Werner Osenberg

Werner Oskar Ewald Osenberg (born April 26, 1900 in Zeitz , † December 14, 1974 in Renningen ) was a German materials scientist , organizer of German armaments research and armaments developer during the Second World War.

He researched u. a. the use of ceramics as cutting material and received a chair at the Technical University of Hanover in 1938 . During the Second World War he was head of the planning office in the Reich Research Council . Through his central file he was able to bring 5,000 scientists and technicians back from the war front. In his institute in Lindau / aH he also did arms research. In 1945 he was brought to the United States. His research files formed the basis for the selection of German scientists in the context of Operation Overcast by the United States.

Studies and early career

Osenberg received his Abitur in the spring of 1918. Subsequently, he was called up to the Navy and took part in a course to become a sea ​​officer candidate in October and November 1918 . From 1920 he studied mechanical engineering first at the TH Munich and then at the TH Dresden and graduated in 1924 with the diploma examination. In 1927 he received his doctorate under Ewald Sachsenberg with a thesis on the subject of the machining process using wood drills and remained there until 1938 as Sachsenberg's scientific assistant. In 1938 Osenberg carried out the first investigations into the use of oxide ceramics as a cutting material.

In April 1933 Osenberg became a member of the NSDAP and in June 1933 he joined the SS . From 1936 he was active in the security service of the Reichsführer SS and took over the supervision of the press office at the TH Dresden .

Torpedo research in Hanover

In 1938 Osenberg was appointed to the chair for machine tools at the TH Hannover. There he established a development department of the navy and an office of the Reich Office for Economic Development . In 1942 Osenberg was appointed head of the department for research, invention and patents in the High Command of the Navy . A model torpedo test station with a basin measuring 240 m² was planned. In this basin, the measuring pistol 37 was tested, among other things, a device for the artificial generation of disturbances in torpedo test projectiles, a torpedo with a heeling- preventing fin, a method for the preparation of deliberate disturbances in the course of a torpedo.

In addition, Osenberg had been ordered by the Commander in Chief of the Navy to record free or underutilized research capacities for use by the Navy. For this purpose, Osenberg's employees created an extensive file in Hanover. This preliminary work was probably the reason why Osenberg was appointed head of the planning office of the Reich Research Council, because such a research file was an important basis for the required tasks.

The planning office of the Reich Research Council

The (second) Reich Research Council (RFR) was founded in Berlin in 1942. His goal was to align state and university research more closely with the requirements of warfare. President of the RFR was the "Reichsmarschall des Großdeutschen Reich" Hermann Göring , whose political power began to decline at that time. An extensive organization was planned for the RFR with 17 department heads and 20 authorized representatives, to whom the technical colleges, the universities, the institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and others should work.

In June 1943 the planning office was also created. This was hidden in Lindau am Harz from October 1943 to April 1945 . His postal address was Northeim, PO Box 148. Goering appointed Professor Werner Osenberg to head this planning office. Its tasks have been summarized in five guidelines.

During the air raids on Hanover in August 1943, Hanover was heavily bombed, and Osenberg's institute was also partially damaged. It was decided to evacuate to a more rural area and finally landed in Lindau in October 1943. There the Mushaus , the former palace of the Lindau moated castle, with its up to 2.30 m thick walls, offered good protection against bombing. Osenberg came from Hanover with around 50 employees, at the end of which there were 298. There was also a branch in Berlin-Dahlem .

Research file

The collection of addresses of underutilized research capacities, which he began in Kiel, developed Osenberg in Lindau into a central file for all parts of the armed forces. With their help one could record scientists and technicians at universities, scientific institutes and Wehrmacht agencies. It contained around 2,000 index cards with the names of institutes and other research institutions, and it also contained a list of Wehrmacht units from which soldiers could be withdrawn. This research file is now stored in the Federal Archives in Berlin .

Return campaign

With a total of four memoranda that were sent to 50 people from the government, the armed forces and science, Osenberg pursued his main goal: to make science and technology more useful for warfare. The most important means of doing this was the return campaign, which began in autumn 1944. With the help of the card index, 5,000 skilled workers were brought back from their units and placed with war-important companies. Another 10,000 of these skilled workers were indispensably provided to prevent their entry to the front.

