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Käthe Paulus seemed more likely to become the stuff of statistics

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than the heroine of headlines. Born into a working-class German family,

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she became by turns an international celebrity, a national hero, and pioneering inventor.

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Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of Footnoting History.

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I’m Lucy, and today I’ll be discussing the life of Käthchen Paulus. Known by the diminutive Käthchen,

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she was born in December of 1868 in Zellhausen bei Offenbach, a small town near Frankfurt am Main.

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The prosperity of the expanding city passed her family by; Käthe’s father died when she was young,

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and she soon learned her mother’s trade of seamstressing, with which she helped to

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support them both. Käthe would continue to support her mother for the duration of the

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latter’s life... but the means by which she did so took a dramatic turn when she was around 20.

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In 1889, Käthe made part of a large and enthusiastic audience for the stunt

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balloon-man Hermann Lattemann. Now, today, we may associate hot air balloons primarily

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with slow-wandering tourist outings over pastoral countryside; or with jigsaw puzzles of the same.

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But in the final decades of the nineteenth century, these massive creations were on the

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cutting edge of technology, enabling human flight several years before the airplane.

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The flights of pioneering ballooners were often marketed as a cross between

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scientific demonstration and vaudeville entertainment. And they attracted the interest

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not only of scientists and socialites, but of huge numbers of the general public.

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In retrospect, it’s difficult to determine whether Käthe was first attracted to Lattemann,

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or to the flight which he made his business. She soon obtained for herself a position as

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his behind-the-scenes assistant, repairing the balloons with the skills she had as

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a trained seamstress. Soon, she oversaw the full range of Lattemann’s equipment.

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She became his partner in private life before she became his professional partner; two years

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after they met, in 1891, they had a son together. Thereafter, Paulus went up in

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balloons with Lattemann, learning from him, quite literally, the ropes. By her own testimony,

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she insisted for some time that she was ready to fly solo before, in 1893, she finally did.

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And she was thrilled--more thrilled even than the audiences who assembled to watch.

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By her own account, it was a less than polished first performance. In a rough landing, she bumped

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her head against the basket hard enough to draw blood. “But what was that,” she wrote in a 1910

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article, “compared to the proud consciousness that the thing had more or less WORKED?”

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For something over a year, Paulus and Lattemann continued to develop their

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professional partnership. The studio photograph accompanying this podcast is representative of

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Paulus’ public image: clad in a sailor’s costume designed to combine practicality

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with the appeal of an adventuress, she stands apparently poised on the verge of making a jump,

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the skyline of Frankfurt just visible below. Her double ballooning act with Lattemann enjoyed great

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popularity, and they toured throughout Germany. In 1895, a malfunction led to tragedy: in a shared

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jump, Lattemann’s parachute failed to open, and Paulus could only watch as he fell to his death.

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The trauma of this experience compounded the depression Paulus suffered at the loss

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of her life partner; by her own account, she remained virtually confined to bed for months,

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unsure how to continue in the aftermath... unsure, even, of whether or not she wanted to.

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What changed all that were the letters. From across Germany, the fans of Paulus’ and

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Lattemann’s feats wrote to the grieving woman. Letters of condolence, letters of sympathy,

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letters of encouragement, begging Paulus not to let this tragedy put an end to her

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own career as a ballooner. By her own account, this enormous outpouring of support was crucial

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in encouraging her to take her next step. It was a dramatic one. She bought four new balloons.

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And, under the modish English stage name of “Miss Polly,” she set off on a grand tour of

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Europe’s capitals. In Paris and Budapest, London and Berlin, Paulus drew large and diverse crowds.

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The studio photograph accompanying this podcast is representative of Paulus’ public image: clad in a sailor’s costume designed to combine practicality with the

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appeal of an adventuress, she stands apparently poised on the verge of making a jump, the skyline of Frankfurt just visible below. Other images showed her in other costumes, including an Annie

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Oakley style outfit, complete with American flag. This get-up was less incongruous to her audiences

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than it may seem to us. The air was, at that time, a new frontier, just opened for exploration,

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subject to a romanticizing, even colonizing gaze not unlike that with which the so-called

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Wild West was viewed. Paulus honed her appearances into theatrical tours de force,

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not only flying, not only jumping, but performing acrobatic feats and even riding a bicycle

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suspended from a hot air balloon’s basket. “Miss Polly” became an international success.

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The advent of the First World War brought further transformations in Paulus’ career.

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Her international performances, of course, came to an end. But it was,

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once again, Paulus herself who engineered the next dramatic change in her activities.

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She made a donation of her balloons and her parachutes to the army administration.

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And the fact that she was Germany’s leading expert in hot air balloons--and, still more

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significantly, parachute technology--made her a valued if unofficial advisor for balloon troops.

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Paulus’ efforts did not stop there, however. She cared passionately about the safety,

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as well as the success, of her country’s armies, and in 1916, she succeeded in gaining a hearing

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from the Prussian War Ministry. Drawing on her years of experience as a performer, Paulus had

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developed a foldable parachute with case, that could be strapped to the back of a ballooner.

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The Ministry gave her a contract, and she set to creating these parachutes... in her apartment.

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Paulus expanded her production as rapidly as she could, training other women in the

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stitching of parachutes. She reserved the difficult and crucial task of cutting the

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slippery silk for herself and her close assistants. It was a lucrative business...

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but Paulus rapidly reinvested her profits in war bonds, a course which was as fiscally disastrous

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for her as it was passionately patriotic. In 1917, she received a Service Cross for War Aid

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(Verdienstkreuz für Kriegshilfe) after 20 balloon-troops shot down at Verdun

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had parachuted to safety. At the end of the war, most of Paulus’ carefully built-up fortune was

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depleted. But she insisted firmly that all her labor had been well worth it.

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Once again, it was letters that convinced her: hundreds of letters,

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addressed to Paulus under her own name in her modest apartment... letters from soldiers who,

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jumping from damaged balloons and airplanes, had opened Paulus’ parachutes, and survived.

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Paulus never resumed an active career as a ballooner. But some historians, at least,

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have argued that in Frankfurt, where she had lived for much of her life, she remained for

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some time a fixture in the popular imagination and popular affection. Art historian Sean Rainbird has

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interpreted several Expressionist artworks of the ‘20s as inspired by Paulus’ and Lattemann’s

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daredevil exploits. Paulus’ funeral, in 1935, was attended by only a handful of people...

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but among them were two women pilots, who credited Paulus, Europe’s first woman flyer,

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as the pioneer who had showed them new possibilities. Today, Paulus is little-remembered,

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her achievements usually found, quite literally, in footnotes. But in one place, her name is next

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to those of Amelia Earhart, Bessie Coleman, and similar pioneers. There is a street named after

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her outside Frankfurt, near the city’s airport, one of the world’s busiest centers of flight.

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NATHAN: This has been Footnoting History. If you like the podcast,

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be sure to visit our website, FootnotingHistory.com,

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where you can find links to further reading suggestions related to this week's episode as

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well as a calendar of upcoming podcasts. You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter,

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@HistoryFootnote. Until next time, remember, the best stories are always in the footnotes.