Kurt Schönherr

Crew Member

Age: Unknown

Hometown: Frankfurt, Germany

Occupation: Helmsman

Location at time of fire: Control car, rudder wheel

Survived


Kurt Schönherr was one of three helmsmen on the Hindenburg's final flight, the other two being Helmut Lau and Alfred Bernhardt. Schönherr had been flying on airships as a helmsman since 1913 when he began his career at the rudder wheel of early DELAG ships Sachsen and Hansa. Schönherr joined the German Naval Airship Division during World War I, and served aboard the L3 under the command of Kapitänleutnant Hans Fritz. The L3 held the honor of having been the first German Zeppelin over England on the evening of January 19th, 1915, when the ship, flying out of Fuhlsbüttel bei Hamburg along with the L4, crossed the British coast at Norfolk, and then turned south to bomb the port of Great Yarmouth.

Less than a month later, on the morning of February 17th, 1915, L3 left Fuhlsbüttel along with the L4 with orders to scout for enemy ships off the Norwegian coast. Four hours later, with one of the L3's three engines having failed shortly after takeoff, Kapitänleutnant Fritz radioed that he was turning back and returning to base. But gale-force winds from the south made it virtually impossible for the L3 to make significant headway. By late afternoon, the ship had managed to cover only 30 miles and was still miles north of the German border when a second engine failed. Fritz was able to use the ship's one remaining engine to turn the ship inland and crash-land it heavily on the Danish island of Fanø. None of the crew were injured, and Kapitänleutnant Fritz was able to destroy the ship's documents and set fire to the ship itself before he and the crew were captured. Thus, Kurt Schönherr and his crewmates spent the next three years as internees.

The crew of the L3 during their internment in the Danish town of Odense. Kurt Schönherr may be the man standing at right. (photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

After the war, Schönherr eventually returned to airships, joining DELAG again in 1927 as a helmsman and subsequently made every flight of the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin until the LZ 129 Hindenburg was commissioned in 1936. He transferred over to the new ship, still as a helmsman, and made every one of the Hindenburg's flights.


Kurt Schönherr prepares a basket of champagne to be lowered from the Graf Zeppelin to a steamship carrying the President of Brazil.
(photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)


His career with the Hindenburg got off to a rather rocky start, however, when on the morning of March 26th, 1936, the Hindenburg was walked out of her shed at Friedrichshafen for her 7th flight, which was to be a three-day propaganda flight over Germany at the behest of Dr. Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. The Hindenburg's commander, Captain Ernst Lehmann, was concerned that the ship's departure had already been delayed by two hours because of unfavorable winds over the airfield that made it impossible for the ship to take off into the wind, as was standard practice. Rather than further delay the flight, Lehmann chose to attempt a risky downwind takeoff, which involved letting the ship's stern rise into the air so that ship would then be lifted by the tailwind hitting the lower side of her tail fins.

Unfortunately, as the ship began its downwind takeoff, a sudden gust coming over the top of the hangar caught the tail of the ship from above and slammed it down to the ground, smashing the lower rudder against the ground. The force of the impact violently tore the rudder wheel from Schönherr's hands, and he was thrown to the floor of the control car. Once the ship was brought back in for landing, Schönherr was sent to a local hospital to be examined, and while he hadn't broken any bones in the accident, his hands were bruised and swollen. Schönherr seems to have returned to the ship in time to be aboard once it was repaired and ready to fly again some six hours later.

During the Hindenburg's 1936 season, starting with the ship's sixth flight on March 23rd, 1936, when for the first time the Hindenburg carried mail, Kurt Schönherr served as ship's postmaster. He oversaw the loading and unloading of mail at the beginning and end of every flight, and also handled onboard mail sent by passengers and crew during flights. Schönherr performed these duties throughout the 1936 season, until navigator Max Zabel took over postmaster duties at the beginning of the 1937 season.

Kurt Schönherr was senior helmsman on the Hindenburg's first North American flight of the 1937 season. As was the case with most every other member of the crew, Schönherr noticed nothing out of the ordinary during the flight. His rudder wheel and all its connections functioned smoothly the whole time, and by the time the ship reached Lakehurst on the afternoon of May 6th, Schönherr had no reason to believe that this was anything more than the most routine of flights.

He went on his final watch of the flight at 6:00, as the Hindenburg cruised along the Jersey shore waiting for the weather to clear over Lakehurst so that they could land. As the ship finally came in to land at Lakehurst shortly after 7:00, Schönherr was at the rudder wheel. He watched as the two manila yaw lines dropped from the bow at approximately 7:21. He even heard the big coils hit the ground below.

Kurt Schönherr's location in the control car at the time of the fire.

