Research between Science, Society and Politics: The History and Scientific Development of Green Chemistry

Abstract

lasting. The first section is concluded by Peter Morris with a brief and well-written summary – in English – of the development of synthetic rubber in Germany (15 pp.). Morris argues convincingly that the market for natural rubber played a dominant role, and that Adolf Hitler promoted the synthetic rubber industry for reasons of national pride, despite poor economic prospects. The second section, “Substitutes for Basic Chemicals and Chemical Products,” opens with a lengthy chapter by Manfred Rasch (52 pp.) that summarises in a well-structured narrative his lifelong research on liquid fuels and lubricants from coal, produced by key technologies such as low-temperature coking, high-pressure hydrogenation (Bergius), and the Fischer-Tropsch process. Rasch argues that the attempts to solve the oil shortage produced new scarcities of energy and electricity in their turn – a kind of domino effect that is also addressed in the chapters by Maier and Zilt. The second contribution to this section, by Sandra Fehr, focuses on the scarcity of nitrogen products in Germany during the First World War. Fehr sheds new light on well-known facts by analysing the developments systematically in a strict chronological order, using Joseph Schumpeter’s analytical framework: invention – innovation – diffusion. She argues that all major inventions predated the war, that the nitrogen scarcity for the military was solved, but at the expense of agriculture, and that the HaberBosch process had a long-term impact on world food supply. The third section, “Substitutes for Fragrances, Flavorings, Food and Fodder,” starts with a chapter by Claus Priesner on the development of synthetic coffee flavours by first-rate organic chemists such as Reichstein and Staudinger. The production on an industrial scale of the substitute Coffarom took place after the war, between 1921 and 1931. As in the case of synthetic rubber, competition with the natural product played a large role. Nevertheless, Coffarom stayed on the market until the 1960s. The last chapter of the book, by Ulrike Thoms, deals with the production of fodder from waste materials and animal cadavers. It discusses in detail the great progress in the production of meat and bone meal by the rendering industry during the First World War. These technologies were further improved during the Second World War and had a lasting impact after 1945. Together with the extensive introduction, the seven cases studies represent a history of the German chemical industry in a nutshell, from the nineteenth century to the late 1950s, with a far greater attention than usual to the role played by politics and the military. With respect to the two central questions mentioned above, the answer to the first is that the external pressures of the two wars seldom led to really new inventions, but they scaled up existing technologies and their application. The answer to the second question is more ambiguous. In some cases innovations emerging during the wars had a lasting impact, as illustrated by the Haber-Bosch process and the production of meat and bone meal, but in other cases, including many alloys, the industry returned to products and processes used before the war, though at a higher level of scientific understanding.