Kaiser Wilhelm Society

Although the imperial government wanted scientists to help Germany become economically competitive, it did not want to finance institutes. In fact, a few days before the inauguration of the first Kaiser Wilhelm Society institute, it was still unfunded. At the last minute, Leopold Koppel, chair of the German Gaslight Company, offered to finance a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry with two conditions the Kaiser must thank him publicly, and Fritz Haber must be the institute s director. 

Although Jews or former Jews accounted for only 1 percent of Germany s population, Jewish bankers were soon underwriting one-fifth of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes. Jews gravitated to new fields and institutions where established barriers did not prevent them from getting... 

Haber was slow to grasp the implications of the Nazis rise to power. As Germans boycotted Jewish businesses and Hitler s brownshirts removed Jewish students from university libraries and laboratories, the Nazis passed a law on April 7, 1933, to cleanse the civil service and universities of Jews. By this time, Haber s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was financed by the government and its employees were treated as civil functionaries subject to the new law. Haber himself was exempt because of war work and seniority. Eager for a chemical warfare center, Nazi authorities singled out Haber s institute and ordered him to fire its Jews. At the same time, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society told Haber to somehow keep his important senior scientists. He had until May 2 to act. 

By the time Haber died, Otto Hahn, acting as provisional director of his institute, had carried out the orders that Haber had resigned over. A Nazi Party member became the institute s director and, in the subsequent Nazi takeover, no other institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society suffered as severely as Haber s. The military planned to make the institute a center for poison gas research, and former staff members were not needed. 

On January 29, 1935, the anniversary of Haber s death, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society held a memorial service. The Nazis forbade government and university employees from attending, so many officials sent their wives instead. In an audience of almost 500 women sat a few men, including Carl Bosch. It was the closest thing to a public protest that scientists as a group staged during the Third Reich. 

Kaiser Wilhelm Society. History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. hl lp //www. fhi-berlin.mpg.de/history/found.html. Source for fact that Nazis politicized Haber s institute most of all society institutes. 

The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences (MPS) is an independent, non-profit research organization. It was established on February 26, 1948, as the successor organization of the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Max Planck Institutes conduct basic research in service to the general public in the areas of natural science, social science and the arts and humanities. 

Following the collapse of the Third Reich, for German science, as for many sectors of public life, the need for a new start was essential. The state of Germany s institutions at the end of the war corresponded to the general chaos accompanying the defeat. The various institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWS) originally founded in 1911, the predecessor of the Max Planck Society, were damaged or housed provisionally at different evacuation sites. The years of... 

Berlin-Buch has a long tradition as a place for medical science, starting with the foundation of the center at the turn of the century which temporarily comprised hospitals with over 5000 beds. In 1928 the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society established an Institute for Brain Research on what nowadays forms the Max Delbriick Center s (MDC) campus. 

Six weeks later, with the emperor in attendance, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Sciences rose into life, inflated with the hot air of optimism, ambition, and pride. It represented a unique partnership of imperial sponsorship and private wealth. Private money built the institutes and paid most of their bills, but Prussia paid the salary of each institute director. At the first meeting of the society s governing council, chemist Emil Fischer proclaimed science the true land of unlimited possibilities. When Fischer mentioned, as one example of science s gifts, the capture of nitrogen fertilizer from the air, he saw the emperor nod his head in agreement. 

Less than a week later, Haber s forebodings became reality. The government unveiled a law ordering the removal within six months of all Jews from the German civil service, except for those Jews who d been soldiers in World War I. The law covered every German university professor and nearly every scientist at the institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. 

Haber, in an act of human decency, resisted. He felt that less prominent scientists, being more vulnerable, deserved more protection, not less. Over the opposition of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society s general secretary, Haber chose to dismiss the institute s two most renowned scientists, Herbert Freundlich and Michael Polanyi. These were the scientists likely to have the greatest success finding positions abroad. (Polanyi already had an offer waiting from the University of Manchester, and Freundlich quickly landed a position at University College in London.)... 

Haber s resignation was not immediately effective. He gave himself and his employers five months, until October 1, 1933, to find a successor. Max Planck, president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, tried to reverse Haber s decision. For several weeks Planck shuttled between various government offices, hoping to work out a... 

Back in Berlin, Haber felt the walls closing in. Already, officials of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were being pressured to remove Haber from his villa. Haber still couldn t decide on his next step. The old man is completely kaputt, wrote one of his young associates, the Jewish-Hungarian scientist Ladislaus Farkas. (Farkas would eventually find a new home in Palestine.)... 

Several of Haber s friends went to Max Planck, president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, and proposed that the society plan a memorial service in Haber s honor. Planck, never a man for open confrontation, was caught between two opposing loyalties—to his friends and to his government. He hesitated, and did nothing for almost a year. Eventually, his better instincts won out. He began preparations for a memorial service to be held on January 29, 1935, tlie first anniversary of Haber s death. 

Three days later, under a cold gray winter sky, a crowd gathered in Dahlem. They stepped across cobblestones dusted with wet snow toward the Harnack House, clubhouse and meeting hall for the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. 

FIGURE 9.14 Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (1858-1947). Planck s quantum theory, proposed in 1900, marks the beginning of modern science. Trained as a thermodynamicist, he based his theory on thermodynamic arguments. It is said that he had some misgivings about the truth of his own ideas until experimental evidence was found in support of them. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed the Max Planck Institute in his honor in 1930 and is still a major institution in Germany. He received the Nobel Prize in 1918. 

Fig. 1.2. Adolf Harnack (1851-1930)in the official robes of the President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society.

The resulting charter established first and foremost the predominance of the Institute Director, anticipating the so-called Harnack Principle, which would become one of the guiding principles of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. This principle stipulated that the Society chooses an (outstanding) scholar and builds an institute around him [sic]. The charter of Haber s institute read such that the director had sole authority to appoint scientific coworkers and accept guest researchers, independent of any representatives of the Koppel Foundation, donors to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society or relevant political authorities. Furthermore, the charter gave the director broad authority to decide questions concerning the use of the Institute s endowment and the installation of apparatus, and it deciared him... 

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