TIMES
IN GERMANY
WOLFGANG
C. GOEDE
Although
the original founders of the “European Science Journalist’s Association”
(EUSJA) were feeling they were breaking new ground in creating such a large
science journalists’ group, the Germans had a group in existence almost 50
years earlier. It was during the
“roaring twenties” that the “Technical Literary Society” (TELI) was
created in Berlin in 1929. With the
political and economic problems it has faced it is a commendable feat that TELI
has managed to both survive and thrive. As a microcosm of the fluctuating state
of the world, Germany is an ideal candidate for examination.
A
MIRROR OF THE TURMOIL IN THE 20TH CENTURY
During
the past hundred years Europe has witnessed tremendous changes. Technological
boosts occurred throughout the century. Radical political movements like
fascism and communism swept the continent, setting the stage for World War II
which led to its separation. Cold War, capitalism and socialism and various
market systems competed with each other, eventually bringing about
globalisation and its challenges. A major role in all these developments can be
attributed to science and technology, so the question arises: how does
scientific and technical journalism reflect the historical tides, developments
and upheavals – how did the community of writers and editors cope with them and
possibly help to create them? Germany being in the centre of Europe and an
essential contributor to the breakthroughs of the past century owes much of its
wealth to science and technology, thus the history of TELI during roughly the
past 80 years gives important clues and can provide guidelines as well as
ethical standards for the time to come.
TELI
was founded on January 11, 1929, in Berlin. The German organisation of
technical writers, which was later changed to also include scientific writers,
is the oldest of its kind in the world. The capital of Germany at that time was
a highly concentrated centre of political and economic power as well as
culture. All the important companies and banking institutions had their
headquarters there. New industries like electrical engineering were booming.
The wireless media, radio and later television, expanded swiftly and promised new
exciting ways of communication. More
than 130 newspapers competed with each other in Berlin, searching for news
everywhere and continually needed ever-faster printing machines. In the beginning of 1929 journalists,
writers, and editors of the key media met with representatives of the press
offices of the major industrial enterprises to found TELI. In those golden
years, the public relation departments had a very distinguished name and were
called Literary Departments, leading to the naming of TELI as a literary
association. One of the principal facilitators of the TELI was the author of
best-selling science fiction novels Hans Dominik, the “German Jules Verne” as
he was respectfully called. According to him, the newly founded organization
was to ensure “perfect and correct reports on technical matters in the daily
newspapers”.
UNDER
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
In 1871
a long time dream came true: Germany, until then a patchwork of countless
little princedoms, became a nation, the empire was founded and finally the
country could compete with more advanced nations like England and France.
During these founding years or Wilhelminian period (“Gründerzeit”) the economy,
industry, and natural sciences received a tremendous boost. Researchers and
inventors produced a record of breakthrough discoveries, railroads were built
all over the nation, Siemens was founded and the first cars emerged on the
streets. This technical revolution came about so rapidly and changed so
thoroughly daily life that it alienated and uprooted many people. This resulted in the promoters of all this
change – the engineers – were perceived as being outright dangerous. The German
Museum in Munich, for example, was founded to smooth this commotion or, even,
to turn it around and get people excited about the new breathtaking techniques.
In fact, for a culture which had been famous for producing outstanding poets
and thinkers like Goethe, Schiller and Kant this new spirit was an affront,
especially for the traditional elites. However, politically this was a highly
desirable development, so no wonder the emperor himself backed it. He helped to
found URANIA, the first science centre in the world, which put science on the
stage as a musical, a play, or some other kind of entertainment. Towards the
end of the century, these performances became so popular and successful that
URANIA received invitations to visit the United States where the public and the
press essentially rolled out a red carpet for the science artists.
By the
turn of century modern technology had been so enthusiastically accepted that
the first newspapers added special sections or supplements to their editions in
which they reported on new machines and developments. The writers were not
regular journalists however, but rather engineers and members of the new
technical professions who were very much enthused about what they were doing.
Despite the fact that technology had become the basis of economic growth as
well as political and military power, technicians remained a small minority without
much influence.
WHO
CALLS THE SHOTS?
On the
decision-making levels, in the military as well as ministries, non-experts
ruled and called the shots. So engineers and technicians started to organize
themselves after the end of the First World War One in order to gain more
political clout and have their own people elected into parliament. One of the
organizers of this movement was Siegfried Hartmann who became in 1919 the first
technical editor in Germany. He worked for the “Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” which
ambitiously tried to reach the editorial standards the “London Times”. Ten
years later this pioneer was elected TELI’s first president. At that time
journalists were not very keen to distinguish between news and comments, so
Hartmann’s self-imposed mission sounded surprisingly modern and farsighted: he
wanted to educate the masses by principally presenting and explaining facts.
Therefore, he saw to it that the constitution of the organisation explicitly
dedicated itself to raising the quality of technical reports. Moreover, he was
an early advocate to strictly separate the editorial from the advertisement
section in the print media.
