Adolf Morsbach

Adolf Morsbach (born December 2, 1890 - † March 26, 1937 in Eberswalde ) was a German science functionary. Morsbach became known as the managing director of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and head of the German Commission for Intellectual Cooperation .

Live and act

After attending school, Adolf Morsbach studied law and economics at the universities of Bonn , Munich and Göttingen . As a Rhodes scholarship holder, he also spent a semester of his studies in Cambridge. In 1914 he received his doctorate as Dr. jur. He then took part in the First World War as a reserve officer from 1914 to 1918 . In 1920 he submitted a second dissertation at the University of Königsberg with which he was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD.

In 1921 Morsbach was appointed to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. From 1923 to 1925 he was the district administrator of the Eder district in Bad Wildungen . In 1925 he was appointed to the higher education department of the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art and National Education as a senior government councilor , in which, under Carl Heinrich Becker , he mainly devoted himself to overseeing the department's foreign affairs. 1927 Morsbach was of the First Managing Director of the General Administration Kaiser Wilhelm Society appointed, making him a "director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society" entitled to use the title. In this capacity he was appointed permanent representative of the President and the General Director in the Society as well as in the boards of trustees and administrative committees of the institutes with voting rights: since 1927 he was a member of the board of trustees of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics and since 1928 Member of the Board of Trustees of the German Research Institute for Psychiatry . In addition, there was membership in the board of trustees of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Metal Research and membership in the administrative committee and board of directors of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Occupational Physiology. Furthermore, he was a member of the board of directors of the Harnack-Haus since 1929 .

From March 1, 1927, Morsbach also served as Secretary General of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Commission for Intellectual Cooperation . In order to be able to devote himself to the expansion of the DAAD into a “Reich Center for Academic Work Abroad”, he was given a two-year leave of absence from the KWG on March 1, 1931. Max Lukas von Cranach took over his office there as a substitute .

Because of his work for the DAAD, Morsbach had good contacts in the United States, to which he made extensive trips from January to June 1929 and from March to July 1930 to study the American university system. During this time he attended more than seventy universities and deepened the relationship between the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and the Rockefeller Foundation . He was also a member of the Rhodes Committee as well as the Rotarians and the men's club.

After Mosbach's leave of absence in the general administration of the KWG expired in 1933, he did not resume his duties in the general administration.

In 1933 he publicly protested against the exclusion of Jewish scientists from the German university system. In an article in the journal Hochschule und Ausland , the organ of the DAAD and the Commission for Intellectual Cooperation, he complained about the emigration of Albert Einstein and Rudolf Ladenburg :

“So the German part in the scientific life of the United States is quite significant. Americans appreciate that. Such cultured immigrants are welcome to their American counterparts. "You will find a second home in America," wrote a popular scientific journal recently. As Germans, we can certainly look forward to this recognition; it confirms the international importance of our science. There is a downside, however. Why do so many German researchers go abroad and why do fewer come to us from abroad? There is a difference between an active economic and an active scientific trade balance! In the latter case, in order to stay with the comparison, it is not work that is exported, the value of which flows back into the country of origin, but the workers themselves, the creators of intellectual goods, emigrate and through their activities increase the intellectual capital of the host people. "

In March 1934, Morsbach summarized his foreign policy ideas in the field of cultural policy in the Morsbach Plan named after him . He then tried to enforce this with the help of the Foreign Office and Ernst Röhm .

On June 30, 1934, Morsbach was arrested in the course of the Röhm affair and held in Dachau concentration camp until August . After his return from the camp he resigned from the general administration of the KWG at the instigation of the Reich and Prussian Ministry for Science, Education and National Education. In 1935 Morsbach, who , according to Friedrich Glum , had left the concentration camp as a "broken man", withdrew into private life. In 1936, a year before his death, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow .

Today Morsbach's estate is kept in the Federal Archives in Lichterfelde. It covers about half a meter with material from the years 1916 to 1937, including Morsbach's war diary on his activities in Lithuania in 1916.

Fonts

• On property and common use according to Prussian water law , 1914. (Dissertation)
• The influence of the Reich financial reform on the formation of the finances of the districts , 1921. (Dissertation)
• German cultural policy abroad , 1929.
• The academic exchange service 1924-1930 , 1930.
• The structure of foreign cultural policy, in: Hochschule und Abroad , 1932, No. 9.
• The cultural relations between the United States and Germany, in: National Socialist Monthly Issues 4 (1933), p. 512.

literature

• Ulrike Kohl: The Presidents of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism , 2002, pp. 47–49.

Web links

• Morsbach, Adolf. Hessian biography. (As of July 24, 2019). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).