus and Müller, were among those who responded to the order and left the kitchen area to make their way to the bow.

Xaver Maier's location on B-Deck at the time of the fire.

Maier was putting away a stack of clean dishes. He had just set a plate in the scullery when he heard a detonation, closely followed by a sharp jolt which knocked him on his back. As he grabbed a girder next to the scullery and pulled himself up, Maier noticed that the ship was taking a steep inclination aft, sending dishes falling to the floor. He wasn't sure what had gone wrong, but he knew he'd better get out of the ship. He then looked out of the kitchen entrance and saw cabin boy Werner Franz dropping out through a service hatch out in the keel corridor near the door to the purser's office and the smoking room. Maier followed, jumping from a height of approximately 10-15 feet.

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.

As he scrambled out from underneath the falling hull, he noticed for the first time that the ship was on fire. With the ship collapsing to earth just behind him, Maier escaped the wreck virtually unharmed. His kitchen whites were not even scorched, and he was filmed by the Movietone newsreel crew at the scene as sailors led him away to the infirmary, smoking a cigarette as he walked.

Xaver Maier, cigarette in hand, being led away from the Hindenburg wreck.

Maier stayed in the States long enough to testify before the US Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry on May 13th, exactly a week after the disaster. He sailed for Germany two days later on May 15th with the surviving members of his kitchen staff, as well as the surviving steward crew, onboard the steamship Europa. Maier survived the war, and thereafter continued to ply his trade at fine German hotels such as the Parc Hotel in Frankfurt.

Xaver Maier passed away in the late 1990s.

Ernst Rudolf Anders

Passenger

Age: 63

Residence: Dresden, Germany

Occupation: Co-Owner, Teekanne Co.

Location at time of fire: Passenger decks, probably starboard lounge

Died in wreck


Ernst Rudolf Anders was a tea merchant from Dresden and was, along with Eugen Nisslé, co-owner of the Teekanne Company. As a young man, Anders went to work for Teekanne, which had been founded in 1882 as a subsidiary of R. Seelig & Hille. Along about 1890, Anders and Nisslé, a fellow co-worker, came up with the innovative idea of selling tea in pre-mixed and measured amounts. This allowed Teekanne to provide consistent quality regardless of year-to-year differences in tea harvests. This soon became Teekanne's main focus, and before long gained the company worldwide recognition.

In 1898, Anders and Nisslé took over the company, and the two families have owned it ever since. By 1913, Teekanne introduced their "TeeFix" and "Pompadeur" brands, which would continue to be popular in Germany almost a century later. During the First World War, Teekanne began to supply Germany's soldiers with pre-mixed, pre-portioned tea in small gauze bags. Known as "tea bombs", these were the forerunners to mass-produced tea bags.

After more than a decade of making these early tea bags by hand, in about 1928 or 1929, Teekanne developed the first tea bag machine. It could produce 35 fully-packed tea bags per minute, and was soon being marketed world-wide. Several years later, faced with the problem of the tea bag material giving the tea an unpleasant after-taste, Teekanne developed tea bags made of perforated cellophane, and later parchment. By 1937, under the TeeFix brand, these new tea bags were being marketed around the world.

In the spring of 1937, Ernst Rudolf Anders made plans to travel to the United States with his son, Rolf. Now a very successful businessman, Anders could afford to book passage for himself and his son on the Hindenburg. However, two weeks before the voyage, Anders suddenly decided to cancel his son's ticket and send him instead via steamer. Evidently, Anders didn't feel entirely comfortable with the idea of having both of them traveling on the Hindenburg, reportedly explaining simply, "Can't have two from the same family on one airship."

So, on May 3rd, 1937, Anders' family saw him off at the Rhein-Main airport in Frankfurt. As the Hindenburg rose into the evening sky, the clouds above her briefly parted, revealing a star above the airship. Frau Else Anders, perhaps nervous about her husband's last-minute decision to cancel their son's ticket, screamed and pointed, thinking that the star was, in fact, a spark and that the airship was catching fire. People nearby quickly reassured her that she wasn't seeing a spark and that the ship was in no danger.

Ernst Rudolf Anders watching icebergs off the Newfoundland coast, Wednesday, May 5th, 1937. (Image taken from home movies shot during the Hindenburg's last flight by fellow passenger Joseph Spah.)

