Category Archives: Object of the Month

News, Object of the Month

Object of the Month: A powerfull piece: Annemirl Bauer, “Männliche Herrlichkeit Gottes” (Male Glory of God), 1988

Object of the Month 09/2023

Accusing, shocking, melancholic – the large-format painting by Annemirl Bauer is expressive. From the eyes of a centrally placed female figure, crouching on a box in prisoner’s clothing, rays emanate to both sides of the picture. On the left, a row of naked women in high-heeled shoes stand in line, the one in front holding out her armed hand. Behind her are other figures, some with oversized phalluses. The pistol points to the right side of the picture with a female figure crucified by crutches, from whose womb blood is flowing. A male army, indicated in heads at the lower right edge of the picture is described with the invocation of the Trinity. The dark, violent and sexualised scenes are only counteracted on the far right by a mother and child standing in the golden light, standing upright and calm despite all hostility.
The title “Männliche Herrlichkeit Gottes”, present in the picture through characters in the sky or on a rocket, refers to the horrors of war and violence (perpetrated by men) as well as to the roles of women – as victims, as perpetrators, as mothers.

A.Bauer Männliche Herrlichkeit Gottes
Annemirl Bauer, Männliche Herrlichkeit Gottes, oil/ carpet, 208 x 246 cm, 1988

Since 2018, the painting has been hanging in the Humboldt University as one of the few works by Annemirl Bauer still present in public. The valiant paintress, herself under surveillance by the Stasi, expelled from the GDR artists’ association (VBK) and subsequently banned from working, repeatedly explored feminist themes. The “Male Glory of God” can also be linked very specifically to the conscription law for women in the GDR, the “Women for Peace” (Frauen für den Frieden), but also to the feminist Ingrid Strobl, who was imprisoned in the Federal Republic.

In 1982, a new law on military service was passed that would also have called on women to serve in national defence in the event of mobilisation. Against this, 150 women protested in a joint plea to Erich Honecker: “We women want to break the cycle of violence and withdraw our participation from all forms of violence as a means of conflict resolution. […] We women understand the readiness for military service as a threatening gesture which opposes the striving for moral and military disarmament and allows the voice of human reason to be drowned in military obedience.” (Petition to the Chairman of the Council of State, Erich Honecker, 12 October 1982)
This pacifist criticism was followed by a wave of interrogations by the state security, intimidation and arrests – for example, of the politically active paintress and main signatory Bärbel Bohley, who, like Annemirl Bauer, was organised in the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR (VBK), from whose district executive committee she was expelled in 1983.

Ingrid Strobl, in turn, an Austrian journalist who was editor of the magazine Emma in Cologne from 1979 to 1986, was taken into remand or solitary confinement as a terrorism suspect in 1987. She had been filmed buying an alarm clock that had been prepared by the BKA (Federal Criminal Police Office) and identified in the remains of a bomb in the 1986 attack on the Lufthansa administration building. The attack against Lufthansa, perpetrated by the organisation “Revolutionary Cells” (Revolutionäre Zellen), also had a feminist background and targeted sex tourism (“state racism, sexism and the patriarchy”, as the Revolutionary Cells themselves stated, cf. Ingrid Strobl: Vermessene Zeit. Der Wecker, der Knast und ich, Hamburg 2020). Strobl received public solidarity after her arrest.
Even without knowledge of this historical background, Annemirl Bauer’s work has an effect through its offensive pictorial language, which also plays with religious motif quotations.
Despite all the criticism – especially against the rejection of Annemirl Bauer’s repeated calls for travel “with return” – the artist was not a dissident and did not want to leave the GDR. Changing the social and political structures, that was her struggle throughout her life, which she lost through her early death shortly before the fall of the Wall in the summer of 1989.
Since 2010, a square named after her in Friedrichshain at Ostkreuz station has commemorated the pugnacious artist.

Author: Christina Kuhli

News, Object of the Month

Object of the Month: Diagram of the precipitation in Berlin-Dahlem in 2022

Object of the Month 08/2023

For the object of the month August, we have chosen the diagram of the precipitation in Berlin-Dahlem for the year 2022 (Fig. 4), which is a piece of the daily weather observation. Morever it also reflects the diversity of research at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as well as allowing the connection to current debates such as climate change and questions of future food security. It is therefore about the one topic where everyone surely always wants to form an opinion: the weather.

