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Frau im Mond
Der Mondexperte Professor Georg Manfeldt vermutet Wasser, Sauerstoff und große Goldvorkommen auf der erdabgewandten Seite des Mondes – eine Theorie, für die er in der Wissenschaft ignoriert und ausgelacht wird. Er lebt völlig verarmt auf dem Dachboden eines Hauses. Allein der Ingenieur und Flugwerftbesitzer Wolf Helius glaubt an Manfeldts Theorien. Gemeinsam mit dem Ingenieur Windegger und dessen Verlobter, der Astronomiestudentin Friede Velten, arbeitet Helius an der Verwirklichung der ersten Mondexpedition. In den „Helius-Werften“ entsteht dafür ein imposantes Raketenschiff namens „Friede“, in dem Helius, Windegger, Manfeldt und Velten aufbrechen wollen.
- GenresScience Fiction
237 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1928
1 person is currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Thea von Harbou
63 books49 followersThea Gabriele von Harbou was a prolific German author and screenwriter, best known today for writing the screenplay of the silent film epic Metropolis (1927). She published over forty books, including novels, children’s books, and collections of short stories, essays, poems, and novellas.
For the German film industry, she wrote or collaborated on more than seventy screenplays in the silent and sound era. At one time, she was the highest-paid screenwriter in Germany.
She married three times: first to actor Rudolph Klein-Rogge, who played leading roles in many of her films, second to film director Fritz Lang, and third to Indian journalist and patriot Ayi Tendulkar. She had no children of her own.
In spite of her extraordinary success in the male-dominated film industry, she was no feminist. Her biographer Reinhold Keiner confirms, “She herself was 'a pretty explicit opponent of that flow, in which the women open up areas in which they . . . do not belong, and they close the areas where they could be queens.'” However, she lived the life of a career woman, and the women in her novels and films are usually strong-willed, self-sacrificing women called upon to rescue and redeem the men in their lives.
Thea showed an interest in writing from an early age and sold her first short story at the age of nine and her first novel at the age of fifteen.
Against her family’s wishes, she enrolled in the School of Performing Arts at the Düsseldorf Playhouse when she was seventeen, and for the next six years she pursued a successful career as a stage actor while she continued to publish stories and novels. Her last repertory season was at the State Theatre in Aachen, where Rudolph-Klein Rogge was the leading man and director. In August 1914, they married, and she turned her attention full-time to writing.
In 1919, director-producer Joe May hired her to collaborate on the screenplay of her story “The Legend of St. Simplicity” as a vehicle for his actor wife Mia May. That film’s success then led May to hire her to collaborate with Fritz Lang on an epic adaptation of her 1918 novel The Indian Tomb, which May directed. That collaboration with Lang initiated a thirteen-year creative partnership that produced some of the best-known films of the Weimar cinema, including Dr. Mabuse, The Nibelungen, Metropolis, Woman in the Moon, and the early sound film M—Murderers Among Us.
She and Lang divorced in 1933, but she continued to work in the German film industry. Some of her noteworthy sound films include her superb 1937 adaptation of von Kleist’s comedy The Broken Jug (Der zerbrochene Krug), the 1938 suspense film Covered Tracks (Verwehte Spuren), and the 1941 sentimental drama Annelie.
In 1941, she joined the Nazi party to gain political leverage to aid the cause of Indians working to overturn British rule in India. After the war, the British then interned her in the Staumül prison camp, where she was “de-Nazified” and cleared of any anti-Semitic activities. She was allowed to return to the film industry in 1948.
Following her appearance as a guest speaker at a Berlin film festival in 1954, she was injured in a fall and died two days later.
For the German film industry, she wrote or collaborated on more than seventy screenplays in the silent and sound era. At one time, she was the highest-paid screenwriter in Germany.
She married three times: first to actor Rudolph Klein-Rogge, who played leading roles in many of her films, second to film director Fritz Lang, and third to Indian journalist and patriot Ayi Tendulkar. She had no children of her own.
In spite of her extraordinary success in the male-dominated film industry, she was no feminist. Her biographer Reinhold Keiner confirms, “She herself was 'a pretty explicit opponent of that flow, in which the women open up areas in which they . . . do not belong, and they close the areas where they could be queens.'” However, she lived the life of a career woman, and the women in her novels and films are usually strong-willed, self-sacrificing women called upon to rescue and redeem the men in their lives.
Thea showed an interest in writing from an early age and sold her first short story at the age of nine and her first novel at the age of fifteen.
