Johannes Winkler

Johannes Winkler (1897-1947) was a German engineer and rocket enthusiast who launched the first liquid-propellant rocket in Europe, on 21 February 1931 at Dessau. After army service in which he was severely wounded in 1916, he graduated in mechanical engineering from the Technische Hochschule in Danzig in May 1918 and went to work for Junkers Aircraft in Breslau. Hermann Oberth's calculations, which showed that manned space travel with liquid-propellant rockets was feasible, fascinated him, and he founded the Society for Space Travel, the VfR, serving as its first president. From 1927 to late 1929 he edited and published Die Rakete, the first journal of rocketry and astronautics. He left Junkers to build the HW-1 and HW-2 rockets; after the HW-2 failed he returned to his old job, and during the Second World War he worked for the Luftforschungsanstalt, designing jet-assisted takeoff units and sounding rockets that never went into production. He died at Braunschweig-Querum on 27 December 1947.