Koppel Foundation

With these words I depart from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute that was built by the Leopold Koppel Foundation. . . and which under my leadership for 22 years was dedicated to serving humanity in times of peace, and the fatherland in times of war. As far as I can... 

Following changes dealing with secrecy oaths and voting procedures, the Academy held its first discussion of the statutes of the KWKW on 26 October 1916. This also marked the first time that Haber took part in a session of the full Academy (although he had been a member for almost five years). He may have feared that the project would be rejected. But it was not. After talks with the Ministry of Education, the Academy, the KWG, the Koppel Foundation, and the War Ministry on 28 October, and followed by a final edition of the statutes by the Academy on 13 November 1916, Koppel sent his proposal to the new Minister of War, Hermann von Stein. Seven days later, the Ministry of War forwarded the request to the Kaiser, who granted his royal license on 17 December 1916. ... 

A third, later draft. Version C, which partially incorporated the handwritten marginal notes that Schmidt-Ott had made in Version B, is in Arch.MPG, I A 1-1789, 8-10. This Version C was discussed on 18 October 1916 by representatives of the Education Ministry, the Prussian Academy, the KWG, and the Koppel Foundation, with officers of the War Ministry, as shown by the handwritten revisions, which as a rule accord with the final draft (Version D, in Arch.MPG, I A-1789, 18v-20 [undated copy]). The very last revisions were settled on by the full Academy in its meeting on November 2, 1916 and were worked into the final version (in BerUn-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Akademiearchiv [henceforth BBAWA], II - XI - 159, 15). 

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... 

By October of 1916, there were five departments dedicated to gas warfare research. In addition to those already mentioned, Herbert Freundlich headed a department dedicated to the supervision and testing of mask filters. That autumn, roughly one year into its expansion, the Institute employed a scientific staff of 77 chemists, pharmacists and engineers, as well as a support staff numbering over 100. Up to that point, the Institute officially remained under the auspices of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and the Koppel Foundation, which lodged muted complaints against the redirection of the Institute. 

In order to support a large number of projects, a foundation would need much more capital than Schmidt s proposed endowment of 250,000 marks At an interest rate of 5%, this would yield only 12,500 marks per year. However, since neither the government nor the KWG would add significantly to an endowment, money would have to be found another way. A time-consuming public fund drive was out of the question. In the end, Schmidt-Ott and Haber must have hit upon the idea not to solicit anonymous donors known to Schmidt, with total pledges of 250,000 marks, but rather to ask the Jewish banker and industrialist, Leopold Koppel. Koppel had endowed, among other things, Haber s KWI for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. 

Association explicitly for the construction of an institute for chemistry and an endowment from the Berlin banker Leopold Koppel for the foundation of an institute for physical chemistry and electrochemistry under the directorship of Fritz Haber. 

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