Ernst Rudolf Anders, lower center with binoculars, enjoys the sights passing by the Hindenburg's observation deck. Probably along the North American coastline on May 6th, 1937. At left, silhouetted against an upright post, is fellow passenger Moritz Feibusch. To the right of Anders, facing the camera, is Lt. Claus Hinkelbein. (Image taken from home movies shot during the Hindenburg's last flight by fellow passenger Joseph Spah.)

Sadly, Frau Anders' apprehensions turned out to be well-founded. When the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst three evenings later, Herr Anders was in the passenger section, probably in the starboard lounge watching the landing through one of the observation windows, when the ship suddenly caught fire. It is not known how Anders died, or whether he initially made it out of the ship alive and died in the infirmary or was simply trapped in the wreckage like many of his fellow passengers. He was later identified by a ring, his watch, and the spats and striped brown shirt he was wearing.

The approximate location of Ernst Rudolf Anders on the passenger decks at the time of the fire.

Anders' son Rolf, who may indeed have owed his life to his father's decision to cancel his booking on the Hindenburg, subsequently took over his father's co-ownership of Teekanne. Eight years later, on February 13, 1945, in the last few months of World War II, the Allies virtually incinerated most of Dresden in a two-day aerial firebombing campaign. The Teekanne Company's facility was badly damaged, and production was slowed. In 1946, what remained of the business was seized by the Allies, and the co-owners, Rolf Anders and Johannes Nisslé, were displaced. With only a backpack, a typewriter, and a bicycle between them, the two men fled to West Germany, They relocated to Viersen, just outside of Dusseldorf, where they began the process of rebuilding the Teekanne Company.

Within a few years, Teekanne was a leader in the tea business once again, and in 2007 the company, still owned and operated by the Anders and Nisslé families, celebrated its 125th anniversary.


(NOTE: For additional reference, the Teekanne website includes a section on the history of the Teekanne Co.)

Captain Walter Ziegler

Crew Member

Age: 29

Hometown: Hamburg, Germany

Occupation: Watch Officer

Location at time of fire: Control car

Survived




Captain Walter Ziegler was a watch officer on the Hindenburg's final flight. A former merchant marine, Ziegler had served aboard the Hamburg-America Line steamers Resolute and New York, rising to the rank of third officer before being hired by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei on May 1st, 1935. With the DZR looking to train watch officers to command the fleet of airships which was expected to be built over the next several years, Ziegler quickly progressed from his initial station on the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin as one of Chief Knorr's riggers, to stand watch as a helmsman, then as an elevatorman and finally, by the time the Hindenburg made her maiden flight on March 4, 1936, a navigator. By the beginning of the Hindenburg's 1937 season, Walter Ziegler had reached the rank of watch officer, and as such was one of the ship's second officers.

Ziegler was also, according to Klaus Pruss (the son of the Hindenburg's commander Captain Max Pruss) one of three ranking members of the Nazi Party among the Hindenburg's crew, the others being Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter and rudderman Helmut Lau. According to Pruss, Ziegler and the others were, however, dedicated airshipmen first and foremost.

Walter Ziegler (prior to promotion to navigator, given the lack of insignia stripes on his sleeve) gives a tour of the navigation room in the Hindenburg's control car.

A disciplined man, Ziegler was apparently more than a bit concerned by the comparatively lax security in the Zeppelin hangar at Rhein-Main Flughafen in Frankfurt, as visitors were allowed inside the hangar to look at the Hindenburg in the days before it's first 1937 flight to America, which was scheduled to begin on May 3rd. Ziegler, who was the officer in charge of moving the Hindenburg into and out of her hangar, later recalled that diagrams of the interior of the ship were posted on the walls of the hangar, which could conceivably have made a much easier job of it for a potential stowaway or other troublemaker.

The first North American flight of the season progressed without incident, and Captain Ziegler's last four-hour watch of the flight ended at 4:00 on the afternoon of May 6th, shortly before the Hindenburg passed over the Lakehurst air station for the first time before heading for the New Jersey coast to await better landing conditions. Ziegler returned to the control car at approximately 7:00, just before navigator Eduard Boetius sounded the signal for landing stations. The ship was approaching the Lakehurst air station from the southwest, and the giant airship hangar came into view shortly thereafter.

