Wolf Hirth

Who was Wolf Hirth?

Wolfram Kurt Erhard Hirth was a German gliding pioneer and sailplane designer. He was a co-founder of Schempp-Hirth, still a renowned glider manufacturer.

Hirth was born in Stuttgart, the son of an engineer and tool-maker. He was the younger brother of Hellmuth, who founded the famous Hirth aircraft engine manufacturing company.

As a young man, Hirth took up gliding and was soon drawn to the Wasserkuppe, then the focus of the German gliding movement, earning his pilot's licence in 1920. In 1924, Hirth lost a leg after a motorcycle accident. From then on, he would fly while wearing a wooden prosthesis. He had the fibula from his amputated leg fashioned into a cigarette holder

In 1928, he graduated from the Technical University of Stuttgart with a diploma in engineering and began to focus on aircraft construction. Over the next decade, he would also tour the world, promoting gliding throughout Europe, the United States, Japan, South America, and South Africa. On 10 March 1931 he gave a demonstration of glider aerobatics over New York City. On one of these publicity trips, he suffered major injuries in a crash in Hungary, requiring a hospital stay of four months. He and Robert Kronfeld were the first pilots to gain the Silver C badge. He was the chief flying instructor at the Grunau Gliding School in the Riesengebirge mountains, then in Germany.