The zeppelin carousel at the Stuttgart fair, 1937
Crowds pass through an eagle-crowned gateway hung with swastika banners, and model airships with gondolas swing round a tower topped by a globe.
A steady stream of visitors in hats and overcoats walks through a gateway of two tall pylons, each crowned with an eagle, with swastika banners hanging on either side and the roofs of the fair beyond. Inside, a striped tower carries a huge painted globe, and from its top steel arms swing silver model airships in a wide circle, each with a gondola of riders; the ships lift off the platform, tilt outward and sweep past against the grey sky.
The fair is presumably Stuttgart's great autumn festival on the Cannstatter Wasen, founded by King Wilhelm I of Württemberg in 1818 after the famine year of 1816. The zeppelin, born on Lake Constance in Württemberg, remained its favourite ride even after the Hindenburg burned at Lakehurst in May 1937.
