Biography

After school, Jähn completed training as a book printer from 1951 to 1955. He then did his military service in the GDR army, where he was deployed in the air force. Jähn then worked as a pilot in the Soviet Air Force in the GDR. From 1966 to 1970 he studied at the Soviet Military Academy "J. A. Gagarin" in Monino. In 1970, Jähn was appointed inspector for fighter pilot training and flight safety in the staff of the GDR air force.

He held this position until 1976. In 1976, Jähn was appointed as a cosmonaut in the GDR and as such was sent to Moscow for training, where he prepared for his future space flight. On August 26, 1978, Jähn flew in the Soviet space capsule "Soyuz 31" to the space station "Salyut-6". He spent a week there with his Soviet colleague Valeri Fyodorovich Bykowski. On the return flight, the "Soyuz 29" space capsule hit exceptionally hard, causing the GDR cosmonaut to sustain permanent back damage.

Jähn subsequently received numerous honors as the first German in space. He was made a "Hero of the GDR" and a "Hero of the Soviet Union" and the cult surrounding the GDR cosmonaut led to the renaming of numerous schools and other public institutions. Jähn then began studying physics in Potsdam, which he completed with a doctorate in 1983. After the fall of the GDR and its dissolution, Jähn worked as a consultant for the Russian cosmonaut training center and, from 1993, also for the European Space Agency (ESA).

The exhibition, which was set up in Morgenröthe-Rautenkranz in 1979, was expanded in terms of content in 1991/92 to become the "German Space Exhibition". In memory of Jähn's contributions to space travel, the planetoid 1998BF14 was named after the former GDR cosmonaut in 2001.
- IMDb mini biography by: Christian_Wolfgang_Barth