Friedrich Christian Anton Lang, better known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States. One of the best-known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. He has been cited as one of the most influential filmmakers of all time.
This article gives a concise timeline of rocket and missile technology.
Hermann Julius Oberth was an Austro-Hungarian-born German physicist and rocket pioneer of Transylvanian Saxon descent. He is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, along with Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert H. Goddard and Herman Potočnik. Oberth supported Nazi Germany's war effort and received the War Merit Cross in 1943.
The Opel RAK.1 was the world's first purpose-built rocket-powered aircraft. It was designed and built by Julius Hatry under commission from Fritz von Opel, who flew it on September 30, 1929 in front of a large crowd at Rebstock airport near Frankfurt am Main. The RAK.1 plane was part of a series of rocket-powered vehicles that were developed and demonstrated within the Opel RAK program, the world's first large-scale rocket program.
Fritz Adam Hermann von Opel was a German rocket technology pioneer and automotive executive, nicknamed "Rocket-Fritz". He is remembered mostly for his spectacular demonstrations of rocket propulsion that earned him an important place in the history of aviation and spaceflight as head of the world's first large-scale rocket program, Opel-RAK. Fritz von Opel, known as Fritz Adam Hermann Opel until his father was ennobled in 1917, was the only son of Wilhelm von Opel and a grandson of Adam Opel, founder of the Opel company.
The Verein für Raumschiffahrt was a German amateur rocket association prior to World War II that included members outside Germany. The first successful VfR test firing with liquid fuel was conducted by Max Valier at the Heylandt Works on January 25, 1930; and additional rocket experiments were conducted at a farm near Bernstadt, Saxony.
Willy Otto Oskar Ley was a German and American science writer and proponent of cryptozoology. The crater Ley on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor.
Rudolf Nebel was a spaceflight advocate active in Germany's amateur rocket group, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt in the 1930s and in rebuilding German rocketry following World War II.
A countdown is a sequence of backward counting to indicate the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur. NASA commonly employs the terms "L-minus" and "T-minus" during the preparation for and anticipation of a rocket launch, and even "E-minus" for events that involve spacecraft that are already in space, where the "T" could stand for "Test" or "Time", and the "E" stands for "Encounter", as with a comet or some other space object.
Thea Gabriele von Harbou was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director, and actress. She is remembered as the screenwriter of the science fiction film classic Metropolis (1927) and for the 1925 novel on which it was based. von Harbou collaborated as a screenwriter with film director Fritz Lang, her husband, during the period of transition from silent to sound films.
Gustav von Wangenheim was a German actor, screenwriter and director.
The Rocket to the Moon is a 1928 science fiction novel by the German writer Thea von Harbou. Its German title is Die Frau im Mond, which means "The Woman in the Moon". It is about a fictitious Moon mission. The book was translated into English by Baroness von Hutten and published in 1930 as The Girl in the Moon. It was republished in 1977 as The Rocket to the Moon.
Gustav Friedrich Fröhlich was a German actor and film director. He landed secondary roles in a number of films and plays before landing his breakthrough role of Freder Fredersen in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis. He remained a popular film star in Germany until the 1950s.
Spione is a 1928 German silent espionage thriller directed by Fritz Lang and co-written with his wife, Thea von Harbou, who also wrote a novel of the same name, published a year later. The film was Lang's penultimate silent film and the first for his own production company; Fritz Lang-Film GmbH. As in Lang's Mabuse films, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), Rudolf Klein-Rogge plays a master criminal aiming for world domination.
Otto Willi Gail was a German science journalist and author.
Gustl Gstettenbaur was a German stage, film and television actor.
The Mistress and Her Servant is a 1929 German silent drama film directed by Richard Oswald and starring Henny Porten, Mary Kid and Fritz Kampers. It was based on the novel of the same title by Georg Engel. It was shot at the EFA Studios in Berlin. The film's sets were designed by the art director Franz Schroedter.
The year 1929 was marked, in science fiction, by the following events.
The House on the Moon is a 1921 German silent science fiction film directed by Karlheinz Martin and starring Leontine Kühnberg, Erich Pabst and Fritz Kortner. Shot at the Johannisthal Studios in an expressionist style, it is now considered a lost film.