Captain Ziegler took the off-watch position at the gas board at the rear of the command deck in the front section of the control car. At approximately 7:10 PM, as the ship made a wide circle to the north and west of the landing field, Ziegler cranked the wheel on the gas board, valving gas simultaneously for 15 seconds from gas cells 3 through 11, and cells 13 and 14 on orders from Captain Albert Sammt, the watch officer in charge of the ship's altitude during the landing maneuver. When it was noticed a couple minutes later that the ship was tail-heavy, Sammt ordered Ziegler to pull the individual valving mechanisms for cells 11 through 16 (which filled the forward half of the ship) in an effort to bring the ship into trim. Ziegler valved these six forward cells three times over the next five minutes or so, for 15 seconds at 7:13, an additional 15 seconds at 7:16, and for 5 seconds at 7:19 when the ship was hovering almost stationary just beyond the outer edge ot the mooring circle, preparing to drop its yaw lines.

Sammt then remarked that the ship seemed to be in trim, and Ziegler proceeded to watch the ground crew below. He saw the ship's two yaw lines drop from the bow at 7:21, and watched the ground crew attach the port line to the corresponding mooring car. The wind suddenly changed slightly, and Ziegler saw the portside yaw line tighten as the ship moved to starboard.

Captain Ziegler's location in the control car at the time of the fire.

The ship suddenly gave a shake, and Ziegler heard a dull thud. He looked aft, and saw a yellowish-red glare coming from the area near the stern of the ship, then he held on as the ship itself took a sudden steep inclination aft. Gradually, the front of the ship began to descend at what Ziegler later described as "a moderate speed, and "settled relatively smoothly." As the ship neared the ground, Captain Ernst Lehmann, former Hindenburg commander who was aboard as an observer, ordered everybody out of the car. Ziegler made his way to a window on the starboard side and prepared to jump. The ship touched down on the hydraulic landing wheel beneath the control car, and Ziegler held back as the ship rebounded about 15 or 20 feet back into the air, leaping out the window as the ship settled to earth for the second and final time.

Ziegler's natural escape route at that point was to run towards the starboard side of the ship, but he quickly stopped and thought better of it when he saw the ship's starboard structure collapsing in front of him. He turned around and made his way back toward the control car and, having heard stories of wartime Zeppelin crew members having survived fiery crashes by lying down on the floor of their gondolas until the fire had subsided, Ziegler climbed back into the remains of the control car and lay face-down on the floor of the navigation room.

One of the Hindenburg's watch officers, either Walter Ziegler or Anton Wittemann, (arrow) pauses and begins to backpedal as the ship's hull collapses atop several other members of the command crew in front of him.

Captain Ziegler stayed in the control car for a few seconds, and then quickly realized that it was simply too hot for him to remain there. He briefly hunted around the navigation room for the ship's log book but, unable to locate it, he climbed back out the starboard window of the navigation room and made his way around the front of the control car. He noticed that the fire was less intense to port, and after a few moments the rest of the outer cover had burned away and he saw a clear path to safety there. Chief Sauter was already out there, and when he saw Ziegler emerging from the wreck, he helped him to get clear.

After making a rather slow escape from the wreck, Ziegler somehow walked out virtually unscathed, and then joined with other crew members in climbing up into the portside passenger decks to look for survivors. Once they assisted the last five passengers out of the ruins of the dining salon, Ziegler and a number of others including steward Fritz Deeg, navigators Eduard Boetius and Christian Nielsen, and an Esso Oil official named Emil Hoff began trying to determine who had escaped the fire and who had not. Ziegler stayed on the field doing what he could for the next couple of hours, and finally went over to the DZR office in the heavier-than-air hangar where crew survivors had been gathering, and then proceeded over to the infirmary to see how many survivors had passed through there.

Ziegler remained in the United States for about 3 weeks after the disaster. He stayed by the bedside of engine mechanic Walter Banholzer, critically burned and dying at nearby Paul Kimball Hospital, until Banholzer passed away early in the morning on May 7th, the day after the fire. Ziegler was also required to assist several other surviving crewmen in the sad task of identifying the bodies of the victims, lined up on the floor in a makeshift morgue in one of the side rooms of Hangar #1. One of those identified by Ziegler was Emilie Imhoff, the Hindenburg's first stewardess, who had been hired by the Zeppelin Company the previous September.

As one of the Hindenburg's most senior officers not confined to the hospital (the other two being Captain Heinrich Bauer and Captain Anton Wittemann) Ziegler took an active role in the investigation into the disaster, particularly in the hours and days immediately following the accident. He was onhand as police and federal agents combed through the Hindenburg's wreckage, and at one point was approached by an FBI agent who was holding what he claimed to be part of a bomb he'd discovered in the stern portion of the ship. What at first appeared to be a watch spring, Ziegler told the man, was in fact merely part of one of the tensiometers used to measure the tautness of the bracing wires radiating out like bicycle spokes from the ship's axial girder.

