The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (German: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften) was a German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911. Its functions were taken over by the Max Planck Society. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society was an umbrella organisation for many institutes, testing stations, and research units created under its authority.
Contents
History
Constitution
The Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG) was founded in 1911 as a research institution outside the university system in order to advance the interests of German state and capital through the development of scientific knowledge relevant to industrial and military application. The inaugural meeting was held on 11 January 1911. The constituent institutes were established in succession and placed under the guidance of prominent directors, whose ranks included the physicists and chemists Walther Bothe, Peter Debye, Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber and Otto Hahn; a board of trustees also provided guidance.
Funding came from both business and government to reduce KWG's dependence on either source. It was also obtained from individuals, from the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Association of German Science), and foreign sources.
Outside Germany, the Rockefeller Foundation granted students worldwide one-year study stipends for whichever institute they chose. Some studied in Germany, in contrast to the German universities, with their formal independence from state administration, the institutions of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft had no obligation to teach students.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its research institutes were involved in weapons research, experimentation and production in both the First World War and the Second World War. During World War I, the group, and in particular Fritz Haber, was responsible for introducing the use of poison gas as a weapon. This was in direct violation of established international law.
Nazi era and World War II
The Kaiser Wilhelm Society sacked its Jewish employees following the enactment of the Nazi Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service in the spring of 1933. Fritz Haber was the only institute director who resigned to protest the instructions issued by the general secretary of the KWG, Friedrich Glum. The Jewish directors were retained for several more years.
After the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws in the autumn of 1935, the KWG President Max Planck convinced the Rockefeller Foundation not to withdraw its funding for the construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (KWIP) in Berlin. He also successfully lobbied the Nazi government through his industrial connections to commit to financing KWIP's future operations.
On 29 May 1937, Max Planck handed over the KWG presidency to the IG Farben founder and chairman Carl Bosch, based on the Society's decision to strengthen its industry ties. He had announced this step in early 1936.
In October 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, the Heereswaffenamt (HWA) requisitioned the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics for military use and forced its Dutch director Peter Debye, who refused to change his citizenship, onto paid leave in the United States. Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn were appointed to oversee the economic and military application of research into nuclear fission under the new head, Kurt Diebner.
In early February 1942, the KWG President Albert Vögler accepted to take back the nuclear power research at KWIP from the HWA at a meeting with the HWA head Wilhelm von Leeb and the HWA physicist Erich Schumann, but following a series of lectures that advertised the field the Reich Minister of Science Bernhard Rust assigned it to his Reich Research Council instead. As a result, the KWG "had changed from being a dependent research subsidy for the army to being even more dependent under the auspices of the Reich Research Council". However, after the appointment of Heisenberg as director of KWIP over Bothe, the Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer's support for Heisenberg improved the organisation's standing and allowed it to start building an underground facility for trials with the uranium machine. In mid-1942, Vögler, who was the chairman of Vereinigte Stahlwerke, a member of the Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft and the unofficial scientific advisor to Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring, persuaded Speer to transfer the Reich Research Council from Rust's ministry to Göring as the supreme commander of the Luftwaffe.
Post-war
By the end of the Second World War, the KWG and its institutes had lost their central location in Berlin and were operating in other locations. The KWG was operating out of its Aerodynamics Testing Station in Göttingen. Albert Vögler, the president of the KWG, committed suicide on 14 April 1945. Thereupon, Ernst Telschow assumed the duties until Max Planck could be brought from Magdeburg to Göttingen, which was in the British zone of the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany. Planck assumed the duties on 16 May until a president could be elected. Otto Hahn was selected by directors to be president, but there were a number of difficulties to be overcome. Hahn, being related to nuclear research had been captured by the allied forces of Operation Alsos, and he was still interned at Farm Hall in Britain, under Operation Epsilon. At first, Hahn was reluctant to accept the post, but others prevailed upon him to accept it. Hahn took over the presidency three months after being released and returned to Germany. However, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) passed a resolution to dissolve the KWG on 11 July 1946.
