Who Was The First German Astronaut In Space?

Sigmund Jähn, born on February 13, 1937, in Morgenröthe-Rautenkranz, Germany, and died on September 21, 2019, in Strausberg, was the first German to travel to space as a cosmonaut. Initially trained as a printer, Jähn joined the East German air force in 1955 and later became a pilot and a military scientist. He studied at the Gagarin Military Air Academy in the Soviet Union, where he honed his Russian language skills and translated numerous Soviet military and political publications into German.

In 1976, Jähn was selected to participate in the Soviet Intercosmos program, which involved sending non-Soviet cosmonauts on space missions with experienced Soviet cosmonauts. On August 26, 1978, Jähn, along with Soviet cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky, launched aboard Soyuz 31 and spent time on the Salyut space station conducting scientific experiments. He returned to Earth on Soyuz 29 on September 3, 1978.



As a result of his mission, Jähn was named a Hero of the Soviet Union and received the Order of Lenin, the highest civilian honour in the Soviet Union. He was also celebrated as a socialist folk hero in his home country of East Germany, which proudly boasted that the first German in space was one of its own citizens. Jähn earned a Ph.D. in geophysics from the Central Institute for Physics of the Earth in Potsdam in 1983. Following the reunification of Germany, he served as a consultant for the country and the European Space Agency at the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia.