Ben RuheFrom

Discourse-2

Ulli Draheim. A small portion of Ulli Draheim’s Gibson Girl kite collection from World War II. In addition to kites, it includes radio transmitters, line, instruction manuals, and repair kits.

A stint in Texas while on active duty with the German air force got Ulli Draheim turned on to things American, so when he later took up collecting old, historic kites he naturally turned to Gibson Girl kites and Paul Garber target kites from the World War II period. Both are American icons. He’s got 80 of the Gibson Girls, along with the gear that goes with them – eight radio transmitters plus generators, tech manuals, lines, extra parts. The Gibson rigs are colored a high visibility yellow, a color Draheim adores. His car is bright yellow. Produced by the U.S. and its ally Britain, all his Boxkite Gibsons have instructions in English except for one oddity, a Gibson Girl with instructions in Russian. Since Russia was a wartime ally, this trophy kite is not a complete surprise, although its history remains unknown. Draheim acquired the oddity at eBay auction.

Gibson Girls were stocked on emergency life rafts used by downed airmen. They raised a radio aerial for summoning help. Curiously, the transmitter gave the kite its name. A rectangular box with narrow waist, it suggested a full-skirted Victorian Age woman, the beauty drawn by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson.

Draheim has Garbers, a two-line early stunt kite, with both German and Japanese aircraft images on the wings. The target kite was used to train antiaircraft gunners aboard ship in coping with the abrupt twists and turns of acrobatic enemy aircraft.

A second focus of Draheim’s collecting is pre-World War I French kites. He has 30 of them including an original Aigloplan from 1909, a Planeur RL, a Roi del Airs.

From there his collecting ranges far and wide, with eight English Atalantas from Pancheff, German Steiff Roloplans, and an assortment of 80 Rokakus from all over. He doesn’t fight them, he just likes flying them.

Ben Ruhe. Photo of Ulli Draheim.

“I also collect everything about kites I can get my hands on – books, cards, articles, even finger hoods for flying,” he says. “I spend a lot of energy on this. I like to do research and learn things nobody else knows. Crazy Ulli, they call me. Kites are my way to keep the feeling of a child, the way to live forever.”

Describing himself as too impatient and hyperactive to bother with building more than the occasional kite, the small, muscular German whose vocation is health inspection work in Gilhon, Lower Saxony, has built up his collection through purchases, trades, gifts. He says, though, there is a single fly in his collecting ointment – “My wife won’t permit kites on the ground floor of our house, her floor. No kite talk there either. All my treasures are on the top floor.” He says he’s at ease with this arrangement. A booming, ambiguous laugh follows.