Collaborations between Israel and Germany in Chemistry and the Other Sciences – a Sign of Normalization?

Abstract

The scientific collaboration between Israel and Germany was not initiated, as commonly believed, by the Max Planck Society or by German scientists who wanted to revive collaboration with their former Jewish colleagues. Rather, it was initiated in the mid‐1950s by two Israeli scientists from the Weizmann Institute and a German scientist at the time at CERN in violation of the widely accepted cultural boycott by Israel against Germany. The initiators succeeded in procuring political support; large‐scale collaboration between the Weizmann Institute, German universities, and the Max Planck Society was developed. In the aftermath of the Second World War, German science suffered from the Nazi expulsion of Jewish scientists and partial international isolation; the collaboration with Israel enabled young German scientists to overcome this isolation and benefit from stimulating Israeli research environments. In times of economic hardship, the collaboration helped Israeli science materially, provided contacts to chemical industry, and strengthened the cooperation between Israeli and European science. The collaboration was built, in part, on postwar myths created by German scientists and the Max Planck Society about their former anti‐Nazi attitudes. Despite the difficult beginnings and some hidden political agendas, the collaboration developed very successfully. Germany became Israel’s second most important partner in the scientific field, after the USA. Today, normalcy prevails in many – though not all – of the Israeli‐German collaborative projects; the past is not forgotten, but science is in the fore.

Geschichte der Physik an der Universität Heidelberg

“…Gentner begann sie auf ganz privater Ebene. Bei Spaziergängen in der Region des Kaiserstuhls bei Freiburg besprachen er und der israelische Biochemiker Gerhard Schmidt vom WeizmannInstitut für Wissenschaften, ob und in welcher Form eine Zusammenarbeit zwischen jungen Wissenschaftlern zur Aussöhnung zwischen Deutschen und Juden beitragen könne (Nickel 1989;Hoffmann 2015;Deichmann 2015). Diplomatische Beziehungen zwischen Israel und Deutschland gab es damals noch nicht.…”

“…Aus diesen Geldern wurden nicht nur Stipendien finanziert, sondern auch in großem Umfang Forschungen am Weizmann-Institut und später auch an anderen wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen Israels. Gentner war der erste Vorsitzende des Komitees, das über die Stipendienanträge entschied, ihm folgten in dieser Funktion Hans-Arwed Weidenmüller, Jörg Hüfner und Dirk Schwalm, alles Heidelberger Physiker (Deichmann 2015).…”

On the Centenary of Emanuel Gil‐Av, Former Professor of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Pioneer of Enantioselective Chromatography

“…The close cooperation of the nuclear physics departments of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot and the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg goes back to the initiatives on the reconciliation of scientific ties between Israel and Germany, under the auspices of Otto Hahn and Wolfgang Gentner ,. Consequently, the final Coulomb explosion experiment was done in cooperation with the Max‐Planck Institute, and the synthesis, involving 50 g of precious Wilkinson's catalysts, was carried out by Oliver Trapp and Kerstin Zawatzky at the Chemistry Department of the University of Heidelberg.…”