The man who came closest to being a father to me was a font of wisdom. As an Englishman, Brian Walton loved to provide incisive anecdotes and witty jokes. As a professional historian he had an inexhaustible supply of stories to draw from. The best of these combined historic events with his own personal history. Brian grew up in Stockport, an industrial town in Greater Manchester, during the aftermath of World War II. The mentality in Britain was very different from that of today. The war was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Germans were not to be trusted. They had dropped bombs all over Britain, including three on Brian’s street when he was a toddler. He had an understandable anger towards them which would sometimes still be displayed in gallows humor. Like all good humor, it had subversive intentions.
Coming to America – Hermann Oberth (forefront) with several German scientists including Wernher von Braun at the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency
Taking Flight – Pushing The Limits
One evening, Brian and I were discussing the American development of solid fueled missiles. This was a game changing technology that allowed nuclear missiles to be launched at a moment’s notice. At the time, I was working as a guide at a former nuclear missile site on the Great Plains. Brian filled me in on some missile history which I was only vaguely aware of. He mentioned that America’s missile program excelled partly due to the work of Werner von Braun, a German rocket scientist who conveniently emigrated to the United States after the war and proceeded to help America develop rocketry. Von Braun did not do this out of altruism, but to save himself from the crimes he had committed during the war by developing V-2 rockets which killed almost 3,000 British civilians, wounded thousands of others, and terrorized the populace.
Brian, who was a great lover of movies said, “they made a film about Von Braun’s life while he was still alive. It was called, “I Aim At The Stars. And we used to say in Stockport that it should have been called, “I Aim At The Stars and my rockets fall on Britain.” That story came to mind many years later when I was visiting Transylvania. While climbing to the top of the 13th century Clock Tower in Sighisoara, I came across a small exhibition about a Transylvanian who also aimed at the stars. Hermann Oberth, was a mentor of Von Braun and the man most responsible for rockets falling on Britain. Transylvania has a reputation for the supernatural, but a rocket scientist at one of the most iconic sites in Sighisoara was really pushing the limits. Then again, so did Oberth throughout his long and complex life.
Above all – Clocktower (center) in Sighisoara (Credit: Bogdan Muraru)
Conflict & Complexity – The Saxon’s Story
The last thing I expected to find as I made my way up the medieval Clock Tower in Sighisoara was an image of Hermann Oberth and information on his life. That was because I had never heard of the man. I doubt many others have either and that includes Romanians. Oberth was a Transylvanian Saxon, that community has been dwindling in Romania ever since World War II. An estimated 100,000 Saxons fled westward when the Red Army was about to overrun Transylvania in 1944. Another 70,000 were arrested and sent to the Soviet Union to work as slave laborers. Ironically, Romania, unlike other nations in Eastern Europe did not expel the Saxons following the war. When the Romanian Revolution in 1989 led to the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and communism, there were still 95,000 Saxons living in Transylvania. Due to the dire state of Romania’s economy during the transition from communism to capitalism, most of Transylvania’s Saxons migrated to Germany. They found the peace and prosperity in Germany that had eluded them during their last fifty years in Transylvania.
By the time of my visit to Transylvania in 2014 there were approximately 25,000 Saxons left in Transylvania. That means three out of every four Saxons had left the region since 1990. They had set out for greener pastures. There are plenty of these in Transylvania, but not the kind covered in money like Germany. The Saxon’s greatest legacy are the fortified churches and remarkable villages with spectacularly quaint architecture. Several of these have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites. As for the Saxon’s human legacy, that has mostly vanished. This made discovering an exhibit on a Transylvanian Saxon, who had also emigrated from the region long ago, that much more unique. Judging by the number of Germans who I observed visiting Transylvania during my time there, I should not have been so surprised. Perhaps the wounds of war had finally healed enough to promote the accomplishments of Oberth, even if some of his accomplishments helped propagate the war that led to the Saxon exodus from Transylvania. Oberth’s life and legacy is just as conflicted as the Saxon’s recent history in the region.
Making a name for himself – Street sign in Sighisoara (Credit: Renardo la vulpo)
Egregious Exhibition – A Matter Of Importance
I did not spend much time studying the small exhibit on Oberth in Sighisoara’s Clock Tower mainly because it was located on one of the upper levels close to the stairs. I was too busy catching my breath and wiping sweat from my brow due to the long bursting climb up the 64-meter-high tower. My first thought upon seeing the exhibit was perplexity. I could not imagine what would possess someone to put an exhibit about a man who represented one of the modern world’s most ambitious undertakings inside a medieval tower. I have seen enough exhibits in Eastern Europe’s provincial cities to realize that the people running them feel that they must exhibit anything of even the mildest interest to compensate for a lack of funds to create modern exhibits.
I found the Oberth exhibit so egregious as to be memorable. I committed Oberth’s name to memory, promising myself that I would find out more about him later. In the next several years any time I thought of my time in Sighisoara, Oberth would come to mind for a few seconds and then like Transylvania’s Saxons vanish into the past. Finally, a decade after my visit, I decided that it was time to find out why he was so important to Sighisoara and the world. What I discovered was just as fascinating and unexpected as the exhibit I came across in the Clock Tower.
Click here for: Outer Limits – Hermann Oberth’s Strange Destiny (Rendezvous With An Obscure Destiny #71b)
Europe Between East And West 