The history of German space policy is also to a large extent the history of European activities in space. Niklas Reinke's book describes for the first time the concepts, the influencing factors and the interdependencies that had an impact on Germany’s post-war programme in space.
The author describes very clearly why Germany had such difficulty in establishing a coherent space policy, compared for instance with France or other European countries, not to mention the USA. There was the historical background with Peenemünde, there was the political obligation of the
transatlantic partnership, and there was the drive for European cooperation, in particular with France.
The book provides a fascinating in-depth look into the different phases of space activities in Germany over the years, and to a large extent also those in Europe, at the personalities involved and at the numerous projects carried out within the national programme or as bilateral programmes with the US and France, or of course, through European cooperation.
L’auteur. Dr. Niklas Reinke (* 1973) studied Political Science, Medieval History and Economics in Bonn, Germany. 2004, he received the PhD degree of the Rheinische Friedrich-Willhelms-Universität with his study on “German Space Politics”. Since 2004, he is an employee of the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR; German Aerospace Center), responsible for the corporate communications of the German Space Agency in Bonn. Before, Niklas Reinke was a freelance researcher at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP; German Council on Foreign Relations) in Berlin. His subjects had been Space and Security within the German and European context as well as Space Exploration.