Imperial German 1909 Zeppelin II Frankfurt ILA Landing Commemorative Medal Ribbon

This is an original German commemorative medal of 1909 marking the landing of the airship Zeppelin II at Frankfurt am Main on 31 July 1909, struck for the first International Aviation Exhibition and issued with its original ribbon. The medal is octagonal and measures approximately 1.5 inches (3.8 cm), suspended by a red-and-white ribbon from a bent-wire pin fitting. It is a patinated base-metal issue of the type catalogued in the Zeppelin medal literature (Kaiser 350).

The obverse carries, around a finely modeled side view of the rigid airship in flight, the raised legend ERINNERUNG AN DIE LANDUNG DES ZEPPELIN II AM 31. JULI 1909 (Remembrance of the landing of the Zeppelin II on 31 July 1909), the U-letters rendered as V in the classical Roman manner of the die. The airship is shown in profile with its long rigid hull, gondolas, and control surfaces picked out in detail. The reverse bears an interlaced monogram within a dotted octagonal border, the cipher of the exhibition that hosted the landing. The medal retains its original suspension: a length of red-and-white ribbon, the colors of the Free City of Frankfurt and of the Hanseatic tradition, folded through a wire hanger with a pin for wear. The finish is a dark patinated base metal with the design in relief.

The event the medal commemorates was one of the defining public spectacles of the early airship age. The airship in question was LZ 5, the fifth of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's rigid airships and sister ship to the LZ 4 that had been destroyed at Echterdingen the previous year; on its acceptance for military service it received the tactical designation Z II, the "Zeppelin II" of the medal's legend. Completed at Manzell near Friedrichshafen in May 1909, LZ 5 measured some 446 feet (136 meters) in length, was driven by two Daimler engines, and early in its career made a celebrated long-distance endurance voyage with Count Zeppelin himself aboard, flying from Lake Constance to Bitterfeld and back. In the summer of 1909, during the airship's relocation from Lake Constance toward its new military home at Cologne, it was displayed at the first Internationale Luftschiffahrts-Ausstellung (International Aviation Exhibition, the ILA) at Frankfurt am Main, and on 31 July 1909 at half past three in the afternoon it descended to land at the Dammgraben ground before the exhibition crowds. This was the first landing of a Zeppelin at the ILA, and it was the exhibition's supreme attraction, witnessed as part of an event that drew some one and a half million visitors between July and October of that year.

The Frankfurt exhibition and the Zeppelin landing belonged to a moment of extraordinary national enthusiasm for the airship. Count Zeppelin had endured years of ridicule, financial ruin, and repeated disaster, culminating in the fiery loss of LZ 4 at Echterdingen in August 1908; the spontaneous flood of public donations that followed that catastrophe, the so-called "miracle of Echterdingen," had rescued his enterprise and turned him into a national hero. By the summer of 1909 the Zeppelin had become the emblem of German technical genius and pride, and the appearance of Z II over Frankfurt, settling to earth before a vast crowd at the world's first great aviation exhibition, was received as a triumph of that spirit. The same year saw Count Zeppelin found the DELAG, the world's first commercial airline. The airship celebrated on this medal did not long survive: on 24 April 1910, less than a year after the Frankfurt landing, Z II was caught by a storm near Limburg an der Lahn, broke loose from its moorings, and was wrecked, making surviving 1909 commemoratives a tangible link to a machine that existed only briefly. Souvenir medals such as this were struck and sold at the exhibition and in its wake as affordable mementos for the public who had come to see the great airship, and they survive today as some of the most evocative artifacts of the pre-war Zeppelin craze.

Condition is very good. The medal retains a strong even patina with the relief design crisp and fully legible on both faces, the airship and the commemorative legend sharp on the obverse and the monogram clear on the reverse. There is light surface wear and minor handling marks consistent with age. The original red-and-white ribbon is present and intact, showing honest age toning and light soiling, and the wire suspension and pin are in place and functional. There is no significant damage or loss.

For the collector, 1909 is the golden year of Zeppelin commemorative medals, and pieces tied to a specific documented event, here the first Zeppelin landing at the Frankfurt ILA, are the most desirable within that field. This medal unites early airship history, the person of Count Zeppelin, and the world's first international aviation exhibition in a single small object, and its survival with the original ribbon adds to its appeal. It will attract the collector of Imperial German Zeppelin and aviation material, of exhibition and commemorative medals, and of the wider material culture of the Kaiserreich at the height of its fascination with flight.