Mathematicians during the Third Reich and World War II
This is an momentarly edited page for the new Version of Mathematicians during the Third Reich
Prof. Thomas Huckle
Institut für Informatik
TU München
huckle@in.tum.de
The Third Reich changed the world it inflected many people.
A lot of Science was done for the war, many people worked for the war on both sides, but there were also people who tried to stand neutral and avoided their work would be spoiled for war reasons.
In the following it's a short summary on mathematicans, who fled, hid, died, were imprisoned or even worked for the war parties.
Mathematicans
Died
Berwald, Ludwig: Dismissed 1939 in Prague; Deportation by Gestapo to Lodz where he died in April 1942.
Blumenthal, Otto: dismissed 1939 from Aachen and - for a short while - kept in "protective custody". Editor of 'Mathematische Annalen' until 1938. In 1939 he went to Holland. When the Netherlands had fallen, he refused the help of Dutch friends and was deported to Theresienstadt where he died 1944.
Cavailles, Jean: Member of the resistance. Killed by the Gestapo 1944.
Dickstein, Samuel: Died in the bombings of Warsaw 1939.
Epstein, Paul: Frankfurt 1919 until 1935, suicide after summon from Gestapo August 1939.
Froehlich, Walter: In 1939 dismissed in Prague, 1941 deported to Lodz and died there 1942.
Hartog, Fritz: Committed suicide 1943 in Munich.
Hausdorff, Felix: As Paul Mongre he published also poems and theater plays. He had to retire 1935 from his chair in Bonn. In 1941 he was scheduled to go to an internment camp but managed to avoid being sent. However by 1942 he could no longer avoid being sent to the internment camp and, together with his wife and his wife's sister, he committed suicide.
Pick, Georg: Retired in Prague 1929. He was deported to Theresienstadt in 1940 and died there in July 1942.
Remak, Robert: Arrested in the Kristallnacht Nov. 9-10 1938 and put into Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After 8 weeks released and went to Amsterdam. 1942 again arrested by German forces occupying Amsterdam and taken to Auschwitz where he died.
Saks, Stanislaw: 1942 killed by Gestapo in Warsaw.
Schauder, Juliusz Pawel: Killed by Gestapo 1943 in Poland.
Tauber, Alfred: died in Theresienstadt 1942
Imprisoned
Germany
Balas, Egon: Underground resistance fighter in Hungary; imprisonment, torture, escape and hiding, after WW2 he was also imprisoned by the Stalinistic Regime.
Banach, Stefan: In Lwów he was in good terms with Russian occupation troops 1939. He returned from Kiev to Lwów after German invasion of Russia. He had to feed lice one hour a day with his blood in the institute of Prof. Weigl. In this institute Prof. Weigl produced anti-typhus vaccine. The 'feeders' like Banach had the remaining time left for organizing the underground University courses. In July 1944 the Russain troops retook Lwów. He died 1945 of lung cancer.
Borsuk, Karol: imprisoned in Poland
Caccioppoli, Renato: In May 1938 Hitler was visiting Naples with Mussolini: Caccioppoli, who had already shown his opposition to fascism, convinced an open-air restaurant orchestra to play La Marseillaise, and made a speech against Italian and German dictators. He was arrested and he should have been tried by a special political court instituted by the fascists against their opponents, but he managed to be declared mad and to be eventually sent to an asylum.
Funk, Paul: Dismissed 1939 in Prague, deported to Theresienstadt 1944, survived.
Grell, Heinrich:
In his lectures on algebra he stressed the beauty of Emmy Noether's theories. he was arrested, kept in conentration camps for months. From 1939 he worked as a scientist for Messerschmitt.
Hellinger, Ernst: Uni Frankfurt 1914, 1936 forced to retire, 13.Nov. 1938 put into concentration camp Dachau for six weeks, emmigration to USA Febr. 1939, Northwestern Uni Evanston, 1949 Illinois Institute of Technology, Nov. 1949 died.
Herzstark, Curt: Developed a portable calculator (the Curta Calculator); imprisoned from 1943 - 45 in KZ Buchenwald, where he worked on his calculator.
Kaluznin, Lev: 1941 arrested in France, 1942 to concentration camp Wahlsburg. 1945 return to Paris.
