Suchergebnisse

Given Peenemünde's ambivalent military and technological history, from rocket development during the Nazi period to East German naval and air bases during the Cold War, its musealization was considered both a chance and challenge during the region's deindustrialization in the 1990s. Local residents' support of veteran engineers promoting an apologetic view of Nazi rocketry was met with bewilderment. However, a space park project and anniversary event were spearheaded by government and industry representatives, turning a regional affair into an international controversy. The article analyzes the function of memory work and the remembrance of technological progress in rural northeastern Germany before and after German reunification. Based on archival sources and interviews with former officers and museum advocates, it traces the Peenemünde museum project through a history of ideological and biographical caesurae, enthusiasm, political promises, and socioeconomic despair.

During the early Cold War, outer space became a politically contested space, and changes in its spatial perception were related to political and ideological controversies. The article highlights the specific relevance of Euclidean geometry in representations of outer space. Focusing on illustrations and expositions in both postwar German States, it argues that shifts within the spatial imagination and representation of space corresponded with the first satellite missions and condensed debates about the future of technology and the moral legacies of the Second World War. In October 1957, Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth and a Soviet construction, urged engineers, scientists, and illustrators to find new ways of depicting and communicating the spaces of outer space to the public and to each other. For decades, space fiction had implicitly stifled theories on the relativity of space and time by hinting at traditional motifs of conquest through machines. Early spaceflight, however, was not about immediate flights to other planets, but about the orbit, a space without a traditional place, yet imagined as being of paramount importance for strategic superiority. Driven by political tensions and drawing on representations established in physics and astronomy, the first satellite projects were designed and explained as missions to places that needed to be defined and controlled because they were strange and new.

"During the early Cold War, outer space became a politically contested space, and changes in its spatial perception were related to political and ideological controversies. The article highlights the specific relevance of Euclidean geometry in representations of outer space. Focusing on illustrations and expositions in both postwar German States, it argues that shifts within the spatial imagination and representation of space corresponded with the first satellite missions and condensed debates about the future of technology and the moral legacies of the Second World War. In October 1957, Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth and a Soviet construction, urged engineers, scientists, and illustrators to find new ways of depicting and communicating the spaces of outer space to the public and to each other. For decades, space fiction had implicitly stifled theories on the relativity of space and time by hinting at traditional motifs of conquest through machines. Early spaceflight, however, was not about immediate flights to other planets, but about the orbit, a space without a traditional place, yet imagined as being of paramount importance for strategic superiority. Driven by political tensions and drawing on representations established in physics and astronomy, the first satellite projects were designed and explained as missions to places that needed to be defined and controlled because they were strange and new." (author's abstract)

"Revolutionary" technologies or large technological systems are often deemed controversial, risky, or ambivalent. Diverging interpretations clash when technological objects, such as rockets, airplanes, or nuclear reactors, are exhibited in museums or at heritage sites, with profound implications for underlying concepts of historical education. This special issue explores the argument that histories of technology have often upheld a traditional view of modern linear progress but became the focus of controversies when the social, political, and cultural conditions of perceiving and remembering these objects changed. At former "places of progress," visitors and exhibition makers are confronted with the remains of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, two World Wars, the Cold War, the Age of Coal, the Space Age, the Atomic Age and the Digital Age. Exhibitions and displays have been used to explain, teach, or make sense of the advents, successes, and failures of high-tech projects. Understanding technological artifacts and corresponding sites such as Chernobyl, Peenemünde, and Hiroshima as well as structures such as factories or bunkers as sites of memory (lieux de mémoire, a term coined by Pierre Nora) shifts our attention to processes of remembering modern technologies and the cases in which established narratives of progress have been supported or challenged. Questions about the ethics of technology use often seem to subvert stories of the "heroes of invention," leaving visitors with the impression of technological ambivalence. Attempts to teach and learn about history and technology via objects and sites have been complicated, politicized, and contested.

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Danksagung -- Einleitung -- Innovation und Plausibilisierung, 1923–1930 -- Wundermaschinen und Wunderwaffen, 1930–1945 -- Neue Raketeure, 1945–1956 -- Unheimliche Technik, 1954–1959 -- Raketenkontroversen in der DDR, 1955–1963 -- Verwirklichung als Krise, 1958–1961 -- Das Ende der Raketenzukunft -- Schluss -- Back Matter -- Quellen- und Literaturverzeichnis -- Abkürzungsverzeichnis -- Abbildungsverzeichnis -- Personenregister.

1. Spacewar! The Dark Side of Astroculture- Alexander C. T. Geppert and Tilmann Siebeneichner -- Part I: Embattling the Heavens -- 2. Cold War – But No War – in Space- Michael J. Neufeld -- 3. The Nuclear Roots of the Space Race- Christopher Gainor -- 4. West European Integration and the Militarization of Outer Space, 1945–70- Michael Sheehan -- Part II: Waging Future Wars -- 5. In Space, Violence Rules: Clashes and Conquests in Science Fiction Cinema- Natalija Majsova -- 6. C. S. Lewis and the Moral Threat of Space Exploration, 1938–64- Oliver Dunnett -- 7. One Nation, Two Astrocultures? Rocketry, Security and Dual Use in Di-vided Germany, 1949–61- Daniel Brandau -- Part III: Armoring Minds and Bodies -- 8. Participant Evolution: Cold War Space Medicine and the Militarization of the Cyborg Self- Patrick Kilian -- 9. Starship Troopers: The Shaping of the Space Warrior in Cold War As-troculture, 1950–80- Philipp Theisohn -- 10. Satellites and Psychics: The Militarization of Outer and Inner Space, 1960–95- Anthony Enns -- Part IV: Mounting Infrastructures -- 11. Architectures of Command: The Dual-Use Legacy of Mission Control Centers- Regina Peldszus -- 12. Space Spies in the Open: Military Space Stations and Heroic Cosmo-nauts in the Post-Apollo Period, 1971–77- Cathleen Lewis -- 13. Satellite Navigation and the Military-Civilian Dilemma: The Geopolitics of GPS and its Rivals- Paul E. Ceruzzi -- 14. What Is, and To What End Do We Study, European Astroculture?- Alexander C. T. Geppert.

Daniel Brandau legt eine umfassend recherchierte Kulturgeschichte der deutschen Raumfahrtbegeisterung vor – und schildert, wie Technikenthusiasmus in Skepsis umschlug. Von der Weimarer Republik bis in die 1960er Jahre organisierten sich deutsche Raumfahrt-Interessierte in Vereinen, in denen sie an Raketen bastelten und für militärische wie zivile Visionen warben. Viele dieser Visionäre und Ingenieure verschrieben sich dem NS-Regime und entwickelten die Großrakete als Waffe. Den neuen, nunmehr friedlichen Raumfahrt- und Technikvisionen der Nachkriegszeit wurde daher mit Misstrauen begegnet. Während in der Bundesrepublik eine Debatte über die gesellschaftliche Kontrolle des Wissens der Techniker entbrannte, prallte in der DDR in der 'Raketenfrage' die Kritik am Faschismus und seinen Waffensystemen auf die sozialistische Raumfahrt-Utopie. Durch zahlreiche Abbildungen werden auch die kosmischen Bildwelten der 1920er bis 1960er Jahre dem Leser vor Augen geführt.