The news hardly seemed to fit his life at the time. Felix Baumgartner (1969-2025), the man who jumped to Earth from nearly 39 kilometers altitude, who broke the sound barrier in free fall and perfected control over extreme situations, died of all things during a paragliding flight. On July 17, 2025, the Austrian extreme athlete crashed in the Italian town of Porto Sant'Elpidio with a propeller-driven paraglider. One year later, the world remembers not only the former record holder. Baumgartner was a man with rough edges who pushed boundaries, studied risks and who knew: Absolute control is an illusion, fear remains real.
"I am coming home now"
On October 14, 2012, the world looks to the sky. In a pressure capsule, carried by a giant helium balloon, Felix Baumgartner ascends to about 39 kilometers altitude. Below him the Earth, before him the free fall. Baumgartner stands on a tiny platform outside his capsule in the vastness of space. He says: "I wish the whole world could see what I see right now." And: "Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are." In the video of the jump, you can see how nerve-wrackingly long he waits. He doesn't want to go into the life-threatening over-rotation that he might not be able to stop anymore. Then mission control in New Mexico clears him: "Ok, Felix." And he responds: "I am coming home now" - "I am coming home now."
The Austrian jumps and falls through Earth's atmosphere for almost four minutes. At Mach 1.25, he accelerates to more than 1,300 kilometers per hour in 50 seconds. "Fearless Felix", his nickname, makes history. A clearly audible sonic boom in the atmosphere proves: Baumgartner becomes the first human to break the sound barrier in free fall. When he does rotate through the air, everyone fears for him. Instinctively, he moves his arms slightly and manages to stabilize himself. After his safe landing on Earth, Baumgartner sinks to his knees, exhausted and as if freed from a burden.
Fatal downward spiral
On July 17, 2025, the news about him once again comes thick and fast. It is sad certainty: Felix Baumgartner is dead. For initially unexplained reasons, he falls to the ground with his paraglider. He crashes onto a wooden hut located next to the pool of a hotel complex in Porto Sant'Elpidio on the Italian Adriatic coast. Baumgartner is an experienced paraglider. Why does the man who was the first to break the sound barrier die of all things during a recreational flight?
The prosecutor's office sheds light on the matter. It was human error, according to a report. Baumgartner and his aircraft got into a fatal downward spiral: "There was a rapid loss of altitude. (...) Baumgartner was unable to steer the canopy out of the spiral." The rescue parachute was deployed only moments before impact with the ground.
"When things get tight, people become Catholic"
The trained auto mechanic Baumgartner starts tinkering with the supposed laws of the world early on. His mentor Roland Rettenbacher describes him as simultaneously "painstakingly precise" and an "insatiable, wild dog". He introduces the 17-year-old Baumgartner to skydiving. At 18, he enlists for five years with the Austrian Armed Forces. After refusing to subordinate himself to the rules there, he is summarily discharged.
His entire energy now belongs to parachuting and jumping from buildings or objects, the so-called BASE jumping. In 1999, he jumps from the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. It is his breakthrough and the jump that "sticks most in his memory", as he admits in 2011 in an interview with "Oberösterreichische Nachrichten". He also doesn't deny a certain "religious component" shortly before the jump: "When things really get tight, people become Catholic", Baumgartner says laconically. That a press release about his death was ready before his stratosphere jump, he also admits to "OÖN" in 2012: "It's pretty bizarre when you have to read and approve such a text."
Loss of compass after stratosphere jump
The groundbreaking stratosphere jump is synonymous with the end of Baumgartner's extreme sports career. Instead, he is passed from talk show to talk show and makes headlines with extreme statements of a completely different kind. He increasingly allows himself to be carried away by verbal political and social boundary violations, as "Stern" summarizes. In 2012, he calls for the establishment of a "moderate dictatorship," advocates awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Hungary's Prime Minister Orban. He provokes with statements on Austrian refugee policy, shows sympathies for the far-right Identitarian Movement and fires broadsides against feminism.
Baumgartner, who previously always kept his bearings in extreme situations, seems to have lost his compass. Already in October 2014, he loses his jump altitude record to the then 57-year-old US manager Robert Alan Eustace. From 2014 until his death, he finds stability in his relationship with Romanian TV presenter Mihaela Radulescu (56). In July 2025, Baumgartner is once again at the Italian Adriatic coast with her to glide through the skies with the motorized paraglider. Euphorically, he films himself in the almost weightless flight - not suspecting that his end on Earth is imminent.
"Fearless Felix" not at all fearless
On October 14, 2012, the sky from which Baumgartner jumps toward the ground is pitch black. Four minutes later, he lands in the New Mexico desert under a brilliant blue firmament. Symbolically, he thus overcomes humanity's eternal fear of the leap into nothingness. Baumgartner undoubtedly achieves something great that day. He is brave enough - and at the same time not at all fearless. The statements of the supposedly fearless man on the subject of fear are remarkable: "I always have fear", he says in 2011 to "OÖN", "I never had fun doing what I do. The fun always started only when I came back healthy."
His girlfriend Mihaela Radulescu loses her mother in December 2025, five months after Felix Baumgartner, and writes according to "Bild" after the double loss: "Today, more than ever, I would have needed his larger-than-life smile and his hugs, his way of telling me that everything... will be ok." Baumgartner once said that suppressing fear was out of the question for him: "You can lie to everything in life, just not to your own head. Fear is an important protective function. And of course a basic fear remains, because you know you need that little bit of luck." One year ago, luck abandoned the man who once touched the sky. And one wishes for him that he has finally found his peace there.
