“My love,
I am writing to you in a hurry … Ullstein informed me that the Zeppelin will probably leave on March 24th, so I must leave Berlin on the 21st in the evening. Besides, they want me to speak with the captain of the Zeppelin, M. Eckener, who will be in Berlin on the 18th. I would then have to leave Bruen on Monday at 4 in the morning in order to arrive in Berlin in the afternoon …. Could you, my love, go with Bebe to Bruen on Sunday at midnight? We will meet at the train station, and will continue the trip to Berlin together … I kiss you a thousand times. (signed) Wolf ”
On March 20th, 1929 the German consul in Jerusalem received a letter permitting the “Graf Zeppelin” to fly over the Land of Israel. However, it was made clear that landing was absolutely forbidden except in cases of emergency. Departure was scheduled for the morning of March 25th. Two days before departure, a problem arose: France banned the Zeppelin crossing over strategic areas in its territory and only allowed for a route that was too dangerous. At the last moment, the German Foreign Office succeeded in obtaining the French’s consent to fly over the Rhone Valley, provided the Zeppelin will reach those areas no earlier than 7 pm i.e. after dark, in order to prevent surveillance of French fortifications. Departure time was forwarded to 10 pm on March 24th.
The weather on the night of March 23rd was stormy. A stowaway was caught and taken off the ship. One of the engineers died of gas poisoning. The hour of departure was delayed. During the day the fierce winds abated. An hour before midnight, on the night of March 24th, the distinguished passengers were brought from the hotel “Kurgarten” in Friedrichshafen, where they had enjoyed one last hot bath, to the hangar. They deposited their smoking supplies in the entrance, excitedly waved farewell and disappeared into the gondola of the airship – Graf Zeppelin LZ -127. Role call of passengers’ names was taken. Two people were found to be missing and someone was sent urgently to bring the President of Germany and the former Minister of Transport who had fallen asleep at the hotel. The blocks under the hold were removed and dozens of pairs of hands pulled the ropes carefully sliding the Zeppelin out of the hangar. Four minutes earlier they were still weighing the ship that was carrying 16,000 pieces of mail in its hold. Phone ring grated the air, officers ran hither and thither, an order to reduce water was given… and the ship – still tied by thick cables, was hovering above the ground. A large police force surrounded the giant balloon “overseeing that nobody would steal the ship at the last minute.” With a slight additional delay due to a gust of wind coming in from the north-east, finally, finally the ropes were cut off, handkerchiefs waved at the windows, the engines hummed, ecstatic shouts and applause… the journalists on board fired their last press reports, and at 54 minutes after midnight on March 25th the ship raised anchors and the dark, fantastic silhouette of the Graf Zeppelin rose up into the full moon lit sky.
Dr. Wolfgang von Weisl stood thrilled in the command room beside the famous captain, Dr. Kurt Eckener, facing the quivering needle of the modern gyroscope compass – the latest technology that replaced the old magnetic compass and had with an unbelievable a resolution of a tenth of a degree of movement.
On board were 41 crew members and 28 guests – among them Dr. Eugen Bolz, president of Württemberg (Germany); Theodor von Gerard, former German Minister of Transport; Countess Bradenstein, Count (Graf) Zeppelin’s daughter; Mrs. Tony Zander, member of the Reichstag; Erich Kocbeizr, justice minister in the government of the Reich; Paul Loebe, Chairman of the Reichstag; Albert Pflueger, president of the parliament of Württemberg; Dr. Herman Badet, a high official in the Prussian Interior Ministry; Wilhelm Kayel and Joseph Jose, Members of Parliaments; Lady Drummond Hey, representative of the newspaper conglomerate Hearst; and other senior members of the Prussian Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Economy; representatives of the German Navy; and as mentioned, Dr. Wolfgang von Weisl.
Von Weisl was one of the most interesting and picturesque among Zionist leaders of the time. He was the son of a prominent family from Vienna, a physician and journalist, who immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1922 and guided the first commanders course of the nascent Haganah. Two years later, as a journalist representing the German media conglomerate, “Ullstein Verlag”, covering the Near East and the Islamic world, he was received at the courts of Arab kings and sheikhs and became a leading expert on Islam. In 1925 he initiated the founding of the Revisionist Party in Vienna and later that year in Palestine and raised the banner of the struggle for the rights of Jews to pray at the Western Wall. A few months after this Zeppelin flight, at the outbreak of the 1929 riots, von Weisl was stabbed by an Arab that left him hovering between life and death.
