Max Holste

Max Holste left Nice in 1925 (aged 12) to move to Courbevoie. His father had died and his godfather — a volunteer in the First World War, assigned to the REP and C27 squadrons — recognised the symptoms of the ‘flying bug’ in his godson. The Great War pilot passed on all his knowledge to Max, who, at the age of eighteen, enlisted in the Naval Aviation at the Rochefort school. In Orly, where he would spend the next five years, Max Holste developed a passion for aircraft. He studied and designed his first aircraft in 1934—a low-wing, tandem-seat monoplane powered by a 40 hp Salmson engine—but its construction was halted when the carpentry workshop where it was being built went bankrupt.
After his military service, he worked successively in the design offices of Farman in Boulogne-Billancourt and Amiot in Colombes, where he participated in the development of the Amiot 354. He built a number of aircraft privately, notably for the Deutsch de la Meurthe Cup, the MH 20, which made its maiden flight on 25 July 1941[2].
Shortly after the liberation of France, Max Holste set up his design office in Laval and, on 12 January 1945, began work with Vincent André on the construction of the MH-52[3]. As soon as the war ended, Max Holste began designing and building the MH 52 for Établissements Borel under the Borand brand, a two-seater training aircraft that was to be ordered by the State.
In September 1946, the young engineer founded the Société anonyme des avions Max Holste, a company he set up in Reims in the early 1950s.
MH.1521M Broussard
In 1951, it was time for the MH 152, an observation aircraft. It was with another aircraft that the Reims-based company found success: the MH 1521 Broussard[4], produced until 1961. Max Holste then embarked on the development of a final aircraft, the MH 250 Super-Broussard, the prototype of which took to the skies on 20 May 1959. The construction programme was taken over by Nord-Aviation, which turned it into the Nord 260 and then the Nord 262.
Ousted from the company of which he was president by the American Cessna, which had become the majority shareholder, Max Holste went into exile in Brazil, where he built the prototype of a commercial aircraft, the Bandeirante, a twin-engine aircraft that would be produced in some 500 units by the company that has since become Embraer.
Max Holste returned to France to live out his final years. An officer of the Legion of Honour and holder of the Aeronautics Medal, he died in obscurity in 1998. Max Holste is buried in the cemetery in Hyères (Var).
Interesting information at: https://www.mh-1521.fr