Erlkönig: confusing vehicle camouflage for years!

Are masterful at camouflage Erlkönig cars of all manufacturers. What is really behind the prototypes of the new cars often remains a secret. But we will at least now reveal what is behind the Erlkönig foil in the Dazzle pattern hides. Where does the camouflage pattern come from? The idea comes from the British artist Norman Wilkinson. While he was serving in the navy in 1918, the artist came up with the idea of ​​camouflaging the warships to protect his comrades from enemy attacks and himself. So he invented it Dazzle pattern. Dazzle means in German confuse or dazzle. Thanks to the dazzle pattern, the Navy was able to camouflage the ships so that the enemy could neither Size, exact points could still guess the direction of travel on the ship. Up to 4.000 warships sailed incognito in this way across the oceans until the end of the war. While there was never any documented evidence of the benefit of this type of camouflage, Wilkinson was honored and celebrated.

Why the name Erlkönig?

During the 1950s, Oswald and Heinz-Ulrich Wieselmann published unsolicited in the auto magazine “Car, engine and sport“Photographs of camouflaged vehicles. The manufacturers felt hurt, because the first time the small sensation was a large audience and at the same time competitor presents. So far, these have been unproven and unpublished recordings. Wieselmann and Oswald published the photographs under the heading "Erlkönig“In a separate section.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had to serve because of his ballad of the same name. From this point on, all test vehicles adorned themselves as "Erlkönige". The verse "Who rides so late through night and wind"? has been changed to "Who is driving so quickly through rain and wind?“The manufacturers of the time have since made every effort to admit both the competition and the journalists with the“ Erlkönigen ” irritate. The aim was not to let anything about the technology and design leak out from random snapshots. The automobile industry thus took over the camouflage of the warships of the time in order to adapt the shape and equipment of its own vehicles encode.

Photographing a “Erlkönig” these days?

In order to be able to photograph test vehicles nowadays, high-quality cameras are available that are built into conventional smartphones. These can capture high-resolution images of current test vehicles more often and more easily than was possible years ago. The manufacturers are therefore working on increasingly sophisticated camouflage films.

Is Wilkinson Still Attractive Today?

However, the dazzle pattern is not just used to disguise vehicles these days. With a combination of Surfboard and spy suit Sharks should be irritated and surfers should be protected from shark attacks. Even 100 years after the invention of the artist Norman Wilkinson, the designers are still relying on the patterns he created.

And finally ... A Erlkönig is a prototype of a vehicle that is supposed to be camouflaged. Manufacturers try to keep the vehicles and their actual appearance a secret. Photojournalists are hunters: Their goal is to uncover the secret of the vehicles ahead of time and to sell the photographs profitably to the tabloid press as well as to specialist magazines.

Summary information on the subject of Erlkönig cars:

• Erlkönige should in particular disguise the body design during test drives.
• Goethe's poem gives the term "Erlkönig" its name.
• first release was a Mercedes Benz 180.

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