The pilots' memorial on the Wasserkuppe - the mountain of pilots - consists of basalt stones as a foundation and an eagle sculpture made of bronze, which was created by the sculptor and animal sculptor Professor August Gaul.

It was erected in 1923 in memory of the fallen pilots of the First World War (1914 - 1918), on the initiative of an association of former front-line pilots. According to estimates of the reporter of the Fuldaer Zeitung, 100,000 people attended the inauguration on August 30, 1923.

The inscription on the airmen's memorial reads:

"WE
DEAD AIRMEN REMAINED
SIEGER
BY US ALONE.
PEOPLE,
YOU FLY AGAIN
AND YOU WILL BE
WINNER
THROUGH YOU
ALONE."

The words must be understood from the spirit of those times after the lost First World War, which were strongly marked by deprivations of the population, reparation payments and inflation.

Kurt Tucholsky rightly criticized the monument and the cult of the glider pilots in the 1920s in the Weltbühne. The inscription was "beautiful, but wrong. The dead aviators are those who were shot down, i.e. defeated - which certainly does not disgrace them. But to construct a victory from a shooting down, which in the opposite case is celebrated as a glory, is surely not acceptable."

From the airmen's memorial, one has a magnificent view over the Rhön.

home sweet home 😍