Was Rudolf Diesel’s Mysterious Disappearance Suicide, Escape or a Conspiracy?

It is Sunday evening, September 29, 1913. World peace has a precarious balance, but the man in the street has never heard of the concept of world war. Off the Belgian coast, the last sunlight disappears on the horizon as the SS Dresden leaves the European mainland behind and heads for Harwich. The first-class passengers enjoy their evening meal, the steam engine makes the silverware tinkle softly, and three distinguished gentlemen sit at a table in the corner of the dining room, one of whom has amassed wealth and fame with a revolutionary engine that will make the steam engine obsolete. Rudolf Diesel is a friendly-looking, bespectacled man of 55 with an impressive career behind him. He is about to retire and that should not be a problem for someone with an estimated net worth of $ 2.5 million (converted to today’s standards $ 62 million). With his friends and business partners Alfred Luckmann and Georges Carels he is on his way to London for the annual meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Engine Manufacturers.

Diesel was born in Paris to German immigrants

Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was born on March 18, 1858 in Paris as the second child of German immigrants Elise Strobel and Theodor Diesel. Theodor comes from Augsburg and practices bookbinding in Paris. There he meets Elise, whose roots lie in Nuremberg, and he starts working as a leather goods dealer.

The Franco-Prussian War makes the Diesel family unwanted in Paris in 1870 and the family moves to London. Shortly afterwards, twelve-year-old Rudolf is sent by his parents to Augsburg, where he moves in with his aunt and uncle. His uncle is a math teacher, the Industrial Revolution is in full swing and Rudolf soon comes to the conclusion that he wants to make a career in technology. After graduating from high school, he attends technical training in Augsburg, after which he enrolls at the Technical University of Munich. There he attends classes with Carl von Linde, a brilliant engineer who makes inventions in the field of refrigeration and later, in the same year that Diesel mysteriously disappears, wins the Nobel Prize in physics.

After graduating in 1880, Diesel returns to his native Paris, where he meets Von Linde again and enters his service. Three years later he marries Martha Flasche and they have three children. In 1890 the family moves to Berlin, where Rudolf is given a high position at Linde, the company of his patron.

Alternative to low-efficiency internal combustion engine

The laws of nature surrounding the burgeoning refrigeration technology, which Diesel has to deal with in his work for Linde, inspire him to find alternatives to the steam engine and the fledgling combustion engine, the efficiency of which is much too low for his taste. He comes up with an alternative, where the fuel is ignited by high pressure. Since the combustion takes place at higher temperatures and takes longer, the efficiency is much higher.

In 1892, Diesel patents his invention and finds a financier for its development in the arms manufacturer Krupp. A year later, the first prototype runs on peanut oil, a nice word for peanut oil. The more than man-sized machine has a bore of 22 centimeters and a stroke of 40 centimeters and in 1895 scored an efficiency of 16.6 percent on petroleum. A year later, Diesel started on an improved version, with which he achieved an efficiency of 26.2 percent. At an exhibition in Munich in 1899, he demonstrated this 25 hp single-cylinder engine for the first time. According to the 1910 Grande Encyclopédie Pratique de Mécanique et d’Electricité, the efficiency and simplicity make the machine an instant success. Diesel does excellent business with the sale of licenses. His brainchild finds its way into generators, trains, shipping, factories and the automotive industry, and the bank account of the brilliant inventor grows like crazy. Around the turn of the century his living was bought and luck smiles on him. In 1912, more than 70,000 diesel engines were thumping around the world.

Disappearance after embarkation in Antwerp

But the happiness is short-lived. In the autumn of 1913, Diesel and his business partners Luckmann and Carels leave Antwerp by night boat for England, where they will attend a meeting and the opening of a factory. Diesel won’t make it across. He stays away from breakfast and when the ship docks in Harwich, the inventor appears to have disappeared without a trace. The incident is picked up worldwide and The New York Times also reports extensively on it. “Immediately after we sailed out of the port of Antwerp, the three of us had dinner. Then we strolled on the deck, talking and smoking. Dr. Diesel was in a great mood and cheerful,” Georges Carels, director of Diesel’s company, told the American newspaper. “Around ten o’clock, with the lights of Flushing in sight, I said, ‘I think it’s time to go to sleep.’ Dr. Diesel agreed and all three of us went to our cabins.” According to Carels, Diesel briefly pauses at the door of his cabin, but then seems to change his mind. He follows Carels, shakes his hand, wishes him good night and says: ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’ Carels: “Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.”

