Rudolf Mentzel

Rudolf Mentzel, 1937

Rudolf Mentzel (born April 28, 1900 in Bremen ; † December 4, 1987 in Twistringen ) was a German chemist , science functionary, employee of the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and National Education and a member of the SS and the NSDAP . He researched chemical weapons and rose to be the most influential science politician of the “ Third Reich ”.

Life

Revolution and Weimar Republic

The son of a teacher was trained in a mine throwing company in Bremen from June 1918 and moved to a field recruit depot in Tubize ( Belgium ) towards the end of the First World War in September 1918 . In 1919 he participated as a member of a guard formation in the suppression of the Bremen Soviet Republic . During the Kapp Putsch in March and April 1920, he was deployed in a student formation in the southern Harz . From May to September 1921 Mentzel fought with the Wolf Freikorps in Upper Silesia , including on Annaberg . In the winter of 1921 or 1922 he joined the SA . In autumn 1923 he became deputy storm leader of SA Storm 2/2. When the NSDAP was banned after the failed Hitler putsch , Mentzel joined the workers and middle class association under Ludolf Haase in Göttingen .

In February 1919, Mentzel began studying mathematics and natural sciences in Göttingen to become a teacher. He began studying chemistry in the winter semester of 1921/22. He received his doctorate in March 1925 under Walter Hückel and Adolf Windaus on stereoisomerism of β-substituted decalins , his first and only scientific publication.

From April 1925 to May 1926, Mentzel headed the laboratory of the Bremen oil company CF Plum. He then returned to Göttingen as a private assistant to Gerhart Janders , in order to carry out research assignments on chemical warfare agents for the Reichswehr Ministry at the Chemical Institute of the University of Göttingen . During this time, from August 1925 to May 1928, Mentzel suspended his party membership or temporarily resigned from the NSDAP. After his re-entry with his old membership number 2,937, he devoted himself more to his political career. From autumn 1928 to summer 1929 he was storm leader of the SA storm 2/82 in Göttingen and from June 1930 to June 1933 district leader of the NSDAP for Göttingen city and country. In June 1932 he also joined the SS (SS no. 39,885). In June 1933 he was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer and since January 7, 1933 he was leader of the I. Sturmbann of Standard 51.

time of the nationalsocialism

After Mentzel's earlier attempt to complete his habilitation in Göttingen had failed during the Weimar Republic , Theodor Vahlen enabled him to do his habilitation in Greifswald in July 1933 . Mentzel gave his inaugural lecture on the importance of gas protection for the civilian population . The venia legendi referred exclusively to "applied chemistry with special consideration of air protection". The secret habilitation thesis apparently dealt with methods to make gas mask filters useless by chemical means and to achieve a breakthrough of the filter. The copy of Walter Hückel's report suggests that the habilitation was due to political influence, despite Mentzel's technical deficits.

To 1 November 1933 brought Jander his former assistant as head of a new department for chemical weapons to the former of Fritz Haber led the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry , whose leadership Jander brokered Bernhard Rust had taken over. In June 1934 Mentzel became a consultant in the Office Science II in the new Reich Ministry of Education (REM) under Rust and thus deputy to Erich Schumann as head of the Office for Science. The Office of Science II was supposed to keep the military informed about civil research. The fact that Mentzel, as a ministerial official, was authorized to issue instructions to his scientific superior, Jander, almost inevitably led to conflicts between the two. Jander was virtually deported to Greifswald in 1935, while Peter Adolf Thiessen , another Göttingen liaison from Mentzel, took over the KWI for physical chemistry.

Mentzel primarily pursued his steep career in science policy. His department at KWI was practically headed by his assistant Remigius Hofmann until Mentzel resigned from this post after being appointed DFG President at the end of August 1938. After his appointment as a non-official extraordinary professor in Greifswald, Mentzel moved to the Technical University of Berlin in September 1934 . Although he had neither teaching experience nor independent publications, he was appointed professor of defense chemistry here in December 1935 without having to fulfill teaching obligations. From 1936 he also took part in the so-called “Research Department for the Jewish Question ” in the newly formed Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany .

In November 1936 Mentzel was the acting successor of the deposed DFG President Johannes Stark and in October 1937 he was confirmed in this office by Bernhard Rust. At the end of April 1939 he became head of the science office at REM. Rust largely gave his advisor a free hand, so that the Ministry was seen as an offshoot of the SS and Mentzel as the gray eminence. Stark didn't think much of his successor at the head of the DFG. For him he was a “young, narrow-minded, unscrupulous, power-hungry fellow.” From 1937 Mentzel was also a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society.

On September 6, 1939, Mentzel became a war administrator for the Army High Command , but was still mainly involved in the civilian sector. After the death of Carl Bosch , Mentzel developed ambitions to become President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society , but was unable to assert himself and became second Vice President in 1941. In 1942 he took over the management of the executive advisory board in the Reich Research Council .

Mentzel campaigned for the German Antarctic Expedition in 1938/39 , which was honored in 1942 by naming the Mentzelberg in Neuschwabenland .

Mentzel's rise took place primarily with the help of informal networks, most of which he had built up in Göttingen before 1933. In addition to Jander, Schumann, Haase and Rust, this SS clique from Göttingen also included Peter Adolf Thiessen , Johannes Less , Konrad Meyer and Walter Greite . In November 1942 he was promoted to SS Brigadefuhrer in the SS .

After the end of the war

On May 2, 1945, Mentzel and Rust fled Berlin in the direction of Schleswig-Holstein . He was captured and interned by the Americans . As part of the denazification process , he was placed in Group III by the Bielefeld Chamber of Arbitration in 1949 . classified as a minor and sentenced to two and a half years in prison, which was offset against his internment period until January 1948. Mentzel later worked in industry and in 1967 relocated to Bassum .

literature

• Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , pp. 117-118.
• Michael H. Kater : The “Ahnenerbe” of the SS 1935–1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich. Stuttgart 1974
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? 2nd Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , pp. 403-404.
• Manfred Rasch:  Mentzel, Rudolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 96-98 ( digitized version ).
• Florian Schmaltz: Research on warfare agents under National Socialism . For cooperation between Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry . Wallstein-Verl., Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-880-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lothar Mertens : "Only politically worthy people" . DFG research funding in the Third Reich 1933-1937 . Akad.-Verl., Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-003877-2 , pp. 30th f .
2. ↑ Lothar Mertens: "Only politically worthy people" . DFG research funding in the Third Reich 1933-1937 . Akad.-Verl., Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-003877-2 , pp. 32 .
3. ↑ Cartographic work and German naming in Neuschwabenland, Antarctica ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 391 kB), accessed on May 12, 2010. 
4. ^ Rüdiger Hachtmann: Science management in the "Third Reich" . tape 2 . Wallstein-Verl., Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0108-5 , p. 273-285 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Mentzel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Amnesty and amnesia To protect Nazi criminals after 1945 by the judiciary. on the example of Mentzel (chap. 3, section 3) from Klaus Schlüpmann: The past in the field of vision of a physicist: Hans Kopfermann 1895-1963. A science study.