Ziegler, along with Bauer and several others, also conferred with the US Navy's Board of Inquiry before it was shut down due to a jurisdictional conflict the Monday following the disaster. Since the Hindenburg was a civilian aircraft, the investigation fell to the US Department of Commerce, even though the disaster had taken place on a Navy base. Once the Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry convened, Ziegler and the others conferred with the Board members as needed, though they were not actually part of the Board itself.

A week after the disaster, Ziegler was onhand for the Board testimony of 14 year-old cabin boy Werner Franz, the youngest crew member by at least several years. There was some question as to whether Franz should be sworn in or not since, as Ziegler pointed out to the Board, it was customary in Germany that minors not be made to swear oaths. In the end, it was decided that the boy should be allowed to testify without being sworn in.

Captain Walter Ziegler (right) and cabin boy Werner Franz (left) on the day of Franz's testimony to the Board of Inquiry.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

Ziegler himself testified before the Board of Inquiry on May 20, and then joined a group of his fellow crewmembers two days later as they returned to Germany onboard the steamship Bremen, which then arrived in Bremerhaven on May 28th. Ziegler later reportedly told of having been met at the ship's port in Germany by a Gestapo agent, literally as he walked down the ship's gangplank to disembark. He was taken to Berlin, where he was interrogated for several hours by a ranking Gestapo officer, who was apparently investigating the possibility that the Hindenburg had been sabotaged. Since this account comes from A.A Hoehling's book, however, and there is as yet no second source upon which to triangulate and attempt to glean some sort of context for the story, it must be taken with a grain of salt.

Walter Ziegler survived the war, and settled down in Hamburg, where he worked for a British petroleum company.

Max Zabel

   Crew Member

   Age: 29

   Hometown: Walldorf, Germany

   Occupation: Navigator (third officer)

   Location at time of fire: Navigation room, control car

   Survived


Max Zabel was one of four navigators on the Hindenburg's last flight, the others being Franz Herzog, Christian Nielsen, and Eduard Boetius. Zabel had previously sailed with the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line, starting out as an able seaman (AB) in about 1925 when he was in his late teens, rose through the ranks, and by late 1932 was second officer aboard the Vogtland. Zabel was hired by the Zeppelin Company in 1935 as a navigator. He had first flown on the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin before the Hindenburg was commissioned in 1936, and then transferred over to the new ship in time for the Hindenburg's maiden flight on March 4th, 1936. In all, Max Zabel made 45 flights aboard the two airships.

Max Zabel signs autographs during a stop at Lakehurst in 1936.

On the Hindenburg's first North American flight of 1937, which began on May 3rd, Zabel was serving not only as a navigator, but also in his new capacity as ship's postmaster, having taken over for helmsman Kurt Schönherr who had acted as the Hindenburg's postmaster during the 1936 season. Zabel not only looked after the bags of mail which were carried at Ring 203 above the control car, but he also handled in-flight mail sent by passengers and crew. Zabel's standby watch, therefore, tended to be taken up largely by his mail duties.

The flight proceeded without incident and on the final day, May 6th, as the ship cruised over the New Jersey shore waiting for the weather at Lakehurst to clear, Zabel was on standby watch and went to the crew's mess for dinner shortly after the ship passed over Asbury Park at approximately 6:00 PM.

About an hour later, the Hindenburg received clearance to land, and was approaching the air station at Lakehurst. Max Zabel reported to the navigation chart room in the center of the control car when the signal for landing stations was sounded. He was in charge of the forward landing wheel under the chart room, which he deployed using compressed air. He then used a detachable control wheel to keep the landing wheel and its housing turned into the wind. After he had gotten the landing wheel more or less into position, Zabel was watching the landing operations on the ground from one of the windows alongside the control car. He saw the two yaw ropes drop from the nose of the ship, one after the other, and the ground crew picking them up and hauling them off to be connected up to the mooring tackle near the mast. The port rope tightened noticeably as the wind changed and pushed the Hindenburg to starboard.

Max Zabel's location in the control car at the time of the fire.

