Benno Strauss

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Benno Strauss (born January 30, 1873 in Fürth ; † September 27, 1944 in Vorwohle ) was a German metallurgist and physicist . Together with Eduard Maurer , he was one of the pioneers for the industrial use of stainless steel in Germany.

biography

Benno Strauss was born on January 30, 1873 in Fürth. His father was the Jewish merchant Nathan Strauss, his mother was Babette Strauss, née Löwenhaar. In 1917 Strauss was baptized Protestant in Wiesbaden and converted to Christianity. On March 24, 1924 he married Gertrud, b. Finkendey in second marriage.

After attending the Latin School in Fürth and the Realgymnasium in Nuremberg and passing the school-leaving exam there in 1891, Benno Strauss studied mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and physics at the Technical University of Munich (now TU Munich) until 1893 . He then attended the University of Zurich until 1896 , where he received his doctorate in philosophy that year .

On March 17, 1896, he took a job in the physics department of Friedrich Krupp AG in Essen, of which he became head in 1899. In 1912, as director of the Krupp research institute, together with the engineer Eduard Maurer, he developed a process for the production of a stainless steel based on a nickel-chromium alloy, which remained cold-deformable through a special heat treatment, the so-called final annealing, or also allowed special strength. For this purpose, the patent officer Clemens Pasel registered two patents and granted them retrospectively in 1919. In 1922 this steel received the protected designation NIROSTA (stainless steel). Also in 1912 he was appointed Royal Prussian Professor and held a lectureship at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster . From 1924 he was head of all testing institutes and research institutes of the Krupp factories in Essen and introduced the hard metal WIDIA (like diamond) at Krupp .

On January 1, 1935, the Krupp company gave him notice because of his Jewish descent. As a result of the Nuremberg Race Laws , he lost his professorship and, like all Jewish Germans, was exposed to increasing discrimination and disenfranchisement. From Gestapo -Proceedings show that his colleague Eduard Maurer took revenge on ostrich and denounced him as a Jew. After the night of the November pogroms in 1938 , Benno Strauss was placed in protective custody for a week , and the family assets of 127,000  Reichsmarks were confiscated. On September 18, 1944, he was deported from Essen, where he had lived until then, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp for forced labor . But Benno Strauss died of pneumonia during a stop in the Vorwohle labor camp near Holzminden .

In 1964 his remains were transferred to the Bredeney cemetery in Essen. In his memory, two streets in Essen and Fürth were named after him. In 2000 the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster published a declaration according to which the dismissals made between 1933 and 1945 for racist and political reasons are null and void.

Awards, honors

Stumbling block to Benno Strauss in Essen

In 1927 he was awarded the Bunsen Medal of the German Bunsen Society and in 1931 the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia honored him with the Howard N. Potts Medal .

In his memory, one street each in Essen and Fürth was named after him.

A stumbling block was laid in front of his home at Alfredstrasse 289 in Essen in memory of Benno Strauss as a victim of the Holocaust on October 12, 2007 .

In October 2012, several steel murals by Strauss were attached to the “Complex2” business park in the city of Fürth, located on Benno-Strauss-Strasse. This happened shortly before the 100th anniversary of the application of the stainless steel patent on October 17, 1912.

literature

  • Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 2: L-Z. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1931, DNB 453960294 , pp. 1867f.
  • Fritz Pudor: Benno Strauss, in: Necrologist from the Rheinisch-Westphalian industrial area born 1939-1951 . August Bagel, Düsseldorf 1955, p. 97 .
  • Gisela Möllenhoff, Rita Schlautmann-Overmeyer: Jewish families in Münster 1918 to 1945. Biographical lexicon . 1st edition. Westphalian steam boat, Münster (Westphalia) 1995, ISBN 3-929586-48-7 . - There is a picture
  • Ralf Stremmel: Benno Strauss, sketch of a researcher's life, in: 100 years of stainless steel. Historical and current issues . Ed .: Manfred Rasch. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8375-0095-0 , p. 37-64 .
  • Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads . Ed .: City of Essen - Historical Association for City and Monastery of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 , p. 334 f .
  • Hermann Schröter: Professor Benno Strauss, department director at Fried. Krupp and inventor of Nirosta steel. In: Hermann Schröter (ed.): History and fate of the Essen Jews: Memorial book for the Jewish fellow citizens of the city of Essen . Essen: City of Essen, 1980, pp. 280–282
  • Christian Walter Keitel: In memory of Benno Strauss , hall talks, University of Münster, 2015

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ThyssenKrupp: The patent: 100 years of stainless steel. Archived from the original on July 31, 2012 ; Retrieved April 26, 2012 .
  2. cf. different representation in Lothar Gall : Krupp. Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-88680-583-2 , p. 293
  3. ^ A b Declaration by the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster on measures taken by the university during the National Socialist tyranny
  4. Forced labor in Holzminden, another illustration in Schröter, p. 282
  5. ^ Benno Strauss mural in Complex2 Fürth