Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Fritz Flackus

Crew Member

Age: 24

Hometown: Frankfurt, Germany

Occupation: Cook's assistant

Location at time of fire: Keel stairs leading to bow

Died, either in wreck or in infirmary

Fritz Flackus, born January 8, 1913, was one of head chef Xaver Maier's assistant cooks aboard the
Hindenburg's on its first North American flight of the 1937 season. Born in Frankfurt in 1913, Flackus had served a culinary apprenticeship from 1927 to 1930. He had only recently been hired by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei and assigned to the Hindenburg as a cook's assistant, and this flight to the United States was his first.

Flackus was off duty as the ship came in to land at Lakehurst on May 6th. Shortly before the airship dropped its landing lines, he and five other men in the crew's mess (cooks Alfred Grözinger and Richard Müller, electrician Josef Leibrecht, and engine mechanics Alfred Stöckle and Walter Banholzer) were ordered to the bow to help trim the tail-heavy ship.

Fritz Flackus' approximate location at the time of the fire.
(Hindenburg structural diagram courtesy of David Fowler)

When the Hindenburg caught fire a few minutes later, Flackus and most of the others in the nose section suddenly found themselves engulfed in fire and at least 150 feet above the ground, unable to jump to safety. Along with 8 others in the Hindenburg's bow section, Fritz Flackus died either in the fire, or possibly in the air station’s infirmary shortly afterwards. His body was returned to Germany and buried at the Frankfurter Hauptfriedhof cemetery in a common grave along with six other Frankfurt-area crew members who were killed at Lakehurst. His name, along with those of the others, is inscribed on a monument over the grave site.

Fritz Flackus' name inscribed on crew memorial in Frankfurter Hauptfriedhof cemetery.

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

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