Rolf Engel

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Rolf Engel (born August 10, 1912 in Menz , † November 23, 1993 in Munich ) was a German rocket engineer, aircraft manufacturer and employee of the SD .

Life

Rolf Engel was the son of a teacher. After finishing his school career, he completed an engineering apprenticeship at the Beuth Engineering School . He then studied at the Technical University of Munich and the Technical University of Danzig . Engel had known Wernher von Braun since 1928 .

Rolf Engel worked on the development of rockets during the Weimar Republic . Together with von Braun and other rocket pioneers, he worked out the basics of rocket technology in 1930 at the rocket airfield founded by Rudolf Nebel in Berlin-Reinickendorf . He then worked for the rocket engineer Johannes Winkler , who developed the first European liquid rocket and launched it in Dessau-Großkühnau in February 1931 . In December 1932 he founded the rocket research institute in Dessau together with H. Springer and with the participation of Hugo Junkers , which had to cease operations in August 1933 due to a lack of financial resources. From 1930 to 1932 he was a member of the Association for Space Travel (VfR). Some members of the VfR approached the Red Army as part of the German-Soviet military cooperation. Rolf Engel offered to bring a team of rocket developers to the Soviet Union .

time of the nationalsocialism

Engel was imprisoned in 1933. He joined the SS and achieved the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer . As a member of the SD , he was stationed in Strasbourg during the Second World War .

Then he was transferred to the Peenemünde Army Research Center . Engel headed the SS rocket research facility for jet propulsion in Großendorf near Danzig . He was a member of the Reich Research Council.

After the end of the war

In 1945 he was hired from a prisoner-of-war camp by the French occupation authorities for the Laboratoire de recherches balistiques et aéro-dynamiques , a development center for ballistic missiles near Paris , where, according to Gerhard Bauch (1962 Cairo), he worked on the development of the Gabriel missile was involved.

During a brief stay in Germany, he was recruited to head an Egyptian missile program in the 1950s. The missile program failed due to missing components.

literature

  • Heinz Horeis: Rolf Engel, rocket builder from the very beginning. Technical University, Munich 1992.
  • Michael J. Neufeld: Rolf Engel vs. the German Army. A Nazi Career in Rocketry and Repression. In: History and Technology. Vol. 13, No. 1, 1996, ISSN  0734-1512 , pp. 53-72.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rudolf Engel in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  2. ↑ Hermann Oberth on waterocket.explorer.free.fr
  3. ^ Ken Silverstein, Daniel Burton-Rose: Private Warriors , p. 118.
personal data
SURNAME Angel, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German space pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Menz
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1993
Place of death Munich