
Sigmund Jähn, the first German to travel into space - Tomte
https://www.zeit.de/wissen/geschichte/2018-08/sigmund-jaehn-first-german-in-space-gdr/komplettansicht
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wolfgke
The German movie "Good Bye, Lenin!"

>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye,_Lenin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye,_Lenin)!

made Sigmund Jähn pretty well-known in West Germany, too. In the story of the
movie, the protagonist convinces a taxi driver (who is or resembles the
cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space and Alex's childhood hero)
to act in a false news report as the new leader of East Germany and to give a
speech about opening the borders to the West.

If you can read German, read the following article at Heise about the 40 year
celebration of Sigmund Jähn's space flight:

> [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Ich-hatte-einfach-
> Gl...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Ich-hatte-einfach-Glueck-
> Vor-40-Jahren-flog-Sigmund-Jaehn-ins-All-4141535.html)

On 1999, the German band "Die Prinzen" (which was quite popular in the 90s and
00s) created a song "Wer ist Sigmund Jähn?" to celebrate this "unknown
cosmonaut":

>
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY6uRERGWBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY6uRERGWBw)

~~~
DenisM
Speaking of, this 2003 movie is doing a great job illustrating resurgence of
nationalism in Russia circa 2014-2018. It's also a fun movie.

~~~
wolfgke
> this 2003 movie is doing a great job illustrating resurgence of nationalism
> in Russia circa 2014-2018.

Could you elaborate on this point somewhat more?

~~~
DenisM
Sure thing.

Spoiler alert.

One of main characters of "Goodbye, Lenin" is an East-German woman who
earnestly worked building up the Socialist society and earned high-ranking
position, but then she fell into a coma to wake months up after the wall came
down. Most of what was built during the soviet times has been or was being
thrown out - cars, furniture, food, TV programming, clothing, display
advertising. So basically all that she worked for, and was proud of, was
thrown to the trash.

This undermined her life-long accomplishments, sense of importance, sense of
self. Except that it didn't, because her son hid everything from her, as she
lay in bed recovering, he draped he windows, brought in old furniture and
food, created(!) fake TV program for her, and even brought in kids to pose as
Socialist-era uniformed boy-scouts. Eventually unable to keep up the charade
he made a video in which Western Germany begged, and was allowed to join
Eastern Germany. He took the video of Easterners jumping over the wall to the
West and reversed it - it was the Westerners now jumping over to the East. She
came to accept the new unified-Germany reality, under these terms, and
recovered from her illness.

Russian citizens suffered two big problems since the wall fell. First, in the
90s the economy was devastated by the governmental mismanagement, pervasive
corruption, and general feebleness of the state. Second, in the oughts the
economy improved (thanks to oil prices), but the populace started feeling that
Russian contribution to and influence on the world is unappreciated, and maybe
even mocked by the west. The the cold war's end, which started out like a
truce between equals, was now looking more like a defeat (the theme fo
treachery came up as it always does), the turning point there was ascension of
the Baltic states to NATO. The industrial achievement of the older generations
looked increasingly less important, and there were very few new industrial
achievements (see "Dutch disease"). The recent military campaigns did not
deliver, and when the subject comes up it goes all the way back to WW2. The
soft foreign influence waned with the collapse of the Eastern block and
flailing economy. The science was pretty much defunded in the 90s and it took
a big hit.

Having once been a part of a great project, and no longer struggling to eat
every day, people now wanted to get back the sense of importance and glory.
And so a virtual parade of past achievements was deployed to sooth the pain,
both in the movie and in the real life. A huge part of the modern-day Russian
media coverage is dedicated to the achievements of the old days: WW2, the
noble Tsarist regime, the heroic Bolshevik regime, the classic literature, the
scientists of earlier centuries, the soviet-era cosmonauts, etc. It's quite a
mix really, and can be baffling at first but there is a thread tying them up -
pride and dignity. And it's not just the government either - you will find a
ton of nostalgic material on social media, even predating the 2012 change in
policy. I think the government is responding to the nostalgia trend they mined
from the social networks, and extending it, which I think is rather
innovative.

So anyway, I thought of this all when I was re-watching the movie recently,
and the puzzle pieces came together for me. Maybe they will for you, maybe
not.