Marczewski, Edward: near the end of the war he was captured and sent to a labour camp in Wroclaw.
Mohr, Ernst: Sentenced to death, but survived.
Pinl, Max: Student boycott of his lecture on relativity mathematics, arrest by Gestapo 1939, six months inprisonment "on remand". From 1940 theoretical work in industry and at Brunswick aviation research institute.
Renyi, Alfred: In 1944 he was forced to a Fascist Labour Camp but somehow managed to escape. He obtained false papers and hid for six months avoiding capture. During this time his parents were held prisoners in the Budapest ghetto. Alfred rescued them with an extreme act of bravery: He got hold of a soldier's uniform, walked into the ghetto, and marched his parents out.
Schwarz, Stefan: Fled from Prague to Slovakia 1939; November 1944 he was betrayed to the SS, arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen, later to Buchenwald. In April 1945, when Schwarz was near death, Buchenwald camp was liberated and his life was saved.
Turan, Paul: spent 32 months in a Nazi labour camp from 1941 to 1944 in Hungary.
Wazewski, Tadeusz: Spent two years in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Weil, Andre: He was a conscentious objector and so wished to avoid military service. He fled to Finland as soon as war was declared. He was sent from Finland back to France where he was put in prison. His sister Simone Weil was a leading figure in the French Resistance. Having used the army as a reason to get out of prison, Weil had no intention of serving any longer than he possibly could. As soon as the chance to escape to the United States came, he took it at once.
Kazimierz, Zarankiewicz: He paid dearly for teaching in the underground university for in 1944 he was sent to a labour camp in Germany. He survived this experience and returned to Warsaw at the end of the war in 1945.
Russia
Gnedenko, Boris: In 1937 he was conscripted into the Red Army on 1 December. He was sent to Bryansk but on 5 December he was arrested. He had been denounced by one of the members of the Mathematics Department who had been with him on the summer trip. Gnedenko was imprisoned with 120 other prisoners in a cell built for six people and was constantly interrogated about statements he had made on the summer trip: confirm that Kolmogorov was the ringleader of a group of "enemies of the people" centred in the mathematics department. Without warning he was released after six months.
Krawtchouk, Mykhailo: In 1937 Krawtchouk was accused of being a Polish spy and also a bourgeois nationalist. He was arrested, tried and sentenced to twenty years in prison and five years in exile. He died at the age of 49 in Kolyma, one of the Labour Camps set up by the Gulag.
Noether, Fritz: In 1934 retired in Breslau, went to Tomsk, USSR. In 1937 he was arrested. He was not heard of again. See also here
Zeckendorf, Edouard: 1940 Zeckendorf was interned as a prisoner of war until 1945.
England
Hirsch, Kurt: Emigration with jewish wife to England; POW in England as an enemy alien ia a camp on the sle of Man working a as a cook; soon released and returned to Leicester.
Mahler, Kurt: Emigration, spent three months as "an enemy alien" in the camp on the Isle of Man.
Neumann, Bernhard:, see also the interview 1932 Uni Berlin, emigration to England 1933, 1935 degree from Cambridge, unemployed until 1937, lectureship in Cardiff, 1939 briefly interned as an enemy alien, 1940 released, joined the Inteliigence Chorps. 1946 lecturer in Hall; 1948 Manchester. Married to Hanna Neumann (maiden name Caemmerer).
Hidden
Emigration
Non-Emigrants
Near Nazi
German Maths and the "Deutsche Mathematik Vereinigung
Bierbach, Ludwig Georg Elias Moses Developed a 'German' style in mathematics as opposite to the 'Jewish' style.
Blaschke Wilhelm seduced by the Nazi ideas he attacked Neugebauer
German Universities during the "Third Reich"
Berlin
List of Professors During 1810 to 1945
History of the Berlin University
University of Berlin under the Swastika
Terror and Exile and a Letter About it by Michael Golomb
Bonn
Seizing the Power in the Provinze
Frankfurt
Goettingen
Heidelberg
Munich
Series of Lectures of the NS Time
Vienna
Prague
Further Informations
About the Education system in the "Third Reich"
School work mixed with propaganda
Overview over school during the "Third Reich"
Ideology and Propaganda in school
General Information in the Web
University St. Andrews, Scotland, History of Mathematics archive
Lebensdaten beruehmter Mathematiker/innen, Uni Freiberg
The mathematics Genealogy Project
Kurzbiographien (Artin, Bernstein, Bieberbach, Blaschke, Blumenthal, Cohn-Vossen, Courant, Froehlich, Grell, Landau, Mises, Neugebauer, von Neumann, Noether, Rademacher, Rellich, Remak, Rogosinski, Schur, Siegel, Toeplitz, Zorn)
Vertriebene, Kollegen in einer dunklen Zeit, Uni Bielefeld?
