Lot 5005

Description

Beautiful estate of the Chief Steward (restaurant manager) on board the Do X aircraft. The pictures were mainly taken during the transatlantic flights to New York and Rio de Janeiro in 1931/32. Approx. 130 photographs in a variety of formats on loose photo album pages, labelled, no cover. Approx. 44 photographs in a small photo album (red cover, dimensions approx. 14 x 20 cm). Also includes several loose photos, cardboard emblems of the Hanse Kogge, approx. ten letters from passengers, some written in English, approx. 12 newspaper articles and several other documents. In varying states of preservation, viewing is recommended.
A commercial flying boat, the Do X was built by the Dornier company of Germany after World War I and completed in 1929. It was financed by the company for Dornier-Flugzeuge, a corporation founded by the Weimar Republic/Deutsches Reich. It was by far the world's largest aircraft at the time. On 21 October 1929, the Do X took off for a sightseeing flight lasting 53 minutes over Lake Constance with ten crew members and 159 passengers (!) on board (company employees and their families) (see also the museum in Friedrichshafen a.B.). In October 1930, the aircraft was approved by the German Test Institute for Aviation and given the aircraft registration number D-1929. During the US flight, the crew included the "grandfather of the stewardesses" Fritz Krause as the restaurant manager and the navigation officer Wilhelm Niemann as first officer and the first flight postmaster. The commander of the Do X was the later General der Flieger Friedrich Christiansen. On the five-day return flight of the Do X from New York to Berlin, leaving on 20 May 1932, the aviator Antonie Straßmann was also a member of the crew.

Condition: II Questions about the lot?