Carl Duisberg

Infobox_Scientist
name = Carl Duisberg


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caption = Carl Duisberg
birth_date = birth date|1861|9|29
birth_place = Barmen, Germany
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nationality = German
death_date = death date and age|1935|3|19|1852|3|10
death_place = Leverkusen, Germany
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work_institution =
alma_mater = University of Göttingen, University of Jena
doctoral_advisor = Anton Geuther
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Friedrich Carl Duisberg ( September 29 1861- March 19 1935) was a German chemist and industrialist.

Life

He was born in Barmen, Germany and from 1879 until 1882 he studied at the "Georg-August-Universität (Göttingen)" and Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and received his doctorate .After military service in Munich, which he combined with work at the laboratory of Adolf von Baeyer, he starts in 1883 his work at the Farbenwerke (dyes company) of Friedr. Bayer & Co. that later became Bayer AG.In his career he became confidential clerk (authorised signatory) and head of research. In 1900 he became CEO of Bayer.Inspired by Standard Oil on a US tour, Bayer became part of IG Farben, a conglomerate of German chemical industries. Duisberg was head of Supervisory board for IG Farben.1935 Duisberg died in Leverkusen.

Work

In the 1920s, dye industry leaders, led by Carl Duisberg of Bayer and Carl Bosch of BASF, successfully pushed for the merger of the dye makers into a single company. In 1925, the companies merged into the Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG or IG Farben (Interest Community of the Dye Industry, Inc.)

This huge corporation, which soon included related industries such as explosives and fibers, was the biggest enterprise in all of Europe and the fourth largest in the world, behind General Motors, United States Steel and Standard Oil of New Jersey.

In 1926, IG Farben entered into a non-competition arrangement with Jersey Standard for oil and chemicals while agreeing to cooperate on the development of synthetic rubber (though Jersey Standard later came under fire from the U.S. federal government because of evidence that the Germany company was impeding its progress in this crucial area).

Although Carl Bosch, the head of IG Farben's managing board, opposed the anti-semitism of the Nazis, the company gave financial support to Hitler and (without Bosch, who resigned in 1935) became indispensable to the German military effort during World War II. The company used slave labor, locating one of its synthetic rubber facilities in Auschwitz to be near the captive labor supply of the infamous concentration camp. Lethal gas made by IG Farben was used in the death camps. After the war, a group of IG Farben executives were convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials. Several years later, in 1952, the company was divided into several independent firms, including BASF, Bayer and Hoechst. (IG Farben survived as a shell company and remains one today.) [ [http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1992/05/mm0592_11.html Hoechst: The toxic brewmasters ] at multinationalmonitor.org]

Carl Duisberg and poison gas

Fritz Haber, born in 1868, was Germany's leading scientist at the outbreak of war in August 1914 and head of its premier scientific laboratory, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin.

Haber was a fervent patriot and was openly sponsored by an equally avid Prussian nationalist, Carl Duisberg. Duisberg was the powerful head of the world's leading chemical cartel, the Interessen Germinschaft or IG Cartel.

Haber strongly agreed with Duisberg's philosophy, and the two forged an on-going collaboration. In the Autumn of 1914, the Wilhelm Institute began the search to find the perfect toxic gas for use in land warfare. Haber and his team worked late into the night testing chemical after chemical. Such was the pressure to succeed that one rushed experiment ended in disaster when Haber's closest collaborator died in a laboratory explosion.

All the effort eventually bore fruit, and in January 1915 Haber had a chemical agent to offer to the German High Command. [http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/thegreatwar/articles/individuals/haber.htm]

Carl Duisberg Society

The Carl Duisberg Society (Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft) was founded in 1949 and was helping Development aid with education programmes for people, especially from developing countries. From 1949 till its merge with the German Society for international Development (Deutschen Stiftung für internationale Entwicklung) in 2002 to form the InWEnt (Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH) 300000 people took part in the programs of the society.

References

External links

* [http://www.leverkusen.com/whoiswho/whoiswho.php4?view=Duisberg Leverkusen who's who]
* [http://www.bayer.de/de/Carl-Duisberg.aspx Duisberg from Bayer AG]
* [http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/DuisbergCarl/index.html Biography of Duisberg]
* [http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1992/05/mm0592_11.html Hoechst: The toxic brewmasters]