Madelung joined the Nazi Party in 1937, and during the Second World War was involved with aeronautical warfare research, including work with Wernher von Braun's rocket program.
The second son of his marriage to Elisabeth Emma née Messerschmitt was Wilferd Madelung, a noted scholar in Islamic studies.
[citation needed] In 1915 Madelung was retained as an assistant at the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt"—acronym DVL—the "German Aviation Laboratory".
In 1937, he joined the Nazi Party,[5] and in the same year was appointed the director of the re-formed Deutsche Akademie der Luftfahrtforschung (German Aviation Research Academy).
[1] From 1946 to 1954, Madelung was a visiting scholar at the USA Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, where he was involved with studies into the ability of the human body to bear large accelerations.
Their first son Gero Otto George (born 1928) was a professor for aviation technology at the University of Munich and member of the supervisory board of Bosch AG.