Figure 1.--Here boys at the Oberschule Saalfeld, a secondary school, are working on gliders. The boy at the right may be the HJ boy in the family album. He looks a few yeats older than his DJ portrait. Building and flying gliders was a primary activity for the Flieger HJ.

The boy here as he progressed through the HJ seems to have been particularly interested in flying. We see a range of Flieger HJ activities. This was the flying division of the HJ. There were flying activities in regular HJ units, but boys with an avid interest in flying could join special Flieger HJ units. We note both school and field activities. We see both hot air baloons and gliders. And as youth he enlisted in the Luftwaffe during World War II. We don't see our boy here in many of the photographs, but since we see him in the Luftwaffe, we assume that he is in the photographs or took the photographs.

Fliger HJ

The Flieger HJ was the flying division of the HJ. The boys joined the Fliger HJ after going through the basic DJ program. There were flying activities in regular HJ units, but boys with an avid interest in flying could join special Flieger HJ units.

Oberschule Saalfeld

Here boys at the Oberschule Saalfeld, a secondary school (figure 1). An Oberschule was an academicially oriented secondary school with a modern curriculum. They gave more emphasis to math and science than clasical studies. I am not sure if the project here building gliders was coordinated with the HJ program. The boy at the right may be the HJ boy in the family album. He looks a few yeats older than his DJ portrait. Building and flying gliders was a primary activity for the Flieger HJ. I believe Saalfeld is the location of the school. Saalfeld (Saale) is a town in the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district of Thuringia, a state in southern Germany. This presumably tells us where the HJ boy was from. The school was founded during the Germamn Empire, but we are not sure just when. Quite a number of its pupils die in World War I. A new acacademic program was introduced during the Weimar Republic (1918-33). The school administrators appear yo have been staunch NAZIs. The program of the school year 1933/34 states: "The year 1933/34 was devoted to Nazi revolution." There were enthusiastic victory celebrations at the school in the early tears of World War II. Again many graduates of the school lost their lives. The strong support for the NAZIs damaged the reputation of the school. After the war, the building serves first as a military hospital and later as a vocational school and a primary school.

Balloon

One photograph shows the boys with a hot air balloon. At least I think it is hot air. Perhaps they got some hydrogen. (Helium of course is preferable as it is not flamable, but the United States, the main source of helium at the time, refused to see helium to NAZI Germany. I'm not sure how common this was. We rarely see the HJ involved with ballooning. It is an elaborately done up balloon with the HJ diamond symbol and the lettering "Flieger". The image is captioned Schwarza--meaning Flugplatz Schwarza. They have quite a large area to launch it. I am guessing that a boy may have gone up in it, but perhaps not. It is not a full-sized balloon.

Glider

We see HJ boys involved with gliders. This was a popular activity and we see quite a few images og boys building and flying gliders. Yoinger boys flew model gliders. Older blews actually flew full-sized gliders. Having boys with flying experience was an advantage for the Luftwaffe before and during World War II. It mean that there were substantial numbers of boys with basic flying experience. The boy here appears to have engaged in glider activities at Flugplatz Swarza. This I think would mean something like Flight Place Black. It appears to have been a HJ facility specially set aside for gliders. It had an elaborate gate topped by a glider. We do not know just where it was located.

Luftwaffe

The HJ boy as a youth enlisted in the Luftwaffe during World War II. The HJ was set up to feed boys into the military services. We don't see our boy here in many of the photographs, but since we see him in the Luftwaffe, we assume that he is in the photographs or took the photographs.