Enoch Thulin

in Swedish

Enoch Thulin

1881 - 1919

At some point in the young Enoch Thulin's life, he got the idea of ​​his life and his life's goal. He was going to become an aviator. In 1894, he came to Lund, where his newly widowed mother had moved from Simris - today Simrishamn in Skåne, with her six children.

In 1900, the Wright brothers in the United States↗ svW flew for the first time. At the time, Enoch was 19 years old and perhaps he had already gathered the stamina for a career as an aviator. A serious young man - captured by an idea.

It has been said that Enoch was fascinated by the flight of birds, but he probably immediately realized that imitating birds was not a good method for flying. First he had to understand the theoretical foundations of flying. A doctoral thesis in Lund in 1912 on air resistance was a step on the way.

Good sources for learning more about Enoch Thulin

If you are in Landskrona, go to the city museum and visit the industrial exhibition.

You can read the excellent stories written by cultural writer Åke Jönsson and aviation history expert Jan Waernberg..

The aviation world has its enthusiasts, one of whom is called Mikael Karlson and lives just outside Lund - click here to see a video of a flying Thulin plane. (new window)

The Thulin Medal

The images show the Thulin Medal↗, which is the finest aerospace engineering award in Sweden. It is available in gold, silver and bronze.

I asked Jan Waernberg what a young person today would primarily learn from Enoch Thulin. The answer came straight away - faith in the future>.

A Thulin plane

About Thulin's companies and businesses ↓

Enoch Thulin was very enterprising and the company expanded rapidly. But he took big risks, too big according to many. And how about the secret large secret order?

Elsa Andersson ↓ became Sweden's first female aviator, at Thulin's flight school in Ljungbyhed. Died young and unfortunate in a parachute jump. Her life became a book by Jacques Werup and a film by Jan Troell -
As white as a snow (Så vit som en snö) (sic).

Enoch Thulin's career

After his bachelor's degree, Enoch (who changed his name from Enok) began teaching mathematics, physics and chemistry in Malmö in 1905. From 1906 to 1912 he was a teacher in Stockholm to varying degrees, where he came into contact with the Swedish Aeronautical Society, becoming a member in 1908.

Thulin comes to Landskrona

In 1912, Enoch Thulin received his flight certificate in France. He was 31 years old, had become a PhD on a dissertation on theories in the aviation area and had learned to fly, and been a high school teacher for a few years and left that career. Was the next step simple, a continuation of a strategy or were there real choices?

A pilot was at that time a true pioneer. When you got out of the plane after landing - if you had not killed yourself - you were met by applause. You could fly and get paid by the spectators, even if that business concept had its weaknesses. Maybe Thulin was captured by all the undone in the area. In 1909 the Italian Marinetti had published The Futurist Manifesto ↗ svW, whose first row read We want to sing the love of the danger, the familiarity with the energy and the audacity. A time for great deeds.

In Landskrona Hjalmar Nyrop and Oscar Ask had been working since 1910 with construction of aircrafts. Their first plan was given the nickname 'Grasshopper', because it bounced rather than flew.

But Oscar Ask did not give up, but already the following year almost 10,000 people gathered at the Exercise field in Landskrona to witness a flight. The field also called 'Exan' is located to the north, outside the picture.

Exan was more of a hiding place for rabbits than paved runway and at one point the flight ended with accident and a near death experience for the young Ask, who the next day started drawing on a new plane.

It was to that audience and these aircraft enthusiasts Enoch Thulin traveled. Landskrona was a ripe planting soil for a man with aviator ambitions. Thulin bought his first aircraft in 1913 and made many notable flight shows in the coming years.

Thulin starts a company

1913 Thulin forms the company AVIS - Aeroplansvarvet i Landskrona - with his friend Ask. Almost all new companies have some problems with ownership and liquidity. And so had Thulin. Some planes and engines were sold. Defense-friendly ladies collected funds for Thulin Plan, but that was not enough and the inventor and Nobel Laureate Gustaf Dalén ↗ svW, entered as a major owner in the new company, which in April 1919 was named Thulinverken. Gustaf Dalén, who founded AGA and was blind since 1912 after a laboratory accident, had probably met Enoch Thulin several years earlier. Dalén was born in 1869 and became like a mentor for Enoch Thulin.

Ambitous plans

Thulin as a businessman

Enoch constructs aircraft and the company also sells many aircraft engines. In 1917, the number of employees grows to 350 people and six months later to nearly 500 employees. In a short period of 1918, there are 800 employees.

In 1916 the company delivers their first engines. 1917 the annual profit was about 1.2 million on a turnover of approximately 9 MSEK.

The company continuously increased its share capital from 100,000 1915 to 6 million in September. 1917. Gustaf Dalén and Enoch Thulin owned about 30% of the company in 1917. In the Swedish Aviation History Review 1980, you can read the following

... By being able to promise fast deliveries, the company received an order from a South American country of SEK 33 million in 1918. The order is surrounded by great confidentiality and is mentioned in the 1918 Administration Report without indicate details. Mainly the order is presumed to have been about engines ...

To to meet this large order, the Board decided on a new share issue of 2 million. This was recalled in conjunction with the end of the 1st World War and the large 33-million order was stopped

... Although the contract was not signed, the company had made major investments and goods purchases to be able to keep the promised delivery time. Both the production apparatus and inventories were now subjected to a catastrophic depreciation...

The article reports an interview conducted with Einar Egnell (CTO and interim CEO) when Thulin in January 1919 resigned the post as the company's CEO). ...It was the large order from a South American state that prompted the board to implement the sharp increase in the company's production capacity ... he [Thulin] took huge risks...

