On August 26, 1978, Sigmund Jähn became the first German in space, launching aboard Soyuz 31. The first item in my collection relates to this milestone.
In 1998, Jähn’s hometown of Morgenröthe-Rautenkranz marked the 20th anniversary of the mission with a reunion of the original and backup crew. The local space exhibition, dedicated to Jähn’s flight since 1979, issued a commemorative envelope that has remained a centerpiece of my collection.
For me, it’s more than just a philatelic piece. It represents the start of my fascination with spaceflight. After receiving it, I spent the next five years collecting signatures from people who had actually been to space. I wasn’t interested in the autographs for their rarity or value—it was about the personal encounters, the chance to meet these people, which was a lot easier back then than it is today. Times were different. Nobody asked for money; the only thing I paid was the postage.
From an astrophilatelic standpoint, the envelope is modest. It bears correct postage with older stamps (Michel 1273 and 1347) and a cancellation featuring the museum’s spaceplane logo, based on the Sänger project, a design that had been created just a few years earlier. The previous cancellation commemorating the “Joint USSR–GDR Space Flight” remained in use until 1992, even after both nations ceased to exist, while the newer cancellation was withdrawn by 1999 due to wear.
In addition to Jähn and his backup, Eberhard Köllner, the envelope carries 27 further signatures other cosmonauts and astronauts (the term “Euronauts,” briefly popular at the time, never really caught on):
Nikolai Budarin, Valery Bykovsky, Frank De Winne, Reinhold Ewald, Klaus-Dietrich Flade, Viktor Gorbatko, Claudie and Jean-Pierre Haigneré, Mirosław Hermaszewski, Alexandr Ivanchenko, Pyotr Klimuk, Valery Korzun, Vladimir Kovalyonok, Sergei Krikalev, Yury Lonchakov, Yuri Malenchenko, Ernst Messerschmid, Talgat Musabayev, Yury Onufriyenko, Thomas Reiter, Vladimir Shatalov, Anatoly Solovyev, Gerhard Thiele, Donald Thomas, Vasily Tsibliyev, Yuri Usachov, and Sergei Zalyotin.
These aren’t just names on paper—they each represent remarkable stories worth telling. Jähn’s mission alone connects to many of them. His commander Bykovsky had already made history much earlier as Soviet cosmonaut No. 5 (or the ninth person in space), and like Gorbatko, he had begun training together with Gagarin. The Salyut 6 resident crew at the time, Ivanchenko and Kovalyonok, also signed, having set a new endurance record on their flight. There’s also Klimuk and Hermaszewski, the Soyuz 30 crew, who had flown the mission just before Jähn’s.
Altogether, the signatories of my envelope completed 73 spaceflights spanning six decades, spending nearly 18 years in orbit. Among them is Yuri Malenchenko, who ranks third in total time spent in space, and Sergei Krikalev, who for years held the world record and still remains in the top tier. Krikalev was also the first Russian to fly on the Space Shuttle and later joined the very first ISS expedition.
Their missions reached seven different space stations since Salyut 1. Six of them commanded MIR—including Zalyotin, its final visitor—and six went on to command the ISS, among them Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne, the first Western European to do so.
More than half of these men and women performed spacewalks. Collectively, they carried out 79 EVAs, spending nearly 17 days outside their spacecraft. Solovyev still holds the record for the most spacewalks and the longest cumulative EVA time, a mark he has kept since 1998. Even though none of the signatories are active today, five went on to lead the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (aka Star City), training the next generation of spacefarers. Jähn himself worked there for many years as a consultant and played a key role in preparing the so-called “Euronauts.”
I share all of this because, for me, it’s what makes spaceflight so endlessly fascinating—not just the technology, but the people behind it. Many of them are no longer with us. Sigmund Jähn and Valery Bykovsky both passed away in 2019, just months apart, at the ages of 82 and 84. Talgat Musabayev died this year at 74; I only learned of his passing a few days ago.