Kaiser Wilhelm Society

Opening of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin-Dahlem, 1913. From right: Adolf von Harnack, Friedrich von Ilberg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Carl Neuberg, August von Trott zu Solz

The Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG) was founded in 1911 in order to promote the natural sciences in Germany, by founding and maintaining research institutions formally independent from the state and its administrations. The institutions were to be under the guidance of prominent directors, which included luminaries such as Walther Bothe, Peter Debye, Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber and Otto Hahn; a board of trustees also provided guidance.

Funding was ultimately obtained from sources internal and external to Germany. Internally, money was raised from individuals, industry and the government, as well as through the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Association of German Science).

External to Germany, the Rockefeller Foundation granted students worldwide one-year study stipends, for whichever institute they chose, some studied in Germany.[1][2][3] In contrast to the German universities, with their formal independence from state administrations the institutions of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft had no obligation to teach students.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and its research facilities were involved in weapons research, experimentation and production in both the First World War and the Second World War. During the World War I, the group, and in particular Fritz Haber, was responsible for introducing the use of poison gas as a weapon.[4] This was in direct violation of established international law.

During World War II, some of the weapons and medical research performed by the KWI was connected to fatal human experimentation on living test subjects (prisoners) in Nazi concentration camps.[5] In fact, members of the KWI of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, particularly Otmar von Verschuer received preserved Jewish bodies and body parts such as eyes for study and display from Auschwitz. [6] These were provided by his pupil Dr. Josef Mengele from prisoners in his charge. He specialized in examining twins, and their genetic relationship, especially for their eye colour and other personal qualities.[7] As the American forces closed in on the relocated KWI, the organization's president, Albert Vögler, an industrialist and early Nazi Party backer, committed suicide, knowing he would be held accountable for the group's crimes and complicity in war crimes.[8]

By the end of the Second World War, the KWG and its institutes had lost their central location in Berlin and were operating in other locations. The KWG was operating out of its Aerodynamics Testing Station in Göttingen. Albert Vögler, the president of the KWG, committed suicide on 14 April 1945. Thereupon, Ernst Telschow assumed the duties until Max Planck could be brought from Magdeburg to Göttingen, which was in the British zone of the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany. Planck assumed the duties on 16 May until a president could be elected. Otto Hahn was selected by directors to be president, but there were a number of difficulties to be overcome. Hahn, being related to nuclear research had been captured by the allied forces of Operation Alsos, and he was still interned at Farm Hall in Britain, under Operation Epsilon. At first, Hahn was reluctant to accept the post, but others prevailed upon him to accept it. Hahn took over the presidency three months after being released and returned to Germany. However, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) passed a resolution to dissolve the KWG on 11 July 1946.

Meanwhile, members of the British occupation forces, specifically in the Research Branch of the OMGUS, saw the society in a more favourable light and tried to dissuade the Americans from taking such action. The physicist Howard Percy Robertson was director of the department for science in the British Zone; he had a National Research Council Fellowship in the 1920s to study at the Georg August University of Göttingen and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Also, Colonel Bertie Blount was on the staff of the British Research Branch, and he had received his doctorate at Göttingen under Walther Borsche. Among other things, Bertie suggested to Hahn to write to Sir Henry Hallett Dale, who had been the president of the Royal Society, which he did. While in Britain, Bertie also spoke with Dale, who came up with a suggestion. Dale believed that it was only the name which conjured up a pejorative picture and suggested that the society be renamed the Max Planck Gesellschaft. On 11 September 1946, the Max Planck Gesellschaft was founded in the British Zone only. The second founding took place on 26 February 1948 for both the American and British occupation zones. The physicists Max von Laue and Walther Gerlach were also instrumental in establishing the society across the allied zones, including the French zone.[9][10]

• Adolf von Harnack (1911–1930)
• Max Planck (1930–1937, 16 May 1945-31 March 1946)
• Carl Bosch (1937–1940)
• Albert Vögler (1941–1945)
• Otto Hahn (1 April 1946 – 10 September 1946 in the British Occupation Zone)

• [ [Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive]]

• Media related to Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften at Wikimedia Commons
• History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the National Socialist Era - Presidential Commission of the Max Planck Gesellschaft
• KWG & MPG Presidents
• A History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research: 1929–1939, by David M. States (June 28, 2001) – compilation of articles, including several about the lives and work of Nobel laureates, on the official website of the Nobel Prize
• Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft 1911–1948 (in German) – Deutsches Historisches Museum
• Max Planck Gesellschaft – English portal
• Documents and clippings about Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW