Bruno Golecki

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bruno Golecki (born April 13, 1913 in Nakel an der Netze ; † September 7, 1988 in Berlin ) was a German engineer who worked in rocket technology as well as in control and regulation technology . He developed the control of a missile system for air defense for the Soviet Union , for which he received the Stalin Prize in 1953 .

Life

From 1928 to 1930 he completed an apprenticeship as an electrician and attended the Mittweida engineering school from 1931 to 1934 . In 1933 he joined the NSDAP and from 1934 was employed at the Sonneberg power station in Thuringia (as an acquisition agent). From 1935 he was a switch engineer at Siemens (Apparate- und Maschinenwerk Berlin-Marienfelde ) and from 1936 at Voigt and Haeffner in Frankfurt am Main. In 1937/38 he was a freelance designer at Bosch in Stuttgart . From 1939 to 1945 he worked as a laboratory engineer in the aviation equipment factory (LGW) of Siemens and Halske in Berlin-Hakenfelde . In July 1945 he was arrested and taken to the special camp in Sachsenhausen of the Soviet occupation , charged with being a block warden . In November 1947 he came to the Soviet Union as a technical specialist and worked there on missile controls for air defense. In 1952 he was one of the few Germans involved in testing the S-25 Berkut anti-aircraft missile in Kapustin Jar . In 1953 he and his colleague Wilhelm Fischer received the Stalin Prize (as the only German rocket technician in Soviet service).

Golecki and Fischer belonged to a small German group in the almost 100-strong Soviet specialist group that developed the missile control and headed the Golecki. This was all the more remarkable as otherwise German and Soviet scientists in the Soviet Union worked separately on the problems and information about technical advances mostly only flowed to the Soviet authorities. His wife and four children stayed in the GDR during this time , which was also unusual since most of the German specialists in the Soviet Union took their families with them. In Tushino, however, he belonged to the group of political prisoners, called the Blue ones after the color of their bus . It was not until 1951 that he was able to send money to his family from the Soviet Union.

Scientific and technical office for device construction (WTBG), then Institute for Automatic Control (IfR), Berlin-Friedrichshain, Neue Bahnhofstrasse 9–17 (until 1968)
Institute for Automatic Control (IfR), Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Storkower Straße 115A (1968–1991, then AUCOTEAM)

He returned to the GDR in 1956 and headed development (from 1958 as Technical Director) at the VEB Scientific and Technical Office for Device Construction (WTBG) in Berlin, later renamed the Institute for Control Engineering (IfR). From 1964 he headed the design and standardization department and from 1965 he headed the basic design department and was chief designer in the system technology department of the IfR. Several generations of standardized vascular systems for the automation industry have emerged from his design work: WTBG, UEB and ursamat.

In his function as department head, Golecki was replaced by his colleague Rudi Emer in 1968 .

In the GDR, Golecki worked on control technology for industry. In 1963 he received the State Prize of the USSR in the Soviet Embassy in Berlin as a replacement for the Stalin Prize. In 1978 he retired.

Golecki is buried like other GDR celebrities in the Eichwalde cemetery.

Other groups of German missile control specialists in the Soviet Union

Josef Eitzenberger also worked on methods for rocket control with radio , among other things for rockets against ships and on optical seeker heads with image transmission (Werner Buschbeck and Helmut Faulstich were also involved). They worked separately from Golecki's group, but later also lived in Tuschino. Eitzenberger worked at the Monino rocket research center near Moscow and later went to West Germany (where he was imprisoned for two years from 1968 on suspicion of espionage), as did Wilhelm Fischer (who came from Golecki's group). Both were at the Battelle Institute in Frankfurt am Main. Fischer headed the electrical engineering department there. Fischer received the Stalin Prize especially for a miniature electric motor in rocket control. Another group of German specialists around Johannes Hoch (also Hans or Johann Hoch), who also dealt with rocket guidance technology, initially worked on Gorodomlja , an island in Lake Seliger . Like the other groups, they were relocated to the Moscow area in 1950 (first to Kunzewo , from 1951 to Tushino).