The terms weather and climate should be kept apart. Weather describes the measurable instantaneous state of the atmosphere, whereas climate is defined more as a typical recurring annual pattern of weather, usually based on 30-year averages.

Weather is usually associated with sunshine, wind, rain or temperature. These are variables that can be measured or counted and play a central role, especially for agriculture and thus for food. And in order to be able to measure or count them professionally, there are fixed weather stations, which are also located at Humboldt-Universität.

The agro-climatological weather station at the agricultural experimental site in Berlin-Dahlem was established in 1931. The weather data measured since then is used on the one hand for the evaluation of the permanent agricultural experiments at the site (investigation of the relationships between weather patterns and growth, development and yield formation of agricultural crops) and on the other hand for the evaluation of the most diverse field experiments, which are designed to be more short-term. The data is available to all students and staff for the evaluation of their field trials.

In addition, the long-term weather records provide an insight into the climatic changes in Berlin.

Odm_August_2023_Bild_01
Figure 1: Weather station on the grounds of the permanent field experiments of the Department of Crop and Animal Sciences of the Thaer Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences in Dahlem. (Photo: O. Zauzig 2023)
Odm_August_2023_Bild_02
Figure 2: Course of the annual mean air temperature (Ta) since the beginning of weather recording in Dahlem.
OdM_August_2023_Bild_03
Figure 3: Annual precipitation (Pa) over the same period.
The two graphs show the course of the annual mean air temperature and the annual precipitation depth (both y-axis) from 1931 to 2022. The air temperature in Berlin-Dahlem increased significantly by 1.8°C between 1931 and 2022 (1.78 Kelvin in 92 years). Annual precipitation shows no significant trend, with the lowest annual precipitation to date of only 338 mm (equivalent to 338 litres per square metre) measured throughout the year in 2022.
OdM_August_2023_Bild_04
Figure 4: Course of precipitation depth in 2022, measured at the Dahlem site.

Figure 4 shows that only 3 months of the year (February, April, December) had precipitation levels above the long-term average. This led to an annual precipitation deficit of 40 percent and thus to the lowest annual total of 337.8 litres per square metre since observations began in 1931. With only 0.6 l/m² precipitation, March 2022 also set a record, which was due to the highest sunshine duration of 245.3 hours measured to date.

This means that four records were set at once in 2022: highest sunshine duration and lowest precipitation level in March, lowest annual precipitation level since 1931, highest number of “desert days”.

Observing the weather remains our task.

Authors: Prof. Dr. Frank-M. Chmielewski and Dr. Oliver Zauzig

Current measured values of the weather station Berlin-Dahlem (HU)

Acker- und pflanzenbauliche Dauerfeldversuche

Agricultural Climatology

News, Object of the Month

Object of the month: The poet and the dolphin skull

Object of the Month 07/2023

The poet Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838) is probably familiar to most people as the author of the fantastic tale „The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl” published in 1814. In it, the protagonist sells his shadow to the devil and thus falls victim to social ostracism. Chamisso’s importance as a natural scientist is far less well known. He was active in the fields of ethnology, zoology and, above all, botany. From 1815 to 1818, he participated in the circumnavigation of the globe by the Russian research vessel Rurik (Chamisso 2012). One of the significant results of this voyage was Chamisso’s discovery of the alternation of generations of the salps. He was not only able to decipher the alternating formation of sexual and asexual generations of these planktonic organisms, but was one of the first researchers ever to recognize the connection between larvae and generational successions of marine animals (Glaubrecht & Dohle 2012).

Fig 1 - Dolphin Skull
The sawed dolphin skull shown here from two sides comes from Chamisso's voyage around the world aboard the Russian research vessel 'Rurik'. (Photography G. Scholtz)

The sawed dolphin skull shown here from two sides also comes from this voyage. In his book “Reise um die Welt” Chamisso mentions dolphins among other things in the notes of May 12 and June 4, 1816: “A dolphin was harpooned, the first of which we got hold of – it served us as welcome food.” “…On the 4th a second dolphin of a different species was harpooned.” In total, Chamisso reports catching of six dolphins, all of whose skulls he donated to the “Zootomisches Museum zu Berlin.” This statement is confirmed by the inventory book of the zootomic collection, as six dolphin skulls collected by Chamisso are listed there. The entry in the inventory book under number 3956 for the skull shown here states: “Crania Delphini n. sp. … cl. a Chamisso ex itinere trans orbem attulit.”

