[6] Engelbert Zaschka came from a family of musicians, his father Wenzel taught zither and played in the Freiburg City Orchestra, his mother Emilie, née Rombach, was a singer; he was the second oldest of four children.

After the Second World War, he settled again in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he operated a workshop (vehicle factory.

This city car concept was aimed to be cost effective and space saving by the vehicle could be folded after use sparingly.

In 1927[8] Engelbert Zaschka of Berlin built a helicopter, equipped with two rotors, in which a gyroscope was used to increase stability and serves as an energy accumulator for a gliding flight to make a landing.

The principal advantage of the machine, Zaschka says, is in its ability to remain motionless in the air for any length of time and to descend in a vertical line, so that a landing may be accomplished on the flat roof of a large house.

Zaschka constructed the large human-powered tractor monoplane with a narrow wing spanning about 66 feet (20 metres).

[17] His [Engelbert Zaschka’s] plane, the first helicopter, which ever worked so successfully in miniature, not only rises and descends vertically, but is able to remain stationary at any height.

German airplane experts assert that such a flight as that of Captain [Charles] Lindbergh's from New York to Paris would not even be a feat for Zaschka's plane when it was perfected.

[…] Herr Zaschka is fully aware that the perfection of his invention will be the greatest forward step in aviation since the Wright brothers made their historical hop.

It is so delicately adjusted that he has been able to keep the plane at a height of several feet above the ground, with no movement either up or down.As a composer, Engelbert Zaschka created popular music, including Slavoma - Der neuste Tanz (1925), which was recorded at least twice: by the orchestra Bernard Etté and the saxophone orchestra Dobbri under the direction of Otto Dobrindt.

Furthermore, he wrote and composed the hit Wer hat denn bloß den Hering am Schlips mir festgemacht (literally, "Who just fastened the herring to my tie?"