The Franklin Institute, a Philadelphia museum dedicated to the study of science, has long said one of its most impressive holdings — a plane built in 1911 by the Wright brothers — was a gift from a man named Grover C. Bergdoll.
The Wright Model B, a two-seater that Bergdoll bought from the brothers, remains one of the best preserved icons of early aviation. The museum’s website details the plane’s rich history and how it was built with inventive flaps and cables.
But it says nothing about the man the museum says was the plane’s donor, a wealthy bon vivant who was utterly despised after dodging the draft for World War I. The scion of a Philadelphia brewing fortune, Bergdoll drove cars and flew planes before the war with an abandon that earned him the nickname “Playboy of the Eastern Seaboard.”
For nearly a century, that plane has been exhibited at the Franklin Institute. But more recently, the circumstances of how it got there have become a point of contention.
The Franklin Institute acquired the plane in 1933, when Bergdoll was living as a fugitive in Germany, to which he had fled after his conviction for desertion. By this time, all of his possessions had been declared the property of the U.S. government. The museum has said in several settings that Bergdoll transferred title by letter while he hid from U.S. authorities overseas.
