Sigmund Jähn flew into space on board Soyuz 31 (26.08.-03.09.1978) together with commander Valery Bykovsky. This flight as part of the Interkosmos program docked to the space station on August 28, 1978.Today, Feb. 13, 2017 is a very special day for the first German cosmonaut. Born in 1937, Jähn will celebrate his 80th birthday today.
Sigmund Jähn was born in Morgenröthe-Rautenkranz in the Vogtland in former Eastern Germany. Myself, born in Western Germany, met Sigmund Jähn on several occasions after the union of Western and Eastern Germany. Sigmund Jähn still is seen as a German national hero in the former Eastern Germany. I could witness this at more than one occasion in person.
He not only made one spaceflight but he was the key advisor to the ESA who paved the way for the succesful flights of four German cosmonauts to the space station Mir. Sigmund Jähn was the perfect person at the right time. He is not only fluent in the Russian language, he also has absolutely key knowledge of the Russian spaceflight technology and he knows the Russian mentality very well.
Sigmund Jähn is an absolutely fantastic and humble person. He loves nature and in each of his public lectures he shows at the end some slides of the environment in the near of his dacha in the Vogtland.
I could tell about several anecdotes I experienced with Sigmund Jähn but I only want to share one publicly.
Sigmund Jähn was a special guest at the Neubrandenburg Space Days in 2014. The Space Days are a well organized 3-day event with lectures on current spaceflight topics.
The event takes place on a weekend and it is a tradition to have a banquet in the hotel that housed the event.
When the banquet began, I felt absolutely miserable and I went several times to the men's room because I had severe stomach problems. After not even half an hour I left the banquet and went to my hotel room, where I vomitted the whole evening. Late at night I crawled to the reception of the hotel and collapsed there.
I was taken to the next hospital by ambulance and was treated with infusions. I woke up in an observation room at around 5 a.m. on Sunday and asked to be dismissed from hospital because I wanted to absolutely listen to the next lectures of the Space Days beginning at 9 a.m.
So I went back to the hotel by taxi and went immediately to the breakfast room where I found a free chair at the table of Sigmund Jähn and the well known German journalist Gerhard Kowalski, specialized in the field of Russian spaceflight. I ordered a cup of tea and then we began a conversation. I told Sigmund Jähn about my treatment and stay in the hospital at night and he asked me what happened. I told him and then he replied: "When we were in cosmonaut training and we were ill, we had a special Russian medicine. We drank vodka!" We three broke out in laughter.