Fig 2 - Crania Delphini
Crania Delphini n. sp. a 3955 diversa. illi Delphini dubii Cuv. oss. foss. affinea aut vero sumuliter (simuliter?) eodem (Translation: Dolphin skull n. sp. (new species) different from 3955. The excavated bones resemble those of Delphinus dubius (Cuvier) or are even the same). cl. a Chamisso ex itinere trans orbem mundum attulit. (Translation: collected by Chamisso, he brought them back from his voyage around the world).

In 1999, the skull and a mandible from the anatomical collection of the Charité were given to the Zoologische Lehrsammlung of the Humboldt-Universität (see Scholtz 2018). The historical significance of these objects went unnoticed for over a decade. It was not until there was an inquiry from Hamburg about the whereabouts of a dolphin skull collected by Chamisso as part of the DFG project “The Appropriation of World Knowledge – Adelbert von Chamisso’s world tour” that our own provenance research led to the identification of the object. Other dolphin skulls collected by Chamisso were identified in the holdings of the Museum für Naturkunde. A comparison with the notes in Chamisso’s travel diaries (Sproll et al. 2023) now offers the possibility to identify individually the six skulls mentioned in the diaries and to which dolphin species they belong.

Fig 3 - Adelbert von Chamisso in the South Seas
Watercolor portrait of Chamisso under palm trees in the Pacific Ocean by Ludwig Choris from 1817 (Collection Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Reproduction: Oliver Ziebe, Berlin, Paper, Sheet: H: 22,80 cm, W: 18,40 cm, Inv.Nr.: TA 00/2026 HZ)

Like many of his scientifically active contemporaries, Chamisso was a member of the “Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin”. As a characteristic product of the Age of Enlightenment, this private association was launched on July 9, 1773, in the apartment of the Berlin physician Dr. Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Martini (Böhme-Kassler 2005). The seven founding members, beyond their professions as physicians, pharmacist, astronomer, royal war councillor and royal administrators, showed great interest in natural science issues and were proud owners of natural history collections. Martini, for example, who initiated the foundation, was a dedicated conchologist, and the pharmacist Marcus Élieser Bloch was interested in ichthyology. The eventually twelve full members met regularly in their private residences, discussed natural history issues, and presented their newly acquired collection items. Associate and honorary members were also appointed. Last but not least, the founding of the Berliner Universität in 1810 caused the number of members to rise sharply. When Chamisso was elected to the GNF in 1819, it was already good manners to list membership alongside that in other national and international associations and academies. The explosive development of scientific research in the 19th century was also reflected in the GNF. It grew steadily, and especially the large number of outstanding researchers who belonged to it shows its historical importance. The focus of interests changed more and more towards biological questions. Accordingly, the Society was closely connected with the Museum für Naturkunde, and with the beginning of the 20th century the meetings were held there. The 2nd World War led to a break in the activities of the GNF.In 1955 the revitalisation took place at the newly founded Freie Universität in the western part of Berlin, where the society is still located today. From the beginning, the GNF has dedicated itself to the promotion and dissemination of scientific knowledge. It still follows this ideal today. It is closely connected to the major Berlin universities and the Museum für Naturkunde. It awards an annual prize for outstanding biological bachelor’s and master’s theses. Regular meetings with scientific lectures as well as excursions are still held. It is the oldest still existing private natural history society in Germany. The GNF celebrates its 250th anniversary on July 9, 2023 with a colloquium in the lecture hall of zoology at the Freie Universität Berlin. In addition, a Festschrift published on behalf of the steering committee highlights aspects of its long history (Scholtz et al. 2023).

By Prof. Dr. Gerhard Scholtz

Links
Zoologische Lehrsammlung der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (only in German)
Salpen (Feuerwalzen), Feuchtpräparat (only in German)

References
Böhme-Kassler, K. 2005 Gemeinschaftsunternehmen Naturforschung. Modifikation und Tradition in der Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin 1773 – 1906. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart.

Chamisso, A. von 2012 Reise um die Welt (Nachdruck). Die Andere Bibliothek, Berlin

Glaubrecht, M. & Dohle, W. 2012 Discovering the alternation generations in salps (Tunicata, Thaliacea): Adelbert von Chamisso’s dissertation “De Salpa” 1819 its material, origin and reception in the early nineteenth century. Zoosystenatics and Evolution 88: 317-363.