Christoph Mick later summarized the activities of the anti-aircraft missile group in a book , emphasizing the management function of Johann Hoch (as well as Eitzenberger, Buschbeck and Waldemar Möller). Hoch was a gifted theorist and engineer who managed to significantly improve the accuracy of German missiles (the A4 , better known as V2 missiles) during the first tests in the Soviet Union. These German rockets were recreated from 1945 to autumn 1946 in Bleicherode / Harz in the "Institut Rabe" (rocket construction) founded by the Soviet occupying forces under the chief designer and later father of Soviet space travel, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev , with Heinrich Wilhelmi responsible for the rocket control was. To this end, Hoch designed an improved analog computer assembly for orbit calculation as part of the rocket control system in the Soviet Union, and he succeeded Helmut Gröttrup , the former creator of the guidance and control technology for the A4 and a member of the German rocket specialists group in Gorodomlja. The son Sergei of the intelligence chief Lavrenti Beria , who was a senior engineer in the Russian missile air defense group, therefore became aware of him and made sure that he and other German specialists also came to the anti-aircraft missile group.

While the secret work of the other German missile specialists was suspended in October 1951 and their return journey was prepared, the members of the Hoch group that developed anti-aircraft missiles (code name A-She, the competing Russian group was B-She) remained on four-year employment contracts . After Mick, Hoch prevailed against the Soviet rival group and in February 1952 the project was approved. In the spring of 1953, however, the construction drawings were taken away from the Germans and passed into purely Soviet hands and the specialists were only occupied with subordinate tasks. They were isolated by their Soviet colleagues, brought to Sukhumi (where the German atomic experts were previously) and then returned to Germany from 1956 to 1958.

Golecki is also not mentioned in the memoirs of Boris Evsejewitsch Tschertok (Chertok). One of the main Russian developers of the Berkut system was Georgi Nikolajewitsch Babakin .

In Kurt Berner's memoirs he also mentions Golecki, whom he describes as a man with strong nerves, a hard will and an indomitable character . Berner (* 1911) was a physicist and an expert in electrical circuits who, like Golecki, was imprisoned from 1945 (in Hohenschönhausen and Sachsenhausen) and worked as a rocket scientist in the Soviet Union until 1958. According to Berner, the German rocket control specialists were amalgamated at the beginning of 1951, with many of the technicians and engineers meeting for the first time. The mental management had to Bernese Eitzenberger with his group (especially Buschbeck, Moeller and Faulstich). The development goal was air defense with already existing missiles with a range of 60 km, 25 of which were to be directed simultaneously to 25 different targets with 90% accuracy (operated by an operator each for 5 missiles who use a joystick to set a crosshair on a screen to the target led). After the granted one year development time, the German group A-She prevailed against the Russian competition in February 1952, as they achieved almost 100% accuracy (but B-She could not guarantee 90%). Berner also mentions that Golecki was one of the few German specialists who took part in the trials of the system on the test site, targeting remote-controlled aircraft, but on one occasion a manned aircraft that had accidentally entered the no-fly zone was almost shot down. It was only able to save itself due to the fact that the rockets were not armed and the pilot, who was unable to shake off the rocket despite diving maneuvers, had to be hospitalized with a nervous breakdown.

Berner mentions that Golecki and Willi Fischer received the Stalin Prize associated with a large sum of money in 1952 (although they could transfer the sum of money to Germany at a preferential exchange rate), but does not go into detail about what it was for. In the further course of 1952 and early 1953 the system was divided into modular units and industrial mass production was prepared. This ended the work of the German specialists on the air defense system. The remaining 100 or so German specialists, whose four-year employment contracts imposed in 1951 expired in 1955, had to remain in the Soviet Union for a further year (in some cases until 1958). Berner's recollections also show that the German specialists were generally treated (and paid) well compared to the standard of living of ordinary Soviet citizens or even Soviet colleagues, even if they were strong, as in the case of Berner, who was initially a political prisoner There were restrictions regarding contacts, for example.