Waernberg writes

... The 33 million order was strange. There are strong reasons to assume that a "South American country" simply was a cover name for a European country, such as Germany or Russia, for which AETA (Thulinverken) could not obtain an export license.

Thulin as business leader - risk aspects

On November 11, 1918, the 1st World War ended. On the same day, if not far earlier, Thulin and the company's management and board must have realized that the company faced very extensive problems. The company's calendar on a large order and continued war was a complete failure for the compny. The crisis was a fact.

200 people were dismissed in December and in April the workforce was reduced to about 80 people. Thulin could not possibly remain in the company's management and he went abroad for a few months, to both rest and may be inspired to develop other products. The aircraft time was over.

One should be careful about assessing a situation and a person in hindight. But Thulin took too large corporate risks and certainly also crossed legal boundaries.

He had learned to live with a personal risk in a way that was not at all suitable for Thulin as a business manager. The company certainly had both severe growth paina and a strategy based exclusively on a war situation. With a better and stronger board, they might have been able to stop the expansion, prepare for a post war situation and a new foundation for the company's future

Thulin's death somehow became a symbol of aIkaros ↗ svW flight. After Thulin, the company produced cars for a short period and the manufacturing competence was transferred other companies in the city. But that is another story.

Elsa Andersson And parachutes

Enoch Thulin did not have a parachute. The first Swedish jump from an aircraft took place in 1920. The first parachutes had a line that was attached to the aircraft, which automatically triggered the screen when the jumper had come under the plane. It was believed that the jumper would faint with speed and would not be able to trigger his screen himself. American Leslie Irvin became the first in the world with a free fall jump. He founded Irvin Aerospace↗ 1919. All parachutes soon became manual.

Elsa Andersson, 1897 - 1922, got her flight certificate at Thulin's flight school in Ljungbyhed 1920. Elsa became Sweden's first female pilot. She also attended a parachute school in Germany.

Elsa Andersson (Amanda Ooms) and Enoch Thulin (Reine Brynolfsson) in
Så vit som en snö ↗ svW

Elsa Andersson probably had a hard time finding herself and flighing and parachuting acted as escape attempts away from 'fate'. In her fifth jump, in Askersund in 1922, one of her arms got stuck in a strap and the parachute develops too late and her life was over.

Her fate fascinated director Jan Troell and author Jacques Werup. They produce a film Så vit som en snö (So white as a snow) (sic) which receives several awards at the Film Gala 2001 in Gothenburg. Werup's book came out in 1996 and here are a few lines..

... yet, the father, to the last moment, is trying to prevent her departure. He understands that the trip to the sleepy Landskrona is just such a journey that daring explorers do not hesitate to make: badly prepared, wet, similar to another fateful expedition that had begun with dreams and enthusiasm as the participants' only resource. (The North pole expedition by Andrée).

He says nothing, because what can a father really say to a child with dreams? If he prevented her? Locked her in? What would it soon look like in such a world?

Traces of Thulin in Landskrona

At Landskrona Muséum you can see objects and pictures from the Thuline era. A few years ago there was a special Thulin room, but today it is closed and several other objects from the city's industrial history are not displayed any more.

There was an Enoch Thulin School that conducted so called vocational preparation training - in construction, electricity and industry. One had a page about Enoch Thulin on their website.

There is an Enoch Thulin's way and a Enoch Thulin's airport↗. It is run by Landskrona Flygklubb and the website has several historical images. For example, the aircraft 'The grasshopper', which was shown inside the dining room at the city's largest hotel. Enoch Thulin was of the opinion that all municipalities should have an airport and invest in the future in aviation.

More traces - get in touch.

Almost all of Landskrona followed Enoch Thulin to his last rest in the new cemetery, where his friend and co-worker Oskar Ask also rests - in block 40.

Enoch Thulin died on May 14, 1919, in a test flight in Landskrona before an upcoming show. He had not flown for a year, but probably felt challenged by several good pilots from the continent who would show up in Copenhagen Thulin was against exhibition flighing and did not take unnecessary risks. On May 14, however, he stretched the boundaries of what the plan of the time could handle. His Thulin K came in a spin, which could not be canceled. He died before he reached the ground. The reaction in Landskrona was as great as if Christer Fuglesang ↗ svW had crashed with his spacecraft in Nybroviken in Stockholm.

He left a legacy as a pioneer, a company, his faith in the future, his wife Maja and their daughter Ylva, born in 1918 in Stockholm and later married the son of Carl Gunnar Herrlin (IDstory) a Landskrona priest.

ENOCH THULIN
född 15 sept 1881
14 maj 1919

MAJA THULIN
Född 4 april 1894
Död 6 juli 1973

VÄNNER RESTE VÅRDEN

Poto/retouch at the gravesite: J. Schlasberg. The lower picture is slightly cropped.

he gravesite is at Landskrona nya kyrkogård in block 44

References

• About BiBB, a media company and an encyclopedia 4.0
• Kyrkogårdskarta
• Flyghistorisk revy Specialnummer 1980, Flygpionjärerna i Landskrona och Ljungbyhed
• Åke Jönsson, 'Historien om en stad del 3:137'
• Mikael Karlson, Wikipedia
• Stig Kernell 1997, 'Hopp i nöd och lust'
• Jan Waernberg 2004, 'Enoch Thulin'
• Enoch Thulin på Wikipedia
• Historiska bilder: Landskrona Museum
• Flyghistoriska muséet
• Text and new photos: Johan Schlasberg

Published: 2010.05 Updated: 2025.06.19

Kategorier 20 Historical persons 45 Landskrona 14

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