I just now found your article, and it's very nicely done!
I hadn't previously known that Willy von Meister knew the Kleemann family, though I did note awhile back in researching von Meister that his parents lived in Homburg at the time Willy was born in 1903. His father was "Landrat" for the region (basically the government administrator for a given district) so I can certainly see how he and the Kleemanns would have known one another. By 1937, however, Willy von Meister was a US citizen living and working in New York, but as VP of the American Zeppelin Transport Company, he would certainly have had early access to survivor lists when the Hindenburg crashed, so it doesn't surprise me that he'd have called the Bolten home to let them know that Marie was safe.
If I might offer one minor technical correction, the Hindenburg's engines were Daimler-Benz diesels and as such ran on heavy fuel oil and not on blaugas. The Zeppelin Company did use blaugas for the engines of the Graf Zeppelin, their previous airship, in an effort to limit the amount of hydrogen they needed to valve in flight. Blaugas weighed slightly more than air, so burning it as fuel didn't lighten the airship appreciably on longer flights. But this also made it more of a fire danger than hydrogen, since any loose blaugas would tend to settle along the keel rather than rising up to be vented topside as the much lighter hydrogen did. Hence, the decision to run the Hindenburg on diesel engines instead.
But again, that's just a minor factual issue. I quite enjoyed your article. (And thanks for crediting my Faces of the Hindenburg blog article on Frau Kleemann.)
I just now found your article, and it's very nicely done!
I hadn't previously known that Willy von Meister knew the Kleemann family, though I did note awhile back in researching von Meister that his parents lived in Homburg at the time Willy was born in 1903. His father was "Landrat" for the region (basically the government administrator for a given district) so I can certainly see how he and the Kleemanns would have known one another. By 1937, however, Willy von Meister was a US citizen living and working in New York, but as VP of the American Zeppelin Transport Company, he would certainly have had early access to survivor lists when the Hindenburg crashed, so it doesn't surprise me that he'd have called the Bolten home to let them know that Marie was safe.
If I might offer one minor technical correction, the Hindenburg's engines were Daimler-Benz diesels and as such ran on heavy fuel oil and not on blaugas. The Zeppelin Company did use blaugas for the engines of the Graf Zeppelin, their previous airship, in an effort to limit the amount of hydrogen they needed to valve in flight. Blaugas weighed slightly more than air, so burning it as fuel didn't lighten the airship appreciably on longer flights. But this also made it more of a fire danger than hydrogen, since any loose blaugas would tend to settle along the keel rather than rising up to be vented topside as the much lighter hydrogen did. Hence, the decision to run the Hindenburg on diesel engines instead.
But again, that's just a minor factual issue. I quite enjoyed your article. (And thanks for crediting my Faces of the Hindenburg blog article on Frau Kleemann.)
Best,
Patrick Russell