BTZ42: p. 85: Jamf, Darmstadt, Universities, V-2s
Kai Frederik Lorentzen
lorentzen at hotmail.de
Wed Jun 8 02:57:22 CDT 2016
> "He knows now for sure that Zwitter the mad Nazi scientist is one of
them ... <
For those who don't know this:
"Zwitter" is the German word for hermaphrodite.
On 07.06.2016 21:03, Smoke Teff wrote:
> Searching the text for other mentions of Darmstadt, the next one I
> find comes on p. 313-4 when Slothrop, being chased through the
> Mittelwerke by Marvy et al, gets help from "an elderly man in a tweed
> suit, with white, water-buffalo mustaches." This is Glimpf.
>
> I have to say I've always had Jamf in my head in the episode with
> Glimpf. If for no other reason than the sonic similarities in their
> names. But cf this shit: "He introduces himself as Glimpf, Professor
> of Mathematics of the Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt, Scientific
> Advisor to the Allied Military Government." A pretty prestigious post.
> Slothrop's first instinct is to think, "I am in the hands of a raving
> maniac."
>
> Attempting to get their pursuers' attention, Glimpf advises Slothrop
> to "say something provocative." Slothrop comes up with three insults
> (though only shouts two of them).
>
> Back on p. 85, we find that traces of Jamf's presence have found their
> way into--presumably--the early 30s slang of Cambridge, Mass, as the
> chapter opens with three entries in /Neil Nosepicker's Book of 50,000
> Insults/.
>
> Hey, did Jamf ever extinguish that Infant Tyrone's old conditioned
> hardon response? Still fleeing Marvy on p. 316, Glimpf (I think)
> launches the phosphorus flare. "Slothrop feels a terrible /familiarity
> /here, a center he has been skirting, avoiding as long as he can
> remember--never has he been as close as now to the true momentum of
> his time: faces and facts that have crowded his indenture fo the
> Rocket, camouflage and distraction fall away for the white moment, the
> vain and blind tugging at his sleeves /it's important...please...look
> at us.../but it's already too late, it's only wind, only /g /loads,
> and the blood of his eyes has begun to touch the whiteness back to
> ivory, to brushings of gold and a network of edges to the broken
> rock...and the hand that lifted him away sets him back in the
> Mittelwerke--"
>
> Glimpf has a friend--or an acquaintance about whom he has mixed
> feelings--named Zwitter, from the T.H. in Munich (where Pökler studied
> under Jamf).
>
> p. 319: "Who are these people? What's happened to the apples in old
> Glimpf's cheeks? What's a Nazi guidance expert doing this side of the
> fence at Garmisch, with his lab intact?"
>
> And then that episode closes with this number:
>
> OH...thur's...
> Nazis in the woodwork,
> Fascists in the walls,
> Little Japs with bucktooth grins
> A-gonna grab yew bah th' balls.
> Whin this war is over,
> How happy Ah will be,
> Gearin' up fer thim Rooskies
> And Go-round Number Three....
>
>
>
> By p. 337 Slothrop isn't so affectionate for Glimpf anymore: "He knows
> now for sure that Zwitter the mad Nazi scientist is one of them. And
> that kindly old Professor Glimpf was only waiting down int he
> Mittelwerke to pick up Slotherop if he showed. Jesus."
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 1:16 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com
> <mailto:smoketeff at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> 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 arounda
> 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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