M.Dusing German Aviation Industry in WWI. Volume 1 (A Centennial Perspective on Great War Airplanes 84)

Luftverkehrsgesellschaft mbH (LVG), Johannisthal & Koslin

Foundation:

  Luft-Verkehrs Gesellschaft mbH (LVG) was founded by Arthur Muller even before the war (1910) with the aim of carrying out advertising trips with Parseval airships Parseval PL.6 and P.L.9 “Charlotte”.
  When the company did not deliver the hoped for results after one year due to technical difficulties, the company started building Farman type airplanes under license.
  But the time of dependence on others was not to last long. At the end of 1911, the German army administration became interested in aircraft. They began to realize that an important weapon was in the making, even if they could not yet remotely foresee the extraordinary importance that the aviation industry would have in the not too distant future. Now the LVG saw a wide sphere of activity ahead of it and was determined to exploit the possibilities. The designer Franz Schneider was appointed, who had worked for a long time in the Nieuport factory in Reims and enjoyed the reputation of being a particularly reliable and skilled aircraft builder.
  During the war, the Luftverkehrsgesellschaft mbH had been given the abbreviated designation “Lvg”by the Flugzeugmeisterei. It owned:
   A factory in Johannisthal along with its own screw factory in Berlin.
   A factory in Koslin (Pomerania).



Luftverkehrsgesellschaft mbH, Berlin-Johannisthal, (LVG)

Aircraft Development:

  Since 1910, the company was engaged in the exploitation of guided balloons designed at that time for passenger and light advertising trips. It bought some Parseval airships and made the first trips with them in 1910. The company was attracted by the growing interest in airplane construction and turned its attention to this field as well. As early as 1911, the company presented two self-built biplanes based on the Farman system and one original Farman biplane for the B.Z. flight. When the factory pilot and flight instructor Benno Konig won the first prize on an Albatros-Farman biplane built by LVG on the very last day, the company became known to the general public for the first time. The construction of further airplanes, improved by own constructions, but always after the Farman system, was taken up and civil pilots, whom the company had accepted as pupils, were trained on it in flying.
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