Background
He was born on June 25, 1894, in the Transylvanian town of Hermannstadt (Nagyszeben), Austria-Hungary, today Sibiu, Romania.
He was born on June 25, 1894, in the Transylvanian town of Hermannstadt (Nagyszeben), Austria-Hungary, today Sibiu, Romania.
As a boy he was attracted by the science fiction writing of Jules Verne and took up scientific studies in the University of Munich.
After the war he attended the universities of Klausenburg in Transylvania, Munich, Gö ttingen, Gottingen, and Heidelberg, continuing his interest in rocket theory.
Oberth's doctoral thesis on rocketry was rejected in 1922.
However, in 1923, he published The Rocket into Planetary Space, which was followed by a longer version in 1929.
In the final chapter Oberth foresaw "rockets … so [powerful] that they could be capable of carrying a man aloft. " In the 1930, Oberth proposed to the German War Department the development of liquid-fueled, long-range rockets.
During this period Robert Goddard waslaunching liquid-fueled rockets in the United States.
In parts of 1928 and 1929, Oberth also worked in Berlin, Germany as a scientific consultant on the film, Frau im Mond ("The Woman in the Moon"), which was directed and produced by the great film pioneer Fritz Lang at the Universum Film AG company. This film was of enormous value in popularizing the ideas of rocketry and space exploration. One of Oberth's main assignments was to build and launch a rocket as a publicity event just before the film's premiere.
He also designed the model of the "Friede", the main rocket portrayed in the film.
In 1938, the Oberth family left Sibiu, Romania, for good, to first settle in Austria, then in Nazi Germany, then in the United States. Oberth moved to Peenemünde, Germany, in 1941 to work on the Aggregate rocket program. Later he worked on solid-propellant anti-aircraft rockets at the German WASAG military organization near Wittenberg.
In 1950, Oberth moved on to Italy, where he completed some of the work that he had begun at the WASAG organization for the new Italian Navy. In 1953, Oberth returned to Feucht, Germany, to publish his book Menschen im Weltraum (Man into Space), in which he described his ideas for space-based reflecting telescopes, space stations, electric-powered spaceships, and space suits.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Oberth offered his opinions regarding unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
Oberth eventually came to work for his former student, Wernher von Braun, who was developing space rockets for NASA in Huntsville, Alabama. Among other things, Oberth was involved in writing the study, The Development of Space Technology in the Next Ten Years.
Oberth retired in 1962 at the age of 68.
He is considered a founding father of rocketry and astronautics.
On 5 June 1929, Oberth won the first "Rep-Hirsch Prize" of the French Astronomical Society for the encouragement of astronautics in his book Wege zur Raumschiffahrt ("Ways to Spaceflight") that had expanded Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen to a full-length book.
He was the teacher of Wernher von Braun, who would later become a giant in both German and American rocket engineering from the 1940s onward, culminating with the gigantic Saturn V rockets that made it possible for men to land on the Moon.
Hermann Oberth is memorialized by the Hermann Oberth Space Travel Museum in Feucht, Germany, and by the Hermann Oberth Society. The museum brings together scientists, researchers, engineers, and astronauts from the East and the West to carry on his work in rocketry and space exploration.
The Oberth effect, in which a rocket engine when traveling at high speed generates more useful energy than one travelling at low speed, is named after him.
There is also a crater on the Moon and asteroid 9253 Oberth named after him.
The Danish Astronautical Society has named Hermann Oberth an honorary member.
The Faculty of Engineering of Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu is named after him.
From 1965 to 1967 he was a member of the National Democratic Party, which was considered to be far right.
On 6 July 1918, Oberth married Mathilde Hummel, with whom he had four children. Among these were a son who died as a soldier in World War II, and a daughter who also died during the war when there was an accidental explosion at a liquid oxygen plant where she was in August 1944.