literature

  • Günter Mörsch, Ines Reich (Ed.): Soviet Special Camp No. 7 / No. 1 in Sachsenhausen (1945–1950). Metropol, Berlin 2005, pp. 182-186. (Biography Bruno Golecki)
  • Kurt Berner: Specialists behind barbed wire. Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-327-00672-5 .
  • Christoph Mick: Research for Stalin. German Museum / Oldenbourg 2000.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to G. Mörsch, I. Reich: Soviet Special Camp No. 7 / No. 1 in Sachsenhausen. Metropol, 2005, Nakel / Netzel is given at the place of birth
  2. ^ Letter to the editor from son Rudhart Golecki from 2008 on a blog about anti-aircraft missiles. After that he was the only German, In: Ch. Mick: Research for Stalin. 1990, p. 148 there is talk of some Germans who were involved in the tests in Kapustin Jar.
  3. ^ Matthias Uhl : Stalin's V-2. The technology transfer of German radio controlled weapons technology to the USSR and the development of the Soviet missile industry from 1945 to 1959 . Dissertation with reproduction of many original documents. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 2001, ISBN 978-3-7637-6214-9 , pp. 209 (304 pp.).
  4. ↑ Mick, loc. cit., emphasizes Johann Hoch as the leader. According to official information, he died of an operation before he returned to Germany. According to Chertok Rockets and people , NASA 2006, Volume 2, p. 62, of appendicitis and also according to Bern specialists behind barbed wire , 1990, p. 268. He died in hospital in July 1955 and was buried with great attendance.
  5. ↑ Dolores L. Augustine: Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany 1945-1990. MIT Press, 2007, p. 9. On p. 20 of the book there is also a photo of Golecki to the left of Kurt Berner on a ski trip in the Soviet Union (the photo comes from Berner's memory book). Otherwise there is no information about Golecki there.
  6. ^ Helmut Breuninger: German specialists in the USSR (1946-1958). 1993. With lists of the participating scientists.
  7. ↑ The family was previously destitute. Walter Ulbricht and the GDR authorities only showed interest in the family after they were awarded the Stalin Prize in 1953. Mörsch, Reich, loc. cit, p. 185.
  8. ↑ Werner Kriesel ; Hans Rohr; Andreas Koch: History and future of measurement and automation technology. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1995, pp. 103-110, ISBN 3-18-150047-X .
  9. ↑ Rudi Emer: Constructive structure of the facilities of the ursamat system. In: Haas, H., Bernicke, E., Fuchs, H., Obenhaus, G. (overall editor): ursamat-Handbuch , published by the Institute for Control Engineering Berlin. Verlag Technik, Berlin 1969, pp. 69-87.
  10. ^ Resting place for GDR celebrities. In: Märkische Allgemeine. September 13, 2013.
  11. ^ First name after Helmut Breuninger, after Mick (research for Stalin 1990) first name Wilhelm
  12. ↑ Light in the head. In: Der Spiegel. No. 14, 1968.
  13. ↑ Christoph Mick: Research for Stalin. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2000, p. 148.
  14. ↑ Here Volume 2, English edition Rockets and People , NASA 2006. Chapter 11, however, deals with the development of anti-aircraft missiles for the defense of Moscow, based on the memoirs of the main developer Karl Samuilovich Alperovich, published in Moscow in 2003. He also mentions Hoch's involvement.
  15. ↑ Kurt Berner: Specialists behind barbed wire. Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Brandenburg 1990, p. 199.
  16. ↑ Berner, specialists, pp. 211f.
  17. ^ Berner, specialists, p. 234.
  18. ↑ Berner, specialists, p. 238.
  19. ↑ Berner, specialists, p. 239.
  20. ↑ It is based in part on memories of the family who provided exhibits
  21. ↑ Golecki is not mentioned. The high group is dealt with on p. 148
personal data
SURNAME Golecki, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Nail on the netting
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 1988
Place of death Berlin