Scholtz, G. 2018 Zoologische Lehrsammlung (Zoological Teaching Collection). In: Beck, L.A. (Hrsg.). Zoological Collections of Germany – The animal kingdom in its amazing plenty at museums and universities. Springer, Berlin, pp. 123-134.

Scholtz, G., Sudhaus, W. & Wessel, A. (Hrsg.) 2023 Festschrift zum 250-jährigen Bestehen der Gesellschaft. Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin 57 (NF): 5-320.

Sproll, M., Erhart, W. & Glaubrecht, M. (Hrsg.) 2023 Adelbert von Chamisso: Die Tagebücher der Weltreise 1815-1818, Edition der handschriftlichen Bücher aus dem Nachlass. Brill/V&R Unipress, Göttingen.

News, Object of the Month

Object of the month: Photographic reproduction of the X-ray image of a bound foot

Object of the Month 06/2023

Over a period of a thousand years, Chinese girls had their feet bound to shorten them. Europeans looked at this beauty practice with a mixture of fascination and astonishment. In the 19th century, doctors also became interested in bound feet, one of them being the Berlin anatomist Hans Virchow, whose podological collection is now housed in the Centre for Anatomy at the HU.

The object presented here, a print of an X-ray image glued to cardboard (cf. https://www.sammlungen.hu-berlin.de/objekte/sammlung-am-centrum-fuer-anatomie/8468/), which is handwritten “Fuß einer 32 jähr. chin. Frau” (“Foot of a 32 year old Chinese woman”), also belongs to this collection.

Foot of a 32 year old chin. Woman
Photographic reproduction of the X-ray image of a bound foot, photo: Felix Sattler

The skeleton shows the characteristic features of bound feet: the small toes are curved under the sole, the instep is arched upwards. Apart from the extreme foreshortening, the nailed sole is particularly striking – obviously the X-ray image was taken through the shoe.

How this came about can be seen in the “Zeitschrift für Ethnologie”: In March 1905, Hans Virchow invited the members of the Anthropological Society to the foyer of the Berlin Circus Schumann “to inspect the Chinese troupe currently staying here” in order to convince himself “of the smallness and reshaping of the Chinese feet”. Advertisements and contemporary sources provide information about the identity of the “troupe”. They were the magician Ching Ling Foo and the “famous small-footed women”: his wife (the “32 year old Chinese woman”), their daughter Chee Toy and Chee Roan, whose name is noted on a photograph in the Náprstek Museum in Prague, another stage of their European tour (cf. Heroldová 2008).

Photograph in the Náprstek Museum Prague
Ching Ling Foo, his wife, Chee Roan and Chee Toy in the Náprstek Museum, 1905, black and white photograph on cardboard, © Náprstek Museum Prague.

Virchow had already dampened hopes of an inspection of uncovered feet in the invitation, “for it is well known [that] Chinese women are particularly difficult about their feet”. In fact, bound feet were never publicly shown naked in China. Foreign photographers and doctors often broke the gaze taboo in the 19th century by harassing women with money and gifts. Female performers also refused the intrusive gaze, but allowed themselves to be x-rayed – through the shoe. Whether this succeeded, as James Fränkel claimed in the “Zeitschrift für orthopädische Chirurgie” (Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery), only because the women were unaware of the procedure discovered in 1895, or whether he was invoking the topos of the secret “X-ray gaze” here, cannot be decided. In any case, the photograph bears witness not only to the encroaching medical gaze, but also to the resistance of the women.

For the anatomists, the campaign was a success, because it not only allowed them to see the feet in three stages of deformation, but – contrary to the popular prejudice of the inability to walk – also in motion. Virchow made several revisions to the X-ray images for the publication of the examination results: He rotated and retouched the images to make them more legible (cf. Dünkel 2021). For him, the on-site visit was neither the first nor the last encounter with bound feet. As early as 1903, he had examined a wet preparation that had come into the Berlin collection after the First Opium War, and in 1912 he macerated the feet of a woman who had died of typhus, which he had received in the course of the “Boxer War”, the suppression of the Yihetuan movement. Whereas medical practitioners in the 19th century had repeatedly complained about the lack of access to Chinese corpses in addition to the gaze taboo, the situation changed with the establishment of mission hospitals and the colonial wars. Soon almost every anatomical collection of the imperial powers possessed preparations of bound feet – some of them from looted graves. Virchow’s collection of casts, models and bones of bound feet also owes much to colonial conditions. The exhibition “unBinding Bodies” in the Tieranatomisches Theater opposite has set itself the task of re-contextualising these sensitive objects. The focus is not on the feet, but on Chinese women and their lives. The exhibition runs until 31 August.