By the
early thirties a network of dedicated technical journalists had started to
operate in the bustling metropolis of Berlin. From their fellow colleagues in
the press offices of the German industry, concentrated in the capital, they
received exclusive information. The philosopher and historian Hans Christian
Förster, who recorded the TELI history for its 70th anniversary in 1999,
characterized the organization with the following words: “a gentlemen’s club
with an elitist attitude, or at least a relatively closed circle based on
paternalistic structures which presented itself to the public as a special
society with special relations”. That’s one side of the coin; on the other side
the chronicler gives the first generation of technical writers credit for “free
and truthful reporting, focussed on clarifications”.
NAZI
PERIOD
Then in
1933, Hitler and his Nazi party came to power. Within a few months he
consolidated his position by bringing all-important institutions and decision
makers into line (“Gleichschaltung”) and thus implementing his ideology. Under
its second president Heinrich Kluth (1932 – 1962) the TELI had to disband the
memberships of its Jewish members and accept two loyal members of the Nazi
party on its board which changed its name to “Führerrat” (Leader’s Council).
How much of this decision was imposed or whether it was taken voluntarily has
not been documented yet, however, there is a high probability that Kluth did
this on his own, because he did not want to jeopardize the work of TELI.
Apparently, this strategy worked out and Förster reports that the Nazis did not
interfere very much. World War II began and the TELI could continue its
operations until 1944. “Technical journalists were recruited as soldiers or
they were part of the war propaganda machine and had to keep up the hope for an
ultimate victory (“Endsieg”)”, reports Förster, “writing about new airplanes
from Dornier, Heinkel, Junkers, Messerschmitt and other ‘Wunderwaffen’”.
These
are some sparse facts about the holocaust years – what’s the analysis? The fact
is that there is still very little known as far as TELI’s history goes. However, most of the material stemming from
that time has not been reviewed and needs to be looked into. Therefore, Förster
has proposed to dig into the archives and thoroughly document the Nazi period,
which he has received a green light for by the TELI board. At this point in
time he can’t do much more than ask questions and guess: “How come that
excellent media experts who wanted to defend the freedom of journalism became
instruments of the armament race; the persecution of opponents of the regime
and the elimination of so called inferior fellow citizens? By accepting this as inevitable destiny they
became involuntary accomplices”, Förster concludes. Why didn’t or couldn’t they
resist? Förster attributes it to the skilful Nazi propaganda which stated that
technique and culture were closely interwoven and resting in the great
tradition of humanism, thus appealing to engineers, technicians, and
“techno-aficionados” of all sorts to help bolster German culture.
Simultaneously, Goebbel’s propagandists understood how to administer a powerful
anaesthesia and distract the media people from the obvious dark sides of the
regime. In light of all this Förster dismisses a long standing thesis of
exculpation as legend, that TELI members just were concerned with technique and
didn’t pay tribute to politics – which means: neither during the Nazi regime
nor in any other political system of the past, the present or the future can we
separate technology and science from the overall sociological and political
context and makeup, they are both intertwined.
While
Förster’s further investigations are pending we might want to take a look at
the technological and scientific community during the Nazi period to firm up
our preliminary assessment. Driven by high ambitions, Wernher von Braun, the pioneer
of rocket science and later head of the Apollo programme, “made a pact” with
the brown regime, estimates sociologist Johannes Weyer. “He was an opportunist
with so much enthusiasm for his field of research that he convinced Hitler to
allot funds to develop the V2.” When in
1944 the rocket was used against London, the member of the Nazi party and SS
commented: “But I wanted to fly to the moon.” Thousands of prisoners worked in
underground installations to enhance the flying “Wunderwaffe”. The ones who
weren’t healthy enough were deported to the concentration camps – 3000 died
during the first three months of 1944.
NAZI
PARTY NUMBERS BOOSTED BY SCIENTISTS
In 2005
the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG), a major German research organization,
published the results of an investigation of historians who had looked into the
question of how scientists had cooperated with the Third Reich. The findings
are disastrous and match with the ones other commissions had come up with when
they had dug through the archives of industrial enterprises and banks: nobody
had been forced, everybody went along voluntarily. More than 50 percent of the
biologists employed by the imperial research institutions
(Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute) joined the Nazi party. The leading protagonist for
eugenics was Konrad Lorenz, one of the founders of ethology, who in 1973 was
honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. One of the principal reasons that scientists played along to
the regime’s tune, was that if they could make it believe that their projects
contributed to the racial policy or, later, could help to win the war (Braun)
they were given access to all kinds of resources and funds. Actually, Nazi
Germany was a paradise for many scientists and they certainly knew how to use
the ideology. Moreover, the exodus of the Jewish scientists opened many
vacancies which many of their Aryan colleagues were anxious to fill and got
them off to nice careers. Dr. Susanne Heim, head of the MPG commission,
concluded that scientists are highly vulnerable to intellectual and moral
corruption. “Opportunities will be used if they promise more influence and
success.”
