A human symbol of shattered Germany at the end of WW-II, Burkhard Heim had lost his eyes and his hands in a laboratory explosion. Besides that, he was left almost deaf. But his drive and his intuition were still very much intact. In spite of these seemingly insurmountable handicaps, he managed to graduate in theoretical physics (1954) and since 1956 he became heavily engaged in research pertaining to the nature of forcefields. In order to develop and test new theories, a special "Research Institute for Forcefield-Physics" was established in 1958, associated with the University of Goettingen in Northeim, Hannover. As proclaimed on the letterhead of the Institute it also represents the "German Section of the European Center for Gravity Research."

As early as 1952, Heim had presented his first public lecture* in Stuttgart, revealing the discovery of a positive lead to anti-gravity, involving a "transitional field" which acts as an intermediary from electricity to gravity. Alas, when Prof. Heim disclosed his theory of "field propulsion" for space-flight at the Second International Congress for Astronautics in Innsbruck, Austria (1952), the history of science gave a repeat performance -- Heim was ridiculed!

Considering that this occurred quite a few years before SATURN moon rockets and MARINER landers had become household words, and astronautics as such was about as unpopular in scientific circles as serious UFO research is today, perhaps this should not have been too surprising.

Stung by the experience, Heim swore to remain silent henceforth until even the last iota of his new theory could be proven by exact laboratory data without the slightest remaining doubts. Since then, mysterious but generally poorly-informed references to his research have shown up in the European, North American and South American press, but officially, by and large, there was only discrete silence about his research results.