On our round-the-world-trip in 2019 from Hong Kong via Micronesia to Hawaii and the Canadian Rockies my wife and I stopped on the Marshall Islands: Of course we were keen to get away from the inner atoll of Majuro and the namesake capital and wanted to venture out to a more exciting outer atoll. We found Bikendrik Island. As we organised our boat transfer in Majuro’s port area we got a bit confused. Locals called Bikendrik, meant for the upcoming three days to be our chill-out and snorkelling destination, „the island of the elderly naked couple“. We did not know what to expect but set off.

After cruising for a few hours on the open ocean, passing turquoise lagoons and palm-fringed atolls, our captain slows down the engine. Ahead of us, on a wooden landing pier, appears an elderly lady, not naked, but dressed in red. We are stunned to be greeted in a fine Austrian dialect: Susanne Kayser, the Lady in Red, turns to be, for the next three days, everything for us: chef, cleaning lady making up our chalet, society lady, and above all, history teacher. Right after dinner, with an endless number of stars and the Milky Way above us and the sounds of the lapping waves of the Pacific Ocean as background music, Susanne embarks on a long journey we first can hardly believe:

Her husband Lutz Kayser, the other „naked“, who had unfortunately died as it turned out a year ago, had been an aerospace engineer from Stuttgart (my home town!) whose goal in the early seventies was to develop, produce and operate a low-cost satellite launch vehicle. Quasi an early Elon Musk, one would say today. For this purpose her husband had founded a company, OTRAG, and won Kurt Debus, now a retired director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, as chairman of OTRAG’s board, and Wernher von Braun as adviser. von Braun had once been the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany (bad guy) and later a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States (turned good guy). Lured by the involvement of these famous men and by generous possibilities to write off their taxes, hundreds of affluent and famous Germans joined OTRAG as investors.

The history lessons go into the next day. On the tiny atoll not bigger than a handball pitch we feel like in a puzzling paradise. Susanne recounts their posh jetset life, travelling around the world with her husband in search of sorely-needed rocket testing ground and for even more investors, while also cooking the most delicious food for us. In between she cleans our chalet. We feast on the most delicious food, not least Austrian Kaiserschmarn, and learn that Susanne was the grand niece of the chief steward of the last emperor of Austria. Susanne had graduated from a renowned Vienna culinary institution and cooking school. We can easily taste it! 

Since the Four Powers Agreement made rocket launches in post-war Germany unthinkable, her husband and his company were still searching for a rocket testing ground. Money was, thanks to investors’s hundreds of millions German Marks assets bases, no object. On one of his travels, Susanne recounted, her husband bumped into an illustrious figure who was part of the organising team of the „Rumble in the Jungle“,the famous boxing match between Ali and Foreman which took place in Kinshasa/Zaire in 1974. He introduced her husband to Zairean dictator Mobutu who welcomed him in his palace in Kinshasa. Mobutu, proudly wearing his Leopard-skin hat and famously vain as a peacock, was enthralled by the prospect of an African Cape Canaveral and the possibility to be able to spot, as Susanne quoted her husband, „every single mouse with the assistance of his satellites“. Consequently Mobutu offered Lutz Kayser’s OTRAG a territory in the size of Communist Germany as testing ground,located on a far-flung plateau above Luvua river, a tributary of the Congo River in Katanga province.  While being glued to the stories of Susanne, we sit a mere meter distant from the lagoon, a squadron of manta rays was silently passing in the clear water in front of us. Time for sundowners, glasses of gin tonics clink.

In 1975 the operation began, hundreds of German engineers, often with their entire families, moved from Stuttgart to Africa. Tons of machinery and equipment, scientific files, had to be moved to Africa, too. Only Debus, chairman of the board, and von Braun, the advisor, were concerned about the possibility of Zairian acquisition of missile technology from the facilities. Her husband was not to be stopped, Susanne continues to say with an admiring smile, and had decided to proceed despite his advisors’ opposition. First a large runway for transport aircraft had to be built. Susanne has to consult her diary: OTRAG’s first test was on May 17, 1977, with the second successful launch on May 20, 1978. The third test failed on June 5, unfortunately with Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko present.

OTRAG invited journalists from Europe. The launches quickly became known inside and outside of Africa, Susanne says she can still not believe what followed. Secret services set their sights on them, The prime minister from neigboriung Angola, allied with the Soviet Union, complained about the rocket launches. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev specifically brought up the touchy subject in his talks with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on the occasion of the state visit in 1978 in Bonn. Political pressure to halt OTRAG’s operations in Africa mounted quickly.Lutz Kayser and his crew, it was said, proved to be political naives. However, Susanne remains convinced that it was only thanks to money paid by the German government that let Mobutu into closing down their testing ground in 1979. Within weeks, Susanne still seems to be flabbergasted, they had to leave Zaire, with everything.

Her husband was still not prepared to forfeit his life’s work, and another dictator stood in line. OTRAG moved its production and testing facilities to a desert site in Libya. A series of successful tests were conducted at this site beginning in 1981. Her husband became professor and director of the Libyan Academy of Sciences. The couple became personally acquainted with Muammar al-Gaddadi, he even made her advances. He was a good dancer, Susanne grins. During the 80s Gaddafi and Libya came into increasing conflicts with the West. It was high time to go, says Susanne, still raving a bit about her exciting social ilfe on numerous receptions with a still glamorous Gaddafi. As the Kaysers and OTRAG left Libya, Muammar Gaddafi confiscated all equipment and installations, hoping to later use the technology. OTRAG finally shut down in 1987, investors had lots hundreds of millions.

Susanne and her husband contemplated where to go now. Saddam Hussein obviously had shown some interest, but Susanne says Iraq was not an option. Australia was one, but did not work out (they Kaysers residence visa were denied). Finally they found paradisiacal Bikendrik Island where they opened a cute little hotel. Interrupted by further fancy food cooked and served by Susanne on her flower-filled terrace, we enjoy our last day inn paradise, go snorkelling and try to digest the ton of history which had been loaded on us. The main house of Bikendrik is full with paintings. There is even an original Cezanne and another original of a way more (in)famous man. How would the world look like today if he would have not become a dictator but a painter, I reason. ,Bikendrik Island, the place of death of Lutz Kayser, is obviously not far from the launching pad on Omelek island from where Elon Musk successful launched his Falcon 1 rocket in 2008. After three days we are picked up by the son of Marshallese President Hilda Heine whose boat brings us back to real (South Pacific) life. In case anyone does not believe the above travel story: Just watch the movie “Fly Rocket Fly“.