Wolfgang Grassmann

Wolfgang Grassmann (born February 20, 1898 in Munich , † August 6, 1978 in Herrsching am Ammersee ) was a German chemist and second director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research (KWI for Leather Research) in Dresden , whose work after the war in Max Planck Institute for Protein and Leather Research in Munich was continued.

Life

Grassman was the son of a well-known Munich specialist and heart specialist. After graduating from high school , Grassmann took part in the First World War. From December 1916 to January 1919 he was a member of the Bavarian Mountain Infantry Replacement Battalion. After the end of the war, he joined the Epp Freikorps and was involved in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic . Since 1919 Grassmann studied chemistry in Munich and obtained his doctorate in 1924 under the Nobel Prize winner Richard Willstätter . During his studies he became a member of the AGV Munich . After completing his studies, he worked as an assistant at the chemical laboratory of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . Among other things, together with his fellow student and later NS-Wehrwirtschaftsführer for "chemical warfare agents" Otto Ambros . His main focus was the organic chemistry of protein-splitting enzymes. In 1928 , Grassmann completed his habilitation and from 1929 was a private lecturer at the University of Munich .

At the end of 1933, Grassmann joined the SA , which he left for reasons of prestige after the Röhm crisis in November 1935. In January 1944, a party arbitration tribunal rejected an application for membership in the NSDAP on grounds of age. Grassmann took over the management of the KWI for Leather Research in Dresden in June 1934. His predecessor, the chemist Max Bergmann , was dismissed under the law to restore the civil service because of his Jewish origin and had to emigrate. At the end of 1934, Grassmann received an honorary professorship for leather chemistry at the Dresden University of Technology . Since the summer of 1936, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research in Dresden has participated in the four-year plan with regard to the supply of domestic tanning and leather materials. Grassmann also worked on the raw materials and foreign exchange staff (since June 1937) and in October 1940 he was appointed head of the four-year plan institute. Germany's self-sufficiency with regard to tannins and raw leather hides was pursued as a war economic goal. In May 1940, Grassmann worked as an expert for the leather business group to ensure that prisoners of the shoe runner detachment in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp were used on the so-called “shoe test track” for carrying tests. Among other things, this involved stress tests of various school materials. In the Sachsenhausen trial of 1947, the head of the shoe testing center, Ernst Brennscheid , was charged, but Grassmann was not. In cooperation or in the part of an employee contract with the IG Farbenindustrie Grassmann explored methods, leather against the chemical warfare agent Lost to impregnate. The IG Farben Group secured the patent rights from Grassmann's research through the contract, for which he received an annual grant of 4,200 Reichsmarks.

In 1948 Grassmann became director of the newly founded Max Planck Institute for Protein and Leather Research in Regensburg , which moved to Munich in 1957. Since 1959 he was a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Works

• Knowledge of the steric course of cyclopentadiene polymerization via the degradation of cyclo-olefins with selenous acid (dissertation), Kiel, 1933.
• together with Ackermann, Wilhelm, Handbuch der Gerbereichemie und Lederfabrikation; The rawhide and its preparation for tanning. Springer Vienna, 1968.

literature

• Florian Schmaltz: Warfare research in National Socialism: on the cooperation of Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry , (= History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism, Volume 11), Wallstein Verlag, 2005.
• Helmut Maier, Armaments Research in National Socialism , Wallstein-Verlag Göttingen, 2004 ISBN 3-89244-497-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Warfare research in National Socialism: on the cooperation of Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry , (= History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism Volume 11), Wallstein Verlag, 2005, p. 292 ( excerpts in Google -Books ).
2. ^ Acta Albertina Ratisbonensia: Regensburger Naturwissenschaften , Volumes 46–48, Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein Regensburg, 1989, p. 240.
3. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book and Vademecum. Ludwigshafen am Rhein 1959, p. 48.
4. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Warfare agent research in National Socialism: on cooperation between Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry , (= History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism Volume 11), Wallstein Verlag, 2005, p. 296 ( excerpts in Google -Books ).
5. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Warfare research in National Socialism: on the cooperation of Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry , (= History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism Volume 11), Wallstein Verlag, 2005, pp. 293-295 ( excerpts in Google Books ).
6. ^ Anne Sudrow: From leather to plastic. Material research on the shoe test track in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1940-1945 . In: Helmut Maier: Armaments research in National Socialism , Wallstein-Verlag Göttingen, ISBN 3-89244-497-8 , p. 229.
7. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Warfare agent research in National Socialism , 2005, p. 311.
8. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Warfare agent research in National Socialism , 2005, p. 304.
9. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945 , Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 197.
10. ^ Wolfgang Grassmann obituary at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences by Adolf Butenandt (PDF file).