Good Luck Lighter

Glücks-Feuerzeug (Good Luck Lighter)

In Germany, chimney sweepers are seen as bearers of good fortune. The Schornsteinfeger-Club (Chimney Sweepers’ Club) Berlin collected donations in the autumn of 1948, in order to distribute good luck lighters as Christmas gifts to the pilots and those who participated in the airlift. A total of 750 lighters were produced for this initiative. On 17 December 1948, Berlin's mayor Ernst Reuter symbolically handed over the first lighters to U.S. pilot Capt. A. K. Lane from Fassberg and the British air traffic controller Fl.Lt. K. Ongley from Gatow.