Undivided Heavens: Spaceflight and the Future in Cold War Germany

In an innovative cultural history across the Iron Curtain, this book explores how a divided nation used the cosmos—as both a technological reality and a field of imagination—to navigate the challenges of the Cold War and compete for the future. Smithsonian curator Colleen Anderson transforms the history of the Space Age by demonstrating that Germans were not just observers of the US-Soviet rivalry, but active participants who used spaceflight to redefine their place in the world.

Connecting...