Four minutes later, as the ship hovered just beyond the mooring circle, the occupants of the control car suddenly felt a shove, and like most of the rest of them, Schönherr thought that a rope had broken… until he noticed that it was becoming very bright above them, and he felt the ship take a steep tilt aft. As his comrades ran about the control car, looking for a chance to jump, Schönherr just held on to his rudder wheel and moaned in horror. As the ship came down towards the ground and rebounded on its landing wheel, Schönherr made his way to a small window on the forward port side of the control car, and jumped just as the ship collapsed to the ground. He stumbled as he landed, and the ship's framework fell over him.

Schönherr had noticed the ship lean to starboard as it collapsed, and figured that his best bet was to look for a way out on the port side. He found an opening almost immediately and dove out through the port side of the ship, got up, and stumbled clear of the wreckage. Willy von Meister, vice president of the American Zeppelin Transport Company, rushed up and helped Schönherr a safe distance away from the wreck. A pair of sailors then led Schönherr across the mooring circle and put him in a car that took him to the air station's infirmary.

As members of the ground crew run back toward the ship to begin rescue efforts, Kurt Schönherr (arrow) hurls himself from the Hindenburg's wreckage, arms outstretched.

Schönherr falls to the ground...

...and then picks himself up and stumbles to safety.

Two US Navy sailors lead Kurt Schönherr to an ambulance shortly after his escape. Walking just ahead of them is Alfred Grözinger, one of the ship's cooks.

Schönherr managed to escape the Hindenburg wreck with only minor injuries. He stayed in the United States for a little more than two weeks following the disaster, testifying before the Commerce Department's Board of Inquiry on May 20th, and then returning home to Germany a day or two later aboard the steamship Bremen along with a dozen or so of his fellow crewmen.

After a number of years as the captain of a merchant marine frigate, Kurt Schönherr retired in the small southern German village of Unterreitenau, where he passed away in 1969 in his late 70s.

Alfred Bernhardt

Crew Member

Age: 31

Hometown: Charlottenburg

Occupation: Helmsman

Location at time of fire: Bow, mooring shelf

Died in hospital

Alfred Bernhardt was born on October 28, 1905 in Charlottenburg. He was a career officer in the Merchant Marine, having gone to sea in 1924 at the age of 18. By 1929 he was a 4th officer with the HAPAG shipping line, and in 1931 he received his patent papers as Kapitän auf großer Fahrt, which meant that he was certified to captain commercial seagoing vessels anywhere in the world.

Bernhardt was also a pilot, and in January of 1934 he became a navigation instructor at the flight school in Braunschweig. Three years later, on January 1st, 1937, Alfred Bernhardt was hired by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei as an officer candidate. He was assigned to the LZ 129 Hindenburg as a helmsman, but as was the case with many of the recent hires from the Merchant Marine, the idea was to train him for eventual assignment as part of the command crew of one of the new airships that the DZR intended to put into service over the next few years. Before long, Alfred Bernhardt would have, in all likelihood, been given an airship command of his own.

Bernhardt was aboard the Hindenburg's first North American flight of 1937, standing watch at the ship's rudder wheel along with fellow helmsmen Kurt Schönherr and Helmut Lau. As the ship approached the mooring mast at Lakehurst at the end of the flight on the evening of May 6th, Alfred Bernhardt was on standby watch. As such, his landing station was in the extreme bow of the ship on the mooring shelf. Along with rigger Erich Spehl, elevatorman Ludwig Felber, and senior elevatorman Ernst Huchel, Bernhardt was assisting with the lowering of the ship's landing ropes as well as the steel mooring cable that would be used to winch the ship down to its mooring mast.

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

Bernhardt and the others had just begun to let the mooring cable down when the Hindenburg caught fire. As the ship's stern dropped, leaving the forward section pointed high into the air, the fire burst straight out through the bow, engulfing Bernhardt and the others.
By some stroke of fate, however, Bernhardt was pulled alive from the Hindenburg's wreckage. Harry J. King, who operated the baggage service for the DZR at Lakehurst, drove Bernhardt and other survivors to the air station infirmary in the back of his truck. Bernhardt was then taken to Fitkin Memorial Hospital in Neptune, NJ where he appears to have never regained consciousness. He was badly burned enough that nobody was able to recognize him, and doctors cut two rings from his fingers and had a news photographer take a picture of them in an effort to find somebody who could identify him. He died in the early morning hours of Friday, May 7, 1937, and his body was not identified until six hours after his death.
Several days after the disaster, Harry Kane found a wedding ring in the back of his truck. Assuming that it belonged either to one of the survivors whom he'd driven to the infirmary or else to one of the crash victims whose bodies he had transported away from the wreck in his truck, Kane returned the ring to the proper authorities. It turned out to have belonged to Alfred Bernhardt. Kane later received the following letter from Zeppelin Company officials:

"The wedding ring is apparently the property of Alfred Bernhardt, a crew member who died in the disaster. I'm sure that his wife will greatly appreciate the ring, particularly inasmuch as she is expecting a child very soon.