The control car shook suddenly with an extraordinary vibration as Zabel heard a muffled explosion. He looked aft and saw a reddish/yellowish reflection. Suddenly the stern of the ship dropped and Zabel braced himself against the rear wall of the navigation room. He saw the contents of the forward chart table, drawers, the log book, etc., fall to the floor as the ship tilted even more steeply. After a number of seconds, Zabel felt the bow of the ship finally beginning to descend. He saw fire everywhere above him, and climbed up onto the chart table to jump out of the main portside window in the navigation room, but he got his foot caught momentarily in one of the top drawers. Navigator Christian Nielsen was already at the window ahead of Zabel and and jumped as the ship neared the ground. Zabel felt the ship rebound on its landing wheel and leapt from the ship a split second after Captain Heinrich Bauer, who had dropped through a window next to the elevator wheel, just forward of Zabel. The two men ran out from under the wreckage as it descended for the second and final time.

Max Zabel (arrow) drops to the ground, having just jumped from the portside navigation room window in the control car.

Max Zabel escaped the wreck unhurt, and immediately ran aft to the passenger decks where he helped others to lead two men and two women out of the ruined dining salon. Once it was clear that they'd rescued everyone they could from the passenger decks, Zabel returned to the control car to make sure nobody was still in there. Seeing that the control car was indeed empty, Zabel then proceeded forward to the bow where he knew there had been nearly a dozen men stationed. He saw rescuers carrying the burning body of one of the men out of the bow, and couldn't tell who it had been. Zabel continued to check various parts of the ship for some time after that, but was unable to find anyone else to rescue.

As ship's postmaster, Zabel worked with the US Postal Service and the Zeppelin Company to account for the mail that had been aboard the Hindenburg when it burned. The Hindenburg had begun the flight with approximately 235 pounds of mail in eight separate mailbags, though one of those bags had been dropped by parachute over Cologne, Germany on the first night of the trip. Between the remaining seven bags of mail and the in-flight mail that various passengers and crew had posted during the voyage, however, there were still between 15,000 and 17,000 letters on the Hindenburg at the time of the fire. Ultimately, only 358 pieces of mail were recovered. Those that could be forwarded to their intended recipients were eventually sent on. However, Mr. F. W. von Meister, the representative for the Zeppelin Company in the United States, had lists of regular philatelic mail subscribers who had had mail being carried on the Hindenburg's last flight. To those whose mail could not be salvaged, Max Zabel signed copies of a form letter that had been written up, explaining that their mail had been lost in the fire.

Zabel testified before the US Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry on May 19th, and then sailed for Germany slightly more than two weeks after the disaster along with other crew survivors onboard the steamship Bremen, finally arriving home approximately a week after that on May 28th.

After the war, Max Zabel worked in Hamburg for the German Hydrographical Institute.

Ernst Huchel

Crew Member

Age: 31

Hometown: Friedrichshafen, Germany

Occupation: Senior elevatorman

Location at time of fire: Bow, mooring shelf

Died in wreck


Ernst Huchel was born on February 26, 1906 in the village of Satuelle, which was situated northwest of Magdeburg, the capital of the Prussian province of Sachsen (Saxony.) Apprenticed as an engine fitter, Huchel found work at the Maybach Motorenbau, and at Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in the tank/container division. He later completed engineering school and on August 5th, 1930, he was hired by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin as an engineer in the construction office.

In 1935, Huchel was taken on as part of the crew of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, on which he stood watch as a helmsman, gradually training up to become an elevatorman. The following year, when the LZ 129 Hindenburg was completed, Huchel transferred to the new ship as the ship's senior elevatorman. He flew on the Hindenburg's maiden voyage on March 4th, 1936, and on most flights thereafter.

A senior elevatorman, Huchel was also in charge of the Hindenburg's freight, both loading and unloading it, and keeping the freight logs. In addition, he was also tasked with looking after special freight while the ship was in flight. The Hindenburg would often transport unusual items in its freight compartments, including airplanes, automobiles, and even on one occasion in August of 1936, a pair of live pronghorn antelope.

Huchel had married Else Baumann, and in 1936 he became the father of twin boys. He was also, in his spare time, an avid sailplane pilot, serving as a flight instructor, as well as the leader of the local glider club in Friedrichshafen.

On the Hindenburg's first North American trip of 1937, which left on the evening of May 3rd, Huchel served once again as senior elevatorman, the other two elevatormen aboard the flight being Kurt Bauer and Ludwig Felber. He also handled his usual duties overseeing the ship's freight, of which there wasn't a great deal on this particular flight.

