He refused to fight in the First World War and, in a case that gripped the nation, was imprisoned for it in the early 1920s, but he escaped after only a few weeks and left for his ancestral land of Germany, set up housekeeping and the U.S. government seized the assets he left behind.
The Philadelphia's Franklin Institute museum claimed Bergdoll transferred the plane to them by letter in 1933. It's since changed its story and said the agreement was verbal.
According to the New York Times, it has recently admitted there is no such letter and that it was a "verbal" agreement with Bergdoll that landed the intensely historic artifact in the museum.
"Getting a verbal agreement—how was it possible when my father was a fugitive at the time in Germany?" Katharina wondered aloud to the Times. "You could not have reached him," adding that since the government technically owned the plane at the time, he could not have legally transferred it. Bergdoll eventually got most of his stuff back after he had returned to the U.S. in the 1940s and served a four-year prison sentence for his youthful transgressions.
The plane stayed at the museum.
Katharina and her family either want the plane back or compensation for it and they'd also like the museum to come clean about how they obtained it.
The museum told the Times in a statement this is the first time anyone has questioned its claim to the plane. "At no time between 1935 and Mr. Bergdoll's death in 1966 did he, his mother, Emma, or his wife, Berta, ever claim any right to the airplane, dispute the validity of the gift, or request its return," the museum's statement to the Times said.
Coincidentally, Orville Wright was at the Philadelphia's Franklin Institute museum in Dec 1933 with Amelia Earhart
https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/special_ms1_photographs/1822/
Bergdoll was born in Philadelphia to a wealthy family, owners of the City Park Brewery (cold brewed lager) and the Bergdoll Mansion.
From racing cars around Fairmount Park to building a roller coaster at their Brewerytown estate, the five children of Louis Bergdoll, Jr. and Emma Barth Bergdoll were constant fodder for the press and provided a rapt public with snapshots of the alluring lives of Philadelphia’s privileged class.
At age 17, in 1910 he acquired a Bleriot XI and learned to fly
2 years later, he was one of 119 people to train at the Wright Flying School, and in 1912 he purchased a Wright Model B biplane for $5,000.
Bergdoll made several public flights from an airfield on family-owned land outside Philadelphia, and was the first person to fly an airplane between Philadelphia and Atlantic City, New Jersey.
At the controls of this plane, Grover “terrorized the Philadelphia community . . . dive-bombing roof tops, racing locomotives, and chasing frightened bathers down the beaches of Atlantic City"
in 1914 he raced at Brighton beach and Trenton. In October he crashed again this time driving the Erwin headlong into an oncoming vehicle. He then hit a tree before going through a hedge and turning over, where upon it caught fire. Both Grover and his passenger escaped
Although Bergdoll registered for the draft, he skipped a physical and was declared a deserter in 1918 (as he never enlisted, he was actually guilty of evading Article 58 of the Selective Service Act of 1917), most likely becuase his family was from Germany, he eluded police for two years, and was arrested at his home in January 1920.
While as many as 160,000 young men ultimately would evade conscription, Bergdoll’s wealth and German heritage made him stand out as a “draft dodger.” When his mother offered the head of the local draft board $1,000 if he would exempt her son from the draft, the situation only got worse for Grover.
After he was found guilty of desertion at a court-martial at Fort Jay on Governors Island in New York City, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Five months later, military authorities allowed Grover to be released under guard to recover a cache of gold he claimed to have buried near Hagerstown, Maryland.
During a stop at his Philadelphia home, he escaped with his chauffeur. Despite a nationwide manhunt, the duo managed to cross the border into Canada and sail to Germany, ultimately finding refuge in Eberbach at a hotel owned by Bergdoll's uncle. Warren G. Harding ordered the seizure of Bergdoll's assets, worth between $500,000 and 800,000 under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917
The US Army tried to kidnap him, in Germany, twice, and failed.
Eventually, 80 percent of the property confiscated in 1921 was restored to him.
The United States Against Bergdoll is the true story of the government's relentless pursuit of Bergdoll across two continents for two decades, of the confiscation of his entire fortune, and of it dictatorial attempt to exile him permanently from his native America.
He never was inducted into the Army, but the govt wanted to make a really high profile example of someone, and being of rich German parents, he was a prime target, and the govt lied about legal technicalities to get him in prison. His brother spent just under 3 years in Leavenworth.
two Bergdoll racers entered in the 1911 Fairmont Park Race. One was abandoned by Grover Bergdoll at a farm in Port Penn, Delaware, in 1919. Discovered in 1949, it is still in its original condition.
