Otto Hahn, Max Von Laue, and Science in Postwar Germany

Sime, Ruth L, Sacramento CA

Investigators

Abstract

SES 00-02037 - Ruth Lewin Sime (Independent Scholar) "Otto Hahn, Max von Laue, Science in Postwar Germany" This project focuses on the activities of Otto Hahn (1879-1968) and Max von Laue (1879-1960), two scientists who were prominent in the German scientific community before, during, and after the Third Reich. Beginning in 1919, both men inhabited the same scientific circle in Berlin, both detested the Nazi regime, both emerged from the Third Reich with the credentials of "decent Germans," and both took positions of leadership in reorganizing and rehabilitating science in Germany after the war. Because both men were influential in the postwar period, it is of value to study their actions under the Nazi regime; their scientific work during the war and the way they represented it afterward; their work in the postwar period; and the imprint they left on the German scientific community. Hahn assumed the presidency of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG) (succeeded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft [MPG]) in 1946, shortly after being awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission. As a famous scientist and person who had been upright under the Third Reich, Hahn became a hugely admired public figure in postwar Germany. Laue was also influential in the postwar period, first in reorganizing the Max Planck Institute for Physics, and then as the director of the Fritz Haber Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin; among colleagues in the Allied countries he was regarded as a German of rare courage and integrity. Because the moral authority that was accorded to both Laue and Hahn was based on their opposition to the Nazi regime, it is important to develop a more detailed picture of their actions and behavior in these years: their relationships with other scientists and Jewish emitters, the efforts to help Jews who had stayed; the risks and difficulties they incurred. For this, their correspondence and other papers provide a large and valuable resource. By the end of the war, Hahn and Laue distanced themselves from Nazism. They asserted that German scientific excellence was undiminished, that scientists as a group had not given their support to Hitler, that scientific institutions had retained their independence, and that Germans overall were not responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime. Their views, part of the "forgetting" of the postwar period, damaged their relations with colleagues abroad for a time, but it fostered cohesiveness at home, and may in part explain Hahn's success as president of the MPG. Hahn portrayed the wartime work in his institute as basic research that was unrelated to the war effort. The project examines the work of Hahn's institute and the extent to which it was connected to military research, relying primarily on institutional documents, scientific publications, and unpublished scientific reports. Finally, this project includes an examination of their public legacy: Hahn's influence on the MPG and his enduring image as one of German science's legendary figures; Laue's friendships with great scientists, his memory, and his sense of history.