Defense Research Association

In August 1944, at Osenberg's insistence, Göring founded another institution with goals similar to those of the Planning Office, the Wehrforschungs-Gemeinschaft (WFG). Its task, too, was to concentrate technical research, including private industry, on the needs of the war. Your head should be responsible for the control of the research projects. Osenberg became this head, and his skills were subsequently strengthened. The defense research community received an inflated bureaucracy. Historians disagree about the value of the WFG. KH Ludwig called it “a huge hoax” and complained about the futility of the whole company. Ruth Federspiel, on the other hand, sees the WFG as a significant step towards interdisciplinary research planning.

Arms development

In 1944, Osenberg also began arms research and development in Lindau. In doing so, he referred to his mandate, as head of the RFR, to put the solved tasks to practical use. The most important project was a missile head with the code name beehive , which was intended to defend against enemy fighter planes . The basis for this was the use of the Schardin effect, scientifically known as the Munroe effect . In the beehive project , hundreds of explosive devices were attached to one another, similar to a honeycomb , the incendiary device had a concave curvature. However, during tests in Redlin in January 1945, the warheads failed completely, and despite improvements they were never used.

One of Osenberg's own developments was the Planet multiple missile projectile, which was intended for defense against bombers. As with the beehive project , the Göttingen Aerodynamic Research Institute was involved in the research process. A mother missile was to be developed that would ignite at some distance from the downing aircraft and thereby drop up to 30 daughter missiles. These should fall through the bomber squadron with circular movements and hit as many enemy aircraft as possible through their spiral trajectory. But Lindau did not get beyond the development of daughter rockets.

The American historian Michael J. Neufeld warned against overestimating Osenberg's role. The Reich Research Council was "fundamentally weak and ineffective in most areas of research and development, notabbl rocketry". Birgit Schlegel judged the armaments developments of the last months of the war as "unplanned and headless".

post war period

In the Osenberg office , as the Lindau family called the institution, work continued until the end of March 1945. On April 10, 1945, the Americans entered, Osenberg was arrested, taken to Paris and then to the United States . Shortly after his capture, Osenberg gave the Allies a list with the names of 15,000 German scientists. It was used for the Paperclip action , also known as " Operation Overcast ". This was supposed to transfer German scientists, including staunch National Socialists, to American services. In 1948 Osenberg reappeared in Lindau, until the 1960s he was famous for his return campaign.

Research from 1954

In 1954 Osenberg returned to the Technical University of Hanover and took over the chair for production engineering and machine tools. Until his retirement in 1970, Osenberg mainly investigated the machining of brittle materials with extremely hard cutting materials .

literature

• Tom Bower: Conspiracy Paperclip. Nazi scientists in the service of the victorious powers. List Verlag, Munich 1988.
• Catalogus Professorum 1831–1981. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the University of Hanover. Volume 2. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-17-007321-4 .
• Werner Degner, Hans Lutze and Erhard Smejkal: Spanende Formung. Carl Hanser Verlag Munich 2002, ISBN 3-446-22138-7 , pp. 60-79.
• Festschrift for the 125th anniversary of the Technical University of Hanover 1831–1956. (1956).
• Ruth Federspiel: Mobilizing Armaments Research? Werner Osenberg and the Planning Office of the Reich Research Council 1943–1945. In: Helmut Maier (Ed.): Armaments research in National Socialism. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2003. pp. 72-108. (History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism, Vol. 3)
• Bernd Greiner: They served every gentleman: How German loot scientists in East and West prepared for the Cold War after 1945. In: Die ZEIT. November 1, 1991.
• History of the IMF . Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Machine Tools.
• Karl-Heinz Ludwig: Technology and Engineers in the Third Reich. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974
• Birgit Schlegel: Weapon developments under Professor Werner Osenberg in Hanover (1941–1943) and in Lindau a. H. (1943-1945). In: Northeimer Jahrbuch 2007. ISSN  0936-8345 , pp. 75-107.
• Birgit Schlegel: Actions and functions of Professor Werner Osenberg in Lindau a. H. 1943-1945. In: Northeimer Jahrbuch 2008. ISSN  0936-8345 , pp. 73-83.
• Kurt Zierold : Research Research in Three Epochs. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1968.

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Osenberg in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Degner 2002, pp. 60-79.
2. ↑ Federspiel 2003, p. 82.
3. ↑ Schlegel 2007, pp. 76-78.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Federspiel 2003, p. 103.
5. ↑ Zierold 1968, p. 248.
6. ↑ Ludwig 1974, pp. 263 and 265.
7. ↑ Federspiel 2003, p. 104.
8. ↑ Schlegel 2007, pp. 86-103.
9. ↑ Schlegel 2008, p. 81.
10. ↑ Schlegel 2008, p. 82.
11. ↑ Bower 1988, p. 139.
12. ↑ history