Aspects of Italian mathematics during the Fascist period by Michele Benzi
Juedische Mathematiker im "Dritten Reich"
Books and articles
BAUER, Friedrich L., Pringsheim, Liebmann, Hartogs - Schicksale juedischer Mathematiker in Muenchen, Sonderdruck 1 aus den Sitzungsberichten der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1997. Muenchen 1997.
BERGMANN, Birgit, EPPLE, Moritz, Jüdische Mathematiker in der deutschsprachigen akademischen Kultur, ISBN 978-3-540-69250-8
BORN, Max, Mein Leben. München 1975. (Englisch: My Life)
CONANT, Jennet, Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
CORNWELL, John, Hitler's Scientists. (Deutsch: Forschen fuer den Fuehrer)
EPPLE, Moritz, und REMMERT, Volker, Eine ungeahnte Synthese zwischen reiner und angewandter Mathematik, in: Kaufmann, Doris hg.: Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus Band I, 258-295
FERMI, Laura, Illustrious Immigrants
HEIBER, Helmut, Universitaet unterm Hakenkreuz
JENS, Walter und Inge, Frau Thomas Mann, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2003.
KRANTZ, Steven, Mathematical Apocrypha: Anectodes
MEDAWAR, Jean, und PYKE, David, Hitlers' Gift. London 2001.
MEHRTENS, Herbert, Das "Dritte Reich" in der Naturwissenschaftgeschichte. In: Naturwissenschaft, Technik und NS-Ideologie, hg. v. Herbert Mehrtens und Steffen Richter, Frankfurt 1980, S. 15-115.
MENZLER-TROTT, Eckart, Gentzens Problem, Mathematische Logik im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, Basel, 2001.
PINL, Maximilian, Kollegen in einer dunklen Zeit Teil I, Jahresbericht DMV (JDMV) 71 (1969) S. 167-228.
PINL, Maximilian, Kollegen in einer dunklen Zeit Teil II, JDMV 72 (1971/72) S. 165-189.
PINL, Maximilian, Kollegen in einer dunklen Zeit Teil III, JDMV 73 (1969) S. 153-208.
PINL, Maximilian, und DICK, Auguste, Kollegen in einer dunklen Zeil, Schluss, JDMV 75 (1974) S. 166-208, Nachtrag und Berichtigung JDMV 77 (1976) S. 161-164.
PINL, Maximilian, und FURTMÜLLER, Lux, Mathematicians under Hitler. In: Yearbook Leo Baeck Institute 18 (1973) S. 129-182.
REMMERT, Volker R., Vom Umgang mit der Macht: Das Freiburger Mathematische Institut im "Dritten Reich" 1999, 14 (1999), 2, 56-85
SCHAPPACHER, Norbert, unter Mitwirkung von KNESER, Martin, Fachverband - Institut - Staat. In: Ein Jahrhundert Mathematik 1890-1990. Braunschweig/Wiesbaden 1990.
SEGAL, Sanford, Mathematicians under the Nazis. Princeton 2003.
SIEGMUND-SCHULTZE, Reinhard, Mathematiker auf der Flucht vor Hitler. Braunschweig/Wiesbaden 1998.
STRAUSS, Herbert, ROEDER, Werner, Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933-1945 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945: Bd II: Arts, Sciences, and Literature
TOEPELL, Michael, Mathematiker und Mathematik an der Universität München - 500 Jahre Lehre und Forschung. Habilitationsschrift Mün-chen 1992. Algorismus - Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften Band 19 (1996).
TOBIES, Renate, Biographisches Lexikon in Mathematik promovierter Personen, see also here
YANDELL, Benjamin, The Honors Class. Natick 2002.