Jasmin Mersmann and Evke Rulffes

Exhibition
unBinding Bodies. Lotosschuhe und Korsett at TA T

Catalogue
unBinding Bodies – Zur Geschichte des Füßebindens in China
Jasmin Mersmann / Evke Rulffes (Hg.)
transcript Verlag, 2023. Open Access.

Literature
Vera Dünkel (2021): Beyond Retouching. Hans Virchow’s Mixed Media and his X-ray Drawings of the Lotus Foot, in: Hybrid Photography, ed. by Sara Hillnhuetter, Stefanie Klamm, Friedrich Tietjen, London/New York, pp. 79-88.

James Fränkel (1905): Ueber den Fuß der Chinesin, in: Zeitschrift für orthopädische Chirurgie 14, pp. 339-356.

Helena Heroldová (2008): Příběh jedněch botiček, in: Cizí, jiné, exotické v české kultuře, ed. by Kateřina Bláhová and Václav Petrbok, Prague, pp. 126-133.

Jasmin Mersmann (2023): Bis auf die Knochen. Gebundene Füße in anatomischen Sammlungen, in: unBinding Bodies, ed. by ders. and Evke Rulffes, Bielefeld, pp. 119-129.

Hans Virchow (1903): Das Skelett eines verkrüppelten Chinesinnen-Fußes, in: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 35:2, pp. 266-316 and (1905): Further communications on the feet of Chinese women, in: ZfE 37:4, pp. 546-568.

News, Object of the Month

Object of the month: An Indian Tablā (dāyāṃ) in the Berlin Lautarchiv

Object of the Month 04/2023 

In addition to its core holdings of audio recordings of prisoners of war from the First World War and the collection of German dialects from the 1920s and 1930s, the Lautarchiv (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) also preserves other interesting sub-collections that have so far remained rather in the background and initially seem to have no obvious connection to the collection. Take, for example, three Indian drums.

No historical written documentation exists for these instruments. There is no entry in any inventory book that would indicate how, why and from where they came into the collection of the Lautarchiv. In terms of organology, the three drums do not form a coherent ensemble. One of these drums—an Indian tablā (dāyāṃ)—will be the focus of attention here.

Tabla
An Indian tablā (dāyāṃ) in the Berlin Lautarchiv; height 29cm.
Tabla Top View
The tablā (⌀ 20cm) viewed from the top with the characteristic black tuning paste (shāī) in the middle. Note the white areas (stains from an improper application of stickers).

About the instrument

Tablā is the name for a pair of drums played with the hands, consisting of two small kettle drums. The smaller of the two drums played with the right hand is also called dāyāṃ (literally: right), which is referred to as the “real” tablā in some publications. The larger drum played with the left hand is called bāyāṃ (literally: left). There is only a dāyāṃ in the Lautarchiv; the pair of drums is incomplete. The tablā is more than a mere “object”; it demands the respect of musicians to be treated as individuals: instrument and musician become one. The drums are placed on the floor and played cross-legged. However, it is not allowed to simply step over a tablā standing on the floor; this is considered disrespectful.

Provenance: a few tentative & speculative thoughts

Some speculative lines of thought on the provenance are outlined here due to the lack of documentation:

  • Non-returned loan?
    First of all, the speculative thought suggests itself whether it could possibly be a historical loan from the Museum of Musical Instruments SIMPK or the Ethnological Museum. This can be ruled out for the MIM due to a missing catalogue number on the instrument. The same applies to the Ethnological Museum.
  • Guest gift?
    According to Dieter Mehnert, who was responsible for the collection in the 1990s, the drums had been “brought” from India before the 1960s. Further circumstances were not known. So whether it was a guest gift to the university deposited in the Lautarchiv must remain open.
  • Age of the instrument?
    Even though the instrument probably came to the Lautarchiv before 1960, this does not allow us to draw any conclusions about the age of the instrument. It could be considerably older. The age could only be reliably determined by a dendrochronological examination (a dating by means of a tree ring examination of the wood used), not by mere visual inspection.