Against her family’s wishes, she enrolled in the School of Performing Arts at the Düsseldorf Playhouse when she was seventeen, and for the next six years she pursued a successful career as a stage actor while she continued to publish stories and novels. Her last repertory season was at the State Theatre in Aachen, where Rudolph-Klein Rogge was the leading man and director. In August 1914, they married, and she turned her attention full-time to writing.
In 1919, director-producer Joe May hired her to collaborate on the screenplay of her story “The Legend of St. Simplicity” as a vehicle for his actor wife Mia May. That film’s success then led May to hire her to collaborate with Fritz Lang on an epic adaptation of her 1918 novel The Indian Tomb, which May directed. That collaboration with Lang initiated a thirteen-year creative partnership that produced some of the best-known films of the Weimar cinema, including Dr. Mabuse, The Nibelungen, Metropolis, Woman in the Moon, and the early sound film M—Murderers Among Us.
She and Lang divorced in 1933, but she continued to work in the German film industry. Some of her noteworthy sound films include her superb 1937 adaptation of von Kleist’s comedy The Broken Jug (Der zerbrochene Krug), the 1938 suspense film Covered Tracks (Verwehte Spuren), and the 1941 sentimental drama Annelie.
In 1941, she joined the Nazi party to gain political leverage to aid the cause of Indians working to overturn British rule in India. After the war, the British then interned her in the Staumül prison camp, where she was “de-Nazified” and cleared of any anti-Semitic activities. She was allowed to return to the film industry in 1948.
Following her appearance as a guest speaker at a Berlin film festival in 1954, she was injured in a fall and died two days later.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 5, 2021
A book that saw into the future and a book that had so much emotion and beauty. I feel like a number of modern science fiction writers could learn from this book.
September 18, 2023
The title given by goodreads is a bit of a misnomer. The title of the novel is The rocket to the moon : from the novel The girl in the moon by Thea von Harbou ; translated by Baroness von Hutten. The Baroness (Freifrau von Hutten zum Stolzenberg) was an American born ex-pat, Bettina Riddle who under her pen name Betsey Riddle, published more than twenty novels of her own in her lifetime.
This translation from the original German Frau im Mond, into English was published in America in several edition by World Wide Publishing Co. One edition contains just The Rocket to the Moon, a second one contained The Rocket to the moon and The spoilers by Rex Beach, and Slightly Scarlet by Percy Heath as part of World Wide Publishing’s “triple deck series” with a dust jacket proclaiming “ADVENTURE” in bold letters. A third was published with just Slightly Scarlet but this time the dust jacket for the two novels read “MYSTERY” as part of the publishers’ “double deck” series. All three novels had been made into motion pictures by 1930. It would appear that the marketing department at World Wide was planning to sell to as many segments of the reading audience as possible, and possibly at different price points.
Since then the translation has been reprinted in both paperback and hardcover editions. This review is based on the text in the World Wide Publishing triple deck series.
Industrialist Wolf Helius goes to visit the impoverished Professor Manfeldt, and narrowly escapes a collision with a man that Manfeldt has just thrown out of his apartment. Helius has come to tell Manfeldt that inspired by his theories, Helius is determined to attempt a trip to the moon in a rocket that his firm has designed and manufactured. Knowing that this trip might end in failure and his own death he plans to go alone, but Manfeldt begs to go along and Helius relents and promises to take Manfelt along. In gratitude he presents Helius with the original manuscript of his research.
On the journey home Helius is waylaid, drugged, and the manuscript stolen. When he arrives home in a stupor, the members of his household staff bring him back to consciousness, and he discovers that the manuscript is gone. He soon confronted by the thief, a man with “an olive complexion,” who introduces himself as Walt Turner. He says he represents a group that are aware of Manfeldt’s theories about the moon including the gold found in its mountains. He demands that in exchange for the manuscript and the plans that he has just stolen from Helius’s safe, he will be included on the journey to the moon. Helius asks for twenty-four hours to think it over. Turner says that he will return in exactly twenty-four hours sure that his offer will be accepted.
When Turner returns he is confronted by not only Helius but also his business partner rocket engineer Hans Windegger and Windegger’s fiancé Friede Velten. After some tense conversations, threats of violence and protests all around, the official crew of the Space-Ship has grown from one to five: Helius, Manfelt, Turner, Windegger and Velten. Friede Velten insists that she will not be left behind despite the protests of both Helius and Windegger. Thus she will become the Woman in the Moon of the German title Frau im Mond.