Meanwhile, members of the British occupation forces, specifically in the Research Branch of the OMGUS, saw the society in a more favourable light and tried to dissuade the Americans from taking such action. The physicist Howard Percy Robertson was director of the department for science in the British Zone; he had a National Research Council Fellowship in the 1920s to study at the Georg August University of Göttingen and LMU Munich. Also, Colonel Bertie Blount was on the staff of the British Research Branch, and he had received his doctorate at Göttingen under Walther Borsche. Among other things, Bertie suggested to Hahn to write to Sir Henry Hallett Dale, who had been the president of the Royal Society, which he did. While in Britain, Bertie also spoke with Dale, who came up with a suggestion. Dale believed that it was only the name which conjured up a pejorative picture and suggested that the society be renamed the Max Planck Gesellschaft. On 11 September 1946, the Max Planck Gesellschaft was founded in the British Zone only. The second founding took place on 26 February 1948 for both the American and British occupation zones. The physicists Max von Laue and Walther Gerlach were also instrumental in establishing the society across the allied zones, including the French zone.
Following the end of the war, a portion of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics' archive relating to the Nazi German nuclear programme was removed to the Soviet Union. The documents were returned to the Max Planck Society in the 1990s with help from the historian Rainer Karlsch.
Presidents
Adolf von Harnack (1911–1930)
Max Planck (1930–1937, 16 May 1945 – 31 March 1946)
Carl Bosch (1937–1940)
Albert Vögler (1941–1945)
Otto Hahn (1 April 1946 – 10 September 1946 in the British Occupation Zone)
Institutes, testing stations and units
Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes
KWI for Animal Breeding Research, founded in Dummerstorf. Transformed into a research institute of the (East)-German Academy of Sciences.
KWI of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, founded 1926 in Berlin-Dahlem.
KWI for Bast Fibre Research, founded 1938 in Sorau. It was moved to Mährisch Schönberg in 1941 and to Bielefeld in 1946. After its incorporation into the Max Planck Society in 1948 and two further relocations to Westheim and Niedermarsberg in 1951 it was incorporated into the Max Planck Institute for Breeding Research and moved to Köln-Vogelsang. The Institute was closed down in 1957. Its first director was Ernst Schilling 1938–1945 and 1948–1951.
KWI for Biology, founded 1912 in Berlin and moved to Tübingen in 1943. It was then the Max Planck Institute for Biology until 2005.
KWI for Biochemistry, founded 1912. Nowadays, there exists the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, but there is no straight relation between the institutes.
KWI for Biophysics, formerly the Institut für Physikalische Grundlagen der Medizin of Friedrich Dessauer was incorporated into the KWG by Boris Rajewsky in 1937. The Institute is located in Frankfurt am Main. It is now the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics.
KWI for Brain Research, founded 1914 in Berlin by Oskar Vogt. It is now the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.
KWI for Cell Physiology, founded 1930 in Dahlem, Berlin by Otto Heinrich Warburg and the Rockefeller Foundation.
KWI for Chemistry, founded 1911 in Dahlem. It is now the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, also known as the Otto Hahn Institute.
KWI for Coal Research Institute of the KWG, founded 1912 in Mülheim. It is now the Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung.
Kaiser Wilhelm Society organisations
Aerodynamic Testing Station (Göttingen e. V.) of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. The testing unit Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA) was formed in 1925 along with the KWI of Flow (Fluid Dynamics) Research. In 1937, it became the testing station of the KWG.
Biological Station Lunz of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society
German Entomological Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society
Hydrobiological Station of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society
Institute for Agricultural Work Studies in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society
Research Unit "D" in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society
Rossitten Bird Station of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, founded 1901 in Rossitten and integrated into the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in 1921. The ornithological station was ceased at the end of the Second World War, but work continues at the ornithological station Radolfzell which is part of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology.
Silesian Coal Research Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, in Breslau.
Institutions outside Germany
Bibliotheca Hertziana, founded 1913 in Rome. It is now the Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute of Art History in Rome.
German-Bulgarian Institute for Agricultural Science founded in 1940 in Sofia.
German-Greek Institute for Biology in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society founded in 1940 in Athens.
German-Italian Institute for Marine Biology at Rovigno, Italy.
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cultivated Plant Research founded in 1940 in Vienna, Austria.
Other
Institute for the Science of Agricultural Work—founded in 1940 in Breslau.
Institute for Theoretical Physics
Research Unit for Virus Research of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology