Das Luftschiff on AllMovie

The true story of a young would-be pilot is fictionalized in this film about flying that has a hard time taking off as it should. Franz Xaver Stannebein (Joerg Gundzuhn), a small child at the turn of the 20th-century, wanted to do nothing more than fly and he carried his dreams into his years at an orphanage and into adulthood as a merchant in Spain. He eventually invests everything he has in his own version of an airship and the airship is a total failure (as most of his experiments in flying have always been). Then the Nazis in Germany ask him to build an airfield in Spain and when he does so, it is used by the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War and he goes to Germany to protest. At that point, he is thrown into an insane asylum and is never allowed out again. Later on, after the war, his grandson begins to go through his papers to try to discover what his grandfather was all about, and the story of Franz Stannebein emerges.