The company was founded by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1908 as a formal entity to continue advancing his pioneering research into rigid airships.

During the Second World War, the company became involved in the manufacture of the V2 rocket; its facilities were hit by Allied bombing raids and it all but ceased to exist in the final months of the conflict.

Initially, his research was being financed by the count himself, as well as by private donations, and even a lottery; public interest in Zeppelin's activities grew with the success of each flight.

[5] During the First World War, Imperial Germany decided to deploy Zeppelins as long-distance bombers, launching numerous attacks upon Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom.

While the direct military effect of these zeppelin raids has been seen as limited, their novelty generated widespread alarm and caused substantial resources to be diverted from the Western Front to address them.

[6] One inadvertent consequence was the launch of a parliamentary inquiry under Jan Smuts, whose report led to the creation of the Royal Air Force (RAF) on 1 April 1918.

Luftschiffbau Zeppelin came under government control and new personnel were recruited to cope with the increased demand, including the aerodynamicist Paul Jaray and the stress engineer Karl Arnstein.

While their dirigibles were never as successful, Professor Schütte's more scientific approach to airship design led to innovations such as a streamlined hull shape, simpler cruciform fins (replacing the more complicated box-like arrangements of older Zeppelins), individual direct-drive engine cars, anti-aircraft machine-gun positions,[8] and gas ventilation shafts that transferred vented hydrogen to the top of the airship.

This brought a halt to Zeppelin's plans for airship development, and the company temporarily resorted to the manufacture of aluminium cooking utensils.

[17] Hindenburg was constructed by the company between 1931 and 1936, and performed its maiden test flight from the Zeppelin dockyards at Friedrichshafen on 4 March 1936, with 87 passengers and crew aboard.

In August 1939, the Graf Zeppelin II conducted a reconnaissance flight along Great Britain's coastline in an attempt to determine whether the 100 metre towers erected from Portsmouth to Scapa Flow were used for aircraft radio location.

[citation needed] During the previous month, Allied bombing during Operation Bellicose had hit the Zeppelin V-2 facility, leading to production being subsequently relocated to the Mittelwerk.

Over the many years, the investment value of the endowment grew to a point where it had become viable for the funds to be put to use for the purpose of designing, developing, and constructing of a new generation of Zeppelins.

In mid 1991, the newly formed development team filed several patents on various technologies that would be later used on the subsequent airship, these included propeller arrangements, structure and girder design, and ballonet implementation.

[30] In March 1991, a flyable remote control proof of concept model was demonstrated, which is claimed to have revealed excellent flight characteristics from the onset.

[30] In 1995, the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt, Germany's civil aviation authority, officially recognized ZLT as a design organisation, and approved new construction regulations for airships.