Dornier Museum

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin serves as the name for a number of places and establishments in Friedrichshafen, but there were a few other successful businessmen besides from him. Claude Dornier, for example. Born in Kempten, he started working at the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH as a young man in 1910 and developed among other things a rotating hangar for Zeppelins. Count Ferdinand recognised his potential and took Dornier under his wings. He provided the young talent with his own department, where he could build the aircrafts and conduct research.

Claude Dornier soon developed numerous aircrafts, which were made almost completely out of metal. For the time, this was a technological revolution. With the newly founded Dornier-Metallbauten GmbH, he was able to undertake even bigger projects and thus quickly established an international reputation. He built the largest aircraft of his time, the airship Dornier Do X, set several world records with his flying machines and even provided a Dornier aircraft, the Dornier Wal, for polar explorer Roald Amundsen’s spectacular expedition flight to the North Pole in the Arctic.

Claude Dornier died in 1969. His company was later sold and now belongs to the Airbus-Group. His legacy still remains, not least in the Dornier Museum near the Friedrichshafen airport. In a modern, dynamic building, numerous original aircrafts are on display, explaining over 100 years of air and space travel history.

By the way: The historic building in which Claude Dornier's first department was housed, the so-called Baracke Seemoos, is one of the few monuments of the city of Friedrichshafen, spared by the war. In 2014, the demolition-threatened building at the Seemooser Horn was dismantled and rebuilt in an elaborate action next to the museum. Today, there is an experimental workshop for young people and a replica of the historical office of Claude Dornier and can be visited as part of the Museum tour.