German rocket scientists

December 31, 2007
Huntsville Journal
When the Germans, and Rockets, Came to Town
By SHAILA DEWAN

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — In 1950, this cotton market town in northern Alabama lost a bid for a military aviation project that would have revived its mothballed arsenal. The consolation prize was dubious: 118 German rocket scientists who had surrendered to the Americans during World War II, led by a man — a crackpot, evidently — who claimed humans could visit the moon.

Ultimately those German immigrants made history, launching the first American satellite, Explorer I, into orbit in January 1958 and putting astronauts on the moon in 1969. The crackpot, Wernher von Braun, was celebrated as a visionary.

Far less attention, though, has been given to the space program’s permanent transformation of Huntsville, now a city of 170,000 with one of the country’s highest concentrations of scientists and engineers. The area is full of high-tech giants like Siemens, LG and Boeing, and a new biotech center.

Rocket scientists, propulsion experts and military contractors have given the area per capita income levels above the national average and well above the rest of the state.

Huntsville residents regard their city as an oasis, as un-Alabaman as Alabama can be. But they acknowledge that the state’s backwater reputation is a hindrance to recruiting. Local boosters are hoping to use the 50th anniversary of Explorer I on Jan. 31 as a way to promote Huntsville as Rocket City, unveiling a new pavilion, housing a 363-foot Saturn V rocket, at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a museum and popular tourist attraction.

Even the Germans, who had spent five years cloistered on an Army base near El Paso, knew beforehand of Alabama’s spotty “résumé,” as Konrad Dannenberg, who at 95 is one of the last surviving members of the original von Braun team, put it last week.

“We knew that the people here run around without shoes,” Dr. Dannenberg said, in a tone of deadpan gravity. “They make their money moonshining and that’s what they drink for breakfast, and supper. And so we, in a way, were a little bit disappointed that it was really not that bad.”

The residents were wary of the Germans as well. They knew that most of them had been members of the Nazi Party and that they had built the V-2 rocket for Hitler. But the charismatic von Braun accepted virtually every speaking invitation, winning over Rotarians and peanut farmers.

And the Germans tried hard to assimilate. Von Braun insisted that the scientists speak English if there was so much as a single American, even a janitor, within earshot, said Ernst Stuhlinger, 94, another surviving member of the team. Dr. Stuhlinger was one of many who settled on Monte Sano, the mountain overlooking the town, which reminded the Germans of home.

“People said, ‘If you had just been at war with these people, how can you be so accepting of them?’ ” recalled Loretta Spencer, the 70-year-old mayor of Huntsville, offering a visitor a homemade pecan cookie. “But I think we were just in awe.”

In school, the German children’s diligence posed a challenge. “I remember working real hard in physics class to beat Axel Roth, who later worked for NASA,” Ms. Spencer said. “I beat him by a point on the final exam, and I was really tickled by it.”

The Germans also needed thousands of Americans to staff the missile program. Many who answered the call were “rocket boys” like Homer H. Hickam Jr., author of the memoir by that name, who scavenged together his first rockets in a West Virginia mining town and now lives here. Others were young men from cotton-picking families who went to school on the G.I. Bill.

By the time Explorer I was launched, the residents of Huntsville had so thoroughly adopted the Germans that there was an impromptu celebration. Charles E. Wilson, the former secretary of defense whose severe curtailment of the Germans’ work was blamed by some as having allowed the Soviet Union to beat America to space with Sputnik, was burned in effigy.

And by the mid-1960s, von Braun had so mastered the local culture that when he wanted voters to approve a bond issue for the Space and Rocket Center, he persuaded Bear Bryant, the revered University of Alabama football coach, and Shug Jordan, the rival Auburn coach, to make a television commercial supporting the project.

Rocketry permeated Huntsville, where windows shook and dishes cracked each time the powerful propulsion engines were tested. Children built rockets powered by zinc powder and sulfur, and the mad-scientist-in-the-basement tradition still has a hold. Tim Pickens, a rocket designer who helped a private manned spacecraft win the $10 million X Prize in 2004, attached a 200-pound-thrust engine to a bicycle in his garage here.

City officials trying to capitalize on this kind of ingenuity are irritated that prominent scholars have chosen this moment to scrutinize the von Braun team’s Nazi ties.

