Nurse the Hate: Franz Reichelt, Hero

Today I discovered some fabulous history, the story of Franz Reichelt.  Franz was an Austrian born French tailor.  He lived in Paris in the early 1900s and made his living primarily as a dressmaker for visiting Austrian tourists.  He somehow became consumed with the idea of making a parachute suit for airmen.  He began to stitch prototypes together.  Soon after he began to experiment by throwing dummies off his fifth floor apartment wearing his parachute suits and began to have some success.  His idea was that he could create something that would be used as a safety device for aviation pioneers so they could survive what must have been fairly consistent problems at altitude.

There was no real indication on why Franz was so fixated on this idea, but he couldn’t let it go.  On February 4^th 1912 he arrived at the Eiffel Tower wearing one of his suits.  He had been telling French authorities that he wanted to continue with his experiments at the greater height of the tower’s first deck with more dummy drops.  However, when he showed up that day he announced that he was going to do the jump himself to prove to the world the success of his design.  His friends pleaded with him not to do it.  The French Authorities, being French, soon got all worked up not so much about Franz’s safety but about protocol and responsibility.  In the end, they decided to let him make his jump after failing to bargain with him to just try some dummies first to see if it worked.

What I can’t make clear from the story is if Franz was stubborn or a fool.  Did he know how risky this was or was he blissfully confident in his limited abilities?  He waved to the gathering crowd saying “see you soon!” cheerfully as he ascended in his suit.  He got to the top railing and stood there with a cop for about 45 seconds perched on the edge.  Watch the footage.  It seems like he must have been weighing things out in his mind comparing the loss of face in backing out versus the likelihood of failure.  Then, as captured on newsreel footage, he did it.  He jumped and fell to his death. 

I am not sure if Franz is some sort of hero or the biggest asshole of all time.  On the one hand, he got in completely over his head.  He must have known that it was, at best, a coin flip if it was going to work.  It was cold that day, a very breezy 32 degrees, just at freezing. It must have been hard to be balanced on that railing and chair with the awkward suit and his hard soled shoes while weighing the options.  Still, he found the courage to jump, and that’s something.

I think we have all been at points in our life where we had to decide to jump or not.  There is a split second where you take the biggest chance you ever took or look back and wonder what would have happened if you had done it.  Maybe Franz thought the split second he jumped “I blew it”.  Or maybe he smiled all the way down cheerfully, just as he had walked up those steps waving to the newspapermen and onlookers.  He would never wake up in the middle of the night wondering “what if I had?”.  There’s something sad and beautiful about the entire incident.

I hope if I ever find myself standing on that railing filled with misplaced confidence, I find the courage to jump.  As the French say, "il est difficile de voler en pyjama chat".  

Here's his jump:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U