Bernhard Bavink

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Bernhard Bavink, photo (around 1937)

Bernhard Bavink (born June 30, 1879 in Leer (East Friesland) , † June 27, 1947 in Bielefeld ) was a German scientist and natural philosopher.

Life

Board at Bavink's parents' house in Leer

Bavink was born in Leer as the only son of the Mennonite merchant and chocolate manufacturer Bernard Bavink and his Lutheran mother Elea Rulffes from Oldenburg . From 1897 Bavink studied chemistry and mathematics in Bonn and physics in Göttingen . He passed his state examination in 1902 and received his doctorate in 1904. During his studies, he became a member of the Bonn and Göttingen Wingolf .

In Göttingen and Goslar he completed the preparatory period for teaching at secondary schools and in 1904 became a senior teacher at the Evangelisch Stiftisches Gymnasium in Gütersloh. From autumn 1912 Bavink was a teacher at the Auguste-Viktoria-Schule, a girls' high school in Bielefeld , which was named after Bavink from 1947 to 1996. In 1920 Bavink took over the scientific management of the Keplerbund , for which he published the magazine Our World from 1920 to 1939 . In 1929 he was appointed senior teacher; he was also a specialist advisor to the provincial school council in Münster . In the winter semester of 1931/1932 he gave the lecture Eugenics and Protestantism , published in 1932 by Günther Just . After the takeover of the Nazis in 1933, he joined the Nazi party in.

His book Science on the Way to Religion had three editions in its first year (1933) and was translated into English and Swedish. It was discussed very controversially among scientists and theologians. In the same year Bavink also published the book Eugenics as research and demand . After Ernst Klee , Bavink was a proponent of eugenics ; he gave the "society the right to free itself from existences that mean absolutely nothing economically and vegetate on a sub-animal point of view".

In 1936 Bavink became a member of the scientific committee of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors ; six years later a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen . In 1943 he received the Rienecker Prize from the University of Würzburg . In autumn 1944 he retired, in the same year he received an honorary doctorate from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster, at which he was appointed honorary professor for natural philosophy in 1947. This year, Bavink's work Die Atomenergie und Its Ausführung was published , in which he clarifies the “fear and hope” and recognizes atomic energy as a “political issue” (introduction), a testimony to this early period of atomic energy use with its sometimes exuberant use Expectations. Shortly before his death in 1947, he received an appointment to the chair for natural philosophy at the Technical University of Stuttgart , which he could no longer follow.

Bavink was a Protestant and married twice. From his marriage to Maria Meyer in 1905 there were two sons and a daughter, and from his marriage to Bertha Lohmann in 1918 there was a daughter.

Appreciations

In 1947 the Auguste Viktoria School in Bielefeld was renamed “Bavink Gymnasium”. This name was changed to " Gymnasium am Waldhof " on August 1, 1996 after controversial discussions about the person and the journalistic work of Bavink . The focus of the discussion was Bavink's fundamentally positive position on National Socialist racial hygiene , the “ destruction of life unworthy of life ” ( euthanasia ) and anti-Semitism in the Nazi regime - albeit with idiosyncrasies that sometimes brought him into conflict with this regime. In 1933 he had written in Organic State Conception and Eugenics : "A decently minded person will always be outraged that the instincts of cruelty vent on innocents under the guise of national enthusiasm". Reports from contemporary witnesses how Bavink brought Jewish schoolgirls to safety from Nazi persecution could not prevent the decision to rename the building.

In 1963 a street was named after him in his hometown Leer (East Friesland).

Publications (selection)

  • Organic conception of the state and eugenics. Alfred Metzner-Verlag, Berlin 1933 (= writings on genetics and racial hygiene. Without volume).
  • The significance of the convergence principle for the epistemology of natural science . In: ZphF, Vol. II, 1947
  • Results and problems of the natural sciences. An introduction to today's natural philosophy. Hirzel , Leipzig 1914 (9th edition 1948). (full text in the Open Library)
  • Science on the way to religion. Life and soul, God and free will in the light of today's natural science. Moritz Diesterweg publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1933.
  • Atomic energy and its use. Francke, Bern 1947. (Dalp Collection, Vol. 44).
  • Knowledge and belief as allies in today's time. In: Nature - the miracle of God . Edited by Wolfgang Dennert.

literature

Web links

Commons : Bernhard Bavink  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the Gymnasium Am Waldhof , accessed on July 1, 2011
  2. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 33.
  3. ^ Günther Just (Ed.): Eugenics and Weltanschauung. Berlin / Munich 1932.
  4. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-932-0 (= Würzburg medical-historical research. Supplement 3.) - At the same time: Dissertation Würzburg 1995), p. 154 f.
  5. ^ Quote from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 33.
  6. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. 1995, p. 157.
  7. ↑ See Ute Felbor: Race Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. 1995, p. 156 f.
personal data
SURNAME Bavink, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German scientist and natural philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Leer, East Frisia
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1947
Place of death Bielefeld