Walter Herrmann (20 September 1910 – 11 August 1987)Pavel V.Oleynikov: ''German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project'', The Nonproliferation Review Volume 7, Number 2, 1–30 (2000) was a German
nuclear physicist
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter.
Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...
and mechanical engineer who worked on the German nuclear energy project during World War II. After the war, he headed a laboratory for special issues of nuclear disintegration at Laboratory V in the Soviet Union.
Biography
Herrmann was born in
Querfurt
Querfurt () is a town in the Saalekreis district, or ''Kreis'', in southern Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is located in a fertile area on the Querne, west from Merseburg. In 2020, the town had a population of 10,454. The town Querfurt consists of Q ...
and completed his engineering degree at the
Dresden University of Technology
TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...
in 1937.http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/uniarchiv/pdf/th-1961-1963.pdf
Career
Pre-War
After completing his degree, Herrmann spent several years as a research engineer at the power plant located in
Böhlen
Böhlen () is a town in Saxony, Germany, south of Leipzig. Its main features are a small airport and a power-plant. It is located in the newly built Neuseenland, the lakes created in the former open-pit mining areas.
History
The first docum ...
,
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
- the headquarters of the AG works. In January 1939, he was transferred to
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
. Due to his skill in thermal engineering, and knowledge in the technical systems of power plants, Herrmann helped build the experimental power station located in
Espenhain
Espenhain is a village and a former municipality in the Leipzig district, in Saxony, Germany. On 1 August 2015 it was merged into the town Rötha.
Uranprojekt
On 22 April 1939, after hearing a paper by Wilhelm Hanle on the use of
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
fission
Fission, a splitting of something into two or more parts, may refer to:
* Fission (biology), the division of a single entity into two or more parts and the regeneration of those parts into separate entities resembling the original
* Nuclear fissio ...
in a ''Uranmaschine'' (uranium machine, i.e., nuclear reactor),
Georg Joos
Georg Jakob Christof Joos (25 May 1894 in Bad Urach, German Empire – 20 May 1959 in Munich, West Germany) was a German experimental physicist. He wrote ''Lehrbuch der theoretischen Physik'', first published in 1932 and one of the most influ ...
, along with Hanle, notified Wilhelm Dames, at the ''
Reichserziehungsministerium
The Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture (german: , also unofficially known as the "Reich Education Ministry" (german: ), or "REM") existed from 1934 until 1945 under the leadership of Bernhard Rust and was responsible for unifying t ...
'' (REM, Reich Ministry of Education), of potential military applications of nuclear energy. Just seven days later, a group, organized by Dames, met at the REM to discuss the potential of a sustained
nuclear chain reaction
In nuclear physics, a nuclear chain reaction occurs when one single nuclear reaction causes an average of one or more subsequent nuclear reactions, thus leading to the possibility of a self-propagating series of these reactions. The specific nu ...
Robert Döpel
Georg Robert Döpel (3 December 1895 – 2 December 1982) was a German experimental nuclear physicist. He was a participant in a group known as the " first ''Uranverein''", which was spawned by a meeting conducted by the ''Reichserziehungsmin ...
Wolfgang Gentner
Wolfgang Gentner (23 July 1906 in Frankfurt am Main – 4 September 1980 in Heidelberg) was a German experimental nuclear physicist.
Gentner received his doctorate in 1930 from the University of Frankfurt. From 1932 to 1935 he had a fellowship whi ...
Gerhard Hoffmann
Gerhard Hoffmann (4 August 1880 – 18 June 1945) was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he contributed to the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club.
Education
Hoffmann studied at the University of Götting ...
, and Joos. After this, informal work began at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, and the group of physicists was known informally as the first ''Uranverein'' (Uranium Club) and formally as ''Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kernphysik''. The second ''Uranverein'' began after the '' Heereswaffenamt'' (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) squeezed out the ''
Reichsforschungsrat The Reichsforschungsrat was created in Germany in 1936 under the Education Ministry for the purpose of centralized planning of all basic and applied research, with the exception of aeronautical research. It was reorganized in 1942 and placed under t ...
'' (RFR, Reich Research Council) of the REM and started the formal German nuclear energy project. The second ''Uranverein'' had its first meeting on 16 September 1939; the meeting was organized by
Kurt Diebner
Kurt Diebner (13 May 1905 – 13 July 1964) was a German nuclear physicist who is well known for directing and administrating the German nuclear energy project, a secretive program aiming to build nuclear weapons for Nazi Germany during World War ...
and held in Berlin. It was then that ''Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik'' (KWIP, after World War II reorganized and renamed the
Max Planck Institute for Physics
The Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) is a physics institute in Munich, Germany that specializes in high energy physics and astroparticle physics. It is part of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and is also known as the Werner Heisenberg Institu ...
), in
Berlin-Dahlem
Dahlem ( or ) is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in southwestern Berlin. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a part of the former borough of Zehlendorf. It is located between the mansion settlements of Grunewald and L ...
, was placed under HWA authority, with Diebner as the administrative director, and the military control of the nuclear research commenced. Some of the research was carried out at the ''Versuchsstelle'' (testing station) of the HWA in Gottow; Diebner, was director of the facility. When it was apparent that the nuclear energy project would not make a decisive contribution to ending the war effort in the near term, control of the KWIP was returned to its umbrella organization, the '' Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft'' (KWG, after World War II renamed the Max-Planck Gesellschaft) in January 1942 and control of the project was relinquished to the RFR that year. However, the HWA did maintain its testing station in Gottow and continue research there until the end of the war.
It was at the Gottow facility that Herrmann participated in
nuclear fission
Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radio ...
experiments designated G-I and G-III. The G-1 experiment had lattices of 6,800 uranium oxide cubes (about 25 tons) in the nuclear moderator paraffin. The work verified Karl Heinz Höcker's calculations that cubes were better than rods, and rods were better than plates. The G-III experiment was a small-scale design, but it generated an exceptionally high rate of neutron production. The G-III model was superior to nuclear fission chain reaction experiments that had been conducted at the KWIP in Berlin-Dahem, the University of Heidelberg, or the University of Leipzig. Herrmann also participated in work to explore the initiation of a nuclear reaction through the detonation of explosives.
In Russia
Near the close of World War II, the Soviet Union sent special search teams into Germany to locate and deport German nuclear scientists or any others who could be of use to the Soviet atomic bomb project. The
Russian Alsos
The Soviet Alsos or Russian Alsos is the western codename for an operation that took place during 19451946 in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, in order to exploit German atomic related facilities, intellectual materials, material resource ...
teams were headed by NKVD Colonel General A. P. Zavenyagin and staffed with numerous scientists, from their only nuclear laboratory, attired in NKVD officer's uniforms. In the autumn of 1945,
Heinz Pose
Rudolf Heinz Pose (10 April 1905 – 13 November 1975) was a German nuclear physicist who worked in the Soviet atomic bomb project.
He did pioneering work which contributed to the understanding nuclear energy levels. He worked on the German nu ...
was offered the opportunity to work in the Soviet Union, which he accepted. He arrived in the Soviet Union, with his family, in February 1946. He was to establish and head Laboratory V (also known by the code name Malojaroslavets-10, after the nearby town by the same name) in Obninsk. The scientific staff at Laboratory V was to be both Soviet and German, the former being mostly political prisoners from the Gulag or exiles; this type of facility is known as a Sharashka. ( Laboratory B in Sungul’ was also a sharashka and working on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Notable Germans at Laboratory B were Hans-Joachim Born,
Alexander Catsch
Alexander Siegfried Catsch (also Katsch; –16 February 1976) was a German-Russian medical doctor and radiation biologist. Up to the end of World War II, he worked in Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timefeev-Resovskij's ''Abteilung für Experimentelle Ge ...
Karl Zimmer
Karl Günter Zimmer (12 July 1911 – 29 February 1988) was a German physicist and radiation biologist, known for his work on the effects of ionizing radiation on DNA. In 1935, he published the major work, ''Über die Natur der Genmutation un ...
. Notable Russians from the Gulag were
N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij
Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij (also Timofeyeff-Ressovsky; russian: Николай Владимирович Тимофеев-Ресовский; – 28 March 1981) was a Soviet biologist. He conducted research in radiation genetic ...
and S. A. Voznesenskij.)Oleynikov, 2000, 14.
On 5 March 1946, in order to staff his laboratory, Pose and NKVD General Kravchenko, along with two other officers, went to Germany for six months to hire scientists. Additionally, Pose procured equipment from the companies
AEG
Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG (AEG; ) was a German producer of electrical equipment founded in Berlin as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität'' in 1883 by Emil Rathenau. During the Second World War, AEG ...
, Carl Zeiss AG, Schott Jena, and Mansfeld, which were in the Russian occupation zone.
Pose planned 16 laboratories for his institute, which was to include a chemistry laboratory and eight laboratories. Three heads of laboratories, Czulius, Herrmann, and Rexer, were Pose's colleagues who worked with him at the German Army's testing station in Gottow, under the ''Uranverein'' project. (See below: Internal Reports.) Eight laboratories in the institute were:
*Heinz Pose's laboratory for nuclear processes.
