SWIDNICA, Poland
Baron Manfred von Richthofen buzzed above the muddy World War I battlefields in his red Fokker triplane, downing a record 80 Allied aircraft on his way to becoming the war's top fighter ace and earning the famed "Red Baron" nom de guerre.
But von Richthofen, who was shot down and killed just before his 26th birthday in 1918, has been a legend in limbo since Poland's borders moved west after World War II and swallowed the baron's hometown of Schweidnitz -- today called Swidnica.
The neglect has been largely because of apprehension about honoring a German, a legacy of the brutal Nazi invasion and occupation of World War II.
Swidnica resident Jerzy Gaszynski is trying to change that with a new memorial to the Red Baron. He says he might even pull in a few tourists at the same time.
"I think that with a figure this well-known around the world, it's a bit of a sin that he's not even that well-known here and that there's really no effort to remember him," Gaszynski said. "Everybody here kind of said under their breath ‘baron this, baron that,' but he was neglected. Nobody was doing anything."
In June, Gaszynsnki put up a memorial plaque that he sculpted in the garden of the von Richthofen family home.
"For many people, a German pilot means World War II," he said. "They look at him through the prism of World War II, but aviation in World War I functioned on entirely different rules."
Gaszynski said that the baron was so well respected as a person and adversary by his enemies that when he was shot down, British and Commonwealth troops buried him with full honors.
"Like a lot of aces, he wasn't necessarily a brilliant aviator, in the sense of flying a plane like an airline pilot would," said Mark Whitmore, the director of collections at the Imperial War Museum in London, which has the engine from the plane in which von Richthofen was shot down on permanent display. "Where he was absolutely brilliant was flying a plane in combat, flying it absolutely to the edge of its capability and gaining the extra edge that makes all the difference, particularly in dogfighting."
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