The “Lucky Airship”: LZ 10 Schwaben
- Michael Wilson
- Sep 9
- 5 min read
[This article was published in The Airpost Journal, Vol. 96, No. 5, Sep-Oct 2025, pp. 72-75. A PDF of that version is attached.]
The Schwaben – designated “LZ 10” meaning it was the 10th “Luftschiff Zeppelin” (LZ) or “Airship Zeppelin” – had the distinction of being the first commercially successful rigid airship (Figure 1). Launched June 26, 1911, and operated by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft (A.G.) – DELAG, for short – Schwaben made 224 flights, carried 4,354 passengers – more than 1,500 paying – and spent 479 hours in the air before it was destroyed in a gale and fire on June 28, 1912. The Schwaben was often commanded by Hugo Eckener. Eckener earned his flight license earlier in 1911 and would become famous for his command of the Graf Zeppelin on its record-setting flights in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Because of its successful history, the Schwaben was dubbed the “Lucky Airship.”
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin invented the rigid airship that bears his name. (In contrast to a blimp which relies on gas pressure for its shape, a Zeppelin has an internal, rigid framework to maintain its form.) He became enamored with lighter-than-air aircraft when he was an observer for the Union Army during the American Civil War. He sketched out the first design of his invention in 1874 after reading a pamphlet titled, Weltpost Und Luftschifffahrt – “World Post and Airship Travel” – by Heinrich von Stephan, but it took until 1900 for Zeppelin to have the time and the money to build LZ 1, which made its first flight over Lake Constance in July of that year. Lake Constance, which is nestled between Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, is part of the Swabian region of Germany, the birthplace of Count Zeppelin and the region after which LZ 10 was named.
A lack of funds was a recurring challenge for Zeppelin, and it was the main reason that LZ 2 and LZ 3 were not built until 1906. But with LZ 3, Zeppelin proved the viability of his design and that in turn garnered the attention of the German Army. From that point, it was an upward trajectory for Zeppelin culminating in the Schwaben.
Schwaben flew out of Düsseldorf, Potsdam and Frankfurt, but most of its flights were roundtrips from its hangar at Oos in Baden-Baden, Germany and had durations of one-and-a-half to two hours. These excursions gave people the thrill of flight and offered vistas of the natural beauty of the Black Forest including its mountains, forests, and river scenery. But the price was steep – 200 marks or about $48, according to stories that appeared in American newspapers in the fall of 1911. That’s equal to about $1,600 today, which certainly explains the low ratio of paying passengers.
The Schwaben had a crew of eight or nine divided between two gondolas, fore and aft that also housed its engines. The powerplant could propel Schwaben at a top speed of 47 miles per hour in perfect weather, but the average speed was 33 miles per hour. It could carry up to 24 people in a passenger cabin suspended beneath the center of the airship. The décor was luxurious – leather covered walls, carpeted floors, large folding windows to offer unobstructed views, and wicker chairs for comfortable seating. To top it off, cold meals and refreshments were available in the cabin.
Along with passengers, Schwaben also carried mail. It was not the first Zeppelin to do so – that honor falls to LZ 4 that carried mail in July 1908 – but because of its relatively long period of service, it carried the most mail by the early Zeppelins.
The postcard shown in Figure 2 and 3 is an example flown on Schwaben’s October 3, 1911, flight. We know Schwaben made a roundtrip flight from Oos that day and based on the postcard’s notations, it might have headed north for 20 miles to the town of Karlsruhe before turning around and returning to its base.
The 5-pfennig Germania stamp, which met the inland rate for a postcard, is cancelled with a Baden-Baden circular date stamp dated October 3, 1911. The postcard also bears a Schwaben on-board cachet of the same date, which is listed as a Type I cachet in Volume 1 of the 5th Edition of the American Air Mail Catalogue.
This postcard was produced for use on Schwaben’s predecessor, the DELAG-operated airship Deutschland (“an Bord des Luftschiffes ‘Deutschland’”). There were two airships named after the country: LZ-7 that was destroyed in June 1910 nine days after its first flight and LZ-8 (Deutschland II) destroyed in May 1911 six weeks after its initial voyage.
These postcards were designed to be dropped from the airship, picked up and signed by the finder (“Name des Finders”), and tossed in the nearest mailbox (“Der Finder wird gebeten, diese Karte in den nächsten Briefkasten zu werfen”) for delivery. This postcard does not include the name of a finder. It was likely dropped from Schwaben in a bag with other postcards that included an instruction note and money for postage. We do know the postcard was postmarked in Baden-Baden and then transported 70 miles to Mannheim, likely by train, where it was delivered.
The picture on this postcard titled, Above the Clouds (“Under den Wolken”), is not a photo of a Zeppelin in flight. Rather it is based on a 1909 painting of a Zeppelin test flight over Lake Constance produced by a German artist named Michael Zeno Diemer. Diemer was known for his marine paintings and panoramic paintings of battles. Interestingly, his son Franz, who was 20 years old when Diemer painted his Zeppelin, would become a flight pioneer setting numerous world records in fixed-wing planes in the late 1910s and early 1920s.
The postcard writer was someone by the name of “F. Löb” who while aloft penned a short note to his/her dear friend “Dr. Busch”: “Sending you and your dear family warm regards from the air.” I have no idea who Herr or Frau Löb and Dr. Busch were other than the latter was a director or teacher at an Upper School for Girls (“Höh[ere] Mädchenschule”) in Mannheim, Germany.
Despite striking out on the identities of those two people, this is a fascinating piece of aerophilately from the very early days of air mail. I’m lucky, indeed, to have a postcard from the “Lucky Airship” in my collection.
Resources
American Air Mail Catalogue, 5th ed., Vol 1., Edited by Joseph L. Eisendrath. 1974. Washington, D.C.: American Air Mail Society.
Empires of the Sky. Rose, Alexander. 2020. Random House, New York.
Zeppelin Post Katalog. Sieger, Walter Hermann, 2001. Hermann E. Sieger GmbH, Württemberg, Germany.
Ochaba, Sabine, “LZ-10 Schwaben – The First Successful DELAG Airship – Part 1.” June 22, 2025. Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, Germany. https://www.zeppelin-museum.de/en/discover/lz-10-schwaben-the-first-successful-delag-airship. Accessed June 29, 2025.
My thanks to Abby Huber for deciphering and translating the written words on the postcard. https://www.ajordanhuber.com/. I have used Ms. Huber’s services on at least two other occasions for difficult-to-read 19th century German-language letters.