Paul Weyland

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Paul Weyland (born January 20, 1888 in Berlin ; † December 6, 1972 in Bad Pyrmont ) was a con man, anti-Semite and nationalist agitator. He was best known to the general public as the organizer of an anti- Einstein campaign in Berlin in 1920.

life and work

Nothing specific is known about Weyland's school and university education. It is believed that he attended high school; presumably he had been a student at the humanistic Leibniz Gymnasium in Berlin. He then apparently acquired scientific and technical knowledge. He himself claimed that he studied chemistry and worked as a biochemist in Germany. After the First World War , he became unemployed. Until 1929 he is said to have lived from casual work. According to Max von Laue , he was a pushover . Occasionally he was also referred to as an engineer, and he also tried his hand at writing, for example in the Deutsch- Völkische monthly books that he published , but only saw one issue.

In 1920 Weyland resigned on behalf of a “Working Group of German Natural Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science”. V. “20 lectures against the theory of relativity . In newspaper articles, he bid for large sums (10,000 to 15,000 Reichsmarks) for scientists who gave public speeches against Einstein at his events. He put the names of several well-known professors on his program whom he knew or suspected to be among the critics of the theory of relativity . Only two events against the theory of relativity staged by Weyland actually took place: Weyland and the experimental physicist Ernst Gehrcke spoke in the presence of Einstein on August 24, 1920 in the Berlin Philharmonic. Topics were: "Considerations on Einstein's theory of relativity and how it was introduced". Gehrcke spoke about "The theory of relativity, a scientific mass suggestion". At the second event on September 2, 1920, the Berlin engineer Ludwig Glaser spoke about "Attempts to prove the theory of relativity". Einstein, for his part, responded sharply to the attacks in the Berliner Tagblatt on August 27, 1920, distinguishing himself from German nationalists ( with or without a swastika ) as a Jew with international, liberal views .

A month later, Weyland visited the meeting of naturalists in Bad Nauheim , where on September 23, 1920 the well-known debate between Philipp Lenard and Einstein took place. He reported on it in an article in the Deutsche Zeitung, which was then reprinted in the right-wing conservative Political-Anthropological Monthly for Practical Politics. "The only positive sense of this natural scientist conference" for him was "that the separation of spirits has taken place and that under Lenard's leadership the violation of physics by mathematical dogmas is rejected". He then went on trips abroad, for example in the USA in 1921 and in 1923 in the run-up to Einstein himself to receive the Nobel Prize in Sweden.

Weyland was later a member of the SA , but was permanently excluded in 1933 because of his criminal past and neglect of his duties. He fled to Prague and appeared as an opponent of the National Socialists. He was abroad from 1936, but returned in 1939 and was immediately arrested. From 1940 to 1945 he was in a concentration camp. After the war he worked for the US armed forces and the CIA and became a US citizen in 1954. In the USA he blackened Einstein as a communist at the FBI in 1953 , whereupon J. Edgar Hoover personally ordered an extensive investigation. In 1967 Weyland returned to Germany. Weyland was married and had a son Joachim Weyland.

literature

  • Andreas Kleinert : Paul Weyland, the Berlin Einstein killer . In: Helmuth Albrecht (Hrsg.): Natural science and technology in history. 25 years chair for the history of science and technology at the Historical Institute of the University of Stuttgart . Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und Technik, Stuttgart 1993, pp. 198–232 ( short version in English ).
  • Armin Hermann: Einstein. The wise man and his century . Piper 1994, ISBN 3-492-03477-2 , pp. 240-43, 245, 363.
  • Siegfried: Grundmann: Einstein's Files: Science and Politics - Einstein's Berlin Time . Springer, 2004 (English edition 2006: The Einstein Dossiers )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Kleinert: Paul Weyland, the Einstein-Killer from Berlin
  2. ^ Albrecht Fölsing : Albert Einstein - A biography . Suhrkamp, ​​1995, p. 520.
  3. ↑ Katharina Zeitz: Max von Laue (1879-1960) . F. Steiner, 2006, p. 34
  4. ^ Siegfried Grundmann: The Einstein Dossiers: Science and Politics - Einstein's Berlin Period with an Appendix on Einstein's FBI File . Springer, 2006, ISBN 9783540311041 , p. 102
  5. ^ Siegfried Grundmann: The Einstein Dossiers: Science and Politics - Einstein's Berlin Period with an Appendix on Einstein's FBI File . Springer, 2006, ISBN 9783540311041 , p. 109
personal data
SURNAME Weyland, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German impostor
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1972
Place of death Bad Pyrmont