Germans gave Count Zeppelin 6 million marks after his airship burned, and his great-grandson has spent ten years trying to take the foundation back from a city

On 5 August 1908 Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's airship LZ 4 burned at Echterdingen near Stuttgart. Germans sent more than 6 million marks in small donations within weeks. Zeppelin put the money into the Zeppelin-Stiftung, created by a deed of 30 December 1908, and founded Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. A gear works started in 1915 grew into ZF Friedrichshafen. Zeppelin died on 8 March 1917. Under pressure from the French occupation, the foundation was dissolved in 1947 and its assets handed to the city of Friedrichshafen. In 1952 a settlement gave the former managers Hugo Eckener and Karl Maybach and the Brandenstein-Zeppelin family shares in Maybach, and their challenges to the dissolution were dropped. In 1990 shares equal to 7.5% of ZF were sold for just under 100 million marks, and the count's great-grandson Albrecht von Brandenstein-Zeppelin signed a waiver. Since 2015 he and his son Frederic have sought to restore the original foundation. The regional council refused in 2016. The Sigmaringen administrative court dismissed their suit in January 2020 for lack of standing, and the state's higher administrative court rejected the appeal in 2022. In December 2019 Albrecht also sued the city for €3.1 million in ZF dividends. In March 2026 they asked the Tübingen regional council to declare the 1947 dissolution void. The city-owned foundation is ZF's main shareholder and spends about €50 million a year.