Josef Schintlmeister

Josef Schintlmeister (16 June 1908, Radstadt – 14 August 1971, Hinterglemm) was an Austrian-German nuclear physicist and alpinist from Radstadt. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. After World War II, he was sent Russia to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project. After he returned to Vienna, he took positions in East Germany. He was a professor of physics at the Technische Hochschule Dresden as well holding a leading scientific position at the Rossendorf Central Institute for Nuclear Research.

In Austria

Education

Schintlmeister had his doctorate and had completed his Habilitation.[1]

Early career

During World War II, Schintlmeister, Dozent für Experimentalphysik (Docent for Experimental Physics), worked at the II. Physikalisches Institut der Universität, Wien (Second Physics Institute of the University of Vienna), where Georg Stetter was the director. One of his colleagues there was Willibald Jentschke. The Institute did research on transuranic elements and measurement of nuclear constants, in collaboration with the Institut für Radiumforschung (Institute for Radium Research) of the Österreichischen Adademie der Wissenschaften (Austrian Academy of Sciences). This work was done under the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranverein (Uranium Club); see, for example, the publications cited below under Internal Reports.[1][2][3]

In work completed in June 1940 and published in 1941, Schintlmeister had followed a line of reasoning similar to that of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Fritz Houtermans and had predicted the existence of the 94th element, plutonium. In two papers published in May 1941, Schintlmeister spelled out the implications of the 94th element in that it could be generated in a Uranmaschine (uranium machine, i.e., a nuclear reactor) and that it would be fissionable.[4]

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 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. The main search team, headed by Colonel General Zavenyagin, arrived in Berlin on 3 May, the day after Russia announced the fall of Berlin to their military forces; it included Colonel General V. A. Makhnjov, and nuclear physicists Yulij Borisovich Khariton, Isaak Konstantinovich Kikoin, and Lev Andreevich Artsimovich.[5]

Scientists who were sent to the Soviet Union were assigned to facilities under authority of the NKVD’s 9th Chief Directorate, headed by Zavenyagin. The facilities were principally the following: Laboratory 2 (Moscow), Scientific Research Institute No. 9 (Moscow),[6] Elektrostal’ Plant No. 12,[7] Institutes A (Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi) and G (Agudzery),[8] Laboratory B (Sungul’),[9] and Laboratory V (Obninsk).[10][11][12][13][14]

Schintlmeister was assigned to Laboratory 2, later known as the Laboratory for Measuring Instruments (LIPAN), and then the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and today known as the Russian Scientific Center “Kurchatov Institute”, in Moscow.[15][16]

Return to Austria

In preparation for release from the Soviet Union, it was standard practice to put personnel into quarantine for a few years if they worked on projects related to the Soviet atomic bomb project, which Schintlmeister did. After quarantine, he was sent to Vienna in 1955. Soon thereafter, he took positions in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR, German Democratic Republic). He was appointed professor of nuclear physics at the Technische Hochschule Dresden (today, Technische Universität Dresden). Additionally, he was a leading scientist at the Zentralinstitut für Kernforschung Rossendorf (ZfK, Central Institute for Nuclear Research Rossendorf, today Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf) near Dresden. Other notable German scientists, who worked on the Soviet atomic bomb project and joined Schintlmeister at the Technische Hochschule Dresden were the physicists Heinz Barwich and Werner Hartmann from Institute G in Agudzery and Heinz Pose and Ernst Rexer from Laboratory V in Obninsk.[17][18][19]

On Schintlmeister’s return to Vienna, he was invited to the British embassy, where a Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (STIB)[20] officer asked him about his time in the Soviet Union. Schintlmeister declined the request. Once, visiting Austria after he had taken the positions in Dresden, British officials offered him the choice of either defecting or becoming a source in the Bloc, preferably the Soviet Union. STIB archives confirms that Schintlmeister was a target of British MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service.[19]

Internal reports

The following reports were published in Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte (Research Reports in Nuclear Physics), an internal publication of the German Uranverein. 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 and the American Institute of Physics.[21][22]

