Franz Reichelt - Aftermath

Aftermath

The next day's newspapers were full of the story of Reichelt's "tragic experiment" ("expérience tragique") complete with photographs; at least four newspapers, Le Petit Parisien, L'Humanité, Le Matin and La Croix, showed images of the fatal jump. Film of the attempt, including footage of Reichelt's body being removed and the onlookers measuring the depth of the hole created by his impact (15 centimetres; 5.9 in), was distributed by news organizations. Initial reports speculated on Reichelt's state of mind: none assumed he had been suicidal, but many called him reckless or foolish. A journalist in Le Gaulois suggested that only half the term "mad genius" applied to Reichelt – although the same report included an interview with one of Reichelt's friends, who claimed that the tailor had felt pressured into giving a dramatic demonstration to attract sponsors, without whom he could not expect to make a profit before any patent expired. Reichelt's death was the first to result from a parachuting accident since Charles Leroux died giving a demonstration in Tallinn in 1889. In fact, on February 2, 1912 – two days prior to Reichelt's fatal jump – an American steeplejack, Frederick R. Law, had successfully parachuted from the viewing platform of the torch of the Statue of Liberty (223 feet (68 m) above sea level and 151 feet (46 m) from the base of the statue), seemingly on a whim. On February 6, La Croix added a footnote to the report on Reichelt's death: another parachuting experiment was to take place on February 18 or 25 at Juvisy-sur-Orge, in which the aviator Camille Guillaume planned to leap from his Blériot monoplane at a height of 300 metres (980 ft) to test a parachute design (the plane would be allowed to crash).

After Reichelt's death, the authorities were wary of granting permission for experiments from the Eiffel Tower. Though they continued to grant permissions for parachute dummy drops, some hopeful inventors – such as M. Damblanc, who wished to try his "helicopter parachute" from the second platform – were refused permission to conduct tests, and even applications for aviation experiments not involving the tower came under renewed scrutiny. More recently, the tower has been the scene of a number of illicit base jumps (a Norwegian man died in 2005 after losing his canopy while attempting a promotional jump for a clothing firm – the first parachuting death at the tower since Reichelt), as well as a sanctioned stunt jump for the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill.

Reichelt came momentarily to prominence again in the 1940s in the United States, when his likeness was claimed as the model for one of the figures that were "strangely un-American in expression and garb" in the WPA-funded mural at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. In an incident reminiscent of the 1933 controversy over Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads mural at the Rockefeller Center in New York City, a furore erupted over an image depicting two minor leftist aviators, supposedly flanking a central portrait of Joseph Stalin. The WPA already had an unwanted reputation as sympathetic to the left, and despite the artist August Henkel's "glib" explanation of the "accidental" inclusion of a Soviet red star and his claim that the image identified as Stalin was actually of Reichelt, the murals were taken down and three of the four panels burned. The story of Reichelt's misadventure was also the subject of a 1993 French short, Le Tailleur Autrichien, written and directed by Pablo Lopez Paredes and starring Bruce Myers in the title role.

Although there were no viable parachuting solutions for use in aeroplanes when Reichelt began developing his suit, by the time of his death a successful parachute jump from a plane using a non-fixed canopy had already taken place in the United States, and a patent for a packable parachute had been applied for by Gleb Kotelnikov. As a parachuting pioneer, Reichelt is largely forgotten; his legacy has taken the form of a cautionary tale: while he may appear as a footnote in parachuting histories, he is a mainstay of books and websites that cite pointless or stupid deaths.