Within the non-material context of the collection

Although no direct connection of the tablā to the other holdings of the Lautarchiv can be reconstructed, the tablā in the Lautarchiv by no means stands in a culturally isolated space. Interesting cross-references exist within the collection that lend a non-material context to the fact that there is a tablā in the Lautarchiv. Consider that the Nobel laureate Rabīndranāth Ṭhākur (রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর,1861–1941) gave a speech and sang a song at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität in June 1921. This audio recording is now in the collection of the Lautarchiv (shelf mark AUT 48). Whether it might even have been a gift from Rabīndranāth Ṭhākur cannot yet be determined on the basis of current knowledge. A song sung in the Tamiḻ language (தமிழ்) by Rājamāṇikkam (born around 1902) on 28 September 1926, accompanied by tablā (shelf mark LA 733), is unfortunately among the losses of the Lautarchiv.

Symbolic power of a Tablā in the Berlin Lautarchiv

Last but not least, the tablā also stands symbolically “in the midst” of the POW recordings of Indian colonial soldiers sent by the United Kingdom against Germany in the First World War. One of the most famous cyclically repeated rhythmic structures in North Indian classical music is the so-called Teental (तीन ताल). Its rhythmically balanced structure in 16 drum syllables (bol), which in turn are subdivided into 4×4 syllables, was considered a symbolic force for peace by none other than Ravi Shankar (1920–2012). It is up to everyone to decide whether the existence of a tablā in the collection of the Lautarchiv, “in the midst” of the audio recordings of prisoners of the First World War, can also assume and unfold such a symbolic power of peace today.

Text and photos: Christopher Li, Head of Collection of Sound Archive
News, Object of the Month

Object of the month: Historical drawing of a new horse stable building

Object of the Month 03/2023 

House 9 on the North Campus once served as the equine clinic of the former Prussian Royal Veterinary School, which was one of the leading training and research centres for veterinary medicine in the young German Empire. The northern part of the building was built in 1836 by Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse, the southern part in 1874 by Julius Emmerich as an extension. A drawing from the plan archive of the Technical Department provides information on the construction of the extension.
HU, Campus North, House 9
Campus North, House 9, Photo: Kerstin Hinrichs, 14 March 2023
The drawing by the architect Julius Emmerich shows the front of an elongated single-storey stable building with a high roof, framed by stair towers and transoms on a scale of 1:100. The centre is emphasised by a risalit with a wood-decorated roof gable, and three window axes each on the left and right. On the ground floor, double-wing windows form a line with the skylights and thus vertically divide the cube. In the gable of the risalite, at the level of the attic, a double-leaf slatted door through which straw and hay could be stored in the attic. The towers served as access to the work and living rooms of the animal keepers in the transverse bays. The shape of the roof, the profiled beam heads and brackets, the accentuation of the cornices by moulded stones as well as the alternating coloured brick bands are depicted in great detail in the drawing. Emmerich’s design borrows from Schinkel’s designs for Prussian country house buildings. Trees and bushes frame the planned building and refer to the park character of the site.
project new horse stable
"Project for the construction of a new horse stable on the site of the Thierarzneischule", 59.8 cm x 45.4 cm, drawing, ink, wash on cardboard

The plan served as an appendix to the cost estimate for the building of 17 August 1873 and was submitted by Emmerich and countersigned by master builder F. Schulze on 12 September of the same year.
At that time, Emmerich was in the Prussian civil service and was in charge of the planning. On the basis of the other autographs, the remarks on the plan and the accompanying signatures, it is possible to trace the usual approval procedure for new buildings that was customary for the city of Berlin in the young Empire. Government building officer Ludwig Giersberg, an employee of the Ministry of Construction, Military, Trade and Finance, Department of Construction, confirmed the accuracy of the plan document. From 1866 onwards, Giersberg was entrusted in the Ministry with the preparation of expert opinions and the examination of building projects of outstanding importance in public construction. His signature under the plan, dated 27 April 1875, confirmed the planning for the new stables for the veterinary school. The text “Neuer Stall der Medizin. Klinik” using a blue pen probably goes back to the planning for necessary new buildings for the veterinary school at the beginning of 1908. At that time, 10,000 horses per year were already being treated in the existing buildings.

