Werner Doehner

Doehner was born in Darmstadt, Germany, and spent his childhood in Mexico City, Mexico, where his father was general manager of Beick, Felix, and Company Pharmaceuticals. He married his wife Ellin, to whom he was married for 52 years, in 1967 in Essen, Germany, who moved with him to Mexico City. In 1984, Doehner, his wife, and son Bernard emigrated to the United States so he could work as an electrical engineer. Doehner was described as a hard-working man, and a devoted family man who worked as an electrical engineer in Mexico, Ecuador, and the United States. He retired from New England Electric System in Westborough, Massachusetts, in 1999.

After retirement, Doehner and his wife lived in Colorado till 2018, when they moved to Laconia, New Hampshire.

Doehner, the last living link to the Hindenburg disaster's part of American history, lived his life in relative low profile obscurity. The Hindenburg flames and crash killed Doehner's father, sister, and 34 others. Doehner, his parents, older brother and sister were taking a vacation on the Hindenburg from Germany to New Jersey. Doehner finally ended his self-imposed silence in 2017, and told the Associated Press on the 80th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster that his mother threw him and his older brother out of the ship while it was on fire. His mother then jumped from the flaming Hindenburg to the ground after them. Hydrogen, exposed to air, had triggered an inferno somewhere on the airship, causing flames to flicker atop the airship, which then ignited the airship as it attempted but failed to land.[1][2]

He eventually became historically significant when he was acknowledged as being the last living survivor of the original surviving 62 passengers and crew who jumped from the dirigible's flames on May 6, 1937, at NAS Lakehurst, Lakehurst Borough, New Jersey. The last surviving crew member, Werner Franz, had died a few years earlier in 2014.[3] The last surviving ground crewmember, Frank Ward, died a year after in 2015.[4][5]

Doehner died on November 8, 2019, at the age of 90.

• Last survivors of historical events