Collectors & Aficionados
The Mysterious Death of Rudolf Diesel
The cause of Rudolf Diesel's death remains a mystery, despite being known for inventing the engine bearing his name. His unslept bed, a diary with a cross on the day of his disappearance, financial difficulties.
On October 10th, 1913, a Dutch coastguard vessel came across the body of a man floating in the North Sea. The crew members recovered a wallet, pocket knife, spectacles case and pill holder from the man’s person, but then, as was customary at the time, returned the corpse to the sea. Three days later, in Vlissingen, Holland, Eugen Diesel identified the items as belonging to his father, Rudolf, the renowned German engineer famous for inventing the engine that bears his name.
Even though Diesel, creator of the engine, was practically the same age as Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective famous for his deductive reasoning technique — Diesel was born in 1858 and Conan Doyle in 1859 —, the subsequent investigation was not entrusted to anyone of Holmes’ caliber, and thus the cause of the death of the German engineer, born in Paris, remains shrouded in mystery. The investigation was certainly not helped by the fact that the body could not be analyzed.
