Alfons Bühl
Alfons Bühl (1900–1988) was a German physicist. From 1934 to 1945, he was director of the physics
department at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe.
Education
From 1919 to 1925, Bühl studied physics at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (today, the Humboldt-
Universität zu Berlin) and the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. He received his doctorate in 1925
under the Nobel Laureate Philipp Lenard at Heidelberg and was a teaching assistant to Lenard.[1]
Career
In 1928, Bühl became a teaching assistant at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and from 1929 was
a Privatdozent there in physics. From 1931 to 1933, he had a lectureship in the physics department at the
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. In 1934, he replaced Wolfgang Gaede as director of the
physics department at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe (today, the Universität Karlsruhe); Gaede
had been forced out by the National Socialist regime as “politically unreliable” after he accepted the
Duddell Medal of the London Physical Society in 1933. In 1936, Bühl was an untenured
ausserordentlicher Professor and from 1937 to 1945 an ordentlicher Professor at the Technische
Hochschule Karlsruhe.[1][2]
Bühl was a physics advisor to the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (NSDDB, National
Socialist German University Lecturers League). In 1940, Bühl attended the historic meeting known as the
Münchner Religionsgespräche confronting the Deutsche Physik movement; Bühl was a principal there
supporting the movement.[1][3]
When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, the concept of Deutsche Physik
took on more favor and fervor. Deutsche Physik was anti-Semitic and anti-theoretical physics, especially
including modern physics, i.e., quantum mechanics. As applied in the university environment, political
factors took priority over the historically applied concept of scholarly ability, even though its two most
prominent supporters were Nobel Laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. During the period in
which Deutsche Physik was gaining prominence, a foremost concern of the great majority of scientists
was to maintain autonomy against political encroachment. Some of the more established scientists, such
as Max von Laue, could demonstrate more autonomy than the younger and less established scientists.
This was, in part, due to political organizations, such as the NSDDB, whose district leaders had a decisive
role in the acceptance of an Habilitationsschrift, which was a prerequisite to attaining the rank of
Privatdozent necessary to becoming a university lecturer. While some with ability joined such
organizations out of tactical career considerations, others with ability and adherence to historical
academic standards joined these organizations to moderate their activities. This was the case of Wolfgang
Finkelnburg. It was in the summer of 1940 that Finkelnburg became an acting director of the NSDDB at
Technische Hochschule Darmstadt. As such, he organized the Münchner Religionsgespräche, which took
place on 15 November 1940 and was known as the “Munich Synod.” The Münchner Religionsgespräche
was an offensive against Deutsche Physik. Finkelnburg invited five representatives to make arguments for
theoretical physics and academic decisions based on ability rather than politics: Carl Friedrich von
Weizsäcker, Otto Scherzer, Georg Joos, Otto Heckmann, and Hans Kopfermann. Alfons Bühl, a supporter
of Deutsche Physik, invited Harald Volkmann, Bruno Thüring, Wilhelm Müller, Rudolf Tomaschek, and
Ludwig Wesch. The discussion was led by Gustav Borer, with Herbert Arthur Stuart and Johannes Malsch
as observers. While the technical outcome may have been thin, it was a political victory against Deutsche
Physik.[4][5][6][7][8]
Literature by Bühl
Alfons Bühl Über die elektrische Doppelschicht an der Oberfläche von Quecksilber, Annalen
der Physik, Volume 385, Issue 10, pp. 137–180 (1926)
Alfons Bühl Über wasserfallelektrische Wirkung an Lösungen ein-einwertiger Elektrolyte,
Annalen der Physik, Volume 388, Issue 16, pp. 1207–1224 (1927)
Alfons Bühl Wasserfallelektrische Wirkung im Vakuum, Annalen der Physik, Volume 395,
Issue 7, pp. 978–992 (1929)
Alfons Bühl Philipp Lenard und die deutsche Naturforschung (1937) in Rudolf G. Weigel
(editor) Philipp Lenard, der Vorkämpfer der Deutschen Physik Karlsruhe, Müller (=
Karlsruher Akedemischen Reden, Number 17), as cited in Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996,
References, page XCII, reference #920.
Notes
1. Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Bühl.
2. Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, 341n13.
3. Beyerchen, 1977, 177 – 179.
4. Beyerchen, 1997, 79 – 102, 103 – 140, 141 – 167, 176 – 179, 199 – 210.
5. Hoffmann, 2005, 293-329.
6. Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, Appendix C; see the entry for the NSDDB.
7. Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, 290.
8. Document 110: The Fight against Party Physics by Wolfgang Finkelnburg in Hentschel and
Hentschel, 1996, 339-345.
References
Beyerchen, Alan D. Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third
Reich (Yale, 1977) ISBN 0-300-01830-4
Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) Physics
and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996)
Hoffmann, Dieter Between Autonomy and Accommodation: The German Physical Society
during the Third Reich, Physics in Perspective 7(3) 293-329 (2005)
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