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Ernst August Weiss: Mathematical Pedagogical Innovation in the Third Reich

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Amphora

Abstract

It is a well-worn educational cliché that different motivations may produce similar outcomes. Recently Uri Treisman has advocated intense small-group learning of mathematics as a way of motivating bright African-American students to keep them from dropping out of mathematics and college.1 His success has been met with considerable publicity in the United States. A similar desire to retain students in mathematics, but in this case, to help build the new national-socialist man thereby, led Ernst August Weiss in 1934–1939, to a not dissimilar idea. Weiss seems to have been an excellent mathematics teacher, and his mathematics camps seem to have inspired students mathematically as well as politically. They also seem to have become quite popular. Weiss’ reprehensible politics do not alter his pedagogical gifts, nor the possible value of his pedagogical innovation. His “mathematics camps„ are worth examination as one example of how mathematics and Nazi ideology would interact.

This article is drawn from material in a forthcoming book by the author on the mathematics in Nazi Germany, where it will appear in slightly different form. The author is indebted to Herbert Mehrtens for copies of Wozu Mathematik and Weiss’ reports of the five mathematics camps he led, as well as to the friendly archivists at the University of Bonn who made the Personalakten of Weiss and Hans Beck available and the Berlin Document Center (BDC). All translations in this article are by the author. The author wishes to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the American Philosophical Society for funds which made this research possible.

E.g. Philip Uri Treisman: A Study of Mathematics Performance of Black Students at the University of California, Berkeley (101 pages). This is an unpublished but a widely disseminated, discussed, and praised study.

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Literatur

  1. Wozu Mathematik?, Bonn, 1933 (hereafter cited as WM).

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  2. WM, p. 8.

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  5. Sauberkeit, i.e. “cleanliness„.

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  10. E.g., Unterlagen zu dem Nachruf für Prof. Dr. Weiss (March 26, 1942) in Personalakten Ernst August Weiss, Universität Bonn.

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  11. According to the extensive obituary of Weiss by Karl Strubecker, Deutsche Mathematik 7 (1943), 254–298, p. 255, she was born in Cannes. Pp. 264–298 of this are devoted to Weiss’ mathematical work.

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  12. As in Note 11.

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  13. All above material, not otherwise annotated, is cited from a letter of Hans Beck to Prof. Leick (Greifswald) on Nov. 4, 1936 in Personalakten E. A. Weiss, Bonn.

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  23. July 8, 1933 according to NSLB card in BDC file on Ernst August Weiss. According to Strubecker op. cit., Weiss had had no political activity prior to January 30, 1933.

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  24. March 1 to March 15, 1934 (Das Mathematische Arbeitslager Kronenburg, Bonn, 1934, p. 5).

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  26. Ibid., p. 10.

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  27. Nevertheless, each camp organized by Weiss contained female students.

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  28. Ibid., p. 8.

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  35. Weiss also studied briefly at the Technical University in Hannover and the University in Hamburg, see Strubecker op. cit., p. 256.

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  37. Das Mathematische Arbeitslager Kronenburg, 3. Lager, Bonn, 1935, pp. 5–6.

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  38. Loc. cit.

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  39. “People„ in this citation especially inadequately translates the German Volk.

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  40. As in note 38, p. 8.

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  41. For Ludwig Bierberbach also, Cauchy was an example of mathematical style to be avoided. Cauchy attacked the “principe de continuité„ of Weiss’ hero Poncelet.

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  42. Beck to Weiss, March 27, 1936 in Personalakten Weiss.

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  43. Beck to Prof. Leick, November 14, 1936; Dekan Pfeiffer to Kurator, August 1, 1936, Wolfgang Krull to Dekan June 31, 1939; Nachruf for Ernst August Weiss, March 31, 1942, by Prof. Carstens, Rektor at Posen, all in Personalakten Weiss.

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  44. C. Kröger, Dekan at Posen, to Dekan at Bonn, March 21, 1942 in Personalakten Weiss.

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  45. Dr. Thunn to Eva Renate Weiss, February 22, 1942, copy in Personalakten Weiss.

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Authors
  1. Sanford L. Segal
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Staropanskii per. 1/5, 103 012, Moscow, Russia

    Sergei S. Demidov

  2. Arbeitsgruppe für Geschichte der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, Universität Mainz Fachbereich Mathematik, Saarstrasse 21, D-W-6500, Mainz, Germany

    David Rowe

  3. Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften der Universität München, Museumsinsel 1, D-W-8000, München 26, Germany

    Menso Folkerts

  4. Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Mathematik und Technik, Bundesstrasse 55, D-W-2000, Hamburg 13, Germany

    Christoph J. Scriba

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© 1992 Springer Basel AG

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Segal, S.L. (1992). Ernst August Weiss: Mathematical Pedagogical Innovation in the Third Reich. In: Demidov, S.S., Rowe, D., Folkerts, M., Scriba, C.J. (eds) Amphora. Birkhäuser, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-8599-7_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-8599-7_32

  • Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Basel

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-0348-9696-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-0348-8599-7

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