Erich Lasswitz

Erich Lasswitz (born September 4, 1880 in Gotha , † March 1959 in Tutzing ) was a German science and technology journalist.

Life

Erich Lasswitz was born in Gotha in 1880 as the second son of Kurd Laßwitz and his wife Jenny, a daughter of the Wroclaw rabbi Landsberg. Attending school at the Ernestinum Gymnasium in Gotha , where his father taught, ended with his Abitur in 1900. He then studied engineering from 1901 to 1906 at the Technical University of Karlsruhe . In 1908 he married his first wife Elsa, b. Knight. The marriage was divorced in 1920.

During the First World War , Erich Lasswitz was the adjutant of the commandant of the prisoner-of-war camp in Ohrdruf in Thuringia. From 1919 he worked for the Frankfurter Zeitung , for which he built up the supplement "Das Technische Blatt" and looked after it until his dismissal in 1943. Your publisher, Heinrich Simon was a classmate of Lasswitz in Gotha and was the godfather of his son Heinz (1909-1993). After finishing his work in Frankfurt he moved to Coburg , then in 1946 to Seehausen am Staffelsee . From 1946 he published the Orion magazine in the Lux-Verlag in Murnau , but due to reasons of age, he stopped working in 1950 at the age of 70. Erich Lasswitz died in Tutzing in 1959.

plant

In addition to many individual publications on technical topics, two major projects should be mentioned: the "Technische Blatt" and the popular science magazine "Orion".

For the Frankfurter Zeitung he was in charge of the “technical features”: Every two weeks, “Das Technische Blatt” was published on Thursdays, alternating with the university paper. Lasswitz presented scientific discoveries and engineering achievements. He thus decisively shaped the perception of modern technology in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. One of his most important collaborators was the nuclear physicist Pascual Jordan . Amazingly, Lasswitz was able to work in the editorial office as a "half-Jew" until 1943 and was not released until May 5, 1943, along with the second "half-Jew" Benno Reifenberg and his colleagues Dolf Sternberger , Wilhelm Hausenstein and Otto Suhr, who were married to Jewish wives .

After the Second World War, he founded the scientific journal Orion in Murnau in 1946 .

Individual evidence

↑ Rüdiger Overmans (ed.): In the hand of the enemy. Captivity from antiquity to World War II. Published in conjunction with the Arbeitskreis Militärgeschichte eV Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1999, ISBN 3-412-14998-5 , p. 343, footnote 12.
↑ Eva Reineke, Walter Kaufmann (ed.): Who was the man with the cigar? The engineer and publicist Erich Laßwitz (1880–1959). Edition Wolf & Fuchs, Murnau 2004, ISBN 3-931247-06-6 ( Murnau heads 2).
^ Günther Gillessen : In a lost position. The Frankfurter Zeitung in the Third Reich. 2nd revised edition. Siedler, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88680-223-X , p. 330.

personal data
SURNAME	Lasswitz, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German science and technology journalist
DATE OF BIRTH	September 4, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH	Gotha
DATE OF DEATH	March 1959
Place of death	Tutzing

[1] Rüdiger Overmans (ed.): In the hand of the enemy. Captivity from antiquity to World War II. Published in conjunction with the Arbeitskreis Militärgeschichte eV Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1999, ISBN 3-412-14998-5 , p. 343, footnote 12.

[2] Eva Reineke, Walter Kaufmann (ed.): Who was the man with the cigar? The engineer and publicist Erich Laßwitz (1880–1959). Edition Wolf & Fuchs, Murnau 2004, ISBN 3-931247-06-6 ( Murnau heads 2).

[3] Günther Gillessen : In a lost position. The Frankfurter Zeitung in the Third Reich. 2nd revised edition. Siedler, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88680-223-X , p. 330.