Heinz Kaminski

Who was Heinz Kaminski?

Heinz Kaminski was a German chemical engineer and space researcher.

On 5 October 1957, Kaminski received signals in Bochum from the Sputnik satellite, the first person outside of the Soviet area of influence to do so. Heinz Kaminski founded and later directed the Bochum Observatory. He also busied himself with environmental research. Although Kaminski was only an amateur astronomer and not a professional, the press constantly treated him as a source of information on astronomical events. At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, Kaminski took an active interest in politics - at first in the Green Party, then in the Bürgerpartei.

In the cellar of his house, Kaminski, a former naval radio operator, had built a receiving station from old wooden tables and in the meadow in front of his house in the Bochum district of Sundern erected an antenna assisted by three co-workers, with whose help he listened in to radio signals from space. During the night of 5 October 1957, Kaminski became the first person outside of the Soviet territories to receive signals from Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in space. The tape recording from Bochum was proof of the start of space travel.