Johannisthal

When Anthony Fokker went into serious aviation business it became soon evident that there was no place for him in his homeland The Netherlands.

Instead he moved to Germany together with his old schoolfriend Frits Cremer and after some preliminary wandering he finally settled at Johannisthal near Berlin, at that time the ‘centre of all aeronautical activities’ in Germany. However, during this early period (1912-1914) Fokker was with many others just a small fish in a big pond and only when he received military orders after the outbreak of the First World War he succeeded to grow his business! I recently found on a second-hand bookmarket a rare little gem from this period:

An original quarterly brochure on Johannisthall covering January-March 1913. It is interesting to see that Fokker is advertising for his flying school, both in landplanes and seaplanes. Actually he had at that time absolutely no seaplane available!
Further the brochure gives a very good overview of ‘who was who’, including a section with portrait and planes pictures!
The brochure is now in the archives of the Aviodrome aviation museum at Lelystad airport, the Netherlands.

Nico Braas