Hanna Reitsch: Fliegen - mein Leben

Hanna Reitsch would have been 100 years old in 2012. The world-famous German aviator and test pilot, who flew more than 40 world records and was the first woman to be awarded the title of ‘flight captain’, died in 1979 at the age of 67.  We are delighted to be able to publish the first part of the memoirs of this passionate aviatrix and staunch patriot, which covers the period from her childhood to her internment by the Americans after the capitulation in 1945, in a new edition with an extended picture section.
 
275 pages + 32 illustrated pages, hardback, hard cover, GERMAN LANGUAGE!

Hanna Reitsch (born 29 March 1912 in Hirschberg/Schlesien, died 24 August 1979 in Frankfurt/Main) was the most successful female aviator of the 20th century - with more than 40 world records in various classes and with different types of aircraft. In the first part of her memoirs, which conclude with the end of the war and her imprisonment in an American camp, she describes her training as an aviator, her subsequent career as a flight instructor at a gliding school, her participation in research expeditions to South America, numerous world aviation records and her work as a test pilot for testing military aircraft.

Working at the Rechlin Air Force Flight Test Centre from 1937, she was the first woman in the world to fly a helicopter (Focke-Wulf Fw 61), a rocket plane (Messerschmitt Me 163) and the manned V 1. After a serious crash in 1943, Hanna Reitsch was the only woman in German history to be awarded the Iron Cross First Class.

On 26 April 1945, she flew with Colonel General Ritter von Greim in a Fieseler Storch to Berlin, which was already surrounded by the Russian army, and spent three days in the Führerbunker. Hanna Reitsch's accounts of the atmosphere of doom in the centre of power of the Third Reich in Hitler's immediate vicinity are of impressive intensity and an important authentic testimony to the times.

On 29 April 1945, under constant fire, she managed to fly the wounded General Field Marshal von Greim, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe by Hitler, out of Berlin.

For Hanna Reitsch, 18 months of humiliating and harassing American captivity followed. The fate of a passionate aviatrix.

In 2010, a film was made about her last great record flight: the last flight of Hanna Reitsch