~~~
sfRattan
> The the cold war's end, which started out like a truce between equals...

Maybe it was taught that way in Russian schools, but I don't know anyone in
any part of the West who considers the end of the Cold War to have been a
"truce between equals." The Soviet Union collapsed. The Russian Federation is
the internationally recognized successor state to a failed empire. It was so
in the 90s as much as it is so today.

~~~
em-bee
the cold war itself started out as a truce between equals

~~~
sfRattan
Thanks, that makes more sense. I clearly parsed the sentence badly.

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themodelplumber
Wow, what a fantastic thing to see that photo of a cosmonaut wearing the the
old DDR patch. For me it's a curiously sentimental mix of the idealism of
modern day progress and forgotten historic nostalgia. The first of which I
still believe in, and the second of which seems more of a ruefully likely
prospect to have to consider as I age.

Thank you for sharing the article.

~~~
scoggs
I wonder if studying to become an astronaut around the world (like for NASA or
JAXA, etc.) there is required reading on Jahn or if they just become fans of a
cult hero like him?

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brohee
Tbh, taking the example of a country that didn't disappear, very few people in
France would know who the first Frenchman in space was. Then he was not
relentlessly hyped by a state propaganda apparatus.

In the grand scheme of things, all but Gagarin and Armstrong are also ran...

~~~
billfruit
I wonder how much the UK public remembers the first Britons in space Helen
Sharman, curiously it was the Soviets who sent her to space.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sharman](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Sharman)

~~~
festkal
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronauts_by_first_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronauts_by_first_flight)

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walrus01
The first and only Afghan in space now lives in Germany. He was an officer in
the soviet-created air force in the 80s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Ahad_Mohmand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Ahad_Mohmand)

When Anousheh Ansari went to space as a paid "tourist", first Iranian in
space, it was on like page 10 of Iranian newspapers in Tehran, because she is
both an American citizen and quite firmly a political opponent of the current
Iranian government system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anousheh_Ansari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anousheh_Ansari)

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severino
Probably because when his country was annexed to the federal republic 28 years
ago, the new governors decided that everything that took place in the 40 years
before was worthless and had to be forgotten. Well, everything except the bad
things like the state security, which we have to remember every day. That's
why we have the Stasi museum and things like that.

~~~
amai
I remember a lot of east germans who rather wanted to be „annexed“ than living
further in the dull DDR. But if you want, we can build the wall again. I heard
the american president is also a huge fan of walls nowadays.

~~~
severino
Well, that doesn't change anything about how the reunification was done and
how the East Germany history was summarized into the wall and the state
police, leaving everything else out of the picture, as this article points
out.

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amai
As far as I know he was also the last east german to travel to space, or
wasn‘t he?

~~~
wolfgke
> As far as I know he was also the last east german to travel to space, or
> wasn‘t he?

This issue is somewhat subtle. Let us look at the list of German astronauts:

>
> [https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liste_deutscher_R...](https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liste_deutscher_Raumfahrer&oldid=181491223)

If you consider "East German" as "born in the GDR", also Ulf Merbold, the
second German in space, who is seen as the first West German in space, is
actually East German. :-)

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jpatokal
I was recently in Mongolia, and one of the more memorable sights (in a country
packed to the brim with them) awaited me next to the station building in the
godforsaken town of Choir, a heat-blasted former Soviet military base in the
middle of the Gobi Desert. The scenery all around was rocky desert, battered
commieblock apartments and barbed wire... and a solitary silver Socialist
Realist statue of Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa, the first & only Mongolian in
space, proudly springing off into the skies.

[https://driftingclouds.net/2018/07/07/from-siberia-to-
tibet-...](https://driftingclouds.net/2018/07/07/from-siberia-to-tibet-
ulaanbaatar-gorkhi-terelj-and-the-gobi-desert/) (photo towards the end)

Mongolia, too, seems very much like a country trying to forget its long
Socialist era, and there were no statues of the guy to be seen in the bright
lights of Ulaanbaatar.

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maweki
I always wondered why the west didn't push a west german citizen to go to
space with one of the later missions, given how much Jähn's flight was
considered a success of socialism by eastern propaganda.

Quite a propaganda qoup, I'd say.

