Karl-Heinz Boseck

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl-Heinz Boseck (born December 11, 1915 in Berlin ) was a German mathematician and National Socialist . In the SS, he was responsible for research on inmates in the field of mathematics and, although he was still a student, had a great influence on mathematics at the University of Berlin during the Second World War.

Life

After graduating from high school, labor service and military service, Boseck studied mathematics in Berlin with a diploma in July 1944 with a thesis on rocket ballistics classified as secret ( examination of the external ballistics of special projectiles ), with the examiners Klose and Erich Schumann (department head research at the Heereswaffenamt). At the university he was a National Socialist student leader and in 1936 took part in National Socialist summer camps. From 1940 he was the assistant of Alfred Klose (Institute for Applied Mathematics) in Berlin, for whom he also worked as a conscript at the Gottow Army Research Center ( Kummersdorf Army Research Center ) near Kummersdorf (shooting range). There Boseck dealt, among other things, with rocket ballistics (Heereswaffenamt, Department Wa F). At the same time, from 1939 Boseck worked part-time at the Reich Security Main Office , Department IIIc (where the mathematician and SS-Hauptsturmführer Helmut Joachim Fischer also worked). Due to ailments in the area of ​​the feet and legs (varicose veins) he was unfit for military service since the beginning of the war.

In the autumn of 1944, on Fischer's recommendation, he took over the supervision of a computational group of inmates of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In order for his authority to become visible, Boseck insisted on being appointed SS-Untersturmführer when taking over his task, which despite his leg problems and the fact that he did not reach the required minimum height of 1.74 m at 1.70 m, for the long term of the war (admission to the SS on October 1, 1944). Klose was reluctant to let him go, but hoped that the new place of work would benefit his institute. The prisoner group worked on weapons research for the SS, the army, the navy and the air force and selected positions by the Reich Research Council - represented by Walther Gerlach and Wilhelm Süss . The position was closely connected to the SS Ahnenerbe as the newly established Mathematics (M) department in the Waffen-SS Institute for Defense Scientific Purpose Research (Head Wolfram Sievers ) . Alwin Walther in Darmstadt , among others, accepted the use of this new computing capacity . In addition to Sachsenhausen, the mathematicians were also selected in Buchenwald concentration camp (by Boseck in November 1944) and Dachau concentration camp (by Helmut Joachim Fischer). One of the prisoners working there was Georges Bruhat from France, but he fell ill. In a report of December 28, 1944, Boseck listed three Germans, six French, three Czechs, three Belgians, a Dane, a Portuguese and (without specifying nationality) a Jew.

With mechanical and electromechanical calculating machines, function tables and flow problems were calculated for the rocket and jet fighter development up to April 1945, among other things. Orders came in particularly through Sievers. However, there were problems with the calculating machines available, which were prone to repair. This was the first group of forced laborers in the field of mathematics under the concentration camp system. Also in 1944 there was a group that carried out astrophysical calculations for the astrophysicist Kurt Walter in the Ravensbrück concentration camp , and when they were later relocated to Sachsenhausen, there was friction with Boseck. The group was based in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg . There were still plans to evacuate to another camp in April 1945, but this never happened. Although the camp had already been closed, Boseck was still in Sachsenhausen on April 4, 1945.

According to the memories of Alexander Dinghas , who was a lecturer in Berlin at the time, Boseck had a great influence at the university. He was a student council and, according to Dinghas, despite his youth, a fanatic who would show signs of a Robespierre , albeit on a smaller scale. According to Dinghas (who was Greek), his influence was so great that he was able to end his teaching post in Berlin, just as Boseck's call to the responsible ministry in 1939 accelerated Dinghas' teaching in Berlin (Boseck supported Dinghas until 1943). According to Dinghas, his influence was even greater than that of Ludwig Bieberbach , who by no means counteracted this influence, but according to Dinghas even had respect for it.

The further fate of Boseck after the war is unknown after Segal. Wolfram Sievers was convicted in Nuremberg in 1947 and executed in 1948. There are memories of the German foreman of the mathematics department in Sachsenhausen Emil Peuker (* 1910) from the time after the war and there are memories of Helmut Joachim Fischer.

literature

  • Segal: Mathematicians under the Nazis, Princeton UP 2003, especially p. 323ff
  • Volker Koop: Himmler's Germanenwahn: The SS organization Ahnenerbe and its crimes, be-bra Verlag, Berlin-Brandenburg 2012
  • Julien Reitzenstein: Himmler's Researcher. Defense science and medical crimes in the "Ahnenerbe" of the SS, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014, especially p. 247f
  • Michael H. Kater: The "Ahnenerbe" of the SS 1935–1945, Oldenbourg 2006

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date of birth according to Gerd Simon, Chronologie Häftlingsforschung, Universität Tübingen, pdf , and Julien Reitzenstein, Das SS-Ahnenerbe and the “Strasbourg skull collection” - Fritz Bauer's last case, Duncker and Humblot 2018, p. 67, note 172.
  2. ^ Reitzenstein, Himmler's researcher, p. 248
  3. ^ Segal, Mathematicians under the Nazis, p. 390
  4. ^ Reitzenstein, Himmlers, Researcher, p. 247
  5. ^ Reitzenstein, Himmler's researcher, p. 247
  6. ↑ Reitzenstein, Himmler's researcher, p. 247. According to other information due to an accident with a leg injury. Segal, Mathematicians under the Nazis, p. 324
  7. ^ Judith Luig, Die Mathe Nazis , TAZ, August 30, 2008
  8. ^ Segal, Mathematicians under the Nazis, 2003, p. 327
  9. ^ Segal, Mathematicians under the Nazis, p. 330
  10. ↑ Dinghas cited in Segal, Mathematicians under the Nazis, 2003, p. 324. The passage from the memoirs of Dinghas is also cited in English in Eckart Menzler-Trott, Logic's lost genius, the life of Gerhard Gentzen, AMS, 2007, p 153f. The memories of Dinghas are published in German in: Dinghas, memories from the last years of the mathematical institute of the University of Berlin, in: Heinrich Begehr (Ed.), Mathematik in Berlin. History and documentation, 2nd half volume, Shaker Verlag, Aachen, 1998
  11. ^ Segal, Mathematicians under the Nazis, 2003, p. 330
  12. ^ Judith Luig, TAZ, August 30, 2008
  13. ↑ Fischer, Memories. Fire Department for Research, Ingolstadt 1985. Mentioned in Gerd Simon, Chronology of Prisoners Research 2010
personal data
SURNAME Boseck, Karl-Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 20th century or 21st century