Freedom of the mind got Nature banned by the Nazis

[Chlorobium]

Habe Heute folgenden Kurzbericht in Nature gefunden. Ir-
gendwie passt der zum Thema, weshalb ich den mal hier
reinstellen möchte.


Freedom of the mind got Nature banned by the Nazis

SIR — Today, when freedom of the press and academia
are in the news, along with the neglect or misuse of
scientific results and theories by politicians, it may be
useful to remember a time when political demagogy
crushed these freedoms in Germany.
At the inauguration of the Philipp Lenard Institute in
Heidelberg in 1936, German scientists and politicians
started a campaign against Nature that succeeded in
having the journal banned from libraries. Nature’s
correspondents were accused of having created an
anti-fascist espionage organization in Germany and
Italy, starting in 1933. It was claimed in the science
journal Zeitschrift für die gesamte Naturwissenschaft
that Nature was filled with propaganda against the
Nazi regime, “mostly based on democratic-liberal and
Jewish feelings of hatred” (H. Rügemer Z. ges. Naturwiss. 3,
475–476; 1938). Leading articles such as “Freedom of
the mind” (Nature 139, 941–942; 1937) and “Science and
peace” (Nature 139, 979–981; 1937) were listed as
examples.
“When the abominable Jewish journal Nature speaks
of the oppression of the spirit, it only means our termi-
nation, out of a sense of responsibility, of an activity
by Jews and Jews-in-spirit directed at the destruction
of the foundations of Aryan science in German culture,
” the Zeitschrift article concluded. The science minister,
Bernhard Rust, took action. “In the weekly science ma-
gazine Nature, appearing in London, papers are often
published that contain outrageous and mean attacks on
German science and the National Socialist state.
Therefore, this journal must be expelled from general
use in scientific libraries,” he decreed in November 1937.

And expelled it was, until the end of the Second World
War. As this example shows, restricting academic free-
dom is a dangerous path to take. We need to resist all
attempts to go down this road in the twenty-first century.

Uwe Hoßfeld*, Lennart Olsson†
*Ernst-Haeckel-Haus, Friedrich-Schiller-
Universität Jena, D-07745 Jena, Germany
†Institut für Spezielle Zoologie und Evolutionsbiologie
mit Phyletischem Museum, Friedrich-
Schiller-Universität Jena, Erbertstraße 1,
D-07745 Jena, Germany

NATURE|Vol 443|21 September 2006
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Chlorobium (der Farbe wegen)