The launch, scheduled for the evening to occur as a full moon is visible in the sky, is described in the following breathless prose starting with the revelation of the spacecraft as the doors of its assembly hall open and it rolls out to its launch site by the shore of a lake, flooded by spotlights:
This translation from the original German Frau im Mond, into English was published in America in several edition by World Wide Publishing Co. One edition contains just The Rocket to the Moon, a second one contained The Rocket to the moon and The spoilers by Rex Beach, and Slightly Scarlet by Percy Heath as part of World Wide Publishing’s “triple deck series” with a dust jacket proclaiming “ADVENTURE” in bold letters. A third was published with just Slightly Scarlet but this time the dust jacket for the two novels read “MYSTERY” as part of the publishers’ “double deck” series. All three novels had been made into motion pictures by 1930. It would appear that the marketing department at World Wide was planning to sell to as many segments of the reading audience as possible, and possibly at different price points.
Since then the translation has been reprinted in both paperback and hardcover editions. This review is based on the text in the World Wide Publishing triple deck series.
Industrialist Wolf Helius goes to visit the impoverished Professor Manfeldt, and narrowly escapes a collision with a man that Manfeldt has just thrown out of his apartment. Helius has come to tell Manfeldt that inspired by his theories, Helius is determined to attempt a trip to the moon in a rocket that his firm has designed and manufactured. Knowing that this trip might end in failure and his own death he plans to go alone, but Manfeldt begs to go along and Helius relents and promises to take Manfelt along. In gratitude he presents Helius with the original manuscript of his research.
On the journey home Helius is waylaid, drugged, and the manuscript stolen. When he arrives home in a stupor, the members of his household staff bring him back to consciousness, and he discovers that the manuscript is gone. He soon confronted by the thief, a man with “an olive complexion,” who introduces himself as Walt Turner. He says he represents a group that are aware of Manfeldt’s theories about the moon including the gold found in its mountains. He demands that in exchange for the manuscript and the plans that he has just stolen from Helius’s safe, he will be included on the journey to the moon. Helius asks for twenty-four hours to think it over. Turner says that he will return in exactly twenty-four hours sure that his offer will be accepted.
When Turner returns he is confronted by not only Helius but also his business partner rocket engineer Hans Windegger and Windegger’s fiancé Friede Velten. After some tense conversations, threats of violence and protests all around, the official crew of the Space-Ship has grown from one to five: Helius, Manfelt, Turner, Windegger and Velten. Friede Velten insists that she will not be left behind despite the protests of both Helius and Windegger. Thus she will become the Woman in the Moon of the German title Frau im Mond.
The launch, scheduled for the evening to occur as a full moon is visible in the sky, is described in the following breathless prose starting with the revelation of the spacecraft as the doors of its assembly hall open and it rolls out to its launch site by the shore of a lake, flooded by spotlights:
It appeared rising from the end of the hall, a dark heaving monster, the airship which was to take out the Space-ship.
The crowd became suddenly silent.
In spite of everything, they had not seemed to really expect that the monster ship would go up. They were, as it were, seized by the throat by the reality of what was unbelievable. The very air around seemed to stand still with expectation.
Then whispers passed round.
“The people who are to go up—where are they?”
Indistinct faces appeared at the windows, but they seemed to be phantoms from another world, with no kinship with the watching crowd. They were already being who did not belong to this world.
The photographers and pressmen who had swarmed the out of the open hall thronged round the great ship like a crowd of gnats. They were all pale and had a feverish expression in their eyes.
Still they must wait … wait for what had to come!
Why did they wait, with all nerves strung to breaking point. And the loud-speakers all gave out out the same word at the same moment:
“CAREFUL!”
A man in airman’s costume stood motionless as a block of stone at the cone of the bluish white searchlight. He was to give the signal to start. He only raised his arm, held it for a second, and then let it fall.
The aircraft began to move. And it went out in the night with a rush and a noise grater that that which a hundred sirens on the ocean could not have made. A blow, as though the earth would open, and fire shot forth from a score of burning mouths—shrieking, roaring fire. The aircraft slid on, ran, flew upwards.
The human sea round the lake moved about in waves, and broke into noise as the waves themselves break at the end of their course. Noise without words as the vast mass watched the marvelous thing which was happening.
With a rush like that of a wild beast from its lair, the airship, which bore the Space-Ship aloft with it left the rails whilst the fire raged round it, sprang into the air and appeared like a meteor flying towards the moon, outlined against the sky in its upward flight.
For the crew of the Space-Ship now comes the most grueling part of their expedition the stress of accelerating to eleven thousand two hundred meters per second. For eight minutes they must endure the the crushing weight of acceleration that will allow them to escape earth’s gravitational pull. A few pass out from the strain. This was the strain that Helius feared might be fatal, so there are some anxious moments until the unconscious members of the crew are brought back to consciousness. Suddenly the great weight they have experienced dissolves into weightlessness and they are able to stare out the windows in awe at the earth, sun, and approaching moon.
The next tense scene is avoiding a crash landing on the dark side of the moon, which they accomplish and survive to find their ship half buried in sand, but a breathable atmosphere and lots of mountains filled with gold.
This is the point in the book in which science fiction turns into a fantasy adventure with the discovery of a temple of gold built by ancient civilization and the nefarious Turner attempts to steal the Space-Ship and return to Earth alone. While it proves his undoing, his parting shot does deplete the spacecraft’s oxygen supply for the return journey and the tale concludes with Wolf Helius left behind on the moon, until to his delighted surprise he is greeted by Friede Velten.
As is evident in the above excerpt above, this is a book filled with similes, metaphors, and few noun or verbs that escape being modified by adjectives or adverbs. It is, nevertheless, effective.
October 13, 2023
Si os digo la verdad, no me salen las palabras.
"Una mujer en la luna" ha sido todo lo que esperaba y un poco más. He marcado y subrayado tantas cosas en el documento e-book que miedo me daría tener realmente la versión en físico (es broma, jaja, ¡sé controlarme muy bien si quiero! Además, es una historia tan descatalogada que doy gracias por haberla conseguido casi de casualidad). He disfrutado tantísimo de este viaje a la Luna que lo repetiría mil veces. No solo porque Thea haya mejorado la estructura narrativa hermosa, pero imperfecta que vi en "Metrópolis", sino porque sabe dar las cantidades justas, exactas, de lo que nos quiere ofrecer, manteniéndonos atrapados en una aventura sencilla, pero, al final, perfecta en todos y cada uno de sus ámbitos. ¿Ciencia ficción basada en los rumores e hipótesis de la época? ¡Una taza! ¿Un triángulo amoroso, bastante más complejo de lo que parece a simple vista, y que influye en la trama hasta un conmovedor final? ¡Tres tazas más, amigo mío! ¿Horror cósmico? ¡Sí, sí, sí! ¡Qué no falte, sobre todo con el terrorífico Walt Turner! ¿Y qué tal una pizca de gore? Sorprendente, ¡pero pa'a'lante junto a los igualmente asombrosos secretos que ocultan las montañas lunares!
Supongo que no es oro todo lo que reluce, ¿eh, Manfeld?
En fin, que me ha encantado, gente. Ya iba con expectativas por su novela anterior y la sinopsis, pero es que von Harbou ha logrado -otra vez- TODO LO QUE PUEDES LOGRAR EN UN LECTOR CON UNA BUENA HISTORIA.
Creo que la voy a tener que calificar como una de mis autoras favoritas, porque está claro que nunca me decepciona.
5/5.
"Una mujer en la luna" ha sido todo lo que esperaba y un poco más. He marcado y subrayado tantas cosas en el documento e-book que miedo me daría tener realmente la versión en físico (es broma, jaja, ¡sé controlarme muy bien si quiero! Además, es una historia tan descatalogada que doy gracias por haberla conseguido casi de casualidad). He disfrutado tantísimo de este viaje a la Luna que lo repetiría mil veces. No solo porque Thea haya mejorado la estructura narrativa hermosa, pero imperfecta que vi en "Metrópolis", sino porque sabe dar las cantidades justas, exactas, de lo que nos quiere ofrecer, manteniéndonos atrapados en una aventura sencilla, pero, al final, perfecta en todos y cada uno de sus ámbitos. ¿Ciencia ficción basada en los rumores e hipótesis de la época? ¡Una taza! ¿Un triángulo amoroso, bastante más complejo de lo que parece a simple vista, y que influye en la trama hasta un conmovedor final? ¡Tres tazas más, amigo mío! ¿Horror cósmico? ¡Sí, sí, sí! ¡Qué no falte, sobre todo con el terrorífico Walt Turner! ¿Y qué tal una pizca de gore? Sorprendente, ¡pero pa'a'lante junto a los igualmente asombrosos secretos que ocultan las montañas lunares!
Supongo que no es oro todo lo que reluce, ¿eh, Manfeld?
En fin, que me ha encantado, gente. Ya iba con expectativas por su novela anterior y la sinopsis, pero es que von Harbou ha logrado -otra vez- TODO LO QUE PUEDES LOGRAR EN UN LECTOR CON UNA BUENA HISTORIA.
Creo que la voy a tener que calificar como una de mis autoras favoritas, porque está claro que nunca me decepciona.
5/5.
October 10, 2024
I like the really old stuff.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews