In Germany, a city’s famed industry now helps keep it afloat

According to the city, the foundation generates between $60 million and $80 million a year for a population of just 57,000. That largess supports projects as varied as school lunches for underprivileged children, sports teams and a new library. It was the threat of losing the foundation that nudged the town fathers to get back into the zeppelin business two decades ago.

That prudent choice kept the foundation in the city’s hands. It may yet prove a good business decision in its own right. Thanks to their low fuel consumption, airships are enjoying renewed attention as an alternative in an era of high fuel prices. But while zeppelins inspire enormous loyalty among those who work on them and a sense of wonder among all who watch them soar, the financial returns have barely gotten off the ground. Since the new line of zeppelins first took flight here 11 years ago, the company, ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, has built only four, including the prototype — and sold only two. “From an economic standpoint, it was completely backward,” Josef Büchelmeier, the mayor of Friedrichshafen, said. “We had the product first and then went looking for a market.”

One hundred years ago, Count von Zeppelin started a foundation with donations dedicated to the development of airships. If for any reason that goal proved impossible, the foundation was to pass to the city of Friedrichshafen. In 1947 after World War II, the French occupation authority turned the foundation over to the city of Friedrichshafen.

To this day, the foundation owns full or majority stakes in a number of large and successful businesses, all descended from the original zeppelin builders. Those enterprises pay dividends to the foundation (and, indirectly, to the city). “Our philosophy is to preserve the businesses in the long run, to keep them at the top, insulated from the common pressure from shareholders,” Büchelmeier said.

“There were always new attacks on the city’s ownership of the foundation,” said Bernd Wiedmann, the town’s mayor from 1985 to 2001. Criticisms of foundation’s ownership led the Audit Office of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, where Friedrichshafen is located, to investigate whether the foundation should be taken from the city; however, the new zeppelin program wholly insulated Friedrichshafen against suggestions that it had abandoned the foundation’s original purpose. “Since then, it’s been quiet,” Wiedmann said.

There was still the little matter of what to do with the 250-foot-long airships once they built them. The reintroduced zeppelins have been used for a variety of purposes, including air-quality testing and crowd surveillance at public events. They have carried roughly 80,000 tourists for gentle rides in the sky in many locales, including in Germany, England and Japan.