Zur frühen Geschichte der Paläocheloniologie von Schaumburg‐Lippe. Die Rolle des Gymnasial‐Professors Max Ballerstedt in der Naturwissenschaft

A survey is given on some new aspects of the early history to the palaeochelonology in Schaumburg‐Lippe (Northern Germany). The very slow development of this is good reconstructable on base of authentic estates. It is the first time to made such a nearly complete reconstruction.     

Zytoarchitektonik und Revolution ‐ Lenins Gehirn als Raum und Objekt

The investigation of Lenin's brain by the German neurobiologist Oskar Vogt from Berlin and his Russian collaborators in Moscow is one of the most exciting and simultaneously oddest chapters in the history of medicine. With the bizarre claim to be able to detect the material substrate of genius it provoked as much unrealistic expectations in the public as strong criticism by the scientific community of brain researchers. The present paper deals in a brief survey with the history of collecting and measuring the brains of famous persons in general and particularly with the historical, political and social circumstances of the performed investigation of Lenin's brain. In this connection the epistemological and technical prereqisites of architectonical brain research and its means of the topographical representation of complex histo‐anatomical and physiological differences in the brain cortex are shortly discussed. The opening of Russian archives after the socio‐economic turn of the year 1991 brought up new background facts in Lenin's pathobiography; together with the sources from German archives a rather extensive reconstruction of the historical events between Lenin's death in 1924 and the final report of the Moscow Brain Research Institute (Institute Mozga) to the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviki) in 1936 is possible now.     

Ettore Majorana (1906—1938): Eine Bestandsaufnahme 64 Jahre nach seinem Verschwinden

Ettore Majorana probably belongs to the most mysterious and most fascinating personalities of the recent physics history. Majoranas work shows also nowadays more than 60 years after its appearance an amazingly fresh reference to present physics problems. A short representation of Ettore Majoranas life and scientific work will be given in this article.     

Akzentverschiebung - Zur Geschichte der Semitistik und Islamwissenschaft während des ‚Dritten Reichs’︁

Fifty years after World War II the history of Semitic and Islamic Studies during the period of nazism has more or less remained ‘terra incognita’. The article shows that academic activities in this field did not remain uninfluenced by that period. In addition to the banishment of Jewish scholars, a concentration on Arabian Studies took place and scholars contributed for the weltanschauung of the Third Reich. To date not all the outcomes can be presented. Yet, one of them is easily observable: The study of Jewish religion, history and culture became a special branch, it is no longer part of Oriental studies.     

Von Vielschichtigkeiten und Verschränkungen “Kulturen der Wissenschaft – Wissenschaften in der Kultur”

On Multiple Levels and Linkages: Introduction to the Symposium ‘Cultures of Sciences – the Sciences in Culture’. – The article presents briefly approaches to cultural history and cultural studies that seem potentially useful to or have recntly been applied in historical studies of the sciences. The first section discusses three such approaches: discourse analysis, symbolic artefacts (images and text), and cultures of scientific practice. Each of the three approaches raises issues of its own, and all of them share a common problem characteristic of cultural and social history in general: linking micro and macro levels of analysis. The second section presents three approaches to resolving this dilemma by focusing on specific linkages between cultures of science (or culture in the sciences) and general history: scientific thought and practice as norms for professional behavior, for example in fields of knowledge dominated by women; spaces of knowledge, for example the city; and linkages of cultural, media and economic history in fields such as radio and television.     

Die ‚Deutsche Physik’︁ in der Selbstkritik des NS‐Ideologen Alfred Bäumler

In 1944, the Nazi ideologist Alfred Baeumler wrote a memorandum for his boss Alfred Rosenberg, Adolf Hitler's commissioner for the political education of party members. In this sensational memo, which did not become known until long after 1945, Baeumler spoke out against the promotion of under‐performing physicists who oust highly‐qualified non‐Nazi scientists at the universities without submitting adequate research results. – Rosenberg's response is not known. What is known, however, is that Baeumler did not manage to change the situation criticised by him.     

Dinosaurier‐Skelette als Kriegsziel: Kulturgutraubplanungen,Besatzungspolitik und die deutsche Paläontologie in Belgien im Ersten Weltkrieg

The paper deals with the unnoticed and sweeping activities of German scientists and university disciplines in the context of German occupation policy and plannings of plundering cultural assets as war pillage during the First World War. It exemplarily shows the case of palaeontologists in occupied Belgium: Their main project was the famous excavation site of skeletons of the dinosaur Iguanodon in the small town Bernissart. After a new excavation between 1915 and 1918 they planned, with the support of occupation authorities, the transportation of dinosaur skeletons into German natural history museums and collections as war pillage.     

