Erich Bagge

Erich Bagge (5th from right) on board the Otto Hahn (1966), which is currently under construction .

Erich Rudolf Bagge (born May 30, 1912 in Neustadt bei Coburg , † June 5, 1996 in Kiel ) was a German nuclear physicist .

Life

Bagge attended the secondary school in Sonneberg . From September 25, 1928 he was a member of the holiday association Neapolitania in his hometown. After studying physics in Munich and Berlin Bagge was in 1938 when Werner Heisenberg at the University of Leipzig with the work "contributions to the theory of heavy nuclei" that the thesis of Hans Euler , joined his doctorate .

During the Second World War he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics on the German “ uranium project ”. Through his mediation succeeded Kurt Diebner , Werner Heisenberg to collaborate on the uranium project by the Army Ordnance Department to persuade headed (HWA). Between 1941 and 1943 he developed the isotope lock, a device for enriching uranium. He applied for a patent for this in March 1942 ( Erich Habann helped him with this ).

Immediately after the Second World War, he was part of Operation Epsilon with nine other physicists ( Kurt Diebner , Walther Gerlach , Otto Hahn , Paul Harteck , Werner Heisenberg , Horst Korsching , Max von Laue , Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Karl Wirtz ) interned in Farm Hall (England). In the book “Operation Epsilon. The Farm Hall Protocols or The Allied Fear of the German Atomic Bomb ”are reproduced in many places by Bagge's statements and attitudes.

After the war he was appointed associate professor and department head of the State Physics Institute at the University of Hamburg in 1948 , where he dealt in particular with the use of atomic energy for merchant ships. In 1956, along with Kurt Illies and Kurt Diebner, he was one of the founders of the Society for Nuclear Energy Utilization in Shipbuilding and Shipping GmbH (GKSS) in Geesthacht.

In 1957, Bagge was appointed head of the Institute for Pure and Applied Nuclear Physics at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel , which he had founded. He built up this institute at a time when great potential for the peaceful use of nuclear energy was beginning to emerge in Germany. During this time, Erich Bagge and Kurt Diebner developed numerous reactor patents, including those relating to fast breeders and plutonium extraction and separation. Through Bagge, there was a close connection with the Geesthacht research reactor , which the GKSS later operated as the supporting organization. In his institute, Bagge also promoted research into cosmic radiation , so that the Kiel Institute for Pure and Applied Nuclear Physics became known around the world with countless balloon launches.

The construction of the first German research ship powered by nuclear power, the ore freighter Otto Hahn , was put out to tender by the GKSS and carried out in Kiel from 1963 to 1968. The ship was intended as a symbol of a "bright" future, but ultimately remained the only German ship with a nuclear power drive.

In one of his last interviews, conducted in August 1995 by Eckart Klaus Roloff for Rheinischer Merkur, Bagge stated: “During the war it was quite impossible to want to manufacture an atomic bomb for Hitler. We were far too far from it. (...) Hiroshima came as a complete surprise to all of us. ”On the rumor that the Danish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr was a spy for the Soviet secret service, Bagge said:“ I consider that to be impossible, these are speculations that have been launched. ”

For later times he recalled that the Federal Minister of Defense, Franz Josef Strauss, who had been in office since 1956, had spoken to him about whether he, Bagge, wanted to join the ministry. “Without any hesitation,” said Bagge, “I told him: For me, the atomic bomb is such a terribly murderous and very dangerous weapon that it should not be built or used. So it happened that I never entered his ministry. ”Since 1957, Strauss had been in favor of nuclear armament in the Bundeswehr.

meaning

Bagge was one of the ten German nuclear physicists interned in Farm Hall (England) after the Second World War as part of the Allies' Operation Epsilon. He was both an experimental and a theoretical physicist. His further developments of the spark counter , which found their way into many laboratories around the world, were important.

Erich Bagge did not see theoretical physics as a fixed teaching structure, but kept drawing his students' attention to what was still unexplained or even contradicting the theory of nuclear and astrophysics . He even encouraged his students to develop new theories by developing and publishing quite daring theories about the spatial expansion of elementary particles or even about the existence of neutrinos . It is therefore not surprising that not a few of his students later became world famous, such as Joachim Trümper or Klaus Pinkau .

A special application of nuclear physics was Bagge's methodical development of carbon dating . His laboratory for C14 and mass spectrometry , which Horst Willkomm set up and led after completing his doctorate at Bagge, was involved in numerous collaborations with archaeological, geological, paleontological and climatological university and non-university institutes.

Bagge was a scientific advisor on the television film The End of Innocence in 1992 . He left copies of original works on German nuclear research from 1939 to 1945 to the Haigerloch City Archives .