There were, however, two dogs aboard – one being sent to a man named Fred Muller in Philadelphia, and the other being shipped by a passenger named Joseph Späh. Huchel, on his standby watch, would walk aft to the kennel basket at Ring 90 to feed and check in on Mr. Muller's dog, usually with one of the stewards. Mr. Späh insisted on feeding and looking after his dog himself.

Ernst Huchel at the Hindenburg's elevator wheel, circa 1936.

Ernst Huchel was off-watch as the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst at the end of its final flight on the evening of May 6th, 1937, and as such he would normally have taken a landing station above the control car, manning the spider lines. However, since the ship was making a flying moor instead of the usual German-style low landing, the spiders weren’t used. Instead, Huchel took a landing station at the mooring area in the bow with along with helmsman Alfred Bernhardt, rigger Erich Spehl, and trainee elevatorman Ludwig Felber.

Ernst Huchel's approximate location at the time of the fire.
(Hindenburg structural diagram courtesy of David Fowler)

When the fire broke out a short while later, Huchel and the others in the bow were engulfed by fire as the blaze shot up out of the nose of the ship and ignited the forward-most hydrogen cell. Huchel seems to have been standing on the lower mooring platform, from which the forward yaw lines had been dropped. While Bernhardt, Felber, and Spehl remained in the ship until it was on the ground, Huchel tried to escape the flames by leaping from the four-paned observation window between the mooring rope hatches. Unfortunately, the ship's bow was still several hundred feet in the air, and Huchel was killed when he hit the ground.

A crewman, probably Ernst Huchel, plunges to earth after having leapt from the tip of the Hindenburg's bow.

Ernst Huchel's body (foreground) after having been dragged away from the wreckage.

Ernst Huchel's body was shipped back to Germany the following week, May 13th, aboard the steamship Hamburg.

Ironically, Jakob Baumann, the father of Ernst Huchel's wife Else had also been killed on a Zeppelin. During World War I, Baumann was chief engine mechanic aboard the German Naval airship SL 11, commanded by Hauptmann Wilhelm Schramm. On the night of September 2-3, 1916, SL 11 took part in a multi-airship bombing raid on London. At approximately 2:30 in the morning, the airship was overtaken and shot down in flames by a biplane flown by Lt. William Leefe Robinson. SL 11 slowly fell to earth, ablaze from end to end, and landed in the London suburb of Cuffley. All aboard, including Jakob Baumann, were killed. The crew was buried in nearby Potter's Bar.


Special thanks to Michael Pavlovic for helping me to confirm the identity of Ernst Huchel in the wreck photos shown above.

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 Huchel's career, and to Dr. Cheryl Ganz for providing me with a copy of the article.

Otto Reichhold

Passenger

Age: 42

Residence: Vienna, Austria

Occupation: Manager, Beck, Koller & Co., Vienna

Location at time of fire: Passenger decks

Died in wreck


Otto Reichhold, born in Berlin in April of 1895, was manager of Beck, Koller & Company, a paint and varnish manufacturer owned and operated by the Reichhold family in Vienna, Austria. Reichhold had made a number of previous steamship voyages to the United States, including a 1913 trip to visit Doctor Edward Rumely in La Porte, Indiana. Doctor Rumely ran the Interlaken School in La Porte, and the 18 year-old Otto Reichhold visited the school as a student.

The Reichhold family had been renowned varnish makers who had long served the Austrian royal household. In the years following World War I, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken apart and the old trappings of feudalism faded, it was no longer of any particular benefit for a business to have served the Emperor, as it had been before. By the mid 1920s Otto Reichhold, then in his early thirties, and his brother Helmuth (just barely in his twenties) co-managed a smaller, stripped-down version of the family’s paint and varnish business, which was called Beck, Koller & Co. The brothers kept looking for ways to improve and expand the company.

They found their opportunity in the burgeoning automobile market.

The concept of mass-production had begun to take hold, and American entrepreneurs such as Ford, Durant, and the Dodge brothers developed assembly lines to more efficiently (and inexpensively) produce automobiles… thus, making them available to the masses. One of the biggest snags in auto production of this kind, however, was the cumbersome, time-consuming process of painting the cars once they’d been assembled. The paint had to be applied by brush and with newly-developed spray guns, and the paint took far too long to dry so that a car could be delivered. It was common for automobile manufacturers to have anywhere from two to four weeks of inventory in the process of being painted at any given time. This inability to keep pace with the assembly lines was an industry-wide problem.

