Walter Mittelholzer
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Check for clobbered parameters".Template:Wikidata image Walter Mittelholzer (2 April 1894 – 9 May 1937) was a Swiss aviation pioneer. He was active as a pilot, photographer, travel writer, as well as of the first aviation entrepreneurs.
Life
Mittelholzer was born on 2 April 1894 in St. Gallen, the son of a baker, earned his private pilot's license in 1917. In 1918 he completed his instruction as a military pilot.
On 5 November 1919 he co-founded an air-photo and passenger flight business, Comte, Mittelholzer, and Co. In 1920 this firm merged with the financially stronger Script error: No such module "Lang".. Mittelholzer was the director and head pilot of Script error: No such module "Lang"., which later became Swissair.
He made the first north–south flight across Africa. It took him 77 days. Mittelholzer started in Zürich on 7 December 1926, flying via Alexandria and landing in Cape Town on 21 February 1927. Earlier, he had been the first to do serious aerial reconnaissance of Spitsbergen, in a Junkers monoplane, in 1923.[1] On 8 January 1930 he became the first person to fly over Mount Kilimanjaro; he planned to fly over Mount Everest later in 1930.[2][3] In 1931, Mittelholzer was appointed technical director of the new airline called Swissair, formed from the merger of Script error: No such module "Lang". and Balair.[4] Throughout his life he published many books of aerial photographs and marketed his expeditions through films and the media as well.[5]
He died in 1937 in a climbing accident on an expedition in the Hochschwab massif in southwest face of Stangenwand in Styria, Austria.[6] His mortal remains were cremated and buried in the urn vault of his mother Elizabeth "Elise", née Grunder (1856-1928), in the columbarium halls of the Feldli cemetery in St. Gallen. The urns containing the ashes of his father Walter Ulrich (1860-1945), a baker, and those of three of his four sisters - Anna (1885-1969), Clara (1886-1963) and Gret (1899-1997) - were later buried there as well.
Among other Swiss air pioneers, he is commemorated in a Swiss postage stamp issued in January 1977. His legacy of some 18,500 photographs is kept at ETH Library's image archive in Zürich, Switzerland.
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Mittelholzer memorial at Zürich Airport
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Earliest aerial photography of Rapperswil, Switzerland, by Walter Mittelholzer in 1919
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Script error: No such module "Lang". Dornier Merkur (CH-171) piloted by Mittelholzer in Kigocna, Kenya (1927)
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Aerial view of Tehran in 1925 by Walter Mittelholzer
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Select bibliography
- Im Flugzeug dem Nordpol entgegen: Junkers'sche Hilfsexpedition für Amundsen nach Spitzbergen, 1923 (with Kurt Wegener, Adolf Miethe, Hans Boykow). Orell Füssli, 1924.
- Die Schweiz aus der Vogelschau: 274 Abbildungen aus der Sammlung von Walter Mittelholzer (with Otto Flückiger. Eugen Rentsch, 1926.
- Persienflug (with Otto Flückiger). Orell Füssli, 1926.
- Kilimandjaro Flug. Orell Füssli, 1930.
- Alpenflug (with F. Hass, Hans Kempf, Willi Fritz Burger). Orell Füssli, 1930.
- Mittelmeerflug, mit 120 Fliegeraufnahmen und einer Einleitung (with Gustav Ehrhardt). Rascher & cie, 1930.
- Tschadseeflug: Mit dem drei-motorigen Fokker der Swissair durch die Sahara zum Tschadsee (with Auguste Piccard). Schweizer aero-revue, 1932.
- Abessinienflug: Mit dem dreimotorigen Fokker an den Hof des Negus Negesti. Schweizer aero-revue, 1934.
- Fliegerabenteuer (with Willi Rickmer Rickmers, Werner von Langsdorff). Brockhaus, 1938.
- Die Schweiz von damals, 1917-1937: 350 historische Flugaufnahmen (with Walter M. Borner). Weltbild-Verlag, 2005. Template:ISBN, Template:ISBN.
References
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External links
- Template:Sister-inline
- Luftbild Schweiz
- Image Archive, ETH Library, "Walter Mittelholzer (1894–1937, photographer)"
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