Heinrich Cordes (chemist)

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Heinrich Cordes (born May 19, 1906 in Haspe / Westphalia , † March 12, 1999 in Hildesheim ) was a German chemist and university professor.

Life

Cordes studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen with a focus on physical chemistry . Since the majority of the Göttingen student body leaned toward the National Socialists at the beginning of the thirties, there were also some Nazi supporters among the chemists such as Gerhart Jander , Wilhelm Jander , Rudolf Mentzel and Peter Adolf Thiessen . At first Cordes was close to the Social Democrats, but probably came under Thessen's influence and then also joined the National Socialists. In a statement, the physical chemist Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer assessed Cordes as a knowledgeable, scientifically minded and pedagogically gifted chemist. As a result, in the early 1930s, Bonhoeffer brought Cordes to work as an assistant at the University of Frankfurt .

Career in the Nazi state

Cordes joined the SA and since August 1, 1932, the NSDAP . In 1935/36 and 1938/39 he was Lecturer Association Leader at the University of Frankfurt / Main. In 1936, after completing his habilitation, he was given a teaching position at the University of Frankfurt . In 1939 he was temporarily the leader of the Hesse-Nassau entertainment lecturers. In 1939 he joined the SS . In the SS he was assigned to the SD . His National Socialist colleague Peter Adolf Thiessen wrote in an expert opinion that Cordes was "well-established as a steadfast, uncompromising National Socialist".

Cordes' efforts to obtain a professorship at a German university were initially unsuccessful because his academic achievements were considered insufficient. Finally, on November 6, 1941 , Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust appointed Cordes to the chair of physical chemistry at the Technical University of Braunschweig against the wishes of the faculty . Wolfgang Finkelnburg , the Lecturer Association Leader of the TH Darmstadt, criticized this appointment at a conference as "a political measure that ignored the performance principle - not to say 'political shift'".

After the Second World War

After the end of the war, Cordes was dismissed from university on May 31, 1945. In the denazification procedure , the Frankfurt Chamber of Justice classified him on January 3, 1949 in Group IV (fellow travelers). The Braunschweig chair had meanwhile been filled elsewhere. Cordes became a professor for reuse and in 1956 was again given a chair at the TH Braunschweig. He retired in 1972.

literature

  • Heinrich Becker, Hans-Joachim Dahms, Cornelia Wegeler (eds.): The University of Göttingen under National Socialism - the repressed chapter of its 250-year history , Munich 1987
  • Catalogus Professorum of the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Braunschweig, Part 2: Teachers 1877–1945, created by Bettina Gundler with the help of Claudia Schüler, Braunschweig 1991, p. 40 f.
  • Ute Deichmann : Fleeing, participating, forgetting - chemists and biochemists during the Nazi era , Weinheim 2001
  • Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , pp. 35-36.
  • Ernst Klee : The Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich , Frankfurt a. M. 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ute Deichmann, fleeing, participating, forgetting. Chemists and biochemists during the Nazi era, Weinheim 2001, p. 218.
  2. ↑ Heinrich Becker u. a. (Ed.), The University of Göttingen under National Socialism, Munich 1987, p. 17.
  3. ↑ a b Ute Deichmann, fleeing, participating, forgetting. Chemists and biochemists during the Nazi era, Weinheim 2001, p. 219.
  4. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt a. M. 2003.
  5. ↑ Peter Albrecht, Walter Kertz (ed.): Technical University of Braunschweig , Hildesheim 1995, p. 459.
  6. ↑ Quotation in: Daniel Weßelhöft: Of hard-working participants, activists and perpetrators. The Technical University of Braunschweig under National Socialism , Hildesheim: Olms 2012, p. 200.
  7. ↑ Peter Albrecht, Walter Kertz (ed.): Technische Universität Braunschweig , Hildesheim 1995, p. 612.
personal data
SURNAME Cordes, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Haspe , Westphalia
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1999
Place of death Hildesheim