Eduard Pestel

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Eduard Pestel (right), 1973
Candidate poster for the state election in Lower Saxony in 1978

Eduard Pestel Kurt Christian (* 29. May 1914 in Hildesheim ; † 19th September 1988 in Hannover ) was a German engineer and economist , professor of mechanics and control engineering as well as politicians .

Life

Eduard Pestel completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer and then first attended the engineering school in Hildesheim in order to then study mechanics at the Technical University (TH) in Hanover . During his studies he was a member of the SA and the Nazi student union . In 1938 he went to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York State , as a DAAD scholarship holder , where he obtained a Master of Engineering degree in 1939 .

After the outbreak of World War II , Pestel came to Japan via Mexico . Pestel worked there from 1942 to 1945 as a "chief engineer" (technical department head) at Leybold KK in Osaka , and from January 1, 1946 to February 1, 1947 as technical director at Osaka Kinzoku . Also in 1947 Pestel continued his studies at the TH in Hanover and received his doctorate in the same year as Dr. In 1950 he completed his habilitation in the field of mechanics. The topic of his habilitation thesis was A contribution to the theory of bending vibrations of girders under moving unsprung and sprung loads .

In 1953 Pestel was first appointed extraordinary professor at the Technische Hochschule Hannover, then had for two decades from 1957 to 1977 the position of a professor stopped and directed the Institute of Mechanics , which included a second chair in 1966, which with Oskar Mahrenholtz was occupied . During this time Pestel and Frederick A. Leckie published a standard work on matrix methods in elastomechanics. In addition, he also dealt with control engineering , wrote a textbook on this together with Eckart Kollmann, thus gaining access to the ideas of cybernetics and thereby qualifying himself for his later work on world models . During 1969 and 1970 Pestel was also rector of the University of Hanover.

In 1966 Pestel became a member of the NATO Science Committee and in 1969 a member of the Board of Trustees of the Volkswagenwerk Foundation (from 1977 to 1979 as its chairman). From 1971 to 1977 he was Vice President of the German Research Foundation and was responsible for the special research areas of the DFG. Since 1973 he was governor of the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam. From 1974 he was Senate Chairman of the Fraunhofer Society for Applied Research . In 1977 he became a member of the Board of Trustees of the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft .

In 1968 he was one of the founders and since 1969 a member of the Executive Committee of the Club of Rome . In this position he initiated work on a computer model for exploring the world, which received the greatest attention worldwide in 1972 with the publication of the Limits to Growth . In order to overcome the recognizable weaknesses of the world model, he and his US colleague Mihailo Mesarovic developed a regionalized world model and the concept of organic growth. This was published as the second report to the Club of Rome in 1974 ( humanity at the turning point ). In 1978 he was involved in the founding of the German Society Club of Rome (DGCoR), which he chaired until his death.

In 1975 he and six other scientists founded the Institute for Applied Systems Research and Forecasting (ISP) in Hanover, which was renamed the Pestel Institute for Systems Research after his death . The occasion was an order from the federal government to develop a computer-based model for the future of the Federal Republic of Germany ( Das Deutschland-Modell ). He was director of the Haus Rissen Hamburg - Institute for International Politics and Economics .

In November 2016, criticism of Pestel's behavior during the Nazi era was voiced, which essentially referred to a letter he had written as a scholarship holder in 1938 and which contains a quote from Benjamin Franklin that is classified as anti-Semitic . The Leibniz University Hannover announced after a thorough examination that Pestel "during the Nazi era behave in an unacceptable from today's point of view has."

Public offices

From 1977 to 1981 Eduard Pestel was Minister for Science and Art of the State of Lower Saxony , initially without a party, in 1978 he joined the CDU at the request of Prime Minister Ernst Albrecht .

During this time he worked on the re-establishment of the German Technion Society , founded by Albert Einstein in 1924 and banned during the Nazi era, in 1982 , which promotes cooperation between Jewish and German scientists. Eduard Pestel was president of this society until his death.

Appreciations and honors

The chair for mechanics he founded in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Haifa ( Technion ) was named after him.