A new biography by Michael J. Neufeld portrays von Braun as a man who made a Faustian bargain. Diane McWhorter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Birmingham native, is at work on a book on the space race that compares Nazi ideology to contemporaneous white supremacy in the South.

Most Huntsvillians concluded long ago that the Germans had been coerced into joining the party. And, though skeptical of claims that the scientists were thoroughly apolitical, Ms. McWhorter says Southerners might easily understand that membership in an organization is not necessarily the best indicator of sentiment.

“There were members of the White Citizens Council in the South who were probably less racist than people who weren’t members,” she said.

Residents point to the symphony and the Huntsville branch of the University of Alabama, both nurtured into being by the Germans, and say their enlightened views contributed to the fact that the town had the first integrated elementary school in the state. Dr. Von Braun himself was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan for hiring blacks, said Bob Ward, a Huntsville newsman and von Braun biographer.

Besides, Huntsville is a forward-looking place. The Nazi question “just doesn’t come up,” said Loren Traylor, a Chamber of Commerce vice president. “That was then, this is now.”

Scientology in Germany

Certainly not as we see it in America...Before I could teach in a German highschool, I had to affirm in an oath that I was not a Scientologist...Shades of Tom Cruise!!!

International Herald Tribune
German security officials again seek ban of Scientology

The Associated Press
Friday, December 7, 2007

BERLIN: Germany's top security officials said Friday that they considered the goals of the Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the country's Constitution and would seek to ban the organization.

The interior ministers of Germany's 16 states plan to give the domestic intelligence agency the task of preparing the necessary information to outlaw the organization, which has been under observation here for a decade on suspicions that it "threatens the peaceful democratic order" of the country.

The ministers, and the federal interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, "consider Scientology to be an organization that is not compatible with the Constitution," said Ehrhart Körting, interior minister of Berlin, who presided over a two-day conference.

Sabine Weber, president of the Church of Scientology in Berlin, said she viewed the renewed attempt to ban the organization as a reaction to increasing acceptance of Scientologists in several European countries.

"It is very, very clear that the true picture of what Scientology is about is pushing its way through," Weber said. "The interior ministers are clearly reacting to that."

Scientologists have long battled to end the federal surveillance effort, saying it abuses their rights to freedom of religion. They point to several lower-court rulings in favor of their right to practice in Germany as a religious organization.

The interior ministers gave no specific examples for their decision, but the most recent annual report on extremism compiled by their agencies criticized the organization for disregarding human rights.

That report said that based on "a number of sources," some of which were not disclosed publicly, it had been determined that Scientology "seeks to limit or rescind basic and human rights, such as the right to develop one's personality and the right to be treated equally."

This year, the German government refused to allow the producers of a movie starring Tom Cruise, an adherent of Scientology, to film scenes in the country, although it did not state Scientology as its reason. It later allowed production to go ahead.

The Church of Scientology, based in Los Angeles, was founded in 1954 by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It came to Germany in 1970 and officials estimate it now has about 6,000 members here.

Jounalism problems in Germany

The New York Times


August 10, 2007
Editorial
Harassing Germany’s Media

Germany would seem to be one of the last places to find the government trying to intimidate its journalists these days. News of secret C.I.A. flights that whisked prisoners through the Continent to places where torture is allowed has horrified many Europeans in recent years. The German courts have been in the forefront of condemning “extraordinary rendition” — the practice of loading terrorism suspects onto planes and secretly flying them to Afghanistan or Syria or other particularly dangerous spots for anyone behind bars.

A German court even issued a warrant in January for the arrest of 13 people said to be part of a Central Intelligence Agency “abduction team” involved in the kidnapping and jailing of a German citizen in 2003. Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese descent, was seized in Macedonia and flown to Afghanistan where he was brutally interrogated for five months before being released without charges ever being filed.

Yet despite such widespread concern, the government is investigating at least 17 German journalists from top publications, like Der Spiegel and Die Welt, for their articles about a parliamentary committee investigating these renditions. World news media organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, have rightly demanded an end to what amounts to political intimidation by the German authorities in these cases.

