Werner Richard Kuers was born on April 18, 1907 in Berlin, Germany. He attended Berlin Institute of Technology, and graduated December 1930 with a Master of Science in Engineering, (machine construction). He worked at Peenemunde, Germany in 1938 and worked with Werner Von Braun. As Nazi Germany began to break down, he and the rest of the Paperclip scientists surrendered to the Allies; he came to the United States in 1945 and began working at Fort Bliss, Texas, assembling, testing, and launching V-2 rockets created from German components acquired by the U.S. Army.

Kuers moved to Huntsville in 1950 with Werner von Braun. He served first as deputy, then director of the Marshall Space Flight Center’s Manufacturing and Engineer Division. By late 1964, he became the Director of Marshall Space Flight Center’s Manufacturing and Engineer Division. Kuers helped develop a new way to weld large parts of the Saturn II rocket and suggested astronauts should use water tanks to simulate weightlessness. He retired in 1969 and moved to Mexico.

Werner Kuers was also an avid musician and was one of the original founders and a concert master of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra.

He died of cancer on May 14, 1983 at Bethesda, Maryland.

Information derived from contents of collection and Lundquist’s “Transplanted Rocket Pioneers.”