Josef Wimmer (physicist)

Josef Wimmer (* 1887 in Solla , Bavaria ; † 1945 or after) was a German physicist and dowser .

life and work

Wimmer, who holds a doctorate in physics, was a physicist at CA Steinheil & Sons in Munich from 1912 to 1915 and later a teacher and professor for mathematics and physics and astronomy. In the 1940s he was at the Wittelsbacher Oberschule in Munich, where he also taught flight physics during the war (many of the students were anti-aircraft helpers at an air base).

He was also known as a dowser and seemed to have some success, because Heinrich Himmler had him flown into his headquarters in Ukraine in early 1942 and was impressed by his ability to find water with the dowsing rod.

After the presentation by Michael Kater , the contact to the Ahnenerbe took place in 1942 via a project to search for gold in the sediment deposits of Bavarian rivers (Inn, Isar), with which Himmler had commissioned the geophysicist Karl Wienert at the SS Ahnenerbe , although every geologist after a simple request to the It had to be clear to the Bavarian Mining Authority that the deposits had been investigated for a long time and were not economical. Wienert delayed the project and from Himmler's point of view it had stalled. After Kater, at the end of 1942, Himmler brought in Wimmer, who became head of the applied geology department at Ahnenerbe. There he first trained dowsers for the SS, who were assigned to their military geological units, for example in Yugoslavia. You should not only find water, but also bunkers, explosives and other things. The training took place in the herb garden of the Dachau concentration camp . After Kater, Himmler commissioned Wimmer in August 1943 to track down a fabulous treasure in Hohenhöwen with a divining rod, which was just as unsuccessful as Wimmer and Wienert's search for gold in river deposits.

But as early as 1940, Wimmer appeared as head of applied geology at the Ahnenerbe in an expert report for Himmler, in which he advocated an application from the Reich Association for Divining Rods from October 1938 for further research and better training. As early as the 1930s, Wimmer initiated research at the University of Munich at the chair of the anatomist Benno Romeis and led it with Dr. Joseph Wüst from. They were also published. According to Wimmer, the physical question was solved through his research and that of others (senior teacher Dr. August Wendler in Erlangen) and out of the field of the occult . In his report of October 1940, however, he laments the fierce resistance and the silence, especially by physicists and geologists. In a report that the Main Security Office had previously obtained, the geologist Erich Wasmund from Kiel, the physicist Walther Gerlach from Munich and Bergrat Werner made negative comments about dowsing rods. In the memorandum, he also promotes its use beyond the search for water. He attributes mistakes to the inadequate training of dowsers and the fact that they are often blindly convinced of their abilities and can hardly be taught. At the end of his letter, he proposes to stop all publications that speak out aggressively against dowsing, and to submit general publications on dowsing to the Department of Applied Geology of Ancestral Inheritance for assessment.

In another letter to the curator of the Ahnenerbe, Walther Wüst, he complained on June 10, 1941 that detectives from Munich-Pasing searched his apartment and confiscated his divining rods and a magnetic theodolite as well as correspondence with the Ahnenerbe and took him for questioning. The letter shows that he was still a full-time school teacher at the time.

Fonts

• with J. Wüst: Investigations into biologically effective radiation, part 2: About novel vibrations of the wavelength 1-70 cm in the environment of inorganic and organic substances as well as biological objects. Physical, chemical and biological studies with a dowser as an indicator , Wilhelm Roux Archive for Development Mechanics of Organisms, Volume 131, 1934, pp. 389-482.

literature

• Michael Kater: The "Ahnenerbe" of the SS 1935-1945, Oldenbourg 2006, p. 222.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dates of birth and beginning of his career according to the portrait gallery of the Astronomical Society, Royal Hungarian University Printing Office 1931, p. 71, with illustration
2. ^ Report by Josef Wimmer on the position paper by the Reich Association for dowsing and the SD Report , October 30, 1940 , Original: Wimmer, On the memorandum of the Reich Association for Divining Rods and the Report of the SD , October 30, 1940, Ursinus College, Digital Commons (digitized version)
3. ↑ In addition to the magazine for dowsing rod research from 1936 to 1940 also in the Wilhelm Roux Archive for Development Mechanics, Volume 131, 1934, Issue 3
4. ^ Digitized at Ursinus College, Digital Commons
5. ↑ Part 1 of the investigations into biologically effective radiation by B. Romeis, J. Wüst and J. Wimmer was: B. Romeis: Investigations on the question of the long-range effect of metals on the growth and development of frog larvae , Wilhelm Roux archive for development mechanics of organisms Volume 131, 1934, pp. 373-388.