Such attempts to stop the reporting on this important subject not only work against the public interest, in Germany they appear to be illegal. The German high court earlier this year approved a shield law that should protect journalists from this kind of harassment — a protection that so far Congress has withheld from the American press. On the most basic level, if a government prosecutes journalists to find the names of their sources, those sources disappear, and journalists can be intimidated into giving up hard-hitting investigations. What goes on inside a government becomes more and more secret, which is bad news for democracy, and what’s left for the public are official press releases.

Miklós Haraszti, the representative focusing on media freedom for the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe, had it right in his letter earlier this week to Germany’s Minister of Justice. “Initiating proceedings against the media merely in retaliation for their publishing, with the aim of deterring them from similar editorial decisions, is inadmissible in a society proud of its press freedoms.” Germany’s prosecutors should drop their attempts to intimidate their nation’s journalists.

Harvest time early summer

I have often mentioned that Germany is a land that does not have open spaces as in the USA. There is no remaining land that is not owned or belonging to a city or town. That being said, I can take a short walk from my apartment and within a few minutes see such sights as an early summer harvest as shown in the picture. I often take this route as it is a circle from apartment and back along the fields and a tree alley (Trees lining the road on both sides) which takes about 40 minutes. The advantage is I get my exercise and clear my head as well enjoying the familiar route while observing the changes of the seasons. I have photographed this area many times...

Today I read in the local paper that for every euro in Germany, 53 percent goes to the State and 47 percent for the individual who possesses it. The 53 percent is taxes, retirement, health insurance, church ( if you are a declared Lutheran or Catholic) added value tax, or whatever they figure they can take from that euro. Nevertheless, Germany is still the 3rd or 4th richest nation in the world.

Today was also a visit to my local dentist for a filling and on the wall of the office was this picture which was painted by a friend of the dentist. It depicts a land or large island in the shape of a tooth and all the landmarks have to do with aspects of dentistry. The Land is called "Dental Land". The two dentists names are shown as towns or areas and all the assistants are on the map. There are the molar islands to the right, and nerve rivers etc. My phone camera was used to take the picture and therefore it is too fuzzy to see the names. I will say that in between getting your teeth taken care of it is an interesting object similar to a Tolkien novel with its map to take your mind of that dreaded drill.

The picture of the beer garden and lake was taken a few weeks ago as I made an evening bicycle trip stopping off at one of my favorite "Watering" holes for a Bratwurst in a roll and naturally a "made in Hof" beer.

Monday in Germany

The weather has been a bit "anstaendig" which means it is nice and then suddenly rainy but for my garden everything is growing like in a tropical rainforest. I harvested one of the red currant bushes in my garden which was so heavy, part of the fruit was in the mud in the strawberry patch. Red currant jelly is fantastic as it has sweet sour taste and the currant berries are the best, fresh on vanilla ice cream or on cereal.

A busy weekend with rehearsals for an upcoming concert on Sunday and a sense of relief now that there was a compromise attributed to the German Chancelor Angela Merkel and Poland´s insistence on not ratifying a new treaty for the European Union. see link

belated blog

I have been remiss to publish my latest thoughts and reports from Germany and I will attempt to bring anyone up to date on what is happening. The Bavarian administration shot down the planned building of a bigger airport in Pirk which is our local airport and quite handy for getting to Frankfurt. It can only serve propeller planes and the lengthening would let us naturally go further than Munich or Frankfurt etc. There is a lot of politics involved as well as the financing but I heard today that Hof will shrink from about 48,000 to 40,000 inhabitants in the future which means money loss from the govt. and the EU. This will affect everything from culture to business and so ergo the need for an airport that can keep attracting tourism in and out, business etc. check this link out in English

Today I finally stirred my stumps and took a bike ride over to the lake which has a great beer garden and one can refuel for the journey home.

We are having hot, humid weather lately which is traditionally more in the middle of July early August. The good news is that I can plant tomatoes outside instead of only in my green house. Here is a picture of my strawberry patch which has been yielding the sweet fruit since the end of May.

The next letter will discuss the problem of Poland, Germany and the EU.

preserving the ice

The long dry spell is over and finally the garden will get enough water. I noticed an article in the newspaper and this picture of workers covering the glacier at the Zugspitze in Germany. The purpose is not to save the glacier but at least to get 15 more years of skiing if all goes well. They had to begin a week earlier than usual as a result of the abnormally hot April. ( hottest in 200 years )