Karl Mey

Karl Mey (born March 16, 1879 in Wandersleben near Gotha, Thuringia; † unknown, after May 1945) was a German industrial physicist and from 1933 to 1935 chairman of the German Physical Society (DPG).

Life

education

Mey studied mathematics and physics at the Humboldt University in Berlin . He received his doctorate in 1902 with his thesis on the cathode gradient of alkali metals .

Career

After completing his studies, Mey was at the Tegel Military Research Office and then at the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft ( AEG ), where he specialized in the improvement of incandescent lamps . In 1909 he became the head of the AEG light bulb factory.

During World War I , Mey served in the infantry on the Western Front from 1914 to 1917.

After the war, Mey resumed his employment at AEG and, after the spin-off of light bulb production from AEG, Deutsche Gasglühlicht AG ( Auergesellschaft ) and Siemens & Halske , headed the research and development department of OSRAM GmbH KG .

Around 1931 Mey became Vice President of the German Glass Technology Society and from 1931 to 1945 he was President of the Society for Technical Physics. From 1933 to 1935 he was chairman of the DPG. The election of Mey as President of the DPG in the year of Hitler's election as Reich Chancellor was a clear sign of independence from National Socialist politics. In his function as a member of the supervisory board of the United Lausitzer Glaswerke , he brought Wilhelm Wagenfeld into the company as head of the design department.

In May 1945, Mey was captured by Soviet soldiers and deported to the Soviet Union as a "leading military industrialist" .

Publications

• Karl Mey: About the cathode gradient of the alkali metals . In: Annals of Physics . Volume 316, Issue 5, 1903

literature

• Walter Scheiffele: Karl Mey and Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Industrial and design strategy 1935 to 1939 . Berlin 2016.
• Dieter Hoffmann: The Ramsauer era and the self-mobilization of the German Physical Society . In: Dieter Hoffmann u. a. (Ed.): Physicists between autonomy and adaptation . Weinheim 2007, pp. 173-215.
• Richard H. Beyler: Framework conditions and authorities of the physicist community in the Third Reich . In: Dieter Hoffmann u. a. (Ed.): Physicists between autonomy and adaptation . Weinheim 2007, pp. 59-90.
• Stefan L. Wolff: The exclusion and expulsion of physicists under National Socialism. What role did the German Physical Society play? . In: Dieter Hoffmann u. a. (Ed.): Physicists between autonomy and adaptation . Weinheim 2007, pp. 91-138.