The members of Led Zeppelin were preparing to perform in a TV studio in Gladsaxe, Denmark on March 17, 1969 when an unexpected guest appeared.
Denmark played a crucial role in the history of Led Zeppelin, with the band’s first live performance taking place in Gladsaxe in September 1968. But the surprise guest’s actions would mean that when Led Zeppelin returned to Denmark in 1970, they would be forced to perform under the name The Nobs.
As Led Zeppelin prepared to film four songs at the TV-Byen studio in 1969, a woman carrying a handbag and outfitted in a cardigan, pearl necklace and a hat sought to prevent the performance from being recorded.
“In the middle of these rehearsals a lady comes in through the door and whispers with some of the people and there is a bit of an interruption to the whole thing,” photographer Jan Persson recalled in “Da Led Zeppelin ramte Søborg”, a 2012 Danish documentary broadcast on DR2.
“She was standing like Marianne Jelved with her handbag in front of her … I wondered a bit about what she was doing there. She wasn’t supposed to sing. It turns out that she came to complain to the manager that they had stolen her name. Her name was Zeppelin,” he added.
The woman spoke to staff at the TV station, explaining that she was a member of the von Zepelin family. Offended by the name of this British rock band, she argued that Denmark’s national broadcaster shouldn’t air the band’s music.
Niels-Jorgen Kaiser, the TV station’s manager, invited the woman into his office for a meeting. “They had long negotiations, the manager and her … Kaiser doesn’t know what to do and shrugs a bit,” Persson said.
The station staff attempted to reassure the woman and brokered a meeting between her and Led Zeppelin. “They said there’s a very important person we want you to meet, she’s looking forward to meeting you all,” Jimmy Page recalled in an interview recorded for a 1990 episode of “MTV Rockumentary”.
“She made a point of coming to the studio to see us. It was Baroness von Zeppelin. She was so overjoyed that we’d used the family name and all the rest of it, the pleasantries,” he continued.
“We invited her to meet us to show we were nice young lads,” Page told Melody Maker on February 28, 1970. The meeting between the band and the woman seemed to go well. “We calmed her down,” Page added.
But after the meeting ended, the woman saw a copy of Led Zeppelin’s debut album, with its cover art showing the Hindenburg airship in flames.
“They took her out into the studio to show her round. Suddenly she saw the album cover, first album cover this is, of the zeppelin crashing in flames. There was an almighty shrieking. She came back in, threatening to have her lawyers stop the show,” Page told MTV in 1990. “All this was going on right to the point of transmission. It reflects in that show, I can tell you.”
“I had to run and hide. She just blew her top,” Page recalled in 1970.
This surreal encounter between the members of Led Zeppelin and a descendant of a noble German family has been recalled in newspaper articles and television documentaries since 1970.
The story has appeared in key Led Zeppelin books such as Richard Cole’s 1992 book “Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored”, Mick Wall’s 2008 book “When Giants Walked The Earth” and Bob Spitz’s 2021 book “Led Zeppelin: The Biography”
Over time, the tale has grown to become more dramatic. The woman is often reported to have been Countess Eva von Zeppelin. She’s frequently claimed to have been a granddaughter of the airship designer Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
But new research by LedZepNews has found that key details of the story are incorrect. Ferdinand von Zeppelin had no granddaughter named Eva, nor was the woman a countess.
With the help of genealogical research and access to Danish newspaper archives, we’ve now found the likely identity of the woman who accosted Led Zeppelin in Denmark in 1969 and who would force the band to change their name for a single show the following year.
When Led Zeppelin travelled to Denmark in March 1969, the woman who appeared at DR’s TV-Byen television studio wasn’t Countess Eva von Zeppelin, but Elsa Schødt, a doctor’s wife and distant relative of Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
Hunting for the real countess
Our search for the real Eva von Zeppelin began with the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen. The German institution chronicles the history of airshipsand recalls on its website the story of Ferdinand von Zeppelin’s granddaughter Eva accosting Led Zeppelin.
Curious to find out more about who Eva was, LedZepNews contacted the museum. Despite the claims on its website, the museum’s head of archives definitively stated: “I have no information on Eva von Zeppelin. But she is/was definitely not the granddaughter of Ferdinand von Zeppelin. The names of his granddaughters were Isabella, Alexandra and Elisabeth.”
Already, the story’s involvement of von Zeppelin’s granddaughter had proven to be false. But the museum offered an intriguing lead: “The Zeppelin family has a lot of members. Maybe Eva von Zeppelin is the descendant of another part of the Zeppelins.”
LedZepNews turned to newspaper articles and books that had been published, searching for more information on the mysterious Eva.
The first mentions of Eva von Zeppelin appear on February 18, 1970 as Led Zeppelin prepared to return to Denmark.
“Eva von Zeppelin, a relative of the German airship designer was today considering legal action if the British pop group Led Zeppelin play in Copenhagen on February 28,” the UK’s Evening News reported on February 18, 1970. The newspaper quoted von Zeppelin as saying: “They may be world famous but a couple of shrieking monkeys are not going to use a privileged family name without permission.”
By February 26, 1970, Led Zeppelin had decided to perform as The Nobs to avoid von Zeppelin’s legal threats.
