As director Fritz Lang later recalled, "The work he had done as consultant and advisor. Oberth was tasked with building a small rocket to be launched at the film's premiere. Although Oberth is often credited as the main technical consultant to the film, Ley's role was of central importance. The "rocketry fad" culminated with Fritz Lang's 1929 film Die Frau im Mond ( Woman in the Moon), which became the first realistic depiction of spaceflight in cinematic history. From exhibits at public locations to large spectator events, such as Fritz von Opel's rocket-car stunts, the German public was excited about both the future possibilities of space travel and the potential for new " weapons of wonder" that could revive the German Empire.
Meanwhile, he was writing hundreds of short articles about rockets for German and foreign newspapers.ĭue to the influence of Ley and other popular science writers, such as Max Valier, Germans witnessed a short-lived "rocketry fad" in Berlin. Ley would eventually become the group's Vice-President during a time when it had no active President. After publishing Die Fahrt ins Weltall (Travel in Outer Space) in 1926, Ley became one of the first members of Germany's amateur rocket group, the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR – "Spaceflight Society") in 1927 and wrote extensively for its journal, Die Rakete (The Rocket). He also began corresponding with every known rocket enthusiast in Europe, including Oberth himself. Ley was so convinced by Oberth's book that he sat down at the age of 19 to write a popularization of its contents. Although it was a difficult technical book, Ley worked through the calculations and concluded that outer space would soon become the next great frontier of human exploration. Ley explained, "I was never quite sure whether my studies would earn me the title of 'zoologist' or 'geologist', but I kept exploring, in a manner of speaking, looking especially into such corners as others had neglected." He then became interested in spaceflight after reading Hermann Oberth's book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space). When his school teacher asked him to compose an essay on the subject "What Do I Want to Be When I Am Grown and Why?", Ley responded: "I want to be an explorer." His teacher thought this silly, but Ley was unconvinced.Īt the University of Berlin, he studied astronomy, physics, zoology and paleontology. Meanwhile, his mother worked as milliner in a distant city in Germany.Īs Ley later recalled he "grew up, so to speak, in the shadow of the Museum of Natural History in Berlin". Consequently, he spent the remainder of the war at a detention camp on the Isle of Man.
When war erupted his father was in Great Britain. Ley grew up in his native Berlin during the First World War under the supervision of two aunts. Willy Otto Oskar Ley was the son of Julius Otto Ley, a traveling merchant, and Frida May, the daughter of a Lutheran sexton.
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