The Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen

Abstract

From 1900 until World War II, the southern German town of Friedrichs hafen on Lake Constance was known as City. During that time, Friedrichshafen served as the manufacturing center for the giant airships bearing their inventor's name. Beginning in the 1970s, Friedrichshafen sought to shore up its identity as a source of civic pride and potential tourism. An obvious move in this direction was the establishment of a museum; a small facility was duly created in the 1980s, and planning begun for a larger institution. Having shifted its production focus follow ing the Second World War, the Zeppelin company returned to its former specialty and began developing a new transport airship, the LZ-N 07. On 2 July 1996, the ninety-sixth anniversary of Count Zeppelin's first airship flight, the new Zeppelin Museum was opened to enormous fanfare. The process that led to the inauguration of the new museum lasted almost ten years. The Zeppelin Museum's former incarnation, the Bodensee Museum, had sought to highlight the region s dual heritage of art and industrial achievement (the Zeppelin company and its offspring: Dornier, MTU, and others). Opened in 1982, it added an airship section three years later but soon found itself running out of space for exhibits and the sub stantial Zeppelin archives. In the late 1980s, with the assistance of the Zeppelin Museum Association, whose members were primarily former Zeppelin employees and airship enthusiasts, the museum administration turned its attention to locating a new site. The Zeppelin Museum Association quickly selected the old Hafenbahn hof (harbor train station) to house the new museum (fig. 1). A prime example of Bauhaus architecture, the station was completed in early 1933 to link ferry service on Lake Constance from Austria and Switzerland to the German railroads. Although a small section of the Hafenbahnhof is still