The first flight of the German pioneer ended with a crash landing

An achievement that will be worthy of a museum within a year – that must be something special. On November 27, 1909, the "Vorwarts", the most important newspaper of the social-democratic workers' movement in Germany, reported that a permanent exhibition on aviation was to be opened in the Reich Post Ministry. In addition to a flying machine by the Wright brothers, "who first realized human flight", the focus will be on a monoplane designed by the Frenchman Louis Blériot.

But that's not all: "Fortunately, a German machine can also be included in this part of the collection - the plane of Hans Grade, the only successful German flight technician to date, but who has already achieved feats that no Frenchman has ever managed like a Start, which he can always repeat without any outside help.” “Vorwarts” was not necessarily known for exuberant patriotism; such a representation had to be solid enough to make it into the SPD newspaper.

In fact, on October 28, 1908, Hans Grade succeeded for the first time in taking off a self-constructed flying machine and keeping it in the air in a controlled manner. Flying machine meant that he didn't float like an airship by hydrogen gas or like a hot air balloon, but actually flew by aerodynamics.

His machine, which would make it into the museum a good year later, was a three-decker with a six-cylinder, two-stroke engine. The first flight took place on the Cracauer Anger, a part of the Elbe meadows north-east of Magdeburg city centre. In the first attempt, which was partially successful, Garde managed to fly a good hundred meters at a height of about eight meters - however, the experiment ended with a crash landing, after which repairs were first necessary.

But Grade couldn't be stopped. He tried again, and on November 3, 1908, he "got the hang of it": his flight that day was shorter, only about 60 meters, but it ended with a clean landing. In the weeks that followed, Grade made dozens more flights.

The news of his success also reached beyond the German borders. In the January 2, 1909 issue, the British magazine Flight reported for the first time on Hans Grade: "It is reported from Berlin that an engineer named Grade has successfully completed flights of between 100 and 400 meters in length at an altitude of around one meters and at different speeds between 30 and 40 kilometers per hour.” He was thus recognized as the first successful aircraft designer and pilot from Germany.

Born on May 17, 1878 in Pomerania as the son of a teacher, Hans Grade had successfully completed the Technical University in Charlottenburg near Berlin since 1899, the most respected training center for engineers in Germany. Soon after graduating, he founded “Grade-Motorenwerke GmbH” in Magdeburg in 1905, which manufactured two-stroke combustion engines for bicycles and boats.

As a one-year volunteer, in 1907/08 he was in charge of military service with the Magdeburg Pioneer Battalion and began construction – inspired by the writings of the Berlin aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal and by the motorized flights of Alberto Santos Dumont, Louis Blériot and Gabriel Voisin in France, which were much discussed in the press at the time of a triplane. For this he used the engine from his company's portfolio, which had the best ratio of high power and low weight: a six-cylinder with 36 hp.

But thoroughbred engineer Grade was far from satisfied. So in the spring of 1909 he designed a lighter monoplane weighing only 120 kilograms with a smaller four-cylinder engine with 24 hp. With this aircraft he moved to the Bork airfield near Beelitz and, almost to the day a year after his first flight, he met the requirements for a prize worth 40,000 marks (at least 40 average annual salaries), which the Mannheim industrialist Karl Lanz had offered in 1907: Received The money should go to the designer whose German-made aircraft successfully flew around two turning marks in the shape of an eight with a German engine and landed safely.

With the money he gained, Hans Grade founded an engine and aircraft factory in Bork, which was able to deliver two to three aircraft and engines a week as early as 1910. At the same time, Grade promoted aviation with demonstration flights in all major cities and attracted many flight students for its flight school, which opened in 1910.

Technically, Grade remained true to its principles of small and light machines with its own two-stroke engines. This made their design unsuitable for military use, as they were underpowered and too light to carry weapons or an extra gunner. During the First World War, his company was largely limited to repairs and was taken over by its competitor Aviatik in 1916.

Grade's biographer Gustav Ewald judged: "His tragedy lay in the fact that, like other pioneers (the two Wrights, Louis Blériot or the Farman brothers), he did not deviate from his original idea." After the war, Grade concentrated on the construction of Cars; his company employed up to 850 people. But in 1925 his factory went bankrupt. His small car was characterized by original ideas such as a continuously variable transmission.

Hans Grade later devoted himself to various developments, since 1934 also on behalf of various corporations. In 1939 he was obliged to take on tasks in the course of rearmament; in fact he had little to do with it. After the end of the war he made himself available to the new Berlin magistrate, but died on October 22, 1946 at the age of 77.

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