The guests were shown their rooms, small cells but elegantly furnished that reminded one of a first-class, luxury ocean liner. The excellent chef presented his piece de la resistance – hotdogs and beer – and the guests, huddled in camel wool blankets embroidered with the Zeppelin logo, raised their glasses “ZUM WOHL!”.
The Graf Zeppelin airship was the result of an encounter between an idea conceived in the late 19th century by David Schwartz, an Hungarian Jewish timber merchant; the enthusiasm of a German nobleman, Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin, and the support of Dr. Hugo Eckener, an aeronautic engineer and former journalist. This last gentleman stood at the head of the Zeppelin Company. He promoted and raised the enthusiasm and the resources required to build the airships on the one hand, and navigated the ship with its passengers and cargo through storms, over vast oceans, and through dangerous mountain passes on the other hand. The Graf Zeppelin LZ -127 was the queen of all airships built until then: a huge hydrogen balloon made from rubberized cotton fabric stretched over a skeleton of aluminum, its length 128 m, and its maximum width less than 12 m. Two petrol engines gave the “silvery exotic fish” mobility and that deafening buzz. Its 2,650 horsepower were translated to a speed of up to 80 miles per hour in calm weather. Gasoline and fuel that fed the engines were stored in barrels and bags of cloth and sufficed for 167 hours of flight. The zeppelin could carry about 13 tons of passengers and cargo. To measure the ship’s distance from the ground a rifle was fired and the height was calculated according to the time it took the echo to rebound, or a bottle was thrown over a river or a lake, and the time until the sound of the bottle hitting the water was heard was used to compute the distance. To the viewers on land the airship gleaming in the sun on a background of blue sky, or vanishing into the silver clouds must have seemed like a divine revelation, a creature from a fairy tale.
In its nine years the Graf Zeppelin LZ -127 covered more than a million miles over the course of 590 flights, including: the first commercial passenger flight over the Atlantic, the first passenger flight around the world, and flying a team of researchers to the North Pole. When the airship first crossed the Atlantic in a flight that lasted 111 hours, overcoming a terrible storm, newspapers on the two continents reached record distribution, and the crew and passengers were honored like Hollywood stars, due to the heroic repair by a team headed by Eckener’s son, who was hanging in the air above the tempestuous ocean. After repair, the Graf Zeppelin returned to Germany in a flight that took less than three days – in comparison with the then six days journey by an ocean liner. A commercial flight route between the continents was thereon established.
But the importance of developing such long-range flight capabilities was not yet apparent to the German politicians and even the dizzying success of their trans-Atlantic flight did not solve the Zeppelin Company’s financing problems. So Eckener, planned a marketing campaign targeting high-ranking officials of political clout – a flight to the Middle East. The choice of the route – over the cradle of European civilization offered the guests an exposure to interesting navigation problems and the unusual impression that the Zeppelin airship evokes in the world. Struggling for public and governmental support, Eckener understood that he had to conquer his passengers’ hearts, and ever the great publicist, he loaded the ship with 63 boxes of wines and an additional 160 bottles of other alcoholic beverages. With its wallpaper-lined walls, heavy curtains, classic wood furniture and brocade upholstered chairs, the main room of the gondola resembled a tea salon in a luxury hotel in central Berlin rather than the world’s greatest flying machine. The meals were served on two square and one round table, set with white table cloths, porcelain crockery (adorned with the zeppelin emblem LZ in blue and gold), silver cutlery and crystal glasses.
Dr. Wolfgang von Weisl sat on a small table with his typewriter, while Dr. Badet, an old chess player, dictated the members’ list for the first International Aerial Chess Club. Dr. Eckener, tall and stern with an imposing presence, came out of the command room – “laughing with delight because it all worked out so well.” The ship soared, gray clouds crowded around the window panes. The presence of the thick fog made it too dangerous to continue through the mountain passes of the Rhone Valley and the ship was delayed until the fog lifted. At 8:45 am the Mediterranean Sea was spotted, and von Weisl’s old friend, the Egyptian journalist Abu Al Fath, sat down beside him and said : “I’m so glad you’re here because you know what it means when I say ‘Bismillah’?”. “Bismillah”, said von Weisl, “Bismillah – in the name of God – we go to the Promised Land in a blessed journey!”
