Melli Beese: How Germany’s first female pilot realized her dream of flying

At the age of 25
Against all odds: How Melli Beese became Germany’s first female pilot

When Amelie Hedwig Beese, Melli Beese for short, decided to become a pilot, she entered an absolute male domain. Her training was sabotaged by male comrades and the flight instructor also let her down. But she was undeterred and became Germany’s first woman with a flying license.

Amelie Hedwig Beese was born on September 13, 1886 in Dresden-Laubegast to wealthy parents. Her mother is the daughter of a Radeberg city councilor and bakery owner, her father is a well-known architect. The two made it possible for their only child to study sculpture at the Royal Academy of Liberal Arts in Stockholm from autumn 1906, as it was… At that time in Germany there was no training for women in this subject. After her return, from 1910 onwards she attended lectures in mathematics, mechanics, shipbuilding and flight mechanics at the Dresden Technical Center (today the “Technical University”) as an external lecturer. She reads press reports about flight experiments with great interest and it becomes clear to her: she wants to become a pilot.

Her father also supports her in this wish and finances her flight training. But the search for a suitable school turned out to be difficult: two flight schools sent them away, only the third – “Ad Astra Flug GmbH” – took them in in 1910. However, her flight instructor Robert Thelen is highly skeptical. He invents excuses to prevent him from going to class with her. When a drive chain fell off the engine shaft during a training flight on December 12th and the plane crashed, it was a welcome opportunity for him to end his training. Beese suffered a five-fold broken leg and several rib fractures during the crash landing. It takes months for her to recover.

Melli Beese struggles with the resentment of male competition

But Beese doesn’t give up and she looks for a new flight school. She found it at the beginning of July 1911 in the Rumpler-Werke school in Berlin Johannisthal. The airfield director is hoping that the first flying woman he could present at his shows will attract a large number of spectators. But her new flight instructor Hellmuth Hirth also has his concerns. He doesn’t believe that women can “achieve something great” on airplanes, as he writes in his book “20,000 Kilometers in the Sea of ​​Air.” “They see the whole thing as nothing more than a sensation and is just for the audience’s amusement.”

And so Beese’s training drags on. Again and again, men suddenly find themselves sitting in the pilot’s seat, even though she is registered for the flight lesson. All male students are given preference over her and if she does manage to get behind the wheel, the plane usually breaks down. “Soon a few spark plugs were replaced with sooted ones, and soon the fuel was drained down to a small amount, so that I (…) had to make an emergency landing as quickly as possible,” Beese later wrote in her memories. She also remembers that it takes her a month and a half to complete five short school flights.

On September 13, 1911, her 25th birthday, Beese organized external witnesses and took advantage of the absence of her disapproving classmates to take her pilot’s license test unnoticed in the early hours of the morning. She is the first woman in Germany to receive her pilot’s license with license number 115, making her the 115th person to be officially allowed to fly an airplane in Germany. From then on she regularly flies in competitions and air shows and sets various long-distance and altitude records for women. Until the First World War, she remained one of 34 female pilots in the world with a flying license. At the Johannisthal Autumn Flight Weeks, just two weeks after receiving her pilot’s license, she set a new record for high-altitude and sustained flight for female pilots with a passenger: she climbed to 825 meters and stayed in the air for two and a half hours.

The war and the flight ban plunge them into financial ruin

In 1912 she founded the “Flugschule Melli Beese GmbH” together with her French husband, her first student pilot and later pilot Charles Boutard. There, for the first time, students are given theoretical and practical work (repairing aircraft) and quick training. She also designs and builds aircraft herself, which she offers for sale for 12,000 marks. And she files several patents for various types of aircraft.

While some flight schools were allowed to train students fit for military service from April 1, 1913, Beese tried in vain to find this source of income. When war breaks out, she has to close her aircraft factory and school and is no longer allowed to enter the airfield. Beese, who took French citizenship after her marriage, is now considered an “enemy alien” like her husband. In addition, only men deployed in war are allowed to fly.

After the war, the couple was financially ruined and was supported by Beese’s mother, as the construction and operation of aircraft in Germany was banned under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. A lawsuit against the government for compensation costs amounting to 80,000 marks dragged on for years. However, due to inflation, part of the compensation paid out is lost, and the couple loses further money by investing in a fraudulent automobile company. A plan by the two to fly around the world in two planes fails due to a lack of funding.

In 1925 the marriage broke up. Beese eventually falls ill with depression and becomes heavily addicted to morphine. Because she lost her connection as a pilot and flight technology developed rapidly during the war, she tried in vain to renew her flying license. All courage to live dwindles. On December 21, 1925, Melli Beese committed suicide at the age of 39.

Watch the video: Ferry pilot Margrit Waltz regularly flies thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic all alone. And that in a propeller plane with just one engine. Your job is to fly small aircraft worth several million euros to customers all over the world.

Sources: German Patent and Trademark Office, TH Lübeck, German museum