By no means all my reading is
done on my kindle, or in English. I do read German books, too, and
physical books will never entirely disappear from my reading life.
A friend of mine lent me this German work of non-fiction, published in the late 1940s: "Vorstoß ins Weltall" by Willy Ley.
Maybe you have already come
across one or two posts having something or other to do with space
travel. It is a science I am very much interested in, and the name Willy
Ley was of course familiar. Willy Otto Oskar Ley (1906 – 1969) was a German-American science
writer, spaceflight advocate, and historian of science who helped to
popularize rocketry, spaceflight, and natural history in both Germany
and the United States. The crater Ley on the far side
of the Moon is named in his honor.
Nazi politics made him flee
his home country early on; via London (in 1935), he made it to the US,
where he spent the rest of his life, and where he met again a man he
already knew from their days as part of a group of
early rocket enthusiasts in Berlin: Wernher von Braun. The two
scientists co-authored books and articles about rocket science and both
worked on Disney programs promoting spaceflight.
 |
| Left to right: Heinz Haber, Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley in 1954. (Picture from Wikipedia) |
Ley's "Vorstoß ins Weltall" ("Advance into Space") is, first and foremost, a science book.
But nearly anyone with an interest in space travel can read it, because
it is so well written.
There is an alement of humour
not often found in non-fiction books, and in my mind, I could almost
hear the author's gentle chuckle at some particularly witty remarks.
Admittedly, I skipped some of
the paragraphs containing mostly formulas and calculations, but I only
have myself to blame for that, certainly not Mr. Ley.
From the little I have
managed to find online, his wife Olga was a scientist, too: She wrote
books about zoology, together with her husband.
Isn't it a little sad that
this man, who dedicated such a large part of his life to space flight, died
only a month before the first men landed on the Moon?
Anyway, I am glad I was
allowed to borrow this precious book (the original 1949 print, in
pristine condition), and will take good care of it until I'll have a
chance to return it to its owner.
This was interesting. I didn't know any of this. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome, Nan. I had known some of what Mr. Ley wrote about before, because I've been reading about rocketry and space travel for decades, but there was also a lot of new, fascinating stuff in it for me.
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