Karl Bechert

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Karl Bechert (born August 23, 1901 in Nuremberg ; † April 1, 1981 in Weilmünster ) was a German theoretical physicist and politician of the SPD .

Life

Karl Bechert was born on August 23, 1901 in Nuremberg. After graduating from high school in Munich, he studied physics , mathematics and chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . In 1925 he received his doctorate under Arnold Sommerfeld with a thesis on the structure of the nickel spectrum and was his assistant from 1923 and his assistant from 1926. In the years 1925–1926 he worked as a Rockefeller Fellow in Spain and he was also for study purposes and for lectures in the USA and India. He had been married to Sibylle Lepsius since 1929 and had two children. In 1930 he completed his habilitation at Sommerfeld and was a private lecturer at his institute until 1933. In 1933 Bechert was offered a professorship at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen , where he became director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics. In 1945/46 the Americans appointed him rector of Giessen University, as he was one of the few politically unencumbered. After he could not prevent the university from being reduced to a training center for agriculture and veterinary medicine with the corresponding loss of positions (including his own professorship), he accepted an appointment at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 1946 , where he was also director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics was. He taught there until his retirement in 1969.

From 1942 to 1948 he was chairman of the Gauverein Hessen of the German Physical Society .

In 1945, after the invasion of the United States, Bechert was appointed mayor of Donsbach (Westerwald) and senior school officer in Dillenburg .

Since the 1950s, Bechert was a member of the board of trustees of the German Peace Society . From 1955 he was a member of the “Church and Politics” working group of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau . As chairman of the state association for the maintenance and promotion of the Christian simultaneous school in Rhineland-Palatinate, he campaigned against separation according to denominations, as made possible by the school articles of the state constitution of May 18, 1947 and the elementary school law of January 25, 1955, and for ecumenical coexistence a. Bechert joined the SPD in 1956.

In 1963 the Norwegian Academy of Sciences elected him a member. In 1971 he became chairman of the "International Society for Responsibility in Science". After leaving the Bundestag in 1972, he increasingly publicly opposed the atomic energy policy of the federal governments Brandt / Scheel and Schmidt / Genscher (he spoke of the "principle of short-sighted benefit"). He was a member of the World Association for the Protection of Life , the Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives Environmental Protection and other organizations of social movements and was considered the "father of the anti-nuclear energy movement". From 1975 to 1981 his writings were sent out four times a year to up to 1,700 recipients in Germany and abroad by the "Prof. Bechert Information Service" supervised by Herbert Wiedmann, Grafenberg, and Wilfried Hüfler, Reutlingen. The latter are still archived with Wilfried Hüfler, Reutlingen.

In November 1980, Bechert was one of the initiators of the Krefeld appeal against nuclear armament in Europe ( NATO double decision ). He was scheduled to be the main speaker for the Easter March rally on April 4, 1981 in Bonn's Hofgarten, but died three days earlier, a few hours after he had given a lecture the previous evening in Kirchhain, Hesse . He died in the Möttau district of the market town of Weilmünster.

plant

Like his teacher Sommerfeld, Bechert dealt with a broad spectrum of areas of theoretical physics, initially with atomic physics and spectroscopy, the solution of the Dirac equation, and the quantum mechanics of the angular momentum of systems of particles and nuclear models. Later he dealt with nonlinear wave equations in gas dynamics and the connection of quantum electrodynamics to nonlinear formulations of classical electrodynamics with self-interaction and the connection of general relativity and classical electrodynamics.

He contributed to the book by Sommerfeld Atomic Structure and Spectral Lines .

He was co-editor of the journal for applied mathematics and mechanics.

Political career

Bechert was a member of the City Council of Gießen in 1945/46 and of the City Council of Gau-Algesheim from 1956 to 1964 . The American occupation forces appointed Bechert mayor of Donsbach in 1945 , but because of his work in Giessen he resigned from office that same year. From 1956 to 1960 Bechert was a member of the district council in the Bingen district .

Bechert was a member of the German Bundestag from 1957 to 1972. There he was for a long time chairman of the committee for atomic energy and water management. Although living in Rhineland-Palatinate , he represented the Hessian constituency of Waldeck in parliament. From 1961 to 1965 he was chairman of the Bundestag committee for atomic energy and water management. He was an explicit opponent of both the civil and the military use of atomic energy. He did not sign the Göttingen Declaration in 1957 because it rejected military use but supported civilian use.

He was President of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science (SSRS), in which international scientists such as Max Born, Wolfgang Pauli, Hans Thirring, Edward Condon and Albert Einstein worked together.

Honors

For services to its reconstruction and the prevention of its closure, the University of Gießen appointed Bechert an honorary senator in 1957 and he was an honorary doctor of the University of Gießen. In Gau-Algesheim the “Karl-Bechert-Haus” of the “Social Democratic Education Initiative” is named after him.

Professor Karl Bechert Prize

The North Hessian SPD has been awarding the Professor Karl Bechert Prize for decentralized renewable energy on a regular basis since 2007. The award honors natural or legal persons who have made a strong socio-political, economic or scientific commitment to the development and dissemination of decentralized renewable energies in Northern Hesse .

Fonts

  • The madness of nuclear war, Diederichs 1956
  • with Christian Gerthsen : Atomic Physics. Theory of atomic construction, Göschen collection, 3 volumes, 4th edition 1963

literature

  • Ralf Kohl, The political work of Professor Karl Bechert from 1956-1972. A study of (un) political behavior. Dissertation, Mainz 1993.
  • Kurt Friedrich : Karl Bechert 1901-1981. Scientists and politicians out of responsibility. in: Historisches Lesebuch Gau-Algesheim, Ed. Stadt Gau-Algesheim, Red. Norbert Diehl, Verlag Carl-Brilmayer-Gesellschaft, ibid. 1999, pp. 128-133
  • Wilhelm Wegner: Role models: K. Bechert is considered the father of the anti-nuclear movement in Germany. in Chrismon plus. Rheinland , H. 2, Düsseldorf 2012, p. 64
  • Wilhelm Hanle, Herbert Jehle: Obituary for Karl Bechert , Physikalische Blätter, 37, 1981, 376–377. doi : 10.1002 / phbl.19810371215
  • WAP Luck: Karl Bechert 65 years old , Physikalische Blätter, Volume 22, 1966, 374-375. doi : 10.1002 / phbl.19660220807

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norbert Diehl, Schullandschaften, in: Rhineland-Palatinate. Grenzland in the middle of Europe, ed. in collaboration with the State Chancellery of Rhineland-Palatinate, 4th edition - Heidelberg, 2006, pp. 114–119.
  2. http://www.fes.de/archiv/adsd_neu/inhalt/nachlass/nachlass_b/bechert-ka.htm