Wernher Von Braun - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Film and television

Von Braun has been featured in a number of movies and television shows or series about the space race:

• I Aim at the Stars (1960), also titled Wernher von Braun and Ich greife nach den Sternen ("I Reach for the Stars"); von Braun played by Curd Jürgens, his wife Maria played by Victoria Shaw. Satirist Mort Sahl suggested the subtitle "But Sometimes I Hit London".
• From the Earth to the Moon (TV, 1998): von Braun played by Norbert Weisser.
• October Sky (1999): this film portrays U.S. rocket scientist Homer Hickam, who as a teenager admired von Braun (played by Joe Digaetano). The film's title, October Sky, is an anagram of the autobiography it was based on: Rocket Boys.
• Space Race (TV, BBC co-production with NDR (Germany), Channel One TV (Russia) and National Geographic TV (USA), 2005): von Braun played by Richard Dillane.
• The Lost Von Braun, a documentary by Aron Ranen. Interviews with Ernst Stuhlinger, Konrad Dannenberg, Karl Sendler, Alex Baum, Eli Rosenbaum (DOJ) and Von Braun's NASA secretary Bonnie Holmes.
• Wernher von Braun – Rocket Man for War and Peace A three part (part1, part 2, part 3) documentary – in English – from the German International channel DW-TV. Original German version Wernher von Braun – Der Mann für die Wunderwaffen by the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk.
• The episode "Pursuit" of the 1982 television series "Voyagers!" involves the lead characters, Bogg and Jeffrey, attempting to connect Wernher von Braun with American army forces as the German regime crumbles between Hitler's death and the surrender. Jeffrey had discovered an altered history in which the Soviets reached the moon while American rockets exploded on the launch pad, and learned that von Braun's team had been captured by the Soviet forces due to a traitor in their midst. David Olivier portrayed von Braun.

Several fictional characters have been modeled on von Braun:

• The Right Stuff (1983): The Chief Scientist, played by Scott Beach, was clearly modeled on von Braun.
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964): Dr Strangelove is usually held to be based at least partly on von Braun.
• Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965, directed by Jean-Luc Godard): Howard Vernon plays Professor von Braun (also known as Leonard Nosferatu), the inventor of the "Alpha 60" super-computer that rules Alphaville.
• In Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the seventh James Bond film, the supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld employs a German scientist resembling von Braun, named Professor Dr. Metz, a pacifist who is duped by Blofeld's rhetoric, who works in a NASA-style research lab in the Nevada desert. The lab is ambiguously depicted as being involved in faking the moon landings (an apparent joking nod to conspiracy theorists, and which figures in some versions of their theories).

There are other references to von Braun in film and on television:

• Mobile Suit Gundam (1979): The largest Lunar city in the Universal Century era is called 'Von Braun City'. The city is the home of Anaheim Electronics, is a strategic point in space, and is built around Neil Armstrong's footprint in the Apollo missions.
• Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare) (1977): Director and star Kidlat Tahimik is president of a Wernher von Braun club and is fascinated with "First World" progress, particularly von Braun's efforts in the U.S. space program.
• Planetes (TV, 2004): There is an upcoming exploratory mission to Jupiter on a new fusion powered ship, the Von Braun.
• Alien Planet (TV, 2005): A spacecraft, named Von Braun, is named after him.
• Babylon 5 (1994): Captain Sheridan's sister Anna returns home on the Earth cruiser Von Braun in the second season episode Revelations.
• In the film Back to the Future (1985) Emmett 'Doc' Brown mentions that his family changed their surname from Von Braun when they arrived in America.

Print media

• In "Werner von Braun—Space Wizard," a four-panel comic strip in Mad Magazine in the late 1950s, artist Wallace Wood depicted von Braun at the launch of a rocket, ready to listen to a radio transmitting the rocket's signals. Suddenly he says, "HIMMEL! Vas ist los?" and then explains, "Vat iss wrong is vit der RADIO! It iss AC...und der control room iss DC!"
• In Warren Ellis' graphic novel Ministry of Space, von Braun is a supporting character, settling in Britain after World War II, and being essential for the realization of the British Space Program.

Literature

• The Good German by Joseph Kanon. Von Braun and other scientists are said to have been implicated in the use of slave labour at Peenemünde; their transfer to the US forms part of the narrative.
• Space by James Michener. Von Braun and other German scientists are brought to the US and form a vital part of the US efforts to reach space.
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. The highly notable novel involved British intelligence attempting to avert and predict V-2 rocket attacks. The work even includes a gyroscopic equation for the V2. The first portion of the novel, "Beyond The Zero", begins with a quote from von Braun: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death."
• New Dictionary, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in his collection Welcome to the Monkey House, notes Von Braun as one of the things an old dictionary does not mention.
• Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut, has a scene in which a character reads a Life magazine with von Braun on the cover.
• Dora by Jean Michel. This is not a novel, but a memoir referring to the Mittelbau-Dora V-2 slave labour camps, by Jean Michel and Louis Nucéra.
• Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam, Jr. The movie October Sky was based on this memoir about a boy, Sonny (in the movie, he's called Homer) Hickam, who lives in a small West Virginia coal town and builds rockets and greatly admires von Braun. Although not directly concerned with von Braun, it is a vivid picture of popular attitudes toward rocket science and von Braun during the early days of the U.S. space program.

Music

• Wernher von Braun (1965): A song written and performed by Tom Lehrer for an episode of NBC's American version of the BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was; the song was later included in Lehrer's album That Was The Year That Was. It was a satire on what some saw as von Braun's cavalier attitude toward the consequences of his work in Nazi Germany: "'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department', says Wernher von Braun." Contrary to popular belief, Wernher von Braun did not sue Tom Lehrer for defamation, nor has Lehrer been forced to relinquish all of his royalty income to Von Braun. Lehrer firmly denied those claims in a 2003 interview.
• The Last Days of Pompeii (1991): A rock opera by Grant Hart's post-Hüsker Dü alternative rock group Nova Mob, in which von Braun features as a character. The album includes a song called Wernher von Braun.
• Progress vs. Pettiness (2005): A song about the Space Race written and performed by The Phenomenauts for their CD Re-Entry. The song begins: "In 1942 there was Wernher von Braun..."
• Oh Carolina (aka Carolina) (1960): written by John Folkes and recorded by the Folkes Brothers and made famous by a cover from Jamaican born singer Shaggy mentions Wernher von Braun without any context.
• John D. Loudermilk's song He's Just A Scientist (That's All) contains the lyric "Everybody's flippin' over Fabian or Frankie Avalon, but nobody ever seems to give a flip over Dr Werner Von Braun."
• The song "Apollo XI/V1/V2/Aggregat 4" from German Electro band Welle: Erdball deals with his inventions.
• Blues metal artists Clutch make reference to von Braun in the 2009 song "Struck Down" on the album Strange Cousins From The West.

Computer games

• In the 1999 PC game System Shock 2, the main starship is named the Von Braun.