POST-WAR
PERIOD
After
the war it took TELI eight years to spring back to life. Finally, in 1953, a
new board was elected and the technical journalists’ organization was back in
business. However, the media in the fifties was changing dramatically, new
special interest publications and magazines entered the market, TV conquered
the living rooms. Technical writing lost its domain since radio and television
created new acoustic and visual formats; furthermore, science began to play a
more dominant role in the public domain and gave rise to a new genre:
scientific writing. To top it off, Berlin was a divided city and no longer a
hub.
So TELI
members had to reorganize and make adjustments, if the organization was to
survive. Robert Gerwin, the 4th
president (1963 – 1970) implemented the reforms by forming regional chapters
throughout West Germany which decentralized the activities, pulled in new
members throughout the country and made up for the loss of Berlin. Gerwin
modernized the organization’s name by inventing a subtitle: “Journalists’
Association for technical-scientific publicity” and went out to recruit science
writers. Gerwin’s successor to the chair, Heinz Rieger (1970 – 1977), as we
have read earlier, picked up and carried on the idea to establish an
international umbrella organization of science journalists. EUSJA soon
attracted new members and renowned names.
One of them was Werner Büdeler, a space expert and TV reporter. He had
commented on the first landing on the moon from Houston. Büdeler served as the
8th TELI president (1983 – 1989).
REUNIFICATION
AND GLOBALISATION
The
fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, the end of the Cold War, and the
reunification of East and West Germany imposed new challenges. TELI’s 9th
president, Klaus Goschmann (1989 – 2001), managed to establish early contacts
with colleagues in the eastern parts, many of which joined the organization. A great asset for a smooth integration was
Gerhard Kirsch, formerly president of science journalists of the German
Democratic Republic, who since 1995 has been running TELI’s new headquarter in
Berlin. An interesting investigation, not done yet, would aim at the question
of how technical and science journalism developed under communist rule. When
TELI got back on its feet in the Fifties, colleagues in the East refrained from
co-operation with the argument that the organisation was “bourgeois”. Rather
they wanted to continue along the more progressive traditions of the German
labour movement and the Soviet Union.
Whatever this meant – there has been very little research. Journalism
was controlled tightly by the Communists, although scientific writers were
granted more freedom than political writers. On the other hand, as Katrin
Schulze observed in a research paper at the Free University of Berlin, science
was a key element of the communist ideology and responsible for the progress of
society – so criticising science would have been necessarily a critique against
communism. Maybe EUSJA members of
Eastern Europe will look one day more thoroughly into this and come up with
more facts, examples, and analysis.
The end
of the confrontation between East and West led to globalisation. A positive
fringe benefit of this has been the foundation of the World Federation of
Science Journalists (WFSJ) which fosters a close co-operation and exchange of
colleagues in the entire world to further enhance professionalism. TELI members
have helped to kick off the Federation idea; this author went on record as a
co-founder. Hanns-Joachim (Hajo) Neubert, TELI’s 10th president (since 2001),
and EUSJA’s vice president is a mentor in a unique peer-to-peer mentoring
program which will help African journalists to become more proficient in
science journalism. On the occasion of EUSJA’s 35th anniversary, long time
delegate and TELI “elder statesmen”, Dietmar Schmidt expressed his hope that
bilateral visits of members to research projects and scientific laboratories
throughout Europe will further increase and sustain networking with the goal of
a strong European identity. Finally, he explicitly welcomes the EUSJA
constitutional amendment that allows various science writers’ organisations of
one country to become EUSJA members and is looking forward in the hope that
this will help to unite and consolidate respective groups in Germany.
OUTLOOK
Germany
has been respected as well as ridiculed, but it is my opinion that Germany,
more than any other country, has confronted its history. This teaches science
journalists a basic lesson. Science’s truth seeking mission is embedded all
over the world in ideologies, ambitions, big money and religious beliefs. So we would be well advised to keep our
distance and to question the motives, methods and results of scientists,
especially in the 21st century in which science and technology have become
increasingly the driving force of the economy. Henry Pierce, Pittsburgh Post
Gazette, has put this difficult relationship into some memorable phrases: “Science journalists are a bunch of patsies
prone to uncritical acceptance of anything we are told by our authorities – our
authorities being doctors and scientists.” He observed that other journalists
maintained a more healthy scepticism toward news sources and continued: “But
we, bless us, go in with our bright baby-blue pencils poised, faithfully
recording anything our scientists – gods – tell us. Never does it occur to us
that these guys too may have motives that are less than noble.”
Wolfgang C. Goede is a political and
communications scientist, as well as senior editor for Germany's leading
popular science magazine P.M. / Knowledge matters. He is on the TELI board and
its EUSJA delegate.
w.goede@gmx.net
http://www.pm-magazin.de/de/nurinternet/artikel_id448.htm
http://www.empowerhaus.de