The Hindenburg, a massive German zeppelin 803 feet long – almost the length of three football fields – departed Frankfurt, Germany on the evening of May 3, 1937, on the first of 10 scheduled round trips between Europe and the United States during its second year of commercial service.
The airship had made 63 previous flights, including 10 round trips to the United States in 1936, but it met tragedy on May 6, 1937 when, in attempting to land at Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, New Jersey, it burst into flames near the mooring mast.
Only 32 seconds later, all that was left of the airship was a smoldering hulk. Of the 97 people aboard – including 36 passengers and 61 crewmen – 35 died (13 passengers, 22 crewmen), and one member of the ground crew was also killed. The majority of the victims were burnt to death, while others died jumping from the Hindenburg at an excessive height, or as a consequence of either smoke inhalation or falling debris. Ship captain Ernst Lehmann, who escaped the crash with serious burns, died at a nearby hospital the next day.
Miraculously, 62 passengers and crew members survived. The results could have been much worse, but, fortunately, the flight was filled to only half capacity. The return flight to Germany, however, was fully booked, with many ticketed passengers planning to attend the historic coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in London the following week.
On-site coverage of the disaster was unusually high because heavy publicity of the first transatlantic passenger zeppelin flight of the year to the United States drew significant media attention. As a result, the tragedy was very well documented and drew worldwide attention; particularly memorable was a famous eyewitness radio report by Herbert Morrison for station WLS in Chicago. Interestingly, coverage of the disaster by the German media was conspicuously muted, with only a few photographs published in German newspapers, perhaps not surprising in that it constituted a major black eye for German industry. Nonetheless, German victims were memorialized as fallen war heroes.
In the days after the disaster, an official board of inquiry was set up at Lakehurst to investigate the cause of the fire, with the American investigation led by the Commerce Department, headed by Colonel South Trimble, Jr., and the German commission led by Dr. Hugo Eckener, the most successful airship commander in history as the commander of the famous zeppelin for most of its record-setting flights.
Although the cause of the disaster remains undetermined, the prevailing theory is that a discharge of electricity from the storm that evening ignited some leaking hydrogen. Notwithstanding several conspiracy theories – including one that Hitler ordered the destruction of the Hindenburg in retaliation for Eckener’s anti-Nazi opinions (he was ultimately blacklisted and “sidelined” by the Nazis) – no evidence of sabotage has ever been produced.
The Hindenburg had flown safely for more than a million miles, including the first circumnavigation of the globe by an airship, and the zeppelin manufacturer had conspicuously featured in its promotions the fact that no passenger had ever been injured on any of its airships. Nonetheless, the Hindenburg disaster shattered public confidence in oversize passenger airships and all but ended the airship era.
Shown here is a truly amazing piece of history, the original bulletin released by the Hamburg-American shipping line’s news service announcing the arrival of the German passenger airship Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937. The announcement lists the arriving passengers with the cities of their residence. (Of course, the Hindenburg unfortunately never arrived.)
Some unidentified person, who annotated the list in pencil, drew crosses beside the names of Ernst Rudolf Anders, Hermann Doehner, and Edward Douglas, indicating that they had died in the disaster. Three additional individuals bear a question mark beside their names, indicating that their fate was unknown at the time, and several others are checked off, possibly indicating that they were safe, though several of these had, in fact, perished.
There were two Jews on the flight: Moritz Feibusch, listed on our exhibit, who died at age 57, and William Leuchtenberg (not listed), who survived.
Moritz Feibusch (1880-1937) was born in East Prussia, where he apprenticed as a tailor before immigrating to the United States at age 17 in 1897. Settling with aunts and uncles in San Francisco, he sought financial help to get started in his new country from his Uncle Aron, a wealthy but eccentric landowner, but he was handed a single silver dollar and told to make his own way – which he did. However, in the aftermath of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire (1906), he returned to Germany for a few years, later returning to San Francisco, where he became the buyer for a large dry goods company.
In 1911, Feibusch married Mignon Schocken, a Christian Scientist. She was an accomplished violinist who worked with the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and helped develop Yehudi Menuhin during his early years performing with the orchestra. (She would later die of an untreated brain tumor in 1928.)
In 1920, Feibusch was offered a position selling products for the California Canneries company, an opportunity he used to open his own brokerage office on Market Street in San Francisco, dealing as an exporter of dried and canned goods and later as an importer of canned fish products from Scandinavia. Beginning in 1928, he made annual trips to Europe, mostly to Germany and England, where he opened a successful office in London.
During his visit to his family in Berlin in 1933 shortly after Hitler had been named German Chancellor (1933), it became clear to him that the family was at risk from the Nazis. Meanwhile, his younger brother, Arno, asked him to help get his son, Martin, out of Germany. The 15-year-old youth had dreams of going to Eretz Yisrael, but Arno convinced him that he’d be better off going to California with his Uncle Moritz.
To circumvent restrictive and hardening U.S. immigration quotas, Feibusch adopted his nephew. As the situation in Germany escalated, he used his growing business connections to help get his family out of Germany, arranging for them to live in his house and getting jobs for them at the cannery.
