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.     

Ungulates and the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition at Grotte XVI (Dordogne, France)

Grotte XVI (Dordogne, France) contains a rich archaeological sequence that begins during the Mousterian and continues through the Magdalenian and includes Châtelperronian and early Aurignacian assemblages. Analyses of the ungulates from this site show no significant change in skeletal part representation, butchering intensity (as measured by cut mark numbers and placement), degree of bone fragmentation, and intensity of carnivore damage across the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition. Relative taxonomic abundances of ungulates change significantly from the Mousterian to the early Aurignacian, but these changes are consistent with climatic forcing and continue throughout the sequence. Only the Magdalenian ungulate assemblage is clearly distinct from all others when examined in terms of these variables, perhaps because of altered predator/prey ratios on the local landscape. Cave bear relative abundances decline precipitously across the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition; this decline may reflect increased human residence times and/or group sizes during this interval, just as Kurtén observed many years ago.     

Reformation(en) und Wissenschaft(en). Einführung in das Tagungsthema

Based on a brief historiographical survey, the article aims at tracing some intellectual relationships between early modern science and the protestant Reformation (or the various individual reformations underlying it). Besides the mere structural analogies of the two reform movements and their common debt to Renaissance humanism, common elements such as the new reading of texts and the new role of the individual, but also the philosophical link between voluntarism and the notion of natural law, are discussed. However, the ambiguous attitude towards natural knowledge and the wide variety within the European protestant movement ask for a much closer look into the relationships between science and the Reformation than has been hitherto been achieved.     

Nur „Zweite Wahl”︁ oder Die Berufung Adolf Butenandts zum Direktor des KWI für Biochemie

The remarkable career of the nobel laureate Adolf Butenandt in Germany before 1945 and especially after the second world war is well known. But in recent years several publications have questioned his personal behaviour in the Third Reich. But all these articles interpreted Butenandts career and his attitude from our knowledge today about Nazi Germany. From archival sources this article will view on the situation in the 1930s and will show that Butenandt was originally not the first choice of the government for the position of director at the Kaiser‐Wilhelm‐Institute for Biochemistry. Finally it is shown, that Butenandt did knew what was going on behind the scenes, because through his close connections with officers of the Rockefeller Foundation he got several information on the selection.     

General Groves and the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Part II)

Die Entscheidung für den Bau der Atombombe fiel in den Vereinigten Staaten aus der Befürchtung heraus, daß deutsche Wissenschaftler und Ingenieure die (in deutschen Laboratorien gemachte) Entdeckung der Urankernspaltung waffentechnisch verwerten würden. Aber sobald die U.S.A. sich einmal entschieden hatte, den Bau einer Atombombe ernsthaft zu betreiben, entwickelte das Unternehmen eine Eigendynamik. In dem Bestreben, das Projekt zu finanzieren, ohne daß die Öffentlichkeit etwas bemerkt, wurde es dem Army Corps of Engineers übertragen, in dessen beträchtlichem Kriegsetat die Ausgaben versteckt werden konnten. Das Projekt erhielt den Namen Manhattan Engineer District, um den Anschein zu erwecken, es handle sich um die lokale Abteilung irgendeines anderen Pionierkorps – was später abgekürzt wurde zu Manhattan Project –, und General Leslie R. Groves, bekannt dafür, Dinge in die Hand zu nehmen und zu Ende zu führen, wurde die Leitung übertragen. Die Beiträge der Wissenschaftler waren zwar entscheidend, doch hatten sie wenig Verständnis dafür, was erforderlich war, um ihre Labor-Experimente in den Maßstab industrieller Fertigung zu überführen; darin war aber General Groves ein Meister. Auf dem Höhepunkt des Vorhabens im Sommer 1944 beschäftigte das Projekt in großen und kleinen Einrichtungen überall in den U.S.A. und in Kanada über 160000 Menschen; und es kann als Zeichen für die Effektivität des Sicherheitssystems angesehen werden, daß die meisten der am Projekt Arbeitenden nichts über den wahren Zweck ihrer Tätigkeit wußten und daß die meisten Amerikaner erst durch die Meldung des Bombenabwurfs über Hiroshima vom 6. August 1945 eine vage Vorstellung von dem Projekt erhielten. General Groves war nicht nur für die Konstruktion der Bombe verantwortlich, er übernahm auch die Verantwortung für die Planung des Abwurfs der Bomben in Japan, und er gab – was weniger bekannt ist – auch die Befehle, welche die Bomben auf ihren Weg nach Hiroshima und Nagasaki schickten. Er war von Anfang an entschlossen sicherzustellen, daß sowohl die Plutonium-als auch die Uranbombe noch vor dem Kriegsende in japanischen Städten Verwendung fänden.     

Vom Nationalsozialismus vertriebene Wissenschaftler auf dem Markt. Die Arbeitsvermittlung des englischen Academic Assistance Council (SPSL) am Beispiel von Türkeiemigranten

After 1933 many scientists and university teachers were obliged to relinquish their posts in the universities of Germany because of national-socialist laws. Organizations-in-aid like the Academic Assistance Council in Great Britain tried to ‘defend science and learning’ raising funds and finding new openings for the expelled academics. But as immigration laws were tight and jobs were scarce in the host countries the AAC and the other organizations had to select the most qualified from among the applicants for support. – The questions the article tries to answer are: What kind of criteria were applied in this selection? Who were the experts? How were the placements made? How did the applicants react to the decisions? Taking for example the AAC, it examines measures to assist a group of scientists who, having tried to settle down in England, finally emigrated to Turkey.     

Folgen der Emigration deutscher und österreichischer Wissenschaftstheoretiker und Logiker zwischen 1933 und 1945

The paper begins by delimiting the scope of ‘logic’ and ‘philosophy of science’ and goes on to present the biographies and select bibliographies of 36 émigré scholars from Germany and Austria working in these fields. An evaluation of this material, and of data on societies, congresses, lecture series, books and periodicals on logic and philosophy of science, is then undertaken. Against the rich background of activity in the 20s and 30s of our century, there is manifest a rapid decline of high-ranking research in the philosophy of science and (to a lesser degree) in logic in Germany and Austria. Since, with one exception, émigré logicians and philosophers of science did not return after the breakdown of the Third Reich, recovery in these fields has been extremely slow. Pertinent knowledge had to be re-imported, and a satisfactory level has been reached only with the coming of a new generation.     

Zur Geschichte des Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituts für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie. Zur geplanten Veränderung des Instituts in eine Forschungs- und Entwicklungsstätte des Heeres für den Gaskampf und Gasschutz auch in Friedenszeiten 1916 und nach 1933

A Contribution to the History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry: On Projected Changes of the Institute into a Research and Development Center of the Army for Chemical Warfare also in Times of Peace 1916 and after 1933. — The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and Electrochemistry, today named after its first director Fritz-Haber-Institut, was in the first World War a place of research on chemical warfare. Evidences in the Archive for the History of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft show that it was planned during the war to continue research in this area in peacetime. To realize this Fritz Haber proposed to found a special Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. As this could not be accomplished the war ministry founded 6 million marks to establish an extra department in the KWI of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry just before the end of the war. After Germany lost the war these were used for other research areas while work on chemical warfare was carried out elsewhere. When Fritz Haber resigned 1933 because of the race-laws of the nationalsocialists the war ministry in cooperation with the ministery for culture nominated an obliging scientist as director of the institute with the aim to take up again research in the area of chemical warfare despite of the opposition of the president of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft and the ministery of the interior. After that time until the end of the second world war 1945 a good part of the work carried out in the institute was done for the war ministry.