In the Promised Land preparations for the Purim Carnival in the first Hebrew city, Tel Aviv were at their heights. The Zeppelin was a gift from heaven, not only for the masses who crowded the streets of the almost-European-almost-city, that sprang out of the Eastern sands, but also for the mayor, Meir Dizengoff, who was now dealing with the logistics for the airship landing. Dizengoff had pledged to provide 600 young men for the cumbersome landing arrangements. But the British Foreign Office demanded that their German equivalent inform Dr. Eckener that he may not land in Palestine. Dr. Eckener sent a telegram to Dizengoff announcing with regret that he is prevented from landing, and in response Dizengoff cabled back: “Thanks in the name of 80,000 Jews celebrating Purim in the first Hebrew city.”
For days now the Hebrew press have been publishing excited reports about the Zeppelin’s visit with “Doar Hayom” running the party. Von Weisl, the star reporter of “Ullstein Verlag”, obtained the approval from Ullstein Verlag, and Arthur Koestler, his apprentice, who had just sat down on the Palestine correspondent chair and did not know yet that he would be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, hastened to report about “Doar Hayom” being the world’s first newspaper to publish the Zeppelin’s travel log! and it being “a leader of technical innovation” – transmitting news reports by parachuting the reports in bags “will build a reputation for the Hebrew press in the world”. These two gentlemen harnessed the tremendous publicity that accompanied the Zeppelin’s flight to the Zionist movement’s call. Von Weisl dreamed about a delegation of Zionist dignitaries that would greet the guests, and Koestler – about a bold action against the British police forces that will surely surround the parked Zeppelin… The veto on landing was a blow to the plans of the pair of the zealot reporters.
On Tuesday at 4 p.m. the airship approached Haifa Bay at 130 mph. After forty hours of flight an ecstatic welcome awaited the Zeppelin: the German colony residents, gathered since noon at the foot of Mount Carmel, greeted the Zeppelin with flags and ribbons. The ship circled over the sign “Willkommen” made of giant planks painted white, then slid south along the coast, above the ancient Crusader castle of Atlit, over the ruins of the imperial Roman fortress of Caesarea, over the newly planted eucalyptuses of Hadera and Zichron-Yaacov and the two new settlements, Netanya and Herzliya. Further south, arising from the sands was the “glory of new Palestine”, Tel-Aviv, bustling with celebrators:
” … A motley crowd of guests, relatives, acquaintances, friends, hotel owners, carters, and porters. Many guests came also in Avtomobiles [buses]. Guests are from all over the country … All hotels in the city are full … By yesterday eighty groups were registered in the Carnival committee (that is three thousand people) …. Also at the carnival in Tel-Aviv were many Arab tourists from Egypt and Syria, and many guests from the Arab cities in the Land of Israel: Nablus, Jenin and others. Many Arabs visited the Jewish National Fund market and bought lottery tickets… Some prominent Arabs from Jaffa and other cities came to the mayor of Tel-Aviv with letters of recommendation from their mayors, interceding on their behalf for tickets to the masked balls (tickets for the balls are sold, as is known, only by recommendation).”
When the droning sound of the Zeppelin’s engines was heard below, traffic in the streets stopped, and the crowds cheered, clapped hands and waved their hats. Wolfgang von Weisl proudly pointed out the orderly system of roads and wide boulevards built by “his Zionists”: “And here arrives the journey to its peak,” he told the readers of the most important newspapers in the German language, “here we can forget the bad impression from Marseille and the disappointment from Rome, here the Zeppelin is welcome as a precursor of modern times … The streets are full of people. Thousands and thousands cram the city, its streets and squares; the blue and white flags of the Jews flood the length of the streets, factories’ sirens operate at full power. Automobiles escort us while we hover, engines mute, over huge Tel–Aviv… Three big bags with confetti are emptied off the side of the ship as a contribution to the carnival tumult in the Jews’ city. The crowd below is increasing. Hooting and shouting reach us through the thin air. Europe in Asia welcomes the Europe in the air, constructing a bridge over space and mind …”, as von Weisl emphasized the connection and common interests between Jewish Palestine and Europe.
