BTZ42: p. 85: Jamf, Darmstadt, Universities, V-2s

[Smoke Teff]

Actually I've got this wrong, Pökler is studying with Jamf in Munich, not
Berlin.

On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 1:06 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> But before then, in the 1910s/20s, post-WWI, pre-WWII, Jamf is working at
> Darmstadt on behavioral psychology. He does some visiting research at
> Harvard, funded by "a slender grant from the National Research Council
> (under a continuing NRC program of psychological study which had begun
> during the World War, when methods were needed for selecting officers and
> classifying draftees)" (p. 85) lest we think it is only in Germany that
> academia's hands are operated by, in service of Their interests. He works
> with one Infant Tyrone.
>
> By the early 1930s (probably much earlier than that), he is back in
> Germany. The 1934 advertising brochure (p. 73) locates him in Berlin. He's
> working for IG in 1939. He's "on the board of directors of the Grössli
> Chemical Corporation as late as 1924."
>
> Would his later corporate, chemical interests preclude him continuing to
> be affiliated with the university in Darmstadt? Wouldn't imagine so, at
> least not necessarily. Wikipedia sort of clumsily says, "a need for a
> separate industry based research educational institution was felt in early
> 1930s." In 1971 this new institution will achieve some independence as the
> Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. So this school is connected not
> only to military interests but to the exact sort of corporate ones that
> Jamf himself is in the middle of in the 1930s.
>
> This, of course, is all due to the insight of "Friedrich August Kekulé von
> Stradonitz, his dream of 1865, the great Dream that revolutionized
> chemistry and made the IG possible." (p. 417). GR-induced thought: yes,
> 1865 would be about the time... The text goes on "So that the right
> material may find its way to the right dreamer, everyone, everything must
> be exactly in place in the pattern." Let's hold onto that maxim.
>
> What was it that would inspire the "fateful change of field" Kekulé makes
> "into chemistry from architecture" (85)? Hearing a lecture from Justus
> von Liebig, the father of organic chemistry, and also the first link
> Pynchon mentions in the "direct chain" of organic chemists that leads to
> Jamf: "Liebig to August Wilhelm von Hofmann, to Herbert Ganister to
> Laszlo Jamf" (164). Go look around a history of what Liebig worked
> on--seems almost innocent in comparison to what comes after Kekulé's
> discovery of the benzene ring.
>
> Weisenburger identifies the episode that line comes from as occurring in
> 1929-30, where Franz Pökler is said to have Jamf as a professor. So he's
> definitely still teaching--though maybe not still at Darmstadt, as
> Leni/Franz are in Berlin here--after his move into organic chemistry,
> synthetics, the private sector.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 12:08 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What biographical/career info about Jamf is known?
>>
>> He's working at Darmstadt in 1920, visiting Harvard, one of the oldest
>> institutions and symbols of power/influence in the New World. This is early
>> in his career, "before he phased into organic chemistry," but if he's
>> visiting Harvard he's gotta be fairly accomplished.
>>
>> As much as (inextricable from) the corporate bleedthrough between these
>> two states who were just at war and soon would be again, universities/the
>> academy are an avenue that permeates the membrane of national borders. Even
>> during the War, nations' taste for scientists, even the other side's
>> scientists, and their insight, intensifies. Information knows no border
>> (nor ethics, and neither do we in pursuit of it). The Word. The supposedly
>> apolitical act of inquiry.
>>
>> But this is all during Wartime. In Peacetime, in 1920, scientists don't
>> need to be kidnapped, smuggled. Jamf travels freely to Harvard, works on
>> the National Research Council's dime, in fact.
>>
>>
>>
>> This might be immaterial, but in clicking around, I find two plausible
>> universities Jamf might have been based out of in Darmstadt:
>>
>> 1) The Technical University of Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt)
>>
>> 2) The Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Darmstadt)
>>
>> Both of them seem to be very important/notable in their own right and
>> seem to have played a big part in the growth and character of the city.
>> Except that, in reading about them, you see that they are really
>> kindred--HD and TUD were originally integrated under the TUD name from that
>> institution's founding in 1877 (it was elevated from a polytechnic school
>> to a university by Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, the year his father died
>> and he inherited his father's title/influence). (Here
>> <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Wappen-HD.png> is a
>> link to the family crest--it has a wheel, a key, six- and eight-pointed
>> stars, a few...sphinxes?, one with a dagger).
>>
>> The university's name is an amalgam of the two that eventually split:
>> Technische Hochschule zu Darmstadt.
>>
>> There is some debate about whether the town is big enough to sustain a
>> university. The matter persists until the school becomes THE FIRST SCHOOL
>> IN THE WORLD to endow a chair in the hot new field of Ee-lectrical
>> Engineering. Which business is about to be booming. The university expands
>> rapidly. In the wake of the industrial revolution, and before WWI, we see
>> that corporate and military interests are driving the academy.
>>
>> Wikipedia has it: "During the two decades before the World War I
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I>, all disciplines of the
>> university underwent diversification and expansion. New disciplines such as
>> Paper Making and Cellulose Chemistry were introduced, and as early as 1913
>> a Chair of Aeronautics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronautics> and
>> Flight Mechanics was set up."
>>
>> And further: "Intense discussions were held on the aim of extending the
>> curriculum <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum> beyond the purely
>> technical education in order to prepare the engineer for his leading role
>> in society. A concrete step in this direction was taken in 1924, when the
>> 'General Faculty', which until then had combined all the non-technical
>> subjects, was divided into a Department of Mathematics and Natural Science
>> and a Department of Cultural Studies and Political Science. Moreover, the
>> measures taken to provide students with knowledge outside their own narrow
>> field of study included the upgrading of Economics and the creation of
>> professorships in Political Science, History of Technology and Sociology."
>>
>> This reminds me of the the source for WvB's epigraph. Also of the notion
>> (do Weber and Brown both mention this?) of the division of labor as a sort
>> of original sin (my words) of the culture.
>>
>>
>> Zoom out for a few notes about Darmstadt. It's "first city in Germany to
>> force Jewish shops to close in early 1933" (wik.). Also one of the
>> earliest sites of US firebombing on Sep. 11, '44. Your classic
>> used-to-be-a-beautiful-city thing. Wikipedia puts it better than I could: "20,000
>> dwellings and one chemical works destroyed and industrial production
>> reduced."
>>
>> I guess this is where G-5 comes in? Of the aftermath of the city's (and
>> thus most of the university's) destruction, Wikipedia says: "The
>> electrical engineering department remained continuously functional, doing
>> work under contract with the U.S. Army to build components of the V-2
>> guidance system. 'But we have to be careful how we word this production
>> order because we don't want the Russians to know that we are cranking up
>> the V-2 system.'"
>>
>> This quote comes from an oral interview given by Helmut Kuerschner, a
>> summary of which can be found here.
>> <http://airforcehistoryindex.org/data/001/070/962.xml> Says Helmut: "WORKED
>> ON GUIDANCE AND CONTROL COMPONENTS, PARTICULARLY ACCELEROMETER, FOR V-2
>> GUIDED MISSILE PROJECT AT PEENEMUNDE, GERMANY."
>>
>> Helmut is offered a job by the government. Eventually relocates to the
>> United States where he works "on the early missile program (later to
>> become NASA) for the U.S. military with other German scientists under
>> Werner Von Braun" (says his wife's obituary). They spend the rest of their
>> days living in the American southwest.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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