Theodor Vahlen

Karl Theodor Vahlen (1869 in Vienna, Austria – 1945 in Prague) was an Austrian-German mathematician who was an ardent supporter of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

Education

Vahlen studied in Berlin from 1889 and received his doctorate there in 1893. [ [http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=48505 Vahlen] – Mathematics Genealogy Project. Dissertation title: "Beiträge zu einer additiven Zahlentheorie".]

Career

From 1883, Vahlen was a Privatdozent in mathematics at the Königsberg Albertina University. In 1904, he began teaching at the University of Greifswald, and in 1911 he became an ordinarius professor there. Vahlen had joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1922. From 1924, he was the first Pomeranian district leader of the NSDAP. In 1924, Vahlen incited a crowd at the University against the Weimar Republic, which resulted in taking down flags of the Republic. The University placed him on leave for political abuse of his function, and in 1927 he was dismissed without a pension. [ Walker, 1995, pp. 95-99.]

Upon his dismissal, Friedrich Schmidt-Ott increased the funding Vahlen had been receiving for his work for the German Navy since 1922. Vahlen worked briefly as an assistant in Johannes Stark’s private physics laboratory. In 1930 Vahlen returned to his birthplace and became a lecturer of mathematics at the Technische Hochschule Wien. [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Vahlen.] [ Macrakis, 1993, pp. 78-79.]

Once Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Vahlen’s career gained momentum and flourished in Germany as a result of his support for the NSDAP. In that year, he became an ordinarius professor of mathematics at the Humboldt University of Berlin, as successor to Richard Edler von Mises, [ Richard von Mises and the economist Ludwig von Mises were brothers.] who emigrated from Germany as a result of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which was in part directed against professors with Jewish ancestry, which von Mises had. After 1933, Vahlen was a strong advocate of Deutsche Mathematik, a parallel movement to Deutsche Physik, advocated by the Nobel Laureate physicists Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark; both movements were anti-Semitic. From 1934, he was ordinarius professor at the University of Berlin, a position he held until attaining emeritus status in 1937. [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Vahlen.]

During the period 1933 to 1937, Vahlen served as third vice president of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft. From May 1934, he was Assistant Secretary and head of the Science Office at the Reichserziehungsministerium (Acronym: REM, translation: Reich Education Ministry.). Actually, the Science Office was split into two components, WI, a continuation of the Prussian department, and WII, the army office for research. Vahlen was head of WI, but, in actuality, the deputy chief, the chemist Franz Bachér ran WI. [ Beyerchen, 1977, p. 57.] From this position, in 1936, Vahlen began publishing the journal "Deutsche Mathematik", for which the Berlin mathematician Ludwig Bieberbach was the editor; in the journal, political articles preceded the scholarly articles. On 1 January 1937 Vahlen was relieved of his duties at the REM. Through a manipulation of the election process by Vahlen and his supporters, he became president of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1938. [ Beyerchen, 1977, pp. 144-145.] [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Vahlen.] [ Walker, 1995, pp. 95-99.]

It was in 1933 that Vahlen joined the Sturmabteilung, and in 1936 he switched to the Schutzstaffel (SS), in which he eventually held the rank of SS-Oberführer. [ Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see entry for Vahlen.] [ Walker, 1995, pp. 95-99.]

Bibliography

*Beyerchen, Alan D. "Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich" (Yale, 1977) ISBN 0-300-01830-4

*Hentschel, Klaus, editor and Ann M. Hentschel, editorial assistant and Translator "Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources" (Birkhäuser, 1996) ISBN 0-8176-5312-0

*Macrakis, Kristie "Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany" (Oxford, 1993) ISBN 0-19-507010-0

*Walker, Mark "Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb" (Persius, 1995) ISBN 0-306-44941-2

References