Gerhard Ritter (chemist)

Dr. Gerhard Ritter at the Expo 67 in Montreal

Gerhard Ritter (born November 27, 1902 in Berlin ; † November 24, 1988 ) was a German chemist and manager. From 1934 to 1945 he was considered the most important employee of IG Farben boss Carl Krauch , held a managerial position in particular for IG Farben's poison gas production and became the company's authorized signatory in 1941 . After the war, in 1956 he achieved the position of Technical Director of the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center (KfK) and in 1959 became director of the Euratom Research Center Ispra .

Life

Background and career before 1945

Knight was at the 1924 Berlin University in Alfred Stock with summa cum laude doctorate. He wrote his dissertation (The gas aerometer and its application to determine the atomic weight of boron) at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Chemistry. From 1924 to 1926 he was an assistant there. He then switched to industry and worked from 1926 to 1934 as a chemist in the ammonia laboratory in Ludwigshafen-Oppau of IG Farben . In 1934, Ritter was brought to Berlin by Carl Krauch after Hermann Göring had set up a central office for war economics for IG Farben, which was to deal comprehensively with matters relating to military science and military planning.

In 1935, the "Vermittlungsstelle W", where "W" stands for Wehrmacht, was set up to optimize cooperation between IG Farben, the Wehrmacht and the authorities. Ritter headed this "switching center W" to which all militarily important developments of IG Farben were reported. The exchange passed this information on to the Wehrmacht, in particular the Heereswaffenamt. When the four-year plan was set up in 1936, which was supposed to make the German Reich fit for war in four years, Ritter was already the closest collaborator of the most powerful industrialist in this four-year plan authority, later Carl Krauch, who later became the chief representative for chemistry in the four-year plan. “In the Nazi era from 1934 until the end of the war, Krauch and Ritter formed a pair of National Socialist twins, so to speak,” says historian Bernd-A. Rusinek . He emphasizes that Ritter is sometimes referred to in the sources as "Prof. Krauch's deputy", sometimes as a "representative of the four-year plan authority and the IG", sometimes as "Dr. Ritter (Stab Göring) “was apostrophized. Ritter performed a variety of functions at the interface of IG Farben, armament and the four-year plan, for example with the raw materials and foreign exchange staff from 1937, before he moved to the Reich Office for Economic Development (RWA) as head of the Technical Department I. At the armaments inspectors' meeting at the beginning of 1942 he represented the chemistry division and in 1944 was head of a task force for the reconstruction of the hydrogenation works that had been destroyed in the war .

Ritter was involved in the development of the nerve gas sarin . The poison gas is named after him, Gerhard Schrader , Otto Ambros and Hans-Jürgen von der Linde . Work on this took place in the Heeresgasschutzlaboratorium (HGL) in Spandau (managed by the Linde). A few months after the beginning of the Second World War, Ritter took part in a conference of top representatives of the Wehrmacht and a four-year plan in mid-November 1939, at which General Georg Thomas had the objective of a warfare agent production of 1,000 tons per month discussed. Historian Rusinek describes Ritter as the “top poison gas manager in the 'Third Reich'”. He was not only Carl Krauch's right-hand man, but also belonged to the leadership of IG Farben, also recognizable by the fact that he became the company's authorized signatory in 1941.

Background and career after 1945

At the end of the war, Ritter was interned in the French occupation zone until April 1946 and moved to Freiburg im Breisgau after his release . In the IG Farben trial in Nuremberg , he was not charged, but was heard as a witness. At his denazification the disposal Spruchkammer Neustadt: "leaving a simple chemist in non-managerial position in a period of 6 years." Ritter worked until 1953 in the coatings industry, before 1954-1956 Plant Manager at the former IG Farben subsidiary Anorgana in Bavarian Gendorf was. This company had manufactured chemical warfare agents during the war, including 100 tons of sarin a month. In 1955 the company was taken over by Farbwerke Hoechst AG , whose chairman at that time was Karl Winnacker . One year later, Winnacker decisively promoted Ritter's career leap to the position of Technical Director of the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center.

In 1956 , together with the chemist and explosives expert Walter Schnurr and the lawyers Rudolf Greifeld and Josef Brandl, Ritter founded the nuclear reactor, construction and operating company, the forerunner of the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center (KfK). The institute was founded on the initiative of Franz Josef Strauss for the civil development of nuclear energy in Germany, where he was advised by the physicist Otto Haxel and the Hoechst manager Karl Winnacker . When the controversy over the heavy water research reactor concept (FR 1 or FR 2 ) dragged on, with industry trying to exert influence in the form of Siemens, Winnacker lost patience due to the rising costs and replaced Ritter with Schnurr, who was previously a department head in Strauss's atomic ministry had been in Bonn.

In Karlsruhe, Ritter had become dissatisfied because he increasingly saw the bureaucratic obstacles as a contradiction to his understanding of the dynamics of war research as a decisive top-down manager. In 1959, mediated by Winnacker, he moved to the lucrative post of head of the Euratom research center Ispra , which he held until 1966. At the Ispra on Lake Maggiore , the Euratom countries (France, Italy, Germany, Benelux) developed new reactor types, including a reactor with organic coolant and heavy water as moderator (organ, Organique-Eau Lourde), originally on a French initiative Discontinued in 1969. Ritter himself had already given up his position in 1966 because he saw no more chance of having more metallurgical research carried out in advance of the application of nuclear technology instead of the project of the organ reactor, which he regarded as hopeless. In 1966, Ritter became “General Commissioner” for the three European communities at the time, the EEC , Euratom and the Montan Union at the 1967 Expo in Montreal.

literature

• Bernd-A. Rusinek : The Greifeld Case , Karlsruhe - Science Management and the Nazi Past (= publications from the archive of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; 5). KIT Scientific Publishing, Karlsruhe 2019, ISBN 978-3-7315-0844-1 ; there in particular the chapter Gerhard Ritter (1902–1977) , pp. 255–274.

Web links

• Reference files Dr. Gerhard Ritter, Federal Archives

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gravestone of Dr. Gerhard Ritter with date of birth and death.
2. ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek: The Greifeld Case , Karlsruhe - Science Management and the Nazi Past (= publications from the archive of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; 5). KIT Scientific Publishing, Karlsruhe 2019, pp. 257–262.
3. ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek : The Greifeld Case , Karlsruhe - Science Management and the Nazi Past , pp. 256-262, citations p. 256 and P. 261.
4. ↑ Helmut Maier, Chemist in the “Third Reich”, Wiley-VCH 2015, p. 308, footnote 193.
5. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Warfare agent research in National Socialism. For cooperation between Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-880-9 , p. 448.
6. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Warfare agent research in National Socialism. On the cooperation between Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry, pp. 451–452.
7. ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek: The Greifeld Case , Karlsruhe - Science Management and the Nazi Past . P. 262.
8. ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek: The Greifeld Case , Karlsruhe - Science Management and the Nazi Past . P. 256.
9. ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek: The Greifeld Case , Karlsruhe - Science Management and the Nazi Past . P. 265.
10. ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek: The Greifeld Case , Karlsruhe - Science Management and the Nazi Past . Pp. 265-267.
11. ↑ Klaus Gaßner, The Nazi era is now catching up with KIT, Badische Latest News March 15, 2013, PDF . The article deals primarily with Rudolf Greifeld's honorary senator status at the University of Karlsruhe
12. ↑ Willy Marth, My experiences in German nuclear reactors and reprocessing plants, Book on Demand, 2014, p. 37 f.
13. ↑ Bernd-A. Rusinek: The Greifeld Case , Karlsruhe - Science Management and the Nazi Past . Pp. 272-273.