COOL TO THE BONE: THE STORY OF THE RABID BARON

Portrait of Baron von Hünefeld made by Nicola Perscheid. Collection of Staatliche Landesbildstelle Hamburg P1976.470.13, via Europeana. Image in public domain.

Ehrenfried Günther Baron von Hünefeld, scion of old German nobility and a daredevil per excellence, was the most unlikely aviation hero ever. Born with a blind left eye and with a serious short-sightedness in his right one (the monocle was not just ornamental) as well as plagued by a more diseases (including nasty nephritis) than most of us ever heard of, he nevertheless managed to become a pioneer of civil aviation, and in April 1928 the man behind the first westbound Atlantic flight (Lindbergh covered the same distance in 1927 but moving west to east).

Not only did he organise the whole venture and fly with the crew of the Junkers W 33 machine named "Bremen" to the USA as the first Atlantic-flight passenger in history, but after his return to Berlin a basically dying man (his health, already so damaged, deteriorated rapidly due to the effort and as a result of the exhaustion caused by the many speeches he had been giving in the US), he immediately got on board of the machine piloted by a Swedish aviator Karl Gunnar Lindner to accompany the latter on his (later abandonded) world-circumnavigation flight.

Baron von Hühnefeld (4th from the left) with the crew of the Atlantic flight (and their wives) in April 1928 before the adventure began. Image by Georg Pahl, via Bundesarchiv Bild 102-05722 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Baron von Hünefeld, aka "Der Tolle Baron" (The "Fantastic" or "Rabid Baron"), died in Berlin in February 1929 of, of all things that he had suffered from in his short life, stomach tumour. You will find his grave in Berlin-Steglitz, where - even though born in Königsberg - he spent his childhood.

Looking at him in this photo, the dashing young man with a monocle, you might have guessed he was a champion of aviation but you would probably have never thought he was a practically blind, physically disabled man on the verge of death.

Representatives of the military, the Reichswehr, greeting von Hühnefeld and pilots of the Atlantic flight on board of the steamer “Columbus” at Bremen harbour in June 1928. Photo Georg Pahl, Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-06088.

If you want to know just how "badass" the "Rabid Baron" was, let me tell you a little story. Following a horrid schrapnel injury during the First World War, one of Ehrenfried von Hünefeld's legs was left permanently shorter than the other one. Grateful for having his legs saved in the first place, he was nevertheless unhappy about the limp the loss of part of the bone structure caused. So he had his other leg shortened to match. And then used his own removed femur bone to make a handle for his new walking stick.

The grave of Baron von Hünefeld at the Steglitz cemetery. Photo by OTFW, Licence GNU and CC 3.0, via Wikipedia.