Walther Pauer

Walther Pauer around 1925

Walther Pauer (born April 1, 1887 in Regensburg , † November 20, 1971 in Dresden ) was a German energy economist and university professor .

Life

Walther Pauer's grave in the Outer Plauen cemetery in Dresden

Walther Pauer was born in Regensburg as the son of the tannery owner Friedrich Pauer and Betty Kempf. After his Abitur at the humanistic old grammar school in Regensburg (1906) and the military service as a one-year volunteer , he studied mechanical engineering at the TH Munich between 1907 and 1911 and specialized in the field of heating technology. During his studies he became a member of the AGV Munich . After completing his studies, he worked as an engineer in the steam engine construction department at MAN in Nuremberg from 1911 . At the TH Dresden in 1913 he accepted an assistant position with Adolph Nägel (1875-1939) at the chair for piston machines and attended lectures by Richard Mollier .

Walther Pauer took part in the First World War as a soldier from 1914 and was taken prisoner by the French . There he dealt with questions relating to the counter-pressure and extraction steam engine. After his written draft was confiscated, he recorded his results in shorthand on a roll of toilet paper, which he smuggled into Germany after his release from captivity in 1920. He continued his research work as an assistant and adjunct in the machine laboratory in Dresden and received his doctorate there in the same year with his work on counter-pressure and extraction steam machines for Dr.-Ing. , The habilitation took place in 1921 on the calculation of extraction steam engines . A year later, Walther Pauer taught as an associate professor for heat management at the TH Dresden . In 1933 he became a full professor for heat economics and head of the institute for heat engineering and heat economics at the TH Dresden. In November 1933 he signed the professors' declaration of Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges .

The Heereswaffenamt sought from the end of 1939, a greater involvement of German academics in the development of liquid rocket unit 4 at. Among the 45 employees of the TH Dresden who were involved in the working group “Project Peenemünde” , there were student assistants and academic staff, several professors, including Walther Pauer, Heinrich Barkhausen and Hellmut Frieser . The motivation for the cooperation of this propagandistically valuable, strategically insignificant weapon in the group was widely spread between personal indispensable position , whereby the war at home could be survived, and the belief in the final victory. For Pauer, the "development of a technically complex apparatus must have seemed challenging". Pauer worked parallel to Georg Beck , who headed the Dresden research group in 1940/41, on a concept for the injection nozzle that was necessary for the fuel supply to the rocket's combustion chamber. Due to the war, despite its superiority to existing technology, neither Beck's design of an annular gap nozzle nor Pauer's borehole nozzle went into series production of Unit 4, but Pauer was able to use his concepts in other military science projects, including the development of a torpedo with jet propulsion together with the Kieler Walterwerke .

Walther-Pauer-Bau of the Technical University of Dresden

After the end of the Second World War , Pauer had to move to the Soviet Union ( Gorodomlija ) with his family as part of the Ossawakim campaign in autumn 1946 - six children had resulted from his marriage . The stay there represented increasing psychological stress for him. He was only able to return to the TH Dresden in June 1952, but was arrested and interrogated again in early 1953.

Until his retirement in 1958, he was a professor with a chair for energy management and at the same time head of the institute of the same name at the Dresden University of Technology. Since 1955 he was a member of the Academy of Sciences , in 1957 he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit of the GDR (bronze).

Walther Pauer died in Dresden in 1971 at the age of 84 after a long and serious illness. His grave is in the Outer Plauen cemetery there .

From 1924 Walther Pauer had looked after the thermal power station of the university at the TH Dresden. The now former thermal power station of the TU Dresden was named "Walther-Pauer-Bau" in 2004.

At the instigation of Pauer's descendants, the toilet paper roll described in the French prisoner of war, which was little noticed but well preserved in his Dresden institute, was brought into a representative form and handed over to the Kostodie of the TU Dresden in 2015 for the purpose of a permanent exhibition.

Works

• Considerations on back pressure and extraction steam engines (1920)
• Energy storage (1928)
• Heat management. In: VDI yearbook (1936)
• Energy industry (1955)
• Introduction to the power and heating industry (1959)
• Some basic questions about space heating (1960)
• Basics of power and heating economics (1970)

literature

• Ingrid Werner (Ed.): Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Walther Pauer . University Library, Central Technical Library of the GDR, Dresden 1987.
• Norbert Elsner:  Pauer, Walther. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 105 ( digitized version ).
• Pauer, Walther. In: Dorit Petschel : 175 years of TU Dresden. Volume 3: The professors of the TU Dresden 1828–2003. Edited on behalf of the Society of Friends and Supporters of the TU Dresden e. V. von Reiner Pommerin , Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-412-02503-8 , pp. 706–707 ( limited preview in Google book search).
• Norbert Elsner : Walther Pauer 80 years . In: Researches and Advances. News sheet for German science and technology . tape 41 . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1967, p. 124 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book. Membership directory of all old men. As of October 1, 1937. Hanover 1937, p. 171.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Klaus Mauersberger: The Walther Pauer role is back. In: Dresden University Journal . No. 13, 2015, p. 6 ( online as PDF; 3 MB).
3. ↑ [Made with]! Miracles and retribution? The "Peenemünde Project" at the TH Dresden. In: Uwe Fraunholz, Swen Steinberg, Stefan Beckert, Florian Eichkorn, Ulrike Marlow, Stefan Weise, Daniel Wendorf: [With] Made? Technologist and natural scientist at the TH Dresden under National Socialism. Collaborative Research Center 804, Dresden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86780-307-6 , p. 36.
4. ↑ [Made with]! Miracles and retribution? The "Peenemünde Project" at the TH Dresden. In: Uwe Fraunholz, Swen Steinberg, Stefan Beckert, Florian Eichkorn, Ulrike Marlow, Stefan Weise, Daniel Wendorf: [With] Made? Technologist and natural scientist at the TH Dresden under National Socialism. Collaborative Research Center 804, Dresden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86780-307-6 , pp. 31–38.
5. ↑ Kurt Magnus : Rocket Slaves. German researchers behind red barbed wire . Elbe-Dnjepr-Verlag, Klitzschen 1993, ISBN 3-933395-61-5 (359 pages, Professor Pauer is referred to as Professor Rauhe in this work ).
6. ↑ Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. W. Pauer passed away . In: Institute for Air and Cooling Technology (Ed.): Air and Cooling Technology . tape 7 , 1972, p. 100 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Walther Pauer in the catalog of the German National Library