Fonts (selection)

Erich Bagge: The mass defect of the atomic nucleus and the relativistic multi-body problem. In: Journal for Nature Research . 1, 1946, pp. 361-366 ( online ).
Are there excited states in elementary particles? Bilocal quantum theory of the electron. In: Journal of Physics . 1953
Together with Kurt Diebner and Kenneth Jay: From the fission of uranium to Calder Hall. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1957 ( rde 41)
The peaceful use of nuclear energy for technical purposes. In: Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of the Interior (Hrsg.): Atom. Reality, blessings, dangers. Kiel 1960, pp. 55-65
The Nobel Prize Winners in Physics. A contribution to the history of the natural sciences. Moos, Munich 1964
The emergence of cosmic ultra-radiation and the expansion phenomenon of the world. Karl Thieme, Munich 1966

Fiction

Richard von Schirach : The night of the physicists. Heisenberg, Hahn, Weizsäcker and the German bomb. Berenberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-937834-54-2 .

swell

Erich Bagge, Kurt Diebner , Kenneth Jay: From the fission of uranium to Calder Hall. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1957.
"Heavy water cost as much as gold". A conversation with Erich Bagge. In: Michael Schaaf: Heisenberg, Hitler and the bomb. Conversations with contemporary witnesses. GNT, Diepholz 2018, ISBN 978-3-86225-115-5 .
Dieter Hoffmann (Ed.): Operation Epsilon. The Farm Hall Protocols or The Allies' Fear of the German Atomic Bomb. Rowohlt, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3871340820 .

Web links

History of extraterrestrial physics at the University of Kiel

Remarks

↑ Ivan Supek : Leipzig in the time of Heisenberg and Hund. From the novel Otkrice u izgulbljeom vremenu (Discovery in Lost Time). Zagreb 1987. In: Manfred Schroeder (ed.): Hundred years of Friedrich Hund. A look back at the work of an important physicist. In: News from the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. II. Mathematical and natural science class. Vol. 1996, No. 1, pp. 32-52; Michael Frayn : Copenhagen. Background information. 2003 (PDF; 111 kB). According to this (p. 5) Bagge was a member of the NSDAP, and according to Supek he was probably the only one of Heisenberg's and Hund's employees; Heinrich Arnold: On an autobiographical letter from Robert Döpel to Fritz Straßmann. 2012, section “Bagge, Euler and Supek in Leipzig”, p. 19 ff. (Online). With regard to the political atmosphere and the discussions in the Leipzig Institute, the representations of Bagge and Supek are very different.
↑ "The atom bomb is murderous." Erich Bagge, before and after 1945 the leading German nuclear physicists. In: Rheinischer Merkur, August 4, 1995, p. 4
↑ Erich R. Bagge: What Really Happens in Pair Production and Beta Decay? Why Neutrinos Don't Exist. In: Fusion. November-December 1985, pp. 29-38.
↑ Secret reports from the period 1939–45 on German nuclear research. In: Haigerloch town archive. Contents. ( Memento from May 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

personal data
SURNAME	Bagge, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bagge, Erich Rudolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German nuclear physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	May 30, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	Neustadt near Coburg
DATE OF DEATH	June 5, 1996
Place of death	Kiel

[1] Ivan Supek : Leipzig in the time of Heisenberg and Hund. From the novel Otkrice u izgulbljeom vremenu (Discovery in Lost Time). Zagreb 1987. In: Manfred Schroeder (ed.): Hundred years of Friedrich Hund. A look back at the work of an important physicist. In: News from the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. II. Mathematical and natural science class. Vol. 1996, No. 1, pp. 32-52; Michael Frayn : Copenhagen. Background information. 2003 (PDF; 111 kB). According to this (p. 5) Bagge was a member of the NSDAP, and according to Supek he was probably the only one of Heisenberg's and Hund's employees; Heinrich Arnold: On an autobiographical letter from Robert Döpel to Fritz Straßmann. 2012, section “Bagge, Euler and Supek in Leipzig”, p. 19 ff. (Online). With regard to the political atmosphere and the discussions in the Leipzig Institute, the representations of Bagge and Supek are very different.

[2] "The atom bomb is murderous." Erich Bagge, before and after 1945 the leading German nuclear physicists. In: Rheinischer Merkur, August 4, 1995, p. 4

[3] Erich R. Bagge: What Really Happens in Pair Production and Beta Decay? Why Neutrinos Don't Exist. In: Fusion. November-December 1985, pp. 29-38.

[4] Secret reports from the period 1939–45 on German nuclear research. In: Haigerloch town archive. Contents. ( Memento from May 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive )