The Berthold Seliger Forschungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (BSFEGmbH) was a company founded by Berthold Seliger in 1961, which developed and built prototypes of sounding rockets and launched them near Cuxhaven. The BSFEGmbH cooporated strongly together with the Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft at which Berthold Seliger was a member of. The first rocket developed by the BSFEGmbH was an embettered version of the Kumulus, which was first launched on November 19th, 1962 and reached a height of 50 kilometres. On February 7th, 1963 the BSFEGmbH launched a two-stage rocket with a maximum height of 80 kilometres and on May 2nd, 1963 a three-stage rocket with a maximum flight height of more than 100 kilometres. Latter rocket may have reached from all rockets built in post-war Germany the largest value of flight altitude. The signals from all these rockets were also received at the observatory Bochum. After May 1963 the BSFEGmbH worked on the improvement of the steering system of their rockets and thought also on military usable rockets.

On December 5th, 1963 the BSFEGmbH gave a flight demonstration of their rockets to military staff of non-NATO-countries. Although their rockets were launched with reduced amount of propellant in order not to hurt the Allied laws concerning the development of military rockets in Germany and were not fit for military use, the rocket experiments of the Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft e.V. and the BSFEGmbH were watched after this date with big suspicion.

In 1964 these experiments were discontinued with a temporary injunction, which is valid until today, after a fatal accident at a rocket demonstration of Gerhard Zucker at Braunlage, although Gerhard Zucker did not cooperate with the BSFEGmbH or the Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft e.V. in any way and had also a bad reputation at the members of these societies.

Weblinks

• http://www.modellraketenbau.de/countdown/cdo030301.htm
• http://www.raketen-modellbau-technik.de/geschichte/cuxhaven/bericht.htm
• http://www.astronautix.com/astros/seliger.htm