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

Tue Jun 7 13:16:51 CDT 2016

Can't not mention that Liebig and Kekulé were both born in Darmstadt.

On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 1:14 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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