HUGO JUNKERS TECHNIK MUSEUM - DESSAU
Aviation Design and Business Innovator of Germany
One of the most familiar airplanes from newsreels of the prewar in Germany and World War II is the corrugated metal tri-motor air transport plane, the Junker Ju52. One of the most successful air designs that began the age of passenger air travel and launched the German airline LuftHansa. One of the few remaining operating examples can be found in Dessau, where the Hugo Junkers Technik Museum occupies a hanger of the once sprawling factory works of Junkers Flugzeug und Motorenwerke AG, where it was first built.
Hugo Junkers was a visionary German engineering innovator and aircraft designer, but he didn’t start out with airplanes. Junkers’ first patent was for a calorimeter to measure heat values for which he was awarded a gold medal at the 1893 World’s Exposition in Chicago. His next patent was for a gas-fired tankless water heater. His work on airplanes began with engines, working on designing the first opposed piston aircraft engine, in 1892, then moving on to other gasoline and diesel fueled engine designs. But it was as an innovator in the all-metal aircraft that Junkers is best known in aviation.
Among the prime examples of his aircraft designs were the Junkers J1 in 1915, the world's first practical all-metal aircraft, which featured a a cantilever wing without external bracing. The Junkers F13, which came following WWI in 1919, was the world's first all-metal passenger aircraft. The Junkers W33 completed the first successful heavier-than-air crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from east to west. The Junkers G38 was a four-engine aircraft which first flew in 1929 and served successfully as commercial transport for a decade up to the war. The Ju52, mainstay of the 1930s and workhorse war transport which the Germans nick-named the “Tante Ju” (the Aunt Ju) and the Junkers G 38 called "flying wing" for its unique outline which was mostly the wings without a substantial fuselage.
Although Junkers' planes are closely associated with the German Luftwaffe war effort, the notorious Ju87 Stuka Divebomber and Ju88 twin engine light bomber, and the Junkers factory in Dessau was one of the largest aircraft manufacturing facilities of the war,producing these planes by the thousands, Hugo Junkers himself was long departed. He was vociferously anti-National Socialist, forced out as head of his own company by the Nazis when they demanded ownership of his patents and nationalized his company in 1934. He was arrested when he refused and died just a year later in 1935, on his 76th birthday.
Aside from aircraft, Junkers was an innovator in housing, designing the first all-metal pre-fabrication house. Junkers was also one of the prime sponsors of the Bauhaus movement, and the principal supporter of the design school relocating from Weimar to Dessau (see Bauhaus Dessau). The Junkers designed radiant heating system can still be seen at the Bauhaus Studio a few blocks away from the museum.
Junkers Museum Displays
The Junkers Technik Museum in Dessau opened in 2001 on the location of the Junkers factory which continued with aviation work though the next decades of the Cold War. The exhibition provides a varied selection of exhibits, documentation on information on Junkers eclectic career, from his first calorie meters to full scale reconstructions of his aircraft. A pristine Ju52 which can be boarded like a passenger was completed for the museum opening and after 10 years of work a Ju13 is now on display, with work on a replica of the world’s first metal aircraft the J1, underway.
Also here are engines, not only from Junkers’ original work, but from the engineers he mentored who went on to innovation in the missile and space race of the 1960s. The metal house that foresaw the movement for prefabrication with its unique system for heat exchange ventilation and occupies one end of the former factory building, while at the other end is spawling model and wall mural map of the Junkers Works factory as it grew to massive scale in the war buildup under the Third Reich, eventually making Dessau a prime bombing target of the war. Also look for the marketing advertisement posters of the 1920s when Junkers used his quite attractive daughters as models to promote his business.
Outdoors at the museum are a few more modern aircraft, including a Lufthansa Passenger aircraft of the 1960s and three MIG jets left from the GDR days of East Germany, the remaining runway of the Junkers factory, still used for civil aviation, and the massive pipe machinery of the original testing wind tunnel, another Junkers innovation.
Visiting Hugo Junkers Technik Museum Dessau
Open hours are 10 am to 5 pm daily April to October. Closed Monday November to March. Donations are accepted. Although the museum is not technically connected with the Bauhaus in Dessau, it can be easily combined with a bus ride. The museum shop offers a collection of model building sets of different types of aircraft as well as books and exclusive articles (mostly in German). © Bargain Travel EuropeFind best hotel and vacation deals in Dessau on TripAdvisor
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See Also:
SCHLEISSHEIM FLIGHT WORKS MUSEUM
SINSHEIM AUTO & TECHNIK MUSEUM
INTERNATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM - HAMBURG
UK IMPERAL WAR MUSEUM - DUXFORD
HALLOREN CHOCOLATE WORLD MUSEUM HALLE
