Deutsches Museum: Head of the Flugwerft retires – Munich

A darling? “We have 70 aircraft here, and I have 70 favorites,” says Gerhard Filchner, leaning over the railing of the gallery and looking down at the imposing machines in the exhibition hall. He’ll be in the cockpit of the phantom force, at the request of the photographer. He doesn’t even have a pilot’s license. Was never important to him. He was allowed to fly often anyway, because he always wanted to present a living museum with air shows, visits by famous pilots and competitions. But he was more interested in technology and the history of aviation, and he knows his way around like no other. After 40 years in the service of the Deutsches Museum, Filchner is now retiring – and will first make a pilgrimage, on foot.

“The Flugwerft Schleissheim is an ideal museum,” says Filchner, as he now walks through the hall, past the machines that are close together here and hanging from the ceiling. Because it is part of aviation history itself. The Royal Bavarian Air Force has been stationed there since 1912, right next to the Schleissheim Palace. The armory hall built at that time and the commandant’s office are still standing today. An exhibition in the passage to the large exhibition hall documents the development. During the First World War, the airfield was expanded and the shipyard was built. After the National Socialists came to power, the area was expanded to become the air base of the Air Force. After the end of the war, the US Army took over the site, and later the German Armed Forces. In 1981 military flight operations ended.

“When I came to Schleissheim for the first time, the area was still a restricted military area,” says Filchner. He comes from the Upper Palatinate and was enthusiastic about aircraft models even as a child. He then studied aircraft technology at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. When he built an aileron along the lines of the Star fighters should develop, he went to the Deutsches Museum to look at the original – “Internet didn’t exist yet”. The thesis was a success. And as luck would have it, a little later the museum was looking for reinforcements for the newly planned major aviation exhibition on Museum Island. Filchner applied and was accepted. Helmut Kohl and Franz Josef Strauss came to the opening in 1984 – and agreed that the state would finance the restoration of the Schleissheim airfield for the German Museum. The fact that Strauss himself was a passionate aviator certainly gave the project the boost it needed.

Filchner was there from the start, bought machines, made sure that they arrived safely in Oberschleißheim, researched their history and set up the restoration workshop with his colleagues. They have renovated many famous aircraft there or also faithfully reproduced them, such as the biplane made by the Munich-based aircraft factory Gustav Otto. The so-called Otto double-deckers were the first aircraft to be stationed in Oberschleißheim in 1912. “Well, yes, that’s one of my favorites,” says Gerhard Filchner now.

Open detailed view

More and more planes arrived. “The Air Force flew in the exhibits for us with transport helicopters.” The branch museum was opened in 1992. From the balloon ride and Otto Lilienthal’s glider from 1894 to world war planes such as Fokker D VII until Eurofighter The range of machines on display is now sufficient. Last came a tornado about it, which was used as a reconnaissance aircraft in Afghanistan – a painted camel on the stern reminds of this. Or the research aircraft Thu 128who collected meteorological data for years.

There is a story on every aircraft, and Filchner knows them all. the Solair I. is close to his heart, it is one of the first solar aircraft, built as early as the 1980s. Its inventor Günther Rochelt also built a kind of flying bicycle, the “Musculair II”. Rochelt’s son Holger set a world record in Schleissheim in 1985: he pedaled 1.5 kilometers through the air. “That is the symbol for the eternal dream of mankind of flying under your own steam”, says Filchner and now almost raves about it.

Open detailed view

Filchner and his team organized many events at the Flugwerft that attracted thousands of enthusiasts: fly-ins, where pilots flew in with their vintage cars. Model airplane competitions, special shows, meetings of flying clubs. Flight simulation days in which computer fans arrive with their laptops, one pilot, the other pilots, and then they virtually flew around the world. Up to 120,000 visitors per year prove the success of the branch museum – after all, more than a tenth of the number of visitors in the main building. And that although the Flugwerft is not on the classic tourist route.

“No two days were alike,” says Filchner, and “who can say that he was able to turn his hobby into a career?” Once he took Chuck Yaeger through the Flugwerft, the first person to break the sound barrier in level flight. the phantom, from whose cockpit Filchner just got out, had Otto Mayr, the former director of the Deutsches Museum, found in the USA. It flies twice the speed of sound. “It would be a bitchy to fly with you,” admits Filchner, who otherwise does not give the impression that he is impressed by military feats. “But with my 1.90 meters, I’m too tall anyway,” he says, relaxed. He is more ecologically and pacifistically moved. That is why he values ​​the engineering performance of a solar aircraft at least as great as that of a jet. And was allowed to fly in other aircraft again and again, in the Zeppelin, in the Antonov, in the Junkers F13– Replica that landed in Schleissheim a few years ago.

Now he will first get away from flying. “My wife said: We no longer fly,” he says, because of the climate. So they last traveled to Corsica by train and ship. “It works too, and you see completely different things along the way.” Simone Bauer also has a management position at the Deutsches Museum, and if she follows him into retirement next spring, Filchner says, then they will want to continue on the Way of St. James. They have already hiked from Munich to Le Puy in France. Now they want to complete the 2500 kilometers. In his mind, he will probably still be with his favorites every now and then.