Tell Me Why

Who Led
With The Zeppelin?

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■ 1101111.

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ANN

ANtiffilif

Long before Robert Plant and
Jimmy Page, David Schwarz
had his own Zeppelin.

Elizabeth and Phillip Applebaum

1 Q:

My wife is a wonderful woman,
but she does have a flaw — she
likes Barry Manilow. I also grew up
lin the 1970s, too, but I loved the
;infinitely more talented Led Zep-
pelin. Recently, my wife and I were
I going through our old record
;albums and came across my Zep-
pelin collection. That got us think-
ing, wasn't there a Jewish connec-
tion to the Zeppelin airship?
A: Yes, there was. The inventor of
the rigid airship, also known as a
dirigible, was a Jew, David
Schwarz (1845-97).
A native of Kesthely, Hungary,
Schwarz initially made his living as
a lumber merchant in Zagreb,
1Croatia. Self-taught in engineering
and aviation, he became interested
in the uses of aluminum. After he
proved that aluminum could be sol-
idered, he set about to design an
I airship built with an aluminum
frame.

11/17

2000

116

in 1894 to design his own airship.
When
Modifying Schwarz's design, in
the Austri-
1900 he built his own successful
an govern-
dirigible, which thereafter became
ment refused to support his project
known as the Zeppelin.
Schwarz went to Russia, where in
1892 he built his first - airship. It had
Q: I love detective novels, and
an aluminum framework with a bal-
recently was rereading some of my
loon covering. The materials sup-
favorites
by the master himself, - Ray-
plied by the Russian government
mond Chandler. A passage from
were so inferior, however, that the
airship could not be filled with gas. 1 his book The High Window always
1 left me uncomfortable. There's a
The German government
chardcter in it named Elisha Morn-
promised Schwarz a substantial
: ingstar, a Jewish guy who reminds
amount of money if he succeeded
me a lot of Shakespeare's Shylock
in building an 80 x 12 meter air-
in The Merchant of Venice. Is there
ship for them. He moved to Vienna
any
record of Chandler being anti-
and designed the craft, but died of
: Semitic?
a heart attack after reading the
telegram from Germany summoning I A: No. Chandler was famous for
writing characters to the extreme.
him to Berlin to attend the test
I
As
Chandler biographer Tom Hiney
flight. His widow, Melanie, made
1 notes, the author's bad guys
the preparations for the flight at
weren't just bad, they were utterly
1Tempelhof Field (now the site of a
1 rotten. The rich men he wrote
I U.S. airbase). After a successful
about weren't just rich, they were
;flight lasting four hours, the pilot
positively drowning in money. And
crash-landed.
I Chandler's most famous protago-
In February 1898, Count Ferdi-
nist, Philip Marlowe, wasn't just a
nand von Zeppelin (1838-1917),
i hard-working detective, he was
who was present at the test flight,
"the most honorable, wittiest, brave
bought all of David Schwarz's plans
and resourceful man imaginable."
and designs from Melanie Schwarz.
Consequently, it's likely Chandler
Zeppelin, a German soldier who
was simply exaggerating stereo-
had fought for the Union Army in
: types when he wrote about Morn-
I the American Civil War, had tried

I

ingstar — though he certainly got
complaints.
Responding to one angry letter
on this very subject, Chandler
wrote, "[People like you] should
look for their enemies not among
those who ... put Jewish characters
in their books because there are
many Jews in their lives and all
interesting and all different and
some rather nasty — like other peo-
ple — but let them look for their
enemies among the brutes (who
1 they can easily recognize) and
among the snobs who do not
speak of Jews at all."
Chandler further responded, in
his
book Playback, in which a fig-
,
1 ure named Fred Pope, a motel
i owner, says, "Of course we got
Jews here now, but let me tell you
I something. A Jew is supposed to
give you a sharp deal and steal
your nose, if you ain't careful.
That's all bunk. A Jew enjoys trod-
, ing; he likes business, but he's only
1 tough on the surface. Underneath,
a Jewish businessman is usually

1
I

really nice to deal with. He's
human."
Interestingly, Chandler, while liv-
ing in La Jolla, Calif., refused to
join the local tennis club because it
refused admission to Jews.

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