After the equine clinic was completed in 1839, the building was used as an animal stable and warehouse until the veterinarians moved to Dahlem in 1991. In 2014, extensive renovation and conversion work took place. Today, there are laboratory and seminar rooms on the ground floor and offices of the Institute of Biology on the upper floor.

Author: Kerstin Hinrichs, Technical Department

Further links (only in German):

Bauakten- und Planarchiv der Technischen Abteilung

News, Object of the Month

Object of the Month: Lise Meitner Monument by Anna Franziska Schwarzbach

Object of the Month 01/2023

Lise Meitner Monument

Since 2014, Lise Meitner faces Unter den Linden; on the other side of the cour d'honneur of the main building, Theodor Mommsen and Max Planck face her. The monument to Hermann von Helmholtz completes the historical series, which is broken up and continued both in terms of contemporary history and aesthetics by Lise Meitner's representation - no longer larger than life and in a space-consuming pose, but set back and asymmetrically on the plinth. The bronze monument to Lise Meitner (1878-1968) is the youngest in the university's cour d'honneur and the only one to date to honour a female scientist. Lise Meitner (1878-1968) combines many special features in her scientific biography: she was the second woman to receive a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1906; in 1913 she was the first woman to become a scientific member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society; she was the first woman to work as an assistant to Max Planck; in 1922 she became the first female physicist in Prussia to habilitate at the University of Berlin; and finally, in 1926, she was appointed as the first associate professor for experimental nuclear physics. In retrospect, she herself describes the fact that she took her work with the students very seriously as "a great human responsibility for our young colleagues, with whom we are together all day and for whose overall human development everything we do and say can have an influence".

Lise Meitner Monument
Lise Meitner Monument
Lise Meitner Monument
Lise Meitner Monument
Lise Meitner Monument
Lise Meitner Monument

Lise Meitner Monument

Nuclear power for peaceful use

Even before her theoretical interpretation of nuclear fission in 1939, she received the first of a total of four nominations for the Nobel Prize in 1919 – but she did not receive the Nobel Prize itself. This honour was bestowed on Otto Hahn in 1945, with whom Lise Meitner worked and researched together for decades – and whom she sometimes referred to, self-confidently teasingly, as “chicken”. She became known to the scientific community early on and met Marie Curie and Albert Einstein personally. As a Jew, she was forced to give up her scientific work by the Nazi Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which was passed in 1933. In 1938, she was able to emigrate to Sweden. There, from 1947 to 1960, she held a research professorship and was head of the nuclear physics department at the Stockholm Institute of Technology. From then on, she devoted herself not to the construction of the atomic bomb, but to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. After her retirement in 1960, she moved to Cambridge, where she died eight years later, having received many international honours and awards.

Monument with signature, nuclear reaction and calculation

The Berlin sculptor Anna Franziska Schwarzbach won the European art competition with her design for the Lise Meitner Monument. The site also almost occupies the place where the monument to Heinrich von Treitschke once stood – the historian who triggered the Berlin anti-Semitism controversy with his sentence “The Jews are our misfortune” and whose monument was finally removed after being moved by the National Socialists in 1951.
Lise_Meitner
Anna Franziska Schwarzbach
Schwarzbach contrasts the relationship between the figure and the plinth: on the base plate lies a plinth with various cuts and cracks that are associatively linked to the fractures in Meitner’s biography. The portrait-like figure itself stands somewhat apart, at once delicate and small and prominent, representing marginalisation as much as merit. On the front of the plinth is Lise Meitner’s signature, on the smooth left side surface a drawing of the nuclear reaction and fragments of a calculation. Thus the attributes have also migrated to the plinth and are not attached to the figure. Criticised as decorative, following female stereotypes and lacking the potential for irritation as an impulse to reflection, the monument is subordinate to the coherent appearance of the Court of Honour. On the everyday walk into the main building of the university, the Lise Meitner Monument nevertheless evokes German history, university and scientific history as well as questions of equal rights – whether it is an anachronism should be decided by each:r.

Author: Christina Kuhli, Custodian of the HU
Art Collection / Custody of the Humboldt University

Photos: Matthias Heyde