Robert Hans Wentzel

Robert Hans Wentzel (born August 25, 1878 in Sulzbach / Saar , † January 6, 1970 in Heidenheim an der Brenz ) was a German railway civil engineer and university professor , he was professor of railway construction and rector of the Technical University of Aachen .

Live and act

After graduating from high school in 1896, Wentzel studied civil engineering at the Technical University of Charlottenburg . After his first state examination for the Prussian civil service in 1901, he took the second state examination in railway construction in 1906. Before the First World War he worked for several years as a government builder ( Assessor ) at the Prussian State Railway Administration and after his military service at the AEG Railway Department in Berlin.

One year after his doctorate , Wentzel accepted a call to the Technical University of Aachen on October 1, 1920, where he taught as a professor for railways and was elected rector of the university from 1926 to 1928 as successor to Hermann Bonin .

In 1939, due to the temporary closure of his chair, he was transferred to the German Technical University in Brno , but an intervention by Vice-Rector Otto Gruber ensured that he was relegated, although Wentzel himself would have preferred to switch to the Technical University of Hanover . So Wentzel could and had to continue this transport and defense policy department, as best it was possible under the war-related interruptions and damage. After rumors about a possible closure of his department, Wentzel submitted an application for early retirement for health reasons in 1943, but his incumbent rector Hans Ehrenberg as well as another transfer application with an appeal to his sense of honor in difficult times and a promise to keep his chair refused. Finally, after the end of the war in 1945, Wentzel was no longer available for further employment and was officially retired .

Wentzel's role in the National Socialist state

Although he was certainly not one of the most active advocates of National Socialism, he was included in the denunciation committee in 1933 together with Felix Rötscher , Hubert Hoff , Hermann Bonin and Adolf Wallichs , which dealt with the review of denunciation cases by the ASTA ( General Student Committee ) and the Student leaders were reported to colleagues and students on the basis of alleged communist ideas or behavior critical of the regime. By forwarding these reports to the Reich Commissioner in the Ministry of Education Bernhard Rust , the non-Aryan university teachers and lecturers Otto Blumenthal , Arthur Guttmann , Walter Fuchs , Ludwig Hopf , Theodore von Kármán , Paul Ernst Levy , Karl Walter Mautner , Alfred Meusel , Leopold Karl Pick , Rudolf Ruer , Hermann Salmang and Ludwig Strauss withdrew their teaching permit from September 1933 under the law to restore the civil service . A year later, at the request of his rector Paul Röntgen, he was appointed liaison lecturer to the German Society for Defense Policy and Defense Sciences . In 1937 he finally joined the NSDAP and was thus confirmed two years later by Alfred Buntru as dean of the Faculty of Construction, since only those party members who were loyal to the regime were now given management duties. Finally, Rector Ehrenberg commissioned him to work together with Peter Mennicken , Hermann Proetel , Hans Mehrtens and Robert Roessing in the working group for spatial planning under Hermann Roloff , which, on behalf of the secret organization "Mittelstelle für Heimatschutz", gave the possibility of expanding the The university was supposed to organize responsibilities for the occupied western neighboring countries, which was done only a few months later due to the liberation of these countries by the Allies.

literature

• Ulrich Kalkmann: The Technical University of Aachen in the Third Reich (1933–1945). Mainz, Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-86130-181-4 , especially p. 390 (= Aachener Studien zur Technik und Gesellschaft , 4; also dissertation, RWTH Aachen, 2003) ( online in the Google book search).

Web links

• Biographical database of the Historical Institute (Chair for Modern History) and the RWTH Aachen University Archives, accessed on July 28, 2010