Alfred Bernhardt was buried at the Frankfurter Hauptfriedhof cemetery in Frankfurt, in a common grave alongside six other Hindenburg crew members who lost their lives in the fire. His name, along with those of the others, is inscribed on a monument over the grave site.

Alfred Bernhardt's name inscribed on crew memorial in Frankfurter Hauptfriedhof cemetery.

Thanks 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 Bernhardt's career, and to Dr. Cheryl Ganz for providing me with a copy of the article.
Special thanks also to Doug and Lena King for the information about Doug's father, Harry J. King.

Helmut Lau

   Crew Member

   Age: about 25

   Hometown: Friedrichshafen, Germany

   Occupation: Helmsman

   Location at time of fire: Ladder leading into lower fin

   Survived


Helmut Lau was born in Friedrichshafen, the son of Bernhard Lau, who was one of Count von Zeppelin's first airship captains. Luftschiffkapitän Lau had been flying Zeppelins since the early days when they would take off from and land on Lake Constance, and had later gone on to command test flights of the Navy's wartime Zeppelin L59 (which was later flown to Africa and back again) and the LZ-120 Bodensee, the first passenger airship built following World War I.

Helmut Lau followed in his father's footsteps, training on the LZ-127 as a helmsman, and then transferring over to the new ship, the LZ-129 Hindenburg, when it was put into service in 1936. Lau was one of three helmsmen on the Hindenburg's final flight, the others being Alfred Bernhardt and Kurt Schönherr. He had been with the ship as a helmsman since its maiden flight on March 4^th, 1936. Lau was also one of three Hindenburg crewmen (the others being Chief Engineer Rudolf Sauter and watch officer Captain Walter Ziegler) who were also ranking Nazi officers, Lau himself being a sturmführer (second lieutenant) in the S.S., in which capacity he also served as a flight instructor. According to Captain Heinrich Bauer, despite his official role within the Nazi Party, Helmut Lau was a dedicated airshipman first and foremost.

One of the Hindenburg's helmsmen, probably Helmut Lau, at the rudder wheel. (photo courtesy of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmBH Archive)

As the Hindenburg came in to land at Lakehurst on its final flight, Lau was off watch and in the crew's mess eating his dinner when the signal for landing stations was blown shortly after 7:00 p.m. He immediately went aft to his landing station at the auxiliary control stand at Ring 33.5 in the lower fin. He briefly walked forward to look out the observation window on the starboard side of the fin, saw that the ship was still a fair distance from the mooring circle, and returned to his station near the auxiliary elevator wheel. Noting that the ship wasn't yet close enough to the ground for him to need to take variometer readings (Lau was tasked with manning the aft variometer, which measured the ship's rate of descent) he returned to the starboard observation window. He watched as the landing lines dropped from the bow and were picked up and taken up by the ground crew. The Hindenburg had by this time come to a complete stop, and Lau noted that it was drifting slightly to starboard.

Helmut Lau's location at the time of the fire.

(Hindenburg structural diagram courtesy of David Fowler)

Over the years, carefully-selected fragments and paraphrases of Lau's subsequent testimony concerning what happened next have appeared in numerous publications and documentaries. They often appear to support varied and sometimes wildly conflicting theories as to the cause of the Hindenburg fire.

What follows, therefore, is an unedited section from Helmut Lau's subsequent testimony to the Board of Inquiry, in which he describes what he saw at the outset of the fire. The testimony is dated May 18, 1937, and translated (as Lau was making his statement) from German to English for the board by Willy von Meister, director of the American branch of the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei:

"[Rigger Hans] Freund was pulling at the hauling-in line for that steel cable located in the fin. He called out to me that it was not running clear on the starboard side and that I was to release it. I proceeded up to unfasten this line that had fouled and passed by Mr. Sauter [Rudolf Sauter, the ship's chief engineer] who was looking out of the port window. I went up the first ladder, which is approximately two meters high, 6-1/2 feet. I then proceeded along the narrow catwalk that is on the port side of the fin, approximately 7 feet or 2 meters off the lower edge of the fin. I then got hold of the ladder that leads further up to the catwalk, with one hand, and with the other hand I released the steel cable that had fouled. I then waited to see if the cable would go over now that it was being pulled up, and was looking up and was facing the port side of the fin."

