6. November 2024
Neue Publikation: Lemberg, Jason, Stiftung – Wissenschaft – Krieg. Naturwissenschaften an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main im Nationalsozialismus, Göttingen, 2024.
Weitere Informationen: Fritz Bauer Institut
Weitere Informationen: Wallstein Verlag
28. Oktober 2024
Ankündigung: 18. Dezember 2024: Vortrag im Rahmen des Kolloquium Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung des Interdisziplinären Zentrums für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung, Bergische Universität Wuppertal. (Programm)
10. Oktober 2024
Ankündigung: 25. Oktober 2024: Vortrag auf der III Jornada Académica InternALE (COIL Seminar) „Retos actuales de la investigación argentina y de la investigación sobre Argentina“, Wuppertal/La Plata (Hybrid).
Title: „Big Science in La Plata? Hans-Joachim Schumacher (1904-1985) between Politics and Military“
15. Juli 2024
Ankündigung: 6. September 2024: Vortrag auf der Tagung der Gesellschaft für Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte „Die Universität der Dinge. Zur materiellen Kultur von Hochschule und Wissenschaft vom Mittelalter bis zur Spätmoderne“, 4. bis 7. September 2024, Göttingen.
Titel: „Erwerben, Ergänzen, Evakuieren: Eine Inventargeschichte der Kriegsforschung am Beispiel der Universität Frankfurt am Main 1933-1945“
21. Mai 2024
Neue Publikation: Lemberg, Jason, Warfare Research and the Two Careers of Hans-Joachim Schumacher. In: Erker, Linda, Rein, Raanan (Hg.), Nazis and Nazi Sympathizers in Latin America after 1945, Leiden, Boston, 2024, 209-232.
Weitere Informationen:
“Linda Erker/Raanan Rein (eds.)
Aside from the prominent perpetrators such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele or Klaus Barbie, there were numerous other cases of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers from Germany and Austria who ended up in Latin America after 1945. Their life trajectories, professional activities, and contacts to local elites in their new homes have hardly been subject to systematic research to date. Their new lives in Latin America, their careers e.g. as diplomats, secret service agents or scientists are therefore a main focus of this volume. The biographies of these people and their networks are woven into the larger political, social, and scientic contexts of postwar Europe and Latin America, especially in the early Cold War period.
With contributions from: Christian Cwik, Linda Erker, Martin Finkenberger, Kinga Frojimovics, Jutta Fuchshuber, Gustavo Guzmán, Jason Lemberg, Raanan Rein, Holger M. Meding, Ursula Prutsch, Philippe Sands, Andreas Schrabauer, Daniel Stahl, Marianne Windsperger
Joint Publication: Brill and Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)
The book is based on contributions and discussions from the international conference about “Nazis and Nazi Sympathizers in South America” in spring 2022, a cooperation between the Department for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). The book was supported by the VWI and the Faculty of History and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna.
Linda Erker/Raanan Rein (eds.), Nazis and Nazi Sympathizers in Latin America after 1945, Jewish Latin America, Vol. 16, Brill, Leiden/Bosten: 2024, 293 pages, ISBN: 978-90-04-69929-8.”
16. Februar 2024
Ankündigung: 19. April 2024: Vortrag auf dem Workshop „International Friendship Within and Beyond the Iron Curtain“, 18. und 19. April 2024, Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino/Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana
Title: Foreign Currency for a Glass of Munich Beer: Contact and Exchange between Mathematicians and Mechanics from Socialist Countries and the FRG
Abstract: Personal contact and exchange. The joy of seeing each other again. Shared experiences. These and similar emotions are part of scientific networks. They appear again and again as motives in the correspondence of the heads of the Society for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, especially in connection with the annual conference organization. The challenges, obstacles and disappointments that arose in this respect were particularly evident during the Cold War. This is of particular relevance for a Society whose leadership and membership were largely made up of representatives from both German states.
The silence of colleagues from the GDR was seemingly forced upon them. This was never quite clear in the centers of applied mathematics and mechanics in the FDR and a cause for uncertainty and frustration. While attempts to establish contacts were never abandoned, the Society seems to have paid particular attention to other socialist countries in what became a kind of evasive internationalization: The number of members from these states increased while members from the GDR left the Society. Encouraging and welcoming invitations were sent to young scientists from the Eastern Bloc states like ČSSR, USSR and Yugoslavia – often enough together with money to ensure their participation.
But what approaches and strategies did mathematicians and mechanics use in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s to get in touch with each other? Descriptions of personal contacts and exchanges with researchers in (internal) conference reports and in the related correspondence will be used to outline the experience of alienation and to find out more about the related assumptions, explanations and hopes involved. Special attention will be paid to the question of friendship: What was the effect of long-term relationships and shared experiences? And what about the advice to take enough foreign currency for a Munich beer?
6. Februar 2024
Ankündigung: 21. Februar 2024: Vortrag auf dem Ruhr-Wupper-Forum, Bochum.
Titel: „Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik: Zwei Wissensfelder und ihre Organisation ca. 1920-1970“
12. Jänner 2024
Ankündigung: 19. März 2024: Vortrag auf der 94. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik (GAMM), 18. bis 22. März 2024, Magdeburg.
Title: „The fruit trees were in full bloom and the weather allowed coffee to be taken outdoors.“ New Perspectives on the History of the Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM) 1920-1970
Abstract: When Friedrich Adolf Willers (1883-1959), the long-standing editor of the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (ZAMM), enjoyed the spring weather in Darmstadt in 1950, he also expressed his satisfaction of what appeared to be the first meeting of a unified GAMM after a devastating war. The society had been founded in 1922 to represent the interests of applied mathematics and mechanics and as a forum for exchange and it had managed to position itself as a science policy player both during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. After the Second World War, however, its continued existence seemed to be in serious jeopardy and the 1950 expression of Willers of the “GAMM in its old form” proved to be deceptive.
The precarious unity of a society that was now spread across four occupation zones and found its counterpart in the open question of the political constitution of Germany serves as the starting point for a new examination of the history of a society in three political systems. For this purpose, new, previously unused source material from several archives will be analyzed. This will be done in two steps: First, a general outline of the history of the society since its beginnings will provide information, locate central actors in their historical context and ask for their science political interests and possibilities. This will be followed by an in-depth look at thematic examples. Particular attention will be paid to the international orientation of the society.
This is a new research project, which is currently set up and which is supported by GAMM.
12. Jänner 2024
Ankündigung: 19. Jänner 2024: Vortrag im Sociology of Science Seminar (Social Studies of Science and Technology, TU Berlin).
Title: Private Money and the Primacy of War: The Natural Sciences at the University of Frankfurt 1933-1945
Abstract: What significance does the way we finance research have for the possibilities and results of science? How does the militarization of a society affect research? These questions will be discussed using the example of the University of Frankfurt. This institution was founded in 1914 with the help of private money as a foundation with special governing bodies. It brought together representatives from economics, politics and science. What was the significance and function of this university organization for science?
The history of the University of Frankfurt has long been written as the history of a rejection. According to this, the university was brought into line with the other universities in Prussia by the National Socialists and lost its characteristics as a foundation. In my presentation, I want to show that the foundation’s potentials were recognized and used according to the rules of a “demonstrative mobilization”. Following the related debate in the History of Science, I show that the conflicts, frictions and misunderstandings that arose in the process did not ultimately stand in the way of efficient use of these potentials. This ultimately promoted the strength and staying power of the Nazi dictatorship in the context of what Rüdiger Hachtmann calls the “primacy of bellicism”.