Klaus Zweiling

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Klaus Zweiling (born February 18, 1900 in Berlin - Moabit ; † November 18, 1968 in Leipzig ) was a German Marxist philosopher and president of the Association of Philosophical Institutions of the GDR.

biography

Klaus Zweiling attended the Bismarck-Gymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf (1909-1917), made his secondary school diploma in 1917 and then worked in the agricultural auxiliary service. His military service lasted from September to November 1918. After the war, he studied mathematics and physics in Berlin and, from September 1920, in Göttingen (1918–1922). He also attended lectures in history, economics, philosophy, and press law. He completed his studies with a doctorate from Max Born ( on the application of graphic methods in determining the orbit of heavenly bodies ) and exams from Carl Runge (applied mathematics), Richard Courant (theoretical mathematics) and Max Born (theoretical physics).

Zweiling had become a supporter of Leonard Nelson in Göttingen . Zweiling joined the USPD in 1920 during the Kapp Putsch (March 15). In December 1920, he did not join the VKPD with the USPD majority . In the spring of 1921 he decided to follow Paul Levi, who had been excluded from the KPD . In 1922, when the remaining USPD reunified with the SPD , Zweiling became a member of the Social Democrats. From 1924 to 1931 he worked as an editor for various social democratic daily newspapers, first at Volkswille in Münster, then at Volkszeitung für das Vogtland in Plauen. During this time he developed from a neo-Kantian to a Marxist and took part in the class struggle , the most important journal of the SPD left.

In 1931 he took part in the founding of the SPD left-wing split-off SAPD , where he worked a. a. in the Zwickau-Plauen district management and the editorial staff of the Socialist Workers' Newspaper and, together with Fritz Sternberg, presented a draft program at the first party congress of the SAPD in 1932. In 1933 Zweiling belonged to the left party majority, which rejected the dissolution course of chairmen Kurt Rosenfeld and Max Seydewitz , and in March 1933 he was elected to the party executive committee, which operated illegally. Arrested by the Gestapo in August 1933 , Zweiling was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of preparation for high treason . In 1943 Zweiling was drafted into a probation unit .

After Karl-Eugen Kurrer , he also made contributions to civil engineering. After his release from prison in 1936 and being banned from practicing his profession, he made his way as a consultant for engineers on mathematical issues. The test engineer Arno Schleusner entrusted him with checking the stability of the guyed steel cantilever construction at Berlin-Tempelhof Airport, which he solved with a variation method. Zweiling was not allowed to publish the results, but Schleusner agreed to publish them under his name in Der Stahlbau 1938. In the literature he is cited for solving problems with elastic plates with biharmonic polynomials and for the convergence of approximation methods in the treatment of the buckling load of columns with a variable area moment of inertia according to Luigi Vianello and Friedrich Engesser . After the war he published two monographs, one on elastic stability (1953) and one on biharmonic polynomials and their application (1952).

After the liberation, Zweiling joined the KPD in 1945 and was initially an editor at its Deutscher Volkszeitung , from 1946 to 1950 editor-in-chief of the theoretical body of the newly founded SED , Die Einheit . In 1950, as part of a campaign against former SAPD members, he was accused of “pest work in the field of ideology” of allowing “anti-party, petty-bourgeois and even Trotskyist views to penetrate”. Released from his previous functions and politically sidelined, he headed the Technik Verlag from 1949 to 1955 .

In 1955 Zweiling, who had completed his habilitation in 1948, was appointed full professor for dialectical materialism at the Humboldt University in Berlin . During this time he gave a comprehensive introductory lecture entitled The Marxist Philosophical Materialism and devoted himself to the analysis of the philosophical problems of physics. He left Berlin in 1960 and went to Leipzig University . On the occasion of his 60th birthday, he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver. In 1965 he retired. His wife died that same year. Zweiling committed suicide at the end of 1968. Herbert Hörz developed into his most famous academic student .

He was buried in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery in Berlin .

Works

  • About the application of graphic methods in determining the orbit of the heavenly bodies , in: Yearbook of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences , Göttingen 1923, DNB 365656119 ( Dissertation University of Göttingen 1923).
  • The rise and fall of capitalist society. Social history sketch. E. Laub'sche Verlagshandlung, Berlin / Otto Klemm, Leipzig 1927, DNB 578532948 .
  • as Otto Erbe pseudonym : The victory of fascism in Germany and the tasks of the working class. Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, diplomatic mission , Paris 1933, DNB 578532956 ,
  • Basics of a theory of biharmonic polynomials. Berlin: Verlag Technik 1952.
  • Balance and stability. Critical examination of some important problems in elasticity theory. Berlin: Verlag Technik 1953
  • Freedom and necessity. Berlin 1956
  • Lenin's concept of matter and its confirmation by modern atomic physics. Berlin: 1957.
  • German philosophy from 1895–1917. Berlin 1962

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurrer, K.-E .: The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Berlin: Ernst & Sohn 2018, pp. 929f., ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .
  2. ↑ A. Schleusner, The principle of virtual displacements and the principles of variation in the theory of elasticity, Stahlbau , Volume 11, 1938, No. 24, pp. 185–192
personal data
SURNAME Zweiling, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Marxist philosopher, President of the Association of Philosophical Institutions of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 18th November 1968
Place of death Leipzig