Ulrich Hütter (18 December 1910 – 12 August 1990) was an Austro-German aeronautical engineer and university teacher who came to wider prominence through his second career as a pioneer of wind power technology.
Life
Ulrich Hütter was born in Pilsen in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (today Plzeň in the Czech Republic). Eduard Hütter (1880–1967), his father, was an architect originally from Salzburg, whose professional career increasingly focused on monument conservation on behalf of the government. The family relocated to Salzburg in connection with Eduard Hütter's work after the war ended, and Ulrich Hütter enrolled at the classics-focused "Humanistisches Gymnasium" (secondary school) there in 1921, moving in 1930 to study Mechanical engineering and boat construction technology at the College of Technology (subsequently renamed) in Vienna. While still at school, he took to helping out in the workshops of the Rhön-Rossitten Gesellschaft gliding organisation during his summer vacations. He teamed up his spare time with his elder brothers Wolfgang and Heinrich to construct experimental flying machines. As their designs became more ambitious, in 1932 Ulrich and Wolfgang started to take lessons to qualify as Glider pilots, using the knowledge gained to develop more sophisticated flying machine models of their own design.
One product of their enthusiasms during these years was a basic glider which the brothers constructed in 1930/31. During the two years it took, the project was reported to have cost the brothers approximately 500 schillings for parts and materials. With a wingspan of 6.4 meters and an overall weight of 35 kg it was believed to be the smallest flying device in the world capable of accommodating a person. It was purchased in November 1931 by the "Vienna Academic Flyers' Group" ("Akademische Fliegergruppe").
In 1936 Ulrich Hütter switched to the College of Technology (subsequently renamed) in Stuttgart to study aeronautical technology, and emerging two years later with his degree in the subject. Meanwhile, in July 1932 Ulrich and his brother Wolfgang had joined the NSDAP (party), a move which presumably appeared career enhancing at the time, although it would cause problems for him after 1945. Hütter received his doctorate in 1942 from the Vienna College of Technology. His work, supervised by Prof. Dr.-Ing, Eugen Feifel, was submitted as "a contribution to the design fundamental for wind power plants". It expounded what subsequently became known as "Hütter's wind rotor theory".
Between 1939 and 1943 he was actually living not in Vienna (which had been incorporated into Germany since 1938) but in Weimar, where he was employed in several different roles, one of which involved heading up the aerodynamics department at the Weimar Engineering College. He was employed, in addition, as a designer-constructor at Ventimotor GmbH., a pioneering wind-power company founded in 1940 by Fritz Sauckel, the regional "Gauleiter" (governor) and Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS Walter Schieber, an exceptionally talented and well-qualified chemist-engineer with close links to the government. One of the principal projects for which Ventimotor GmbH. had been earmarked was as the supplier for a large decentralised power generation network using wind energy to be created in the context of the government's massively ambitious and gruesomely controversial "Generalplan Ost" for eastern central Europe. However, after German defeat at Stalingrad towards the end of 1942 it became the turn of the Soviet army to advance against the enemy. For the German army there would be no "final victory", and Germany's "Generalplan Ost" was over-written, after 1945, by the Soviet vision for the territories involved. During 1943 activities at Ventimotor GmbH. were suspended till after the war. According to one source he "served briefly in the military" before, still in 1943, being redeployed to Stuttgart to work as head of the construction-design department at the research institute of "Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH." at Stuttgart-Ruit. Projects for which he was responsible at Zeppelin's research division included manned missiles, underwater towing devices and the Hütter Hü 211 high-altitude "night hunter" reconnaissance prototype.
