The Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft (RRG) or Rhön-Rossitten Society was a German

gliding Gliding is a recreational activity and competitive air sports, air sport in which pilots fly glider aircraft, unpowered aircraft known as Glider (sailplane), gliders or sailplanes using naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmospher ...

organization, the first one in the world that was officially recognised. The Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft was mainly responsible for establishing gliding as a sport, not only in Germany but eventually throughout the world. Because the

Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919. As the most important treaty of World War I, it ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allies of World War I, Allied Powers. It was signed in the Palace ...

forbade any form of powered flight in Germany, many young pilots and aircraft designers turned to gliding as a sport. Under

Oskar Ursinus Carl Oskar Ursinus (11 March 1877 – 6 July 1952) was a pioneer of German aviation and is remembered mainly for his contributions to sailplane designs and the sport of gliding. He has been nicknamed the ''Rhönvater'' ("Rhön father") because he ...

Reitsch, H., 1955, The Sky My Kingdom, London: Biddles Limited, Guildford and King's Lynn, and

Theodore von Kármán Theodore von Kármán ( , May 11, 1881May 6, 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who worked in aeronautics and astronautics. He was responsible for crucial advances in aerodynamics characterizing ...

, hobbyists and serious university study groups began building gliders. The first contest was held in 1920 on the mountain of the

Wasserkuppe The Wasserkuppe (;) is the highest mountain in the Rhön Mountains, Rhön range and the tallest elevation in the Germany, German state of Hesse, standing at above sea level. It forms a prominent plateau within the Fulda district and is known as ...

in the Rhön region of

Hesse Hesse or Hessen ( ), officially the State of Hesse (), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major hist ...

. While many of the entering designs were no more than kites and many of the 'flights' were no more than stumbles ending in a crash, Kármán and his team from the

RWTH Aachen RWTH Aachen University (), in German ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen'', is a German public research university located in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With more than 47,000 students enrolled in 144 study prog ...

with their glider ''Schwarzer Teufel'' (Black Devil) pioneered the bungee-launching method and regularly managed flights of over a minute followed by a crash-free landing. The event was then repeated annually with a constant improvement in the gliders and the results. Simultaneously another gliding group formed at the Rossitten sand dunes at the

Curonian Spit The Curonian Spit, sometimes called Courish Split (; ), is a long, thin, curved sand-dune spit that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site shared by Lithuania and Russia. Its southern portion lies w ...

East Prussia East Prussia was a Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1772 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1871); following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's ...

. Although far apart, the enthusiasts from the Wasserkuppe and Rossitten frequently met and compared ideas, designs and techniques. One big organization was suggested to coordinate the activities at the Rhön and the Rossitten dunes, and every other gliding club that might be founded. In 1924, 'Rhönvater' (Rhön father) Oskar Ursinus convinced the then Secretary of Air Transport for the Ministry of Transportation, Dr. Brandenburg, to found a national gliding organization, the Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft. From the start, the new society did everything to provide an all-round service to gliding enthusiasts: it organized yearly gliding competitions; it managed flying schools at Rossitten and the Wasserkuppe; it had its own workshops for constructing gliders and its own research team to develop newer and better gliders. There was also a

meteorological Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agriculture ...

work group which investigated

thermal A thermal column (or thermal) is a rising mass of buoyant air, a convective current in the atmosphere, that transfers heat energy vertically. Thermals are created by the uneven heating of Earth's surface from solar radiation, and are an example ...

s and ridge-lift. In 1925, Ursinus took yet another bold step by appointing

Alexander Lippisch Alexander Martin Lippisch (2 November 1894 – 11 February 1976) was a German aeronautical engineer, a pioneer of aerodynamics who made important contributions to the understanding of tailless aircraft, delta wings and the ground effect in aircra ...

as head of the technical branch of the RRG. Lippisch advanced the work of RRG by designing and building ever more sophisticated gliders. Also in 1925 the ban on powered aircraft was partially lifted and soon the RRG started experimenting with

motor glider A motor glider is a fixed-wing aircraft that can be flown with or without engine power. The FAI Gliding Commission Sporting Code definition is: a fixed-wing aerodyne equipped with a means of propulsion (MoP), capable of sustained soaring flig ...

s. In addition to the 'traditional' way of bungee-launching gliders, the RRG also developed winch launching and

aerotowing Gliding is a recreational activity and competitive air sports, air sport in which pilots fly glider aircraft, unpowered aircraft known as Glider (sailplane), gliders or sailplanes using naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmospher ...

to get gliders airborne. In 1933 with the

Nazis Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

in power, the RRG as an independent society could no longer exist in a uniform

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. Therefore the RRG was broken up, and the flying club was partly absorbed by the

Hitler Youth The Hitler Youth ( , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth wing of the German Nazi Party. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. From 1936 until 1945, it was th ...

. The design and research section was preserved under the new name of "

Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug The , or DFS , was formed in 1933 to centralise all gliding activity in Germany, under the directorship of Professor Walter Georgii. It was formed by the nationalisation of the Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft (RRG) at Darmstadt.Reitsch, H., 1955, ...

" (DFS), the ''German Research Society for Gliding''. In the new society, Lippisch was allowed to retain his post as chief designer. Under his leadership the DFS continued to turn out a series of successful sailplanes. Up to

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, RRG and DFS were major forces in German aeronautical design. When Theodore von Kármán looked back at the Treaty of Versailles, he saw the motor-flight prohibition as a mistake:

with Lee Edson (1967) ''The Wind and Beyond'', page 102 :I have always thought that the allies were short-sighted when they banned motor flying in Germany. They stimulated the very development they wanted to stop: the growth of German aviation. Experiments with gliders in sport sharpened German thinking in aerodynamics, structural design, and meteorology. In aerodynamics, for instance, they took attention away from the limited double- and triple-wing arrangements of World War I planes and showed how the single long span increases efficiency. The relation between span and chord is known as

aspect ratio The aspect ratio of a geometry, geometric shape is the ratio of its sizes in different dimensions. For example, the aspect ratio of a rectangle is the ratio of its longer side to its shorter side—the ratio of width to height, when the rectangl ...

, and gliders showed that if this ratio is high efficiency is improved. Though he had left Germany long before writing, Kármán recalled some advances made there: :In structural design, gliders showed us in Germany how to distributed weight in a light structure, and revealed new facts about vibration...we uncovered the dangers of hidden

turbulence In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers with no disruption between ...

in the air, and in general opened up the study of meteorological influences on aviation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rhon-Rossitten Gesellschaft Gliding in Germany Hesse East Prussia in the interwar period 20th-century German aviation Rhön Mountains

See also

References