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LZ127 – Graf Zeppelin
Unlisted Variety with Swastikas

466309. Sold For $375

GERMANY, Drittes Reich. 1933-1945. Cast FE Plaquette (150x92mm, 170.75 g). Around-the-World Flight of the Graf Zeppelin or Die Deutschlandfahrt (The German Trip). By Erberhard Ferdinand Encke. Cast by the Lauchhammer Art Foundry. Dated 1929, reissued 1936. Graf Zeppelin in flight right, with swastikas on fins; constellation Ursa Major and the North Star in bcakground; to lower left, coat-of-arms of Count Zeppelin; to lower right, mark of the foundry / Blank, but stamped WELTFLUG [1929] GRAF ZEPPELIN/ Eberhard Encke-Berlin. Kaiser 501 var. (no swastikas, intact date on reverse). EF, minor spotting.


In the years following the First World War, it seemed that the future of commercial aviation lay in the rigid lighter-than-air zeppelins. The most famous of these promising passenger airships was LZ127, the Graf Zeppelin. Completed in 1928, the airship operated on a number of routes, including a regular Germany to Brazil run, and various individual flights around Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as to the United States. In 1929, with financial backing of American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hurst, the Graf Zeppelin became the zeppelin to circumnavigate the globe, starting at the US Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey, crossing the Atlantic, western Europe, Russia, the Pacific ocean, and the continental United States before returning again to New Jersey.

Curiously, the other published examples all bear plain fins, lacking any sort of livery. The present specimen has swastikas on the fins and an obliterated date on the reverse, indicating that it is a later, Nazi-era reissue. One occasion in the later service record of the airship provides a suitable occasion. From 26-30 March 1936, as a part of the propaganda blitz to approve annexation of the newly occupied Rhineland to Germany, the Nazi party dispatched its two most famous airships, LZ-127, the Graf Zeppelin, and LZ-129, the Hindenburg, to drop leaflets and blast military music. Known as Die Deutschlandfahrt (The German Trip), this operation helped secure the power of the ascendant Nazi Party among the German people, and is also celebrated on medals issued by Karl Goetz (Kienast 516).