Selected publications

Articles

Books

Notes

  1. 1 2 Bericht über das II. Physikalische Institut der Wiener Universität (27 June 1945). See Document 5.
  2. ↑ Archivbehelf: Institut für Radiumforschung.
  3. ↑ Louis Galison "Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics" (University Of Chicago Press, 1997) pp. 158–159.
  4. ↑ Thomas Powers Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (Knopf, 1993) 514n29.
  5. ↑ Oleynikov, 2000, 3–6 .
  6. ↑ Scientific Research Institute No. 9 (NII-9; today the Bochvar All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Inorganic Materials, Bochvar VNIINM). Max Volmer and Robert Döpel were assigned to this facility.
  7. ↑ Elektorstal’ Plant No. 12. The following were assigned to this plant: A. Baroni (PoW), Hans-Joachim Born (PoW), Alexander Catsch (PoW), Werner Kirst, H. E. Ortmann, Przybilla, Nikolaus Riehl, Herbert Schmitz (PoW), Herbert Thieme, Tobein, Günter Wirths, and Karl Zimmer (PoW).
  8. ↑ Institutes A (in Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi) and G (in Agudzery) created for Manfred von Ardenne and Gustav Hertz, respectively. Institutes A and G were later used as the basis for the Sukhumi Physico-Technical Institute (SFTI); today it is the State Scientific Production Association “SFTI”. At Institute A were Ingrid Schilling, Fritz Schimohr, Fritz Schmidt, Gerhard Siewert, Max Steenbeck (PoW), Peter Adolf Thiessen, and Karl-Franz Zühlke. At Institute G were Heinz Barwich, Werner Hartmann, and Justus Mühlenpfordt.
  9. ↑ Laboratory B in Sungul’ was established by a decree of the Council of Ministers in 1946, and it was run as a Sharashka. In 1955, it was assimilated into a new, second nuclear weapons institute, Scientific Research Institute-1011 (NII-1011), today known as the Russian Federal Nuclear Center All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics (RFYaTs–VNIITF). Hans-Joachim Born (PoW), Alexander Catsch (PoW), Willi Lange, Nikolaus Riehl, and Karl Zimmer (PoW) were assigned to Laboratory B. Born, Catsch, and Zimmer were initially at the Elektrostal’ Plant No. 12, but Riehl sent them to Laboratory B shortly after its opening. Later, Riehl went from Elektrostal’ to become the scientific director of Laboratory B.
  10. ↑ Laboratory V was created for Heinz Pose in Obninsk, and it was run as a sharashka. Laboratory V was later renamed the Physics and Power Engineering Institute (FEhI); today it is the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation “FEhI”. Werner Czulius, Walter Herrmann, Hans Jürgen von Oertzen, Ernst Rexer, Karl-Heinrich Riewe, and Carl Friedrich Weiss were assigned to Laboratory V. (Cited as a sharashka in Polunin, V. V. and V. A. Staroverov Personnel of Special Services in the Soviet Atomic Project 1945 – 1953 [In Russian] (FSB, 2004).)
  11. ↑ Maddrell, 179–180.
  12. ↑ Albrecht, Heinemann-Grüder, and Wellmann, 2001, 48–82.
  13. ↑ Oleynikov, 2000.
  14. ↑ Vazhnov, M. Ya. A. P. Zavenyagin: Pages from His Life (chapters from the book). [In Russian]
  15. ↑ Oleynikov, 2000, 4.
  16. ↑ Kruglov, 2006, 131.
  17. ↑ Josef Schintlmesiter – Technische Hochschule Dresden.
  18. ↑ ZfK – 50 Jahre Forschung in Rossendorf, Zentralinstitut für Kernphysik
  19. 1 2 Maddrell, 2006, 201–202.
  20. ↑ The STIB was an arm of the Intelligence Division of the Control Commission for Germany - British Element (CCG/BE) in Bad Oeynhausen.
  21. ↑ Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, Appendix E; see the entry for Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte.
  22. ↑ Walker, 1993, 268–274.

References

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