After his death, the Institute for Applied Systems Research and Forecasting (ISP) he founded in 1975 was renamed the Eduard Pestel Institute for Systems Research in his honor .

In 1982 Pestel was awarded the Max Born Medal for Responsibility in Science . In 1984 he received the Fraunhofer Prize from the Fraunhofer Society . He was posthumously honored in Chicago as one of the “Thinkers of the Twentieth Century”.

Pestel had been an external member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1981 . The Brunswick Scientific Society he belonged since 1959 as a full member.

Eduard Pestel was an honorary doctor of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York State.

In Osnabrück there is an "Eduard-Pestel-Straße" named after him.

Private

  • His wife is the analytical psychotherapist and author Anneliese Ude-Pestel .
  • Eduard Pestel's tomb can be found in the Herrenhausen cemetery .
  • Eduard Pestel had four children with his first wife, the American Jaqueline Evans: Robert Pestel (1941–2002), Susanne Rickert (* 1943) and Wendy Lehmann (* 1946) were born in Kobe (Japan); Michael Pestel (* 1950) was born in Hildesheim.

Fonts (selection)

  • (with Eckart Kollmann): Fundamentals of control engineering . Vieweg Verlag, Braunschweig 1968, 3rd edition: Vieweg & Teubner, Wiesbaden 1979, ISBN 978-3-322-96097-9 .
  • (as co-author): The Limits to Growth. Report of the Club of Rome on the State of Humanity . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-421-02633-5 .
  • (with Mihailo D. Mesarović): Humanity at the turning point. 2. Report to d. Club of Rome on the world situation . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-421-02670-X .
  • (with Dennis Gabor , Umberto Colombo and others): The end of waste. On the material situation of humanity. A factual report to the Club of Rome . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-421-02690-4 .
  • The Germany model. Challenges on the way into the 21st century . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-596-23431-X .
  • Our chance is common sense. Learning for the world of tomorrow . Westermann, Braunschweig 1980, ISBN 3-14-508800-9 .
  • (with Jens Wittenburg): Strength theory. A textbook and workbook . Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1981, 3rd edition: Springer, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-62653-1 .
  • (with Mihailo D. Mesarović and Aurelio Peccei ): The way into the 21st century. Geneva 1983.
  • Beyond the limits of growth. Report to the Club of Rome . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-421-06393-1 .
  • Rainer E. Kirsten (Red.): An opportunity for humanity. Perspectives for the world of tomorrow (= Edition Pestel , Volume 1). Adlibri-Verlag, Hamburg 2011. ISBN 978-3-89927-027-3 (collected writings and lectures by Eduard Pestel).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Klaus Mlynek: Pestel, Eduard Christian Kurt . In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . P. 282.
  2. ^ A b Michael Jung: Repressed Past: Post-War Rectors of the Technical University of Hanover in the Nazi Era . In: Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Stadtarchiv (Ed.): Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter . New episode 70.Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2016, ISBN 978-3-86525-570-9 , p. 187–190 ( uni-hannover.de [PDF]).
  3. ^ Bibliographical reference in the catalog of the German National Library
  4. ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Berlin: Ernst & Sohn 2018, pp. 842f., ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .
  5. ^ Joint declaration by the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University of Hanover and the Deutsche Technion-Gesellschaft eV on Eduard Pestel , November 19, 2016. Memento from the Internet Archive of December 12, 2016
  6. ↑ Eduard Pestel: A chance for mankind - perspectives for the world of tomorrow . Ed .: Rainer E. Kirsten. First edition edition. KlettMedia, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-89927-027-3 , pp. 328 .
  7. ^ Members Directory: Dr. Eduard C. Pestel. National Academy of Engineering, accessed June 8, 2017 .
  8. ^ Gitta Kirchhefer: A walk through the Herrenhausen cemetery . Self-published, Hanover 2012.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Pestel, Eduard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pestel, Eduard Christian Kurt (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer and economist, professor of mechanics and control engineering and politician (CDU)
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1988
Place of death Hanover