Propeller blade for aeroplanes

• wood, “Norddeutschen Dornier Werke” in Wismar around 1935, length: 197 cm

Aeroplane propellers were initially made from wood then later from metal. Nowadays they are made from fibre-glass reinforced synthetic materials or carbon fibres. The first propellers had two blades and then four. The propeller blade comes from the Dornier production facility in Wismar. In 1933 “Dornier-Metallbau GmbH Friedrichshafen” founded a branch in the port on the Baltic Sea, the later “Norddeutschen Dornier Werke” (with further locations in Lübeck and Berlin).

The facility had more than 3,000 employees at the end of the 1930s. The number increased during the war through the employment of forced labourers and prisoners of war.Allied bomb attacks on Wismar destroyed buildings and facilities. The Red Army demolished the remaining plants in 1945.