The Founding of the International Astronautical Federation

Catalog E · Miscellanea · Special Feature

Two issues of Weltraumfahrt, August and October 1951

The first International Astronautical Congress, held in Paris in 1950, is already in this collection — its minutes, and the French magazine L’Astronef that devoted a special section to it. These two issues of the German magazine Weltraumfahrt, official organ of the Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung e.V. (GfW), Stuttgart, carry the story forward to where it was finished: London, September 1951, where the national rocket societies that had gathered informally in Paris signed a constitution and became a federation.

A Preview, Ahead of London

Cover of Weltraumfahrt, Heft 4, August 1951, announcing the Second International Astronautical Congress, London — Heft 4, August 1951: the flags of the participating national rocket societies, converging on a single globe.

The August 1951 issue of Weltraumfahrt went to press previewing what its cover calls the “2. Internationaler Kongreß für Astronautik” — the Second International Congress for Astronautics, scheduled for London, 3–8 September 1951. The cover design ties the flags of the participating societies by a web of lines to a single point on the globe, a dove of peace worked in above them. Inside, alongside the congress preview, short notes look back on the first congress in Paris the year before, and cover a postwar rocket exhibition in Munich marking the museum-piece status rocketry had already begun to acquire in occupied Germany.

The Constitution, Signed

The delegates to the founding of the International Astronautical Federation, London, September 1951, with the magazine's own caption naming each one — “Die Delegierten” — the delegates, named society by society in the magazine’s own caption below the photograph.

The October 1951 issue reports on what happened at London: on 4 September, delegates from ten national rocket societies in nine countries — Argentina, Austria, France, (West) Germany, represented by both the Stuttgart and Hamburg branches of the GfW, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States — signed the constitution of a new body, the Internationale Astronautische Föderation, the International Astronautical Federation. The magazine names every delegate in the photograph above; among them, for Switzerland’s Schweizerische Astronautische Arbeitsgemeinschaft, is Ing. J. Stemmer, whose own work is the subject of another feature in this collection, standing alongside A. C. Clarke and A. V. Cleaver of the British Interplanetary Society — Clarke represented elsewhere in this collection by his own letters and early stories.

A President Elected

Eugen Sänger, newly elected president of the International Astronautical Federation, with Hermann Oberth, September 1951 — “Die Föderation hat ihren Präsidenten gewählt” — the Federation has elected its president: Eugen Sänger, with Hermann Oberth beside him.

The new Federation elected Eugen Sänger, of the GfW, as its first president, with A. G. Haley of the American Rocket Society as vice president and G. Loeser, also GfW, as managing vice president. The magazine’s caption for the photograph above calls Sänger’s neighbor, Hermann Oberth, the “Vater der Raketentechnik” — the father of rocket technology — and notes his presence at the congress with evident pride. Also among the delegates: Frau Dr. I. Bredt of the GfW and Prof. F. Hecht of the Austrian society, the ÖGfW — Hecht would go on to edit Astronautica Acta, the Federation’s own journal, whose inaugural volume is also in this collection.

Two magazine issues, six weeks apart on the newsstand, bracket the moment a loose gathering of national rocket societies became a standing federation — the same federation whose first published volume, Astronautica Acta, sits on the shelf a few years further along in this catalog.