*Werner Czulius's laboratory for uranium reactors.
*Walter Herrmann's laboratory for special issues of nuclear disintegration.
*Westmayer's laboratory for systematic nuclear reactions.
*Professor Carl Friedrich Weiss's laboratory for the study of natural and artificial radioactivity.
*Schmidt's laboratory to study methodologies for nuclear measurement.
*Professor Ernst Rexer's laboratory for applied nuclear physics.
*Hans Jürgen von Oertzen's laboratory to study cyclotrons and high voltage.
1950s
When his time with the Soviet Nuclear Program was done, Herrmann returned to the DDR to focus on restoring the country's energy supply. In December 1945 he was ordered by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany to carry out the reconstruction of the nation's boiler plants.
In May 1953 he started a project to modernize the central steam generator in Berlin. As recognition for his service, and skill at restoring energy in the DDR Herrmann was sent to Hungary to manage the commissioning, designing, and construction of power plants.
In July 1956, Because of his merits and his many years of professional experience in power plant engineering, Herrmann is appointed a professor at the
University of Magdeburg
The Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg () (''OvGU'') was founded in 1993, making it one of the youngest universities in Germany. The university is located in Magdeburg, the Capital city of Saxony-Anhalt and has about 13.000 students in nine ...
's school of mechanical engineering as the head and founder of the Institute of Thermal Engineering.
1960s
At the beginning of the fall semester, 1960, Herrmann was elected as the Dean of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
In 1962, Hermann was made head of a group of experts tasked with the stabilization of the large-scale power plant in Lübbenau.
In 1964, he was the initiator of the first-ever thermotechnical colloquia
In 1968, he was made the first Director of Apparatus and Plants at THMD
1970s
A particularly high honor of his scientific life's work, Herrmann was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Dresden in 1976
Internal reports
The following reports were published in ''
Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte
''Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte'' (''Research Reports in Nuclear Physics'') was an internal publication of the German ''Uranverein'', which was initiated under the ''Heereswaffenamt'' (Army Ordnance Office) in 1939; in 1942, supervision of ...
'' (''Research Reports in Nuclear Physics''), an internal publication of the German ''
Uranverein
The Uranverein ( en, "Uranium Club") or Uranprojekt ( en, "Uranium Project") was the name given to the project in Germany to research nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, during World War II. It went through s ...
''. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the
Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association.
KIT was created in 2009 w ...
and the American Institute of Physics.Walker, 1993, 268.
*F. Berkei, W. Borrmann, W. Czulius, Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, K. H. Höcker, W. Herrmann, H. Pose, and Ernst Rexer ''Bericht über einen Würfelversuch mit Uranoxyd und Paraffin'' G-125 (dated before 26 November 1942)
*Kurt Diebner, Werner Czulius, W. Herrmann, Georg Hartwig, F. Berkei and E. Kamin ''Über die Neutronenvermehrung einer Anordnung aus Uranwürfeln und schwerem Wasser (G III)'' G-210
*Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, W. Herrmann, H. Westmeyer, Werner Czulius, F. Berkei, and Karl-Heinz Höcker ''Vorläufige Mitteilung über einen Versuch mit Uranwüfeln und schwerem Eis als Bremssubstanz'' G-211 (April 1943)
*Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, W. Herrmann, H. Westmeyer, Werner Czulius, F. Gerkei, and Karl-Heinz Höcker ''Bericht über einen Versuch mit Würfeln aus Uran-Metall und schwerem Eis'' G-212 (July 1943)
*W. Herrmann, Georg Hartwig, H. Rockwitz, W. Trinks, and H. Schaub ' G-303 (1944)
Bibliography
*Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996)
*Kant, Horst ''Werner Heisenberg and the German Uranium Project / Otto Hahn and the Declarations of Mainau and Göttingen'', Preprint 203 (Max-Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 2002
*Macrakis, Kristie ''Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany'' (Oxford, 1993)
*Oleynikov, Pavel V. German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project'', ''The Nonproliferation Review'' Volume 7, Number 2, 1 – 30 (2000) The author has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in
Snezhinsk
Snezhinsk ( rus, Сне́жинск, p=ˈsnʲeʐɨnsk) is a closed town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. Population:
History
The settlement began in 1955 as Residential settlement number 2, a name which it had until 1957 when it received town ...
(Chelyabinsk-70).
*Walker, Mark ''German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949'' (Cambridge, 1993)