Wissenschaftsstädte – Zur Bedeutung des Topos der ‘kreativen Stadt’ für die Wissensproduktion

Science Cities: What the Concept of the Creative City Means for Knowledge Production. – The article aims to show that the relationship of science and the city has changed since the 1970s in the context of the knowledgeable society. While cities have principally been regarded as the typical space of science, of new ideas and innovation for centuries, since the 1960s and 1970s universities, research institutes as well as industrial research institutes have relocated to the periphery of cities. There, however, these sites of knowledge have been organized in an ‘urban mode’. That means that the concept of the city as a place of science and innovation has determined the architectural, spatial, and social organization of these sites on the periphery of cities. Certain features of the city have been copied, such as social infrastructures, places of communication, restaurants, cafes etc., while others have been left out – housing, cinema, theatre etc. An ‘urban mode of knowledge production’ in the sense of a very stylized model of the city has become a tool to enhance the production of scientific and technological knowledge. – The article exemplifies this by focusing on a case study, namely of the so‐called ‘Science City’ of the Siemens Company in Munich‐Neuperlach.     

Physik und Politik in der frühen Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Max Born,Werner Heisenberg und Pascual Jordan als politische Grenzgänger

Physics and Politics in the Early Federal Republic of Germany. Max Born, Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan between Scientific and Political Discourse. – Contrasting the historiography of two major developments in 20th century German history, the creation of quantum mechanics in 1925 and the dispute on the nuclear armament of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957, the question is raised to which extent the scientific culture was able to bridge political disagreement within the German physicists' community. A twofold story of the private and public exchange between Max Born, Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan among others on the scientists' position to nuclear armament on the one hand and the writing of the history of quantum mechanics on the other hand displays different types of relating scientific work and moral responsibility. Neither politics nor science went on unaltered after the disputes between physics and politics in the early Federal Republic of Germany.     

Oszillierende Weltmodelle versus Urknallmodelle. Das oszillierende Weltmodell Friedmanns,die Ablehnung der Anfangssingularität durch russische Kosmologen und die Zustimmung der katholischen Kirche zur Urknalltheorie Lemaîtres und Hawkings

The Russian mathematician and physicist Friedmann and the Belgian priest and physicist Lemaître were the first to consider non‐static world models in the framework of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Friedmann seemed to favour a periodic, oscillating cosmological model. His investigations were taken up by Russian cosmologists in the 1960s. They stated that the singularities present in many of the Friedmann‐Lemaître cosmological models seemed to be artificial and were ascribed to the assumption of a highly symmetric distribution of cosmic matter. Their disapproval of singularities seems to be in accord with Soviet ideological requirements during that time like atheism and dialectic materialism. They had to retract their statements after Hawking had proved his singularity theorems and after the microwave background had been discovered. Hawking followed the line of thought which was initiated by Lemaître in the early 1930s. Lemaître had combined for the first time quantum physics and relativistic cosmology and had developed his idea of the primeval atom, a beginning of the universe in a dense state with just one quantum containing the whole mass of the universe. Pope Pius XII brought together this primeval atom and God as the Creator of the universe and declared in 1951 that big bang cosmology is compatible with the Bible. Not surprisingly Hawking was awarded the Pius XI medal by the Vatican in 1975 for his contributions to big bang cosmology.     

“Die wissenschaftliche Ausbildung des Arztes ist eine Culturfrage …”. Über das Verhältnis von Wissenschaftsanspruch,Bildungsprogramm und Praxis der Medizin

The article shows that the elite, nationalistic and imperial mentality of German medicine in the second half of the nineteenth century was closely connected to its aim to be understodd as a natural science. With this in view leading representatives of German medicine propagated a scientific approach to man and nature instead of the traditional values of humanistic education (“Bildung”). One of the most important consequences of the new scientific ideal in medicine — integration in governmental planning, the change in professionel status of doctors, the increasing tendeny to recognize biologistic ideologies — was the loss of the medical ideal of the ars medica, a subject which has not received sufficient thematic attention. This theme is explored in the third part of the article.