Urwumpe
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Sigmund Jähn was the first German in space, orbiting Earth in Salyut 6 during the mission Soyuz 31 in 1978. He spend 7 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes in space during that flight, especially testing the multispectral camera MKF 6, which was built in the GDR and essentially the part of the deal that got him into space, the flight for the camera. He was the third non-soviet cosmonaut.
He never got the chance for a second flight, the GDR reunited with the FRG before, the GDR negotiated with the USSR about a second mission of Jähn, but they never found an agreement there (As the legend goes, the struggling USSR demanded western currency for the second flight, of which the GDR barely had enough for its own survival). Also a minor spine injury that he got from the harder than usual Soyuz landing, after the parachute failed to detach and pulled the capsule over the ground, made it unlikely to ever happen. Like many eastern German generals at that time, he was supposed to end up with a small pension in early retirement.
Still, his career wasn't over at that time, with western German astronauts struggling hard to get their eastern German predecessor a job at the German aerospace center, working as advisor for DLR and ESA, because of his immense knowledge of Russian spaceflight. That was also one major contribution to the Shuttle-Mir program, helping to quickly adapt different training styles and crew interface philosophies into one common and still well working community. He even continued to serve as a mentor for German astronauts after his official retirement in 2002.
https://www.dw.com/en/a-life-for-space-sigmund-jähn-germanys-first-cosmonaut-dies-aged-82/a-37502900
He never got the chance for a second flight, the GDR reunited with the FRG before, the GDR negotiated with the USSR about a second mission of Jähn, but they never found an agreement there (As the legend goes, the struggling USSR demanded western currency for the second flight, of which the GDR barely had enough for its own survival). Also a minor spine injury that he got from the harder than usual Soyuz landing, after the parachute failed to detach and pulled the capsule over the ground, made it unlikely to ever happen. Like many eastern German generals at that time, he was supposed to end up with a small pension in early retirement.
Still, his career wasn't over at that time, with western German astronauts struggling hard to get their eastern German predecessor a job at the German aerospace center, working as advisor for DLR and ESA, because of his immense knowledge of Russian spaceflight. That was also one major contribution to the Shuttle-Mir program, helping to quickly adapt different training styles and crew interface philosophies into one common and still well working community. He even continued to serve as a mentor for German astronauts after his official retirement in 2002.
https://www.dw.com/en/a-life-for-space-sigmund-jähn-germanys-first-cosmonaut-dies-aged-82/a-37502900
