Article ID: CBB000641858

The Politics of Memory: Otto Hahn and the Third Reich (2006)

unapi

As President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its successor, the Max Planck Society, from 1946 until 1960, Otto Hahn (1879--1968) sought to portray science under the Third Reich as a purely intellectual endeavor untainted by National Socialism. I outline Hahn's activities from 1933 into the postwar years, focusing on the contrast between his personal stance during the National Socialist period, when he distinguished himself as an upright non-Nazi, and his postwar attitude, which was characterized by suppression and denial of Germany's recent past. Particular examples include Hahn's efforts to help Jewish friends; his testimony for colleagues involved in denazification and on trial in Nuremberg; his postwar relationships with émigré colleagues, including Lise Meitner; and his misrepresentation of his wartime work in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Keywords. Otto Hahn - Lise Meitner - Fritz Haber - Max von Laue - Max Planck - Ernst Telschow - Fritz Paneth - Richard Willstätter - Philipp Hoernes - Wilhelm Traube - Maria Rausch von Traubenberg - Otto Meyerhof - Friedrich Hermann Rein - Stefanie Horovitz - nuclear fission - Nobel Prizes - Heinrich Hörlein - Ernst von Weizsäcker - Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker - Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry - Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry - Kaiser Wilhelm Society - German fission project - Werner Heisenberg - Gottfried von Droste - Max Planck Society

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Description On “Hahn's activities from 1933 into the postwar years, focusing on the contrast between his personal stance during the National Socialist period... and his postwar attitude.” (from the abstract)


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Authors & Contributors
Wolff, Stefan L.
Walker, Mark
Sime, Ruth Lewin
Hossfeld, Uwe
Dahn, Ryan
Yruma, Jeris Stueland
Concepts
National Socialism
Science and war; science and the military
Science and politics
Physics
World War II
Societies; institutions; academies
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
19th century
Places
Germany
West Germany
Switzerland
Soviet Union
Institutions
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie
Deutsche Museum
Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG)
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
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