Is this photo of the Red Baron authentic?

Given ccprog's translation, this looks to be the sort of signed photo one might commonly receive as a response to fan mail.

The issue here is that there's only a small window of his life during which that might have occurred. He wasn't particularly famous (or even over 20) before he joined the German military around the start of the war, so it would have to be "fan mail" owing to his Red Baron persona.

During the war and after he became famous, he was in a rather high command position where he had leadership, tactical, and training responsibilties that should have kept him far too busy to be dealing with fan mail.

There is one such window though. He suffered a head injury in July 6th of 1917. From then until the 23rd of October (with a brief attempt to return to duty for a bit more than a month around August), he was convalescing. During that latter period he wrote an autobiography. It would make sense if he were also answering fan mail during that period.

After that he went back into combat, and 6 months later was shot down over France.

However, for the entire duration of that window, the USA was at war with Germany. German immigrants were widely viewed as potentially disloyal, and many were being interned or even lynched. It seems highly unlikely anyone in the US would be so bold as to send the Red Barron fan mail during that time, and equally unlikely it would be received and faithfully delivered back.

I'd imagine that if one were to investigate the club's history, it was not operating as a German-language Singing club at that time.

This being said, the German Luftwaffe was promoting him as a heroic figure, along with his "flying circus", and it was said that he was recieving rather a lot of fan mail at squadron HQ. So it would make sense if there was staff assigned specifically to answer his fan mail. So on the theory this may have been handled by his staff and not the man himself, there would be a window from about early 1914 to the US entry in 1917 during which this might have been received and sent out. If that happened, I hope they hid it well from 1917-1919.

Manfred von Richthofen – Wikipedia died at the age of 26. The man on the right looks older.

It's hard to read the text, but I think that the last portion is 'für Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen' (for Manfred Baron von Richthofen).

The signature is also different. The known signature does not use the title and abbreviates the 'von'.

So I don't think this is a signature, but an inscription describing the photo.

This may be a photo of the builders of a plane intended for Manfred von Richthofen.

What I can make out from the inscription is

mit herzlichem Gruße
(an) die ..ustir Sänger..u..n
Rittmeister Manfred
Freiherr von Richthofen

Especially the second line is very hard to decipher. It ends with a name, but its last part is almost invisible, and the word before baffles me. Comparing to other occurences of the same letters, I am relatively sure it ends with "ustir", but the first, uppercase letter is unclear, and the whole does not remind me of anything.

So it is a dedication, and it would be resonable to assume it is from Richthofen to the, either single female person, or to multiple persons, mentioned in the second line.

You say this is from a singing club – "Sänger" is German for singer, could this be the name of your club, or a germanised version of it?

Edit: the name of the club has now been confirmed to be "Austin Sängerrunde", which therefore undoubtedly are the two last words in line two.

As to the authenticity, the Richthofen line does not look like his normal signature, where he typically adds the "Rittmeister" title after his name, and which has a few characteristic details like the small f with a wide loop to the left, and the curl added above the "R".