Georg Friedrich Nicolai

Georg Friedrich Nicolai (born: Lewinstein) (1874 Berlin-1964 Santiago de Chile) was a German physiologist who studied at the University of Berlin, and later practiced medicine at the Charité in Berlin. He admired the works of physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, and with internist Friedrich Kraus published a book on electrocardiography titled "Das Elektrokardiogramm des gesunden und kranken Menschen".

In 1914, at the onset of World War I, Nicolai composed an anti-war treatise called "Manifesto to the Europeans". Only three other intellectuals in Germany signed Nicolai's manifesto; they being physicist Albert Einstein, astronomer Wilhelm Julius Förster and philosopher Otto Buek.

During the war he published "The Biology of War" which was translated into several languages. As a result, he was demoted and sent to the remote Tucheler Heide, Westprussia (Tuchola Forest) area.

In 1922 he emigrated to South America where he worked and taught in Argentina, and later Chile.

In the 1930s he wrote "Das Natzenbuch (A Natural History of National Socialist Movement and of Nationalism in General)", in which he denounces nationalism as "one of the greatest, possibly greatest danger to the further development of the human race".

Literature

* Herbert Gantschacher (editor) "Theatre Form as an Articulated Way of Life" including essays of Hubert Steiner(Vienna), Katharina Rostock(Berlin), Jean-Jacques Van Vlasselaer(Ottawa), Marjan Bevk(Bovec), Erich Heyduck(Vienna) and Brenda Harker(Oakland) in "The Unifying Aspects of Cultures" - TRANS-Studien Bd. 1 LIT, Vienna-Berlin 2004; ISBN 3-8258-7616-0
* Herbert Gantschacher "Witness and Victim of The Apocalypse" - ARBOS, Vienna-Salzburg-Arnoldstein 2007

References

* http://www.inst.at/trans/15Nr/10_5/10_5inhalt15.htm
* [http://www.inst.at/trans/15Nr/10_5/gantschacher_2_15.htm The Limits of Virtual Reality]
* [http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8359.html Manifesto to the Europeans]