Waldemar Petersen

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Waldemar Petersen (born June 10, 1880 in Athens , † February 27, 1946 in Darmstadt ) was a German professor of electrical engineering and entrepreneur (from 1926 member of the board of the AEG ).

Life

Waldemar Petersen was the eldest son of the Lutheran pastor and court preacher Waldemar Petersen . His younger brothers were Hans Petersen and Wilhelm Petersen . In 1891 the family of seven moved from Athens to Mainz and a year later to Darmstadt. After graduating from Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt, Petersen studied electrical engineering at the TH Darmstadt in the summer semester of 1899 and became a member of the Corps Rhenania . He graduated with honors in 1903. After one year of military service in the 115th Infantry Division in Darmstadt, he returned to the TH. In autumn 1914 he took part in the First World War for a few weeks.

scientist

From 1904 he was a scientific assistant at Erasmus Kittler at the TH Darmstadt, which in 1902 set up the first high-voltage laboratory for operating voltages above 50 kV. A colleague at this time was Leo Pungs . He received his doctorate at the TH Darmstadt in 1907 . Petersen completed his habilitation in the same year . From the winter semester of 1915/16 he took over the chair of his teacher Kittler. On October 1, 1918, he became Kittler's successor and thus full professor of electrical engineering at the TH Darmstadt. While his teacher was still relying on direct current technology, Petersen continued to develop the still young alternating current technology. Petersen had a great pedagogical talent in his lectures.

Ground-fault extinguishing coil from Petersen in the Deutsches Museum

In 1917 Petersen invented the extinguishing coil named after him for earth fault compensation (Petersenspule), the original of which can be seen today in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In 1918 he developed the watt metric earth fault relay . He wrote basic textbooks on the new field of high voltage engineering. Therefore, he is also considered the founder of high voltage technology in Germany.

In 1920/21 he was dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. From October 1921 to October 1923 he was rector of the TH Darmstadt. During his term of office as rector, a. the hiring of the first full-time sports teacher at the TH, Ernst Söllinger , and the opening of the university stadium on Nieder-Ramstädter Strasse.

During the transfer of Albert Leo Schlageter's body to Donaueschingen, the special train passed through Darmstadt on June 9, 1923 at around 2 a.m. As part of this action, stylized as an anti-republican demonstration, Petersen, as Rector of the TH, gave a short address, which subsequently led to a heated argument in the Hessian state parliament. In particular, the SPD MP Otto Sturmfels criticized Petersen massively and called on the government to take measures against the rector of the TH.

Entrepreneur, armaments manager and National Socialist

In March 1926 Petersen was appointed to the board of directors of AEG and in 1928, after Felix Deutsch's death and Paul Mamroth's departure from the board, he was appointed general director of AEG together with Hermann Bücher and August Elfes (1871-1932). He pushed for the establishment of the AEG research institute, which opened on April 1, 1928 in Berlin. Carl Ramsauer was won over as head of this .

Petersen joined the SA on November 1, 1933 in Königs Wusterhausen as a candidate . In the following years he rose seven more steps up the career ladder to Obersturmbannführer . After the membership ban was lifted , he also joined the NSDAP in May 1937 . From April 20, 1938 until the end of the Second World War, he worked as a military economist . He was the driving force behind mobilizing AEG research for military applications. As a military economist, he had good contacts with the Army Weapons Office and from February 1935 was able to push the development of the image converter tube to become a night viewer enormously and deliver a model for testing in September. Around 1937 he developed detonators for magnetic mines. In the 1940s he was closely networked with the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition . He headed various commissions on behalf of Albert Speer and Karl Saur .

In the spring of 1943 he headed the commission for remote shooting. This commission included a. to Emil Leeb , Erhard Milch and Friedrich Fromm . The task of the commission was to make a recommendation as to whether the Fieseler Fi 103 , so-called V1, or the unit 4 , so-called V2, should be produced as a priority. After Petersen suffered a stroke at the end of 1944, the management was transferred to Walter Dornberger .