During his annual trip to Europe in January 1937, Feibusch developed a bad cold and decided that he would take a trip to Italy, where the climate was decidedly warmer – and, sadly, he booked passage home to the U.S. on the Hindenburg. Having had a long fascination with zeppelins and having crossed the ocean via steamship at least 30 times, he knew that the Hindenburg would not only get him home days faster but would also provide a luxurious travel experience, so he decided to treat himself to a birthday present and booked the flight.
After his extended Italian trip, he returned to Germany to board the Hindenburg at the Rhein-Main Airport in Frankfurt on May 3. Pursuant to his long-time practice of designing and printing custom postcards to be mailed to family, friends, and business contacts, he designed cards for his Hindenburg flight that featured a photo of himself and the airship bearing the message: “Greetings on the Maiden Voyage of the Hindenburg – May 1937 – M. Feibusch.”
As he sat in the Hindenburg’s lounge addressing some 200 of his postcards, the airship’s chief steward advised him that the Hindenburg’s maiden flight had actually been made a year earlier. Feibusch warmly responded with a smile that, well, in any case it was his maiden voyage.
Despite his success as a businessman, his important contacts, and the first-class treatment he was due as a passenger on the prestigious zeppelin, Feibusch experienced anti-Semitism aboard. Although the Hindenburg’s stewards ordinarily made dining room assignments by seating passengers in groups of four or more, Feibusch was reportedly seated for meals throughout the flight at a table for two – and, not coincidentally, with the only other Jew aboard, William Leuchtenberg.
Moreover, one survivor later noted that not only did the steward not offer the two Jews coffee refills or extra toast and marmalade like he did all other passengers, but he also added slices of bacon to their meals – which they both pushed to the side of their plates – out of sheer spite.
Feibusch told Leuchtenberg of his plans to bring his mother to the United States later that year aboard the Hindenburg because he feared for her safety under the Nazi regime. When he commented to his dinner companion that the Olympic Rings had been removed from the airship, Leuchtenberg responded that “Hitler wouldn’t very well keep them painted on the side of his airship next to his swastikas after a black man took home four gold medals, would he?” (a reference to Jesse Owens’ incredible performance at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin). When an American listening to their conversation commented, “And yet, here we are, funding [Hitler’s] cause,” Feibusch replied, “This is travel, not politics. This is about luxury.”
It is not known precisely where Feibusch was when the fire started, but studies suggest that he was most likely on the starboard side of the ship near one of the windows. In any event, he was unable to escape in time, and it would be a few days before his body, found lying atop his camera, was identified. The few of his postcards salvaged from the wreck have become very valuable items for Hindenburg collectors.
In a final wretched irony, Feibusch’s coffin was included among those of the German fatalities at a May 11, 1937 memorial ceremony held at Pier 86 in New York City. Thus, an American citizen for 40 years and a Jew who had dedicated the last years of his life to rescuing his family from the Nazis was honored in a Nazi memorial service, which included uniformed Nazis marching and heiling their beloved Fuhrer.
Carrying out his wishes, the executors of Feibusch’s estate were able to bring other family members to San Francisco in June 1937 and, in the end, all of his siblings and their families were able to leave Germany. Many, however, were held in English internment camps as “enemy aliens” until after the war.
Born in Duisburg, Germany, William Ernest Leuchtenberg (1873-?) immigrated to the United States in 1899, where he resided in Larchmont, NY; became an American citizen in 1910; served as president of a manufacturer of gas filter materials and gas purification systems; and filed for a patent for a cleaner process that he had developed for removing hydrogen sulfide from coal or water gases using an iron oxide-based purifier in 1925.
Because he handled only German goods and maintained significant business contacts in Germany, he was well known by the German government. His usual practice for his extended business trips to Europe throughout the 1920s and 1930s was to book passage on steamships across the Atlantic but, upon his return from a trip in May 1937, he decided to fly back on the Hindenburg. He spent much of the flight drinking, and there is considerable testimony from survivors suggesting that he was quite besotted.
When the airship approached Lakehurst, Leuchtenberg was sitting in the portside dining salon looking out a nearby window. When he heard the explosion and saw passengers tumbling along the inclined floor, he grabbed on to a railing and managed to hang on until the burning ship settled on the ground, but he sustained serious injuries, including burns to his face and head. Unable to see well through his burned and swollen eyes, he slid along the tilted floor, ultimately ending up near the door leading to the cabin hallways and the gangway stairs.
Someone guided him through the gangway hatch, from which he fell 10 feet into the arms of rescuers and was taken to the hospital, where his injuries slowly healed. Three weeks later, when he testified to the Hindenburg Board of Inquiry, his hands were still so badly burned that he could not sign his own statement.
Shipping records show that Leuchtenberg took an 18-day Caribbean cruise on the Colombian Line’s steamship, the S.S. Haiti in November 1937, possibly to help him recover from his injuries, but there is little else known about his subsequent life and there are no records indicating the date of his death.