Helmuth Reichhold emigrated to the United States in the early 1920s and went to work in the paint department of Ford Motors, quickly rising through the ranks to become the technical head of the department within a year. In winter of 1925, Helmuth (who had Americanized his name to "Henry") heard from Otto back in Europe that the family company had developed oil-soluble, phenol-based paints that covered in one or two coats, and then dried quickly (in hours rather than days) with the application of a small amount of heat.

Having purchased 20 100-pound bags of the substance through Otto, Henry Reichhold named the new product "Beckacite", after the name of the family firm, and then started his own business selling Beckacite directly to Ford and, to a much lesser extent, to other automobile manufacturers. Henry and Otto Reichhold quickly realized that their Vienna factory was not going to be able to keep up with the American auto industry's demand for Beckacite. so, operating under the Beck, Koller & Co. name, Henry set up a factory and sales offices in Detroit.

Otto Reichhold, back in Europe, had begun dealing with the British automobile industry, and had expanded the Vienna branch of Beck, Koller and Co. on this basis. He sailed to the United States in 1928 aboard the steamship Deutschland, and spent a few months in Detroit with Henry working out the details of the company's new American operation. It was decided that Otto would focus on production and development, and Henry, along with his business partner Charles O'Connor, would concentrate more on sales.

And so, the Reichhold's businesses began to grow, establishing research laboratories in the United States to meet the increasing demands of Ford Motors, which made a point of selling its cars in as many different colors as it could. Beck, Koller & Co. faced its share of difficulties during the Great Depression, but the company survived and gradually began to set up smaller subsidiary companies in the United States and in Europe to produce the raw materials needed to create the various paint and resin lines Beck, Koller & Co. sold.

Otto Reichhold photographed during an ocean voyage in the 1930s.

(photo courtesy of Gerald List)

Otto Reichhold, who continued to be based in Europe, would periodically travel to the United States to meet with Henry and discuss the further development of their international business. During the first week of May in 1937, Otto was on his way from Europe for one of these meetings. He had written to Henry to inform him of his plans to fly over on the German passenger airship Hindenburg, mentioning how keenly he was looking forward to the experience. Otto left his wife Rosa and their daughter behind in Vienna, and boarded the Hindenburg in Frankfurt on May 3rd. Henry made his way from Detroit to Lakehurst, NJ to meet Otto when he landed on May 6th.

It is not known exactly where Otto was when the Hindenburg caught fire. He may have been in his cabin, or perhaps in the starboard lounge (towards which the wind, and ultimately the fire itself, was blowing at the time of the accident, and where, unfortunately, a number of passengers ended up trapped and unable to escape).


Otto Reichhold's possible location in the starboard lounge at the time of the fire.


Henry Reichhold and an associate, Dr. Stefan Baum, were standing in the visitors' area next to the Lakehurst Naval Air Station's huge airship hangar, watched in horror as the airship burst into flames and fell to the ground. They saw people leaping to the ground and running from the airship, and were hopeful that Otto was among them. They searched the airfield and the survivor lists long into the night, but as the hours passed their hopes began to fade.

As it turned out, Otto Reichhold was unable to get out of the wreck, and was burnt badly enough that it was several days before his body was identified. Otto's body was subsequently shipped back to Vienna aboard the steamship Hamburg on May 13th, 1937.

Following Otto’s death, Henry was left to shoulder the burden of responsibility for the company, and became CEO of Beck, Koller & Co. which, in the year following Otto’s death, was renamed Reichhold Chemicals, Inc. The company flourished and was still running strong at the beginning of the 21st century.

Henry Reichhold retired in 1982, having made Reichhold Chemicals into a Fortune 500 company. In fact, at the time of his retirement, Henry Reichhold had been Chief Executive Officer of a Fortune 500 company longer than any other CEO. He passed away in December of 1989.

Otto Reichhold is buried in a cemetery in Vienna, with his brother Henry beside him.


Special thanks to Gerald List, Otto Reichhold's grandson, who provided me with the photo of his grandfather seen here, as well as with some factual corrections courtesy of his mother, Herr Reichhold's daughter.

Thanks also to Laurie-Ellen Shumaker, whose father worked for Reichhold chemicals for almost 40 years, and who shared with me her father's written history of Beck & Koller/Reichhold Chemicals.