Despite his leave of absence, Petersen kept teaching at the TH Darmstadt until mid-1933. In a letter to the rector of the TH, he announced at the end of June 1933 that "in particular, however, working on the tasks of the new Reich" would no longer make further teaching possible.

Waldemar Petersen died on February 27, 1946 in Darmstadt as a result of a second stroke. Petersen had been married to the Darmstadt publisher's daughter Auguste Kichler (1885–1974) since July 1907. The marriage remained childless. Both were buried in the Darmstadt forest cemetery.

Waldemar Petersen was a board member of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) from 1931 to 1940 .

Awards

  • 1929: Honorary member of the Darmstadt fraternity Germania .
  • 1929: Dr. rer. pole. e. H. by the law and political science faculty of the University of Königsberg.
  • 1929: In Hirschegg in the Kleinwalsertal , the sports and study center of the Technical University of Darmstadt was named Waldemar-Petersen-Haus when it was opened . Since June 6th 2015 the house has been called Darmstädter Haus .
  • 1929: Full member of the Prussian Academy of Building in Berlin.
  • 1935: Cross of honor for combatants.
  • 1936: Decoration of honor of the technical emergency aid with the year 1919.
  • 1938: Honorary member of the Association of Electrical, Electronics and Information Technology .
  • 1939: Commander's Cross 1st Class with the Star of the Saxon Ernestine House Order .
  • 1956: In Darmstadt a street was named after him in 1956, first in the city center and in the 1960s on the Lichtwiese campus of the TU Darmstadt. In October 2013 this street was renamed.
  • 1959: A street in Kassel has been named after him since 1959.

Publications

  • A new voltage regulation: (Communication of the mode of operation. Theory of the regulation process) , Dissertation, Darmstadt, 1907.
  • Electrostatic machines , habilitation thesis, Stuttgart 1907.
  • High voltage technology , Stuttgart 1911.
  • Overcurrents and overvoltages in networks with high earth fault currents. In: ETZ, Vol. 37, 1916, pp. 129-132.
  • Research and technology: on behalf of the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft , Berlin 1930.
  • Electrical engineering in Darmstadt. In: ETZ, Volume 57, 1936, pp. 602f.

literature

  • Manfred Efinger : Waldemar Petersen. Athens - Darmstadt - Berlin . Justus von Liebig Verlag, Darmstadt 2014, ISBN 978-3-87390-350-0 .
  • Waldemar Petersen. In: Stadtlexikon Darmstadt, Stuttgart 2006, pp. 703f.
  • Michael Neufeld: The rocket and the Reich. Wernher von Braun and the beginning of the rocket age , Berlin 1999.
  • Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 2: L-Z. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1931, DNB 453960294 , p. 1397.
  • Peter Strunk: The AEG. The rise and fall of an industrial legend , Berlin 1999.
  • Waldemar Petersen: pioneer of high voltage technology; Inventor of the Petersen coil ; Festschrift for the 100th birthday; TH Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1982
  • Weinheim Association of Old Corps Students (Ed.): 100 Years of the Weinheim Senior Citizens' Convention. Festschrift for the centenary of the WSC, Bochum 1963, p. 139.
  • Christa Wolf and Marianne Viefhaus: Directory of professors at TH Darmstadt , Darmstadt 1977, p. 155.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marie-Luise Heuser , Wolfgang König : Tabular compilations on the history of the VDI . In: Karl-Heinz Ludwig (Ed.): Technology, Engineers and Society - History of the Association of German Engineers 1856–1981 . VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-18-400510-0 , p. 585-589 .
  2. ↑ Willy Nolte (Ed.): Burschenschafter Stammrolle. List of the members of the German Burschenschaft according to the status of the summer semester 1934. Berlin 1934, p. 369.
  3. ↑ He was convinced of the goals of the Nazis. In: FAZ of September 23, 2014, p. 38.
personal data
SURNAME Petersen, Waldemar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer, manager
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Athens
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1946
Place of death Darmstadt