Alexander Baumann was born in Heilbronn, Germany. He studied mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, graduating in 189as a "state construction supervisor" in Chemnitz, followed by a stint with Dresdener Maschinenfabrik & Schiffswerft AG in Dresden.
Teaching career
In 1902 Baumann moved to Zwickau to teach engineering. He became an instructor at the Physical-Technical Reichs Establishment in Charlottenburg in 1908. In the five years following the powered flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903, Baumann received patents for several flying machine designs, flight control mechanisms, and slotted wings. In 1910 Baumann began lecturing on aeronautics at TH Stuttgart, and his reputation brought him to the attention of GrafFerdinand von Zeppelin. Zeppelin headed a foundation that raised 59,000 gold marks to establish a chair in aeronautical engineering at TH Stuttgart, and Baumann became the first holder of this chair later that year. From his position, Baumann acquired a Wright Flyer from the Wright Brothers in 1912, and was a founding member of the Scientific Aeronautical Society of Stuttgart, a forerunner of the DGLR. With the German manufacturer Gmbh Freytag, Baumann developed, constructed and tested a biplane of his own design. In 1913 he had published a two-volume textbook, Mechanische Grundlagen des Flugzeugbaues, that became a standard reference for the next decade.
At the start of World War I, Ferdinand von Zeppelin brought Baumann into the Versuchsbau Gotha-Ost consortium to design, develop, manufacture and test Riesenflugzeug, a type to be larger than the Gotha G bombers. The first Riesenflugzeug built was the VGO.I in April 1915. Baumann, an expert in light-weight construction techniques, placed the four engines in nacelles mounted between the upper and lower wing decks to distribute the loads to save weight in the wing spars. The follow-on VGO.III prototype, a 3-engine open cockpit bomber, produced greater power and validated the soundness of the basic design. Baumann designed and developed three successors, including the Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI, which became the largest bomber produced in quantity by the Germans in World War I. For his achievements, Baumann was awarded the Royal-Württemberg Wilhelm Cross without Swords in 1917.
Post-war design career
In 1924 Baumann became a design consultant for the Mitsubishi Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha in Nagoya, Japan, working with Nobushiro Nakata and Satsuo Tokunaga. Baumann designed three early Japanese military aircraft, the 2MR1 Tobi carrier reconnaissance plane, the experimental 2MB2Washilight bomber and the 1MF2 Hayabusa fighter. Baumann returned to Germany and died in Stuttgart on March 23, 1928, of lung cancer.
