Peter Adolf Thiessen

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Peter Adolf Thiessen (1961)

Peter Adolf Thiessen (born April 6, 1899 in Schweidnitz , Province of Silesia , † March 5, 1990 in Berlin ) was a German chemist . Among other things, he worked from 1935 to the end of the Second World War as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for physical chemistry and electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem and from 1956 to 1964 as director of the institute for physical chemistry at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Berlin. From 1937 to 1945 Thiessen was head of the chemistry division of the Reich Research Council headed by Hermann Göring . - After the Second World War he was obliged to work on the atomic bomb project in the USSR until 1956. From 1957 to 1965 he was chairman and then honorary chairman of the Research Council of the GDR . From 1960 to 1963 he was a non-party member of the State Council of the GDR .

Live and act

After studying chemistry at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg , the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald and the University of Göttingen , Peter Adolf Thiessen received his doctorate there in 1923 under Nobel Prize winner Richard Zsigmondy with a dissertation on the subject of "Critical investigations on colloidal gold " .

From 1922 to 1928 and again from 1933 he was a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 3096). Along with Rudolf Mentzel at the University of Göttingen, he was one of the early National Socialist activists who joined the NSDAP and the SA in the early 1920s .

After his habilitation, he worked from 1926 to 1932 as a lecturer and from 1932 to 1935 as associate professor for inorganic chemistry at the universities of Göttingen, Frankfurt am Main and Münster.

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1935 he was appointed full professor at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster , but already in the same year accepted a position as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for physical chemistry and electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem . From 1934 to 1937 he was also an advisor to the Reich Ministry of Education under Minister Bernhard Rust . In 1937 Thiessen became head of the chemistry division of the Reich Research Council (RFR). In this role he was the most influential man in research funding in the field of chemistry. In addition, there were close and long-term relationships with Professor Rudolf Mentzel , then SS Brigadefuhrer , President of the German Research Foundation and, from June 1942, Vice President of the RFR, with whom he shared the Haber Villa in Berlin-Dahlem. From 1939 to 1942 Thiessen was a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society .

In 1939 he became a full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In 1945 he was expelled from the academy because of his role during the Nazi era.

Its role during the Nazi era , in particular the institute's focus on poison gas research such as the “miracle weapon” chlorine trifluoride ( N-substance ), is viewed critically from today's perspective.

In the USSR

At the end of World War II , Thiessen and other German scientists were brought to the USSR to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project . It is reported that on April 27, 1945, Thiessen drove to Manfred von Ardenne's private institute in an armored car accompanied by a Soviet major who was also a leading chemist . Together with Thiessen, von Ardenne, Gustav Hertz and Max Volmer were transported to the Soviet Union. Volmer initially stayed in Moscow, where he was employed at Research Institute No. 9, while the other German scientists were then ordered to Georgia to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Von Ardenne became head of Institute "A" in Sinop near Sukhumi (today the capital of Abkhazia ), Hertz became head of Institute "G" in Agudsera, also at Sukhumi.

From 1945–1950, Thiessen worked with his group in object A, the “Sinop” sanatorium near Sukhumi, built by the NKVD, under the direction of Baron von Ardenne. His group developed metal-nickel filters for gas diffusion during isotope enrichment and contributed to solving the problem of corrosion on the units. The new type of filter was then manufactured in the Elektrostal plant near Moscow. From October 1948 to March 1949 he was assigned to Novouralsk (Sverdlovsk-44), together with Heinz Barwich , in what the Germans called "Kefirstadt". There they successfully completed the development of new filters and anti-corrosion techniques on the units for gas diffusion for nuclear fission preparation. At a meeting of the Technical Council, he also surprisingly met the head of the Soviet secret service Lavrenti Beria , to whom he complained about the lack of contact with Soviet scientists.

For his work on filter development, Thiessen received the first-degree Stalin Prize in 1951 , the USSR's highest award for civil citizens.

After the first Soviet atomic bomb attempt, Thiessen and other scientists were withdrawn from the secret project in June 1952 and moved from Sukhumi to Moscow. There he worked under "quarantine" in the Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences. During this time he developed new processes in the field of tribology - lubrication techniques to optimize friction and wear processes.

The German researchers were only able to return to their homeland in 1956 after the Soviet project had been successfully carried out and a certain “waiting period”.

In the DDR

The Presidium of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (DAW) overturned the decision made in 1945 about his exclusion from the academy in 1955. In 1956 Thiessen returned from the USSR to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and was director of the Institute for Physical Chemistry at DAW from 1956 (?) To 1964 , his successor being Wolfgang Schirmer . From August 1957 to 1965 he was chairman and then honorary chairman of the Research Council of the GDR . From September 1960 to November 1963 he was a non-party member of the State Council of the GDR . He was a member of the Scientific Council for the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy .

Awards

During the Nazi era, Thiessen received the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP for his research work and his services to the Nazi regime .

In 1958 he received the National Prize of the GDR for his services in the USSR and the GDR and a year later the banner of labor and the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold, for which he was awarded the honor bar in 1969.

In addition, he was awarded the Stalin Prize (1951), the Great Star of Friendship of Nations , the Karl Marx Order and the State Prize of the USSR , the Lenin Order and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor .

As an external foreign member he was accepted into the Academy of Sciences of the USSR . The Academy of Sciences of the GDR awarded him the Helmholtz Medal in 1981 and its bar of honor in 1988.

Works (selection)

  • "The colloid gold" (with R. Zsigmondy), Akademie Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig 1925 (colloid research in detail, vol. 1).
  • Thermal-mechanical material separation. Series: The Chemical Engineer. Volume I, part 3. Leipzig 1933 (as co-author)
  • Basics of tribochemistry. Berlin 1967 (as co-author)
  • A look into the next decade: Development paths of the sciences. Jena 1968

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Das colloid gold" , Akademie Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig 1925 (Colloid research in detail, vol. 1).
  2. ↑ Bernhard Strebel, Jens-Christian Wagner (PDF; 635 kB): Research program “History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism”, Berlin 2003, p. 46, note 181
  3. ↑ Biographical information from the manual "Who was who in the GDR?"
  4. ↑ Pawel W. Olejnikow: German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project , The Nonproliferation Review Volume 7, Number 2, 1 - 30 (2000) . Olejnikow was a group leader in the Institute for Technical Physics of the Russian Nuclear Center in Sneschinsk (Chelyabinsk-70).

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Thiessen, Peter Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Schweidnitz
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1990
Place of death Berlin