The Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR, Society for Space Travel) was founded in 1927 by church administrator Johannes Winkler, rocket experimenter Max Valier and science writer Willy Ley and included the German-Romanian Hermann Oberth. Space travel and rocketry had gained popularity in German speaking Central Europe following the June 1923 publication of Oberth’s book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space). Ley and Oberth subsequently served as advisers for filmmaker Fritz Lang's 1929 film Frau im Mond (The Woman in the Moon). Beginning in 1930, several members conducted liquid-fuel rocket experiments and the society itself founded the Raketenflugplatz (Rocketport) Berlin in fall 1930. It survived until the Nazi government put it out of business in 1934. Several members, notably Wernher von Braun, went on to be important in German Army rocket development, leading to the V-2 missile in World War II. He and others became important rocket engineers in the U.S. after the war.