I heard over me a muffled detonation and looked up and saw from the starboard side down inside the gas cell a bright reflection on the front bulkhead of cell No. 4. The gas cell was approximately at the line that I have indicated on Exhibit 10. I therefore could see from there to the point that I am indicating. I could see from my position at this point to approximately the position indicated. Here and here I saw no fire at first. I saw it on the front side of cell 4. The bright reflection in the cell was inside. I saw it through the cell. It was at first red and yellow and there was smoke in it. The cell did not burst on the lower side. The cell suddenly disappeared by the heat."

"The fire proceeded further down and then it got air. The flame became very bright and the fire rose up to the side, more to the starboard side, as I remember seeing it, and I saw that with the flame aluminum parts and fabric parts were thrown up. In that same moment the forward cell and the back cell of cell 4 also caught fire, cell 3 and cell 5. At that time parts of girders, molten aluminum and fabric parts started to tumble down from the top. The whole thing only lasted a fraction of a second."

"I turned around and pulled in my head - I had no hat on - and jumped back underneath the girder to which the telephone is attached. Whilst I was jumping back, I noticed that the ship was dropping rapidly. The ship at the moment that the explosion went up had an acceleration down. As I ran back, I saw Mr. Sauter, who was lying on the floor and had his hands over his head, and I did not see the machinist, [Richard] Kollmer, at that moment, who operates the landing wheel. The reason that I did not see him was that I was looking out of the window, watching the ground to gauge the moment when the ship would hit. During the descent it was extremely bright in the lower fin. I did not feel the heat during the descent, only during the descent pieces of aluminum, molten aluminum, and bits of fabric were tumbling down constantly."

"During the descent I stood with my back to the direction of flight. That is, I was looking astern and down. The ship then cracked onto the ground with great force. I felt everything was collapsing from above, and I fell to the right. Freund, who must have been standing somewhere behind me, fell over me at that time, but I did not see him, only after we were lying on the ground I saw him."

"In the moment of the ship crashing on the ground, Mr. Sauter apparently regained consciousness and he yelled at us to get out. At that time, intense heat and smoke was also observed. We were lying on the inside of the outer cover and wanted to get out through the outer cover. This was not possible, however, because the outer cover was resting on the ground. In other words, the lower fin had laid itself over on the left side, on the ground, and I looked up. I saw Kollmer climbing out of the entrance hatch in the fin. Sauter yelled to us that we could get out at that point. Then Freund emerged and got out, and I got out, and Freund assisted me to get out, and Freund ran away, and I looked around once more and I saw Mr. Sauter coming out with blood streaming down his face. I got hold of him and pulled him out. We then ran about 20 meters away from the ship, and I did not see Mr. Kollmer anymore.= Freund and Sauter were still with me.

"When we first examined each other to see if we were hurt, I had nothing the matter with me; Mr. Sauter had a bleeding wound on his head, and Freund had burns on the back of his head and on the side of his cheek. Kollmer was limping away from the wreck. We could not do anything because the wind was coming from port and was blowing the flames and the smoke to the starboard side. Sauter and Freund and myself then ran around the stern side of the ship to the port side, and I no longer saw Freund. I lost sight of him. Sauter ran for the port rear engine, and there were sailors from the Lakehurst ground crew. They wanted to hold Mr. Sauter back because I think they were afraid that the fuel tanks might still explode at that point. I was still a little further aft, and heard screaming from inside the wreck at approximately this point (indicating)."

Thus, Helmut Lau was the person with the clearest vantage point of the origin of the fire, although by his own admission he didn't literally see the initial burst of fire, but rather heard the "pop" of the fire igniting and the glow of the fire through gas cell #4. As part of his testimony, Lau filled out a diagram on which he sketched the ladders and gas cells near his position, as well as marking his field of view and the point at which he first saw the fire.

Helmut Lau's witness diagram, filled out for the Board of Inquiry investigation.

Helmut Lau testifying before the Board of Inquiry, May 18th, 1937.

Though analysis of the details presented in his testimony can, when taken in context, produce a few different interpretations as to what exactly might have started the fire, it's clear that Lau, along with Freund, Kollmer, and Sauter, was very close to the fire's point of origin (Lau was perhaps 60 or 70 feet below and aft of the spot where he first saw the glow of the fire), and that Lau himself saw the fire take hold and spread from deep within the ship's hull.

Remarkably, Helmut Lau was uninjured in the crash, and returned to Germany via steamship not long after the disaster. He survived World War II, though he did spend time in a British POW camp. Due to his prodigious autodidactic ability in learning multiple languages, Lau acted as a translator for occupation forces after the war. He later worked in Düsseldorf as an engineer, and lived in a number of other places (including Heidenheim and the Spanish town of Dénia) before eventually settling in Merzig, where he married and had two sons and a daughter.

Special thanks to Helmut Lau's granddaughter Irina Philippi for providing details of her grandfather's life.