“We are not too bothered about this. In fact, it’s a bit of a laugh. I don’t think she has a leg to stand on, legally, and in any case the tour is already a sell out,” an unnamed spokesperson for the band told the Wolverhampton Express and Star for its February 26, 1970 issue.
Original media reports called the woman “Eva” but at this stage there was no mention of her noble title or her being a granddaughter of the airship designer. On February 28, 1970, however, the UK’s NME was the first publication to identify Eva von Zeppelin as a countess.
With so much confusion in media reports about the exact identity of the woman and her link to the von Zeppelin family, it was starting to seem possible that Eva von Zeppelin never existed at all.
But Persson, the photographer who witnessed the woman’s intervention at the TV studio, took a photograph of the meeting between Page and the woman which can be seen at the 12:38 point in the documentary.
“When I get a closer look at this lady who looks like a typical hat lady in her late sixties, it turns out that she is my downstairs neighbor from Nyhavn. I greet her and ask what is going on. She comes and complains about the theft of her name,” Persson recalled in the documentary.
Persson’s involvement in the 2012 documentary meant that we were confident that Eva von Zeppelin actually existed. We had a photograph of her meeting Page along with firsthand accounts of the meeting from both Persson and Page.
But if Eva wasn’t a granddaughter of Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who was she? An unlikely answer was found in Howard Mylett’s 1976 book “Led Zeppelin” in which he identifies her as “Count Evan von Zeppelin”, transforming her into a male descendant.
A more likely description of the woman was found in the October 17, 1970 issue of the Dutch magazine Pep, which referred to Eva von Zeppelin as an “achternicht”, meaning a second cousin or great niece, of Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
It was time to delve into the von Zeppelin family tree in search of someone who fitted the description of an older woman living in Copenhagen in 1969, ideally a distant relative of Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
The von Zepelin family, to give the family the typical spelling of its surname named after the village of Mecklenburg in Germany where they originate from, is vast. Genealogists such as Finn Holbek have mapped the family’s origins as far back as Heinrich von Zepelin who died sometime after 1286.
Our focus was on the Danish branch of the von Zepelin family, which was established when Hartvig Detlev von Zepelin moved from Germany to Copenhagen before his death in the city in 1841. Hartvig’s brother was Ferdinand Ludwig Graf von Zepelin, the grandfather of the famous airship inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin who used the alternative double “p” spelling of the family’s name.
Eva von Zeppelin becomes Elsa Schødt
Following Hartvig’s descendants, we eventually found Elsa Karen Vilhelmine Sehested Berregaard von Zepelin.
Born in Copenhagen in 1914, Elsa married doctor Aksel Schødt on August 21, 1935. Her age of 55 in 1969 didn’t completely match Persson’s recollection of a woman “in her late sixties”, but it didn’t rule out Elsa being the Eva von Zeppelin who campaigned against Led Zeppelin. It’s possible that Persson, recalling a brief encounter he had in 1969 for a 2012 documentary, misremembered the woman’s age.
Marriage and census records dating from the 1930s and 1940s indicate that Elsa lived in and around Copenhagen, fitting with the person we were seeking.
We’ve found no specific link to Copenhagen’s Nyhavn district, however, where Persson lived in the late 1960s and supposedly knew the woman who appeared at the TV studio from. By the 1970s, Elsa and her husband lived in Lille Skensved outside Copenhagen.
Crucially, Elsa’s relation to Ferdinand von Zeppelin matched the description published in Pep in 1970. The Dutch magazine referred to her using a term for a second cousin or great niece of the airship designer. The von Zepelin family tree shows that Elsa was a second cousin twice removed of Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
The family tree also gave new meaning to Elsa’s objections to Led Zeppelin’s name. Her marriage in 1935 ended the von Zepelin family name in Denmark, bringing an end to a century of the family’s history in the country.
Elsa was the end of one line of the noble von Zepelin family, with her children taking their father’s surname of Schødt. It’s understandable that Elsa, upon discovering newspaper reports of a British rock band performing in Denmark and appearing on television using her former surname, decided to confront the band in person in a television studio.
A final clue came when Holbek, a Danish genealogist who has extensively researched the von Zepelin family history, sent LedZepNews an article published by Danish newspaper Bergens Tidende on February 28, 1970.
“Mrs Elsa von Zeppelin is strongly opposed to the British beat group Led Zeppelin giving a concert to 4,500 people in the K.B.-Hallen tonight,” it reported. “That is why the four Englishmen will be introduced as The Nobs when they take the stage tonight before their 2½-hour concert.”
“Already a year ago, Mrs von Zeppelin tried to prevent the group from participating in a TV recording, but she was unable to stop it. That will not happen tonight either. Led Zeppelin rejects any connection with the Zeppelin airship family,” it continued.
Elsa’s name has been mistakenly reported for more than 50 years, but in 1970 this local newspaper in her native Denmark correctly identified her not as Eva or a Countess, but as her actual identity of Elsa.
With thanks to: Mike Tremaglio, Finn Holbek, Maj-Britt Persson, Janus Køster-Rasmussen, Steen Ostermann Rytlig, Sabrina Steenbuch, Tore Mortensen, the Københavns Stadsarkiv, the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg and the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen.
Anybody on holiday in southwestern Germany should visit the Zeppelin Museum at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance (a/k/a the Bodensee). I was there with my wife a few years ago on a Saturday morning, & what did we espy overhead, if not an airship in flight?