Bust of Hermann Oberth

When Hermann Oberth was named an honorary member of the "Association for Space Travel" in Breslau in 1927, the flight of Sputnik was still three decades away. But the Transylvanian Saxon, who was born in Sibiu in 1894 and attended school in Sighișoara, was already fascinated by the futuristic novels of Jules Verne as a young man and began to explore rocket and space theory while still a high school student.Oberth initially studied medicine at his father's request, later physics and mathematics. His ideas, still entirely utopian at the time, were first published in book form in 1923. Oberth was only marginally involved in the German rocket tests under his former student Wernher von Braun in Peenemünde from 1941 to 1943. Instead, he subsequently developed remote-guided solid-fuel rockets for anti-aircraft defense in Reinsdorf.After the war, Oberth worked in Switzerland, Italy, and the USA, including at NASA.Oberth received numerous awards and honors as the founder of scientific rocketry and astronautics, as well as a prophetic initiator of space travel and space medicine. He died on December 28, 1989, in Feucht near Nuremberg.

Hermann Oberth, the famous but also controversial mathematician, physicist and space technology researcher, was born in Sibiu and attended the mountain school in Sighisoara. Among other things, he is the inventor of the space mirror. There are stories about him in Sighisoara that show him as a particularly talented mathematician and an absent-minded professor with strange ideas about rockets in space.
Oberth's bust on Oberth Square below the Hour Tower was created by the Transylvanian-Saxon and Sighisoara artist Wilhelm Fabini.