Description

In 1922, the aeronautical designer Richard Dietrich laid the foundation for the development of sports aircraft construction in Germany with his aerobatic passenger biplane. Richard Dietrich’s aircraft were extremely popular in sports aviation circles until the mid-1920s and enjoyed a high degree of public recognition.

After the early decline of Dietrich aircraft construction, some of Dietrich’s closest employees took up his developments and continued them successfully into the 1930s. In 1928, Dietrich’s foreman Andreas Pöhlmann tried to continue Dietrich Flugzeugbau at Phoenix Flugzeugbau Müller & Pöhlmann in Düsseldorf. Based on Dietrich’s light aircraft projects, the Phoenix-Meteor LF2 was built in Düsseldorf. Dietrich’s factory pilots Antonius Raab and Kurt Katzenstein founded the world-famous Raab-Katzenstein Flugzeugbau in Kassel, where Dietrich’s pioneering developments were continuously developed.

After the end of the Raab-Katzenstein-Werke, Raab continued the work in the 1930s in the Baltic States and at the Greek AEKKEA-Raab. Max Gerner brought Dietrich’s passenger double-decker to series production as early as 1921 as a student assistant in Mannheim and later as an engineer in Kassel. At Max Gerner Flugzeugbau in Frankfurt in 1928, he took up Dietrich’s Luftford idea with his light aircraft designs, which were built in series at the Adler automobile works in the 1930s. After a break of years, Richard Dietrich also resumed his designs from the 1920s in 1934 with the MIAG-Dietrich MD12 at Mühlenbau und Industrie AG. However, the MD12 could no longer compete with the modern aircraft designs of the 1930s and remained Dietrich’s last aircraft design as a one-off.

German language book.