October 29th, 1933, the London Sunday Referee reported that in Rugen, a small Baltic coastal town near Germany, a man landed safely after flying in a rocket six miles into the atmosphere. This of course would make Germany the first successful testing agent of manned rocket powered flight. The flight itself was done under the auspices of the German War Ministry. The rocket so the newspaper the Referee reported, was built in Barmbeck.

“On Sunday morning, at 6 o’clock, Otto Fischer shook hands with his brother and the small group of Reichswehr officials present to witness the experiment, and crawled into the rocket through the small steel door.

“Bruno Fischer and the three officials then retired to a small hollow in the ground about two hundred yards away and Fischer closed the switch that sent the rocket on its journey. There was a blinding flash and a deafening explosion, and the slim torpedo-shaped body was gone from the steel framework in which it had rested.

“A few minutes later it came into sight again, floating nose upwards from a large parachute that had automatically been released when it had begun to descend. As it drifted nearer, the steel fins on the outside of the body could be seen moving as its pilot manipulated the rocket so that it would land on the island. A few seconds later it came to rest on the sands a few yards away, and Fischer crawled through the door of the rocket white and shaken, but smiling triumphantly. The journey through space had lasted 10 minutes and 26 seconds.”

Source: http://io9.com, wikipedia