The Zeppelin offered the quickest mail transfer at the time, and it became its main source of income. Since 1912 the Zeppelin was authorized to stamp and sort mail. Signed postcards or special stamps in honor of the Zeppelin flights were coveted by collectors and philatelists. The mail sacks were thrown at specified points and “the honest finders” were relied upon to deliver them. In these bags were also the onboard journalists’ reports and articles. The radio was used only by the crew or to transfer short, telegrafic news items. And now the largest mail parachuting in the history of the Zeppelin was planned to take place above Jerusalem: four sacks. In preparation for this event, Koestler hung posters throughout Jerusalem promising in English, Hebrew and Arabic, “…travel expenses and a prize of 1.25 pound from Ullstein to the honest finders.” However, because of a delay darkness fell before the vessel arrived in Jerusalem, and a concern rose that the bags might get lost. It was therefore decided to throw the mail over the British military airport camp at Sarafand (today Zerifin) “…as they are held by descending parasols. The parasols opened immediately and flew away to the earth like four white birds.” Among them were also Dr. von Weisl’s reports for the Neue Freie Presse and the Voschice Zeitung. The envelopes and postcards bore the red stamp of Luftschift Graf Zeppelin 1929 Mittel MeerFahrt with a picture of the Graf Zeppelin over desert landscape and a palm. To von Weisl’s postcards the “Ramla Mail” stamp was added.
The public relations efforts of the Doar Hayom newspaper were not aimed at the nations of the world so much as at the internal Zionist political struggles in general and the growth in the circulation of the Revisionists’ paper in particular. Behind the scenes of the “Zeppelin theater” a small part of the struggle for the Zionist leadership was taking place. Dr. Herman Badet, a devote Jew and an enlightened Zionist, was a director in the Prussian Interior Ministry, and had already participated in the Zeppelin’s Trans – Atlantic flight about six months earlier. When the Middle East route was decided upon, partly due to his influence, Badet invited Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the Zionist Organization, to take part in the flight. But Weizman was in no hurry to take advantage of the Zeppelin’s publicity, and so at the dining table in the Zeppelin’s gondola, facing Badet, sat – of all people – Dr. von Weisl, the fiercest critic of Weizmann and the Zionist socialist policies, who happened to be also a columnist of Doar Hayom. Davar, the trumpet of the workers’ parties, had to draw the news about the Zeppelin’s flight from the Egyptian newspaper Al -Ahram. In an attempt to save face, Davar published a greeting, handwritten by Dr. Badet, “to the Workers Federation Committee” from “us the socialist passengers on the Zeppelin journey”, that was sent – not with those mail sacks thrown off the ship, but from the station in Friedrichshafen a whole week after the journey ended (April 5th, 1929). Above Eckener’s signature von Weisl signed his name with a humoristic wink “as a guest of the socialist parliamentary club in the Zeppelin.” For a socialist he definitely was not.
In the Hebrew press a war raged over the question of landing or not-landing. Each version had political implications: who supports and who criticizes the Mandate Government. The level of hope and expectation as well as the competition over who really knows what the Brits want, dizzyingly seesawed from one end to the other.. Doar Hayom, the mouthpiece of the Revisionist party, sharply criticized the Mandate Government and the British policy in the Middle East for not letting the Zeppelin land on holy soil; while Davar, on behalf of Dr. Badet, explained the cancellation of the Zeppelin’s landing as due to adverse weather conditions: “Wrong is the opinion published in various newspapers that the British government banned the landing in Ramla. …what reasons could have prevented it from giving such permit.”
And while all this was raging far below, on board the Zeppelin the president of the Reichstag, ministers, deputies and other distinguished travelers, all of whom very much wanted to participate in the Purim celebrations below their feet, devised a scheme that would force the British to approve a landing at least for a few hours. One of the dignitaries had sprained his leg skiing sometime before the making the Zeppelin trip. And lo and behold, his leg started to swell horribly, causing the passenger severe pain. The ship’s Viennese doctor, Dr. von Weisl, was convinced that the patient needed to be examined by another doctor in Tel Aviv . A telegram to Ramle was about to be sent informing headquarters of the necessity of an emergency landing. But Eckener thought and pondered and finally decided to resist the urge and the pleading: it was already after dark and there was no certainty that the staff on the ground was equipped with all that was needed for a night landing – such as flashlights.