The next morning, Diesel is missing from the breakfast table. Carels and Luckmann go to his hut and knock in vain. When they open the door, they find an unslept in bed. “The blanket was folded and a nightgown was on the bed ready for Mr. Diesel. His keys were in a pocket of his bag and he had hung his watch on the bag in such a way that he could read it from bed,” Carels told the newspaper. “Everything seemed neat in the cabin. I couldn’t determine if any money was missing because I didn’t know how much he had on him, but there was no indication that his things had been tampered with. Because his arrival ticket was not Carels emphasizes that Diesel made a cheerful, cheerful impression at the end of that evening. “If we rule out the idea of ​​an accident, all I can think of is that something must have suddenly gone wrong in his head. He was conservative with alcohol, did not smoke and, as far as I know, had no dizziness.” The latter requires some nuance. Diesel has complained to several friends of bouts of insomnia, which led him to wander around, dead tired, night and day. Business concerns and extreme work pressure put a heavy burden on his health.

Two weeks after Diesel’s mysterious disappearance, things come to light that shed a completely different light on the matter. The earlier stories about his fortune are questioned by German newspapers who believe that Diesel has left his family in need of money. It is said that he had invested his capital in a number of unsuccessful companies and the press speculates that the reason for his disappearance must be sought in his precarious financial position.

$375,000 in debt

And indeed: two weeks after his disappearance, on October 14, 1913, Diesel’s creditors meet in Munich. They calculate that the inventor has about $375,000 in debt, against which he has no more than $10,000 in fixed assets. To make matters worse, his real estate is on the books for much more than it’s worth.

Bizarre message: Diesel has started a new life in Canada

In March 1914, almost six months after Diesel’s disappearance, a bizarre message appears in the Münchner Abendzeitung. The newspaper refers to letters received in Germany from which it appears that Diesel has started a new life in Canada. The article doesn’t get any more concrete than that and we shouldn’t attach too much value to it. It is clear that Diesel had every reason to go up in smoke and there is little chance that his body will ever be found. Eleven days after the disappearance, a corpse of a well-groomed, well-dressed man who could be Diesel in stature and age is fished up off the mouth of the Scheldt, near Vlissingen. A day earlier, another corpse is retrieved from the sea near Norway and is associated with the missing engineer. It is so decomposed that the finders do not want to take it on board, but objects on the body are secured and recognized by Diesel’s son Eugen as his father’s. But if Diesel did indeed want to disappear to escape his creditors, then Eugen has every interest in those creditors believing his father is dead.

Probably jumped overboard

According to tradition, before leaving for England, Diesel’s wife Martha received a bag from her husband with instructions not to open it until a week later. She does so after his supposed death, to find 200,000 marks in cash. In a diary that Diesel took on board, he is said to have drawn a black cross on the page dated September 29, the day of his disappearance, as if marking his own end. History became legend, legend became myth: a quote from The Lord of the Rings that also applies to Diesel’s disappearance. Admittedly, he probably jumped overboard that autumn night in 1913 in desperation because of his business failures, the raging waves and certain but liberating death. But one would almost hope that he was able to watch from Canada for many years to come as his invention conquered the world and that old age has closed his eyes forever. In any case, it is certain that he was spared the diesel scandal of 2015.

Then there are the murder plots

No mystery without conspiracy theories. To this day, there are those who do not believe that Rudolf Diesel committed suicide, nor that he squeezed his mustache to escape creditors. He would have just been thrown overboard and they see two possible motives for that murder. For example, the oil industry would have every interest in making Diesel a head smaller. His technique was far too sparing with the stuff that made them rich. That is far-fetched, after all: Elon Musk would have been quartered, beheaded and tortured to death by OPEC twenty times. A little less unlikely is the theory that Diesel traveled to England to sell his knowledge to the English navy. World War I was imminent and the diesel engine was at the heart of German submarines. With the murder of Diesel, the German secret service would have prevented him from making his knowledge available to the future enemy.