Born in
Hasselfelde, he first came to public notice in 1931, when he began to work on the problem of
transporting mail by rocket. In 1933 he performed several experiments in the
Harz and at
Cuxhaven. In 1934, he emigrated to the
UK, where he attempted to interest the British government in his rocket. After a failed rocket demonstration for officials of the British
Royal Mail on 31 July 1934, he was deported to Germany, where he was arrested on suspicion of cooperating with the British. During
World War II he served in the
Luftwaffe. After World War II, he moved across the border to
West Germany, to the part of the
Harz in
Lower Saxony, where he became a furniture dealer. He continued his rocket experiments until, at a rocket demonstration on 7 May 1964 on the
Hasselkopf Mountain near
Braunlage, an accident occurred which killed three people. This accident led to a ban on civilian rocket research in
West Germany, ending the rocket experiments of the
Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft (Hermann Oberth Society) and the
Berthold Seliger Forschungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (Berhold Seliger Research and Development Society). In the 1970s Gerhard Zucker once again began launching mail rockets. ==Zucker in popular culture==