Ernst Schmalz, born 1879 in Nidau, Switzerland, in 1908 built with the help of Failloubaz, a pusher monoplane, powered by a 12 hp Anzani motor, with large ailerons he himself named “Stabiloklappen”. In flight tests at Thun he made jumps of up to a height of 6 meters. In 1909, Schmalz retired from flying. He sold his apparatus to a chauffeur, who collided with a tree top in flight tests on the Beundenfeld in Bern. Although the pilot remained intact, the aeroplane itself was a total loss.

Robert Schlageter of Luzer, Switzerland, was born in 1887. He quit his technical studies in Burgdorf to devote himself to aviation. After first tests with gliders, he began to build, with the help of two friends, his first monoplane, with a triangular-section fuselage and an Anzani engine, in 1909. Then he built in four months, for a company in Mainz, another monoplane of the same type. His planes flew only in good wind conditions, but he won a prize at a fair in Chemnitz in 1911. He had to quit aviation for economic reasons, was forced to sell his planes and spare parts.

The Emile de Schepper and Hubert Hagens “Helpman I” monoplane was exhibited in the bicycle school of Fongers in Groningen (Netherlands) in May 1911. It had an open fuselage aft of the pilot seat and triangular-section fuselage and was powered by a 5-cylinder Anzani, rated at 50 hp. The monoplane was designed and built by Emile de Schepper and Hubert Hagens. Hagens was the mechanician of the famous Belgian flyer Jan Olieslagers and Emile de Schepper was the son of the Belgian E. J. de Schepper, who was a wealthy billiard manufacturer in Helpman (a separate village then, now a part of the town Groningen), hence the name “Helpman I”.