In parallel, what started in January 1929 with a technical request for landing rights by Dr. Eckener to the Department of Air in the German Ministry of Transport, had by now developed into a full-blown diplomatic and political storm: hundreds of telegrams, hours of discussions and legalistic maneuverings, a blow to the reputation of the British Foreign Affairs, a scandal in the British House of Commons, and an unwelcome shake to the stability of the Egyptian parliament … all as the result of Lord Lloyd’s wish that a British airship be the first in the Mediterranean’s sky. It was only thanks to Section 18 of the Mandate for Palestine which states that Britain was obligated to give equal air rights to all members of the League of Nations, that the Zeppelin’s appearance over Palestine was, as depicted in the New York Times, “one of the outstanding paradoxes of modern times is the arrival today of the Zeppelin over the Holy Land, where means of transportation are mostly those of thousands of years past – camels and donkeys…”
The Zeppelin flew over Tel–Aviv for the last time, answered the ovations with flickering lights, and headed east to the Holy City. Just as the whirring sound of the Graf Zeppelin’s engines was heard in Jerusalem so did “the announcement of the radio station in Neuroberg (Germany) of the Zeppelin passing over Jerusalem at this moment…”
The Zeppelin’s journeys were staged like theatrical events. Dinner with carefully selected wines was scheduled to be served at sunset while hovering over Jerusalem. But it was not the visuals that enthralled the hearts this time: darkness already enveloped the city and only isolated lights cast patches of light around the Temple Mount. The guests on the ship watched in reverence and silence as the ancient, eternal city, was illuminated in the pale glow of the full moon of Shushan Purim..
Dr. Badet and Dr. von Weisl shared in the traditional reading of the Book of Esther.
From there Capt. Eckener turned the craft towards the Dead Sea. And thus he wrote in his memoirs:
“The Dead Sea is nearly 1,300 feet below sea level. We were tempted by the possibility of flying our Zeppelin at a significantly lower height than sea level. Jerusalem lay at an altitude of 2,600 feet and within fifteen minutes we were over the tip of the plateau from which there is a steep drop to the Rift Valley where at its bottom lay the Dead Sea. It was night, and the rising full moon with its pale light barely illumine, the great lake extended in semi-darkness, mysterious like the underworld. Slowly we sank lower, carefully groping the way lower and lower until we were flying a few hundred feet above the water. We looked up at the peaks towering above us as if from a basement. It was a strange feeling to be on an airship that normally soars high above the sea, and now flies a thousand feet below it. We opened a few bottles of Rhine wine and celebrated the event …”
Over the glittering, black waters at the lowest place on earth, Lady Drummond Hey was heard to wittingly remark: “our Zeppelin has now turned into a submarine”.
A bottle of “Carmel Mizrachi” wine was opened. It was brought to the ship by Dr. von Weisl as a gift from “Keren Hayesod6” in Germany and Lady Drummond Hey announced excitedly that she had been to the winery from hence came this wonderful wine. Sweet wine, heavy, “wonderful. It is full of Palestine’s sun,” said the daughter of the Graf Zeppelin, the Baroness Brandendstein, as the passengers clinked their glass in honor of the Holy Land and Dr. von Weisl promised that the Orient will not stay Oriental for long.
Dr. Badet punned the revisionists and in particular von Weisl , as he told Davar’s readers that when he toasted glasses with Dr. Weisl and called “L’Chaim” [Weizmann] , he was surprised that Weisl also said ” L’Chaim” and not as a conscious Revisionist was supposed to answer “L’Vladimir” [Jabotinsky ]….
Eckener turned his ship southward. Stretched beneath them was the road where “almost 3,000 years ago the Patriarch Jacob’s sons journeyed to buy grain from their brother Joseph, the luckiest grain speculator of all times.”
After 81 hours and 5,000 miles the Zeppelin returned safely to Friedrichshafen. The ORIENT-FAHRT (the East-Flight) “was probably the most wonderful flight in the history of aviation.”
