150 Years of Chemical Society in Germany by Wolfram Koch
n 2017, the German Chemical Society (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, GDCh) celebrated the 150th Ianniversary of the creation the older of its two predecessor organizations, the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft.
The Beginning of a Chemical Society in Germany which is represented by its own society, the Deut- sche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie, The Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (DChG) was founded in 1894). In the early years of the 20th centu- founded in Berlin on 11 November 1867 by Adolf Baey- ry, the German chemical societies also established the er, August Wilhelm Hofmann, and other distinguished first scientific wards.a These include the August-Wil- scientists. Hofmann became its first president. The helm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze, established in 1903 society was largely modelled after the Chemical So- with Henri Moisson and Sir William Ramsay as first ciety of London which was founded 26 years earlier awardees, the Liebig-Denkmünze, first awarded in in 1841. Hofmann had been living and working in Lon- 1903 to Adolf von Baeyer, and the Emil-Fischer-Me- don since 1845 where he was the first director of the daille, introduced in 1910 with award winners such as Royal College of Chemistry. In 1861 Hofmann became Otto Hahn in 1919. All these awards are conferred by president of the Chemical Society of London of which the GDCh to outstanding chemists until this day. An- he was a member since his arrival in London. Thus, other important highlight was the joint foundation by Hofmann is presumably one of the very few, if not the DChG, VDCh and the predecessor of today’s Verband only person, who was president of two important na- der Chemischen Industrie (VCI, the German Chemical tional chemical societies. Industry Association) of a publishing house in 1921: In 1868 the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft pub- Verlag Chemie. This publishing house was later owned lished its first scientific journal,Berichte der Deutschen by the GDCh until it was sold to Wiley in 1996 and re- Chemischen Gesellschaft (Reports from the German named in Wiley-VCH. It still remains GDCh’s most im- Chemical Society). The journal was published under portant publishing partner. that name (or slight variations thereof) until 1997 when it merged with other journals to become the European From the DChG to the GDCh Journal of Inorganic Chemistry. The other more recent predecessor of today’s GDCh, the Verein Deutscher The National Socialist era in Germany did not leave the Chemiker (VDCh) (Association of German Chemists), GDCh’s predecessor organizations unscarred. Applica- was founded twenty years later, in 1887. While the tion of the so-called Führerprinzip, which suspended DChG drew its membership mostly from chemists in democratic election and decision-making processes academia, the VDCh’s focus was on chemists working became obligatory. Jewish employees lost their jobs in the chemical industry. The journal the VDCh pro- and Jewish members were partly expelled. The chemi- duced for its members is still published today by the cal organizations were incorporated into the NS-Bund GDCh and is one of the internationally most renowned Deutscher Technik (the National Socialist Federation chemistry journals: Angewandte Chemie (which liter- of German Technology). After the war, the DChG and ally translates into Applied Chemistry and hints to the the VDCh both ceased to exist (formal dissolution fol- industrial background of the VDCh members). lowed only many years later) and were merged to form The first job placement service for chemists was the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, first founded in launched under the aegis of the VDCh in the year the British zone in 1946 and then in West Germany as 1900. A few years later, the VDCh’s first technical di- a whole in 1949. The first president of the GDCh was visions (“Fachgruppen”) were created as a reaction Karl Ziegler, who in 1963 won the Nobel Prize in chem- to the increasing specialization of the field. Many of istry for his work on catalysis. In the early 1950s, mem- these divisions still exist today and are important pil- bership of the GDCh passed the 5000 mark and by lars of the GDCh. Currently the GDCh has a total of 1958, the GDCh had more than 10 000 members. As a 26 technical divisions covering all areas of modern comparison, the highest number of members of DChG chemistry (with the exception of physical chemistry and VDCh occurred in the year 1930 when the two
Chemistry International January-March 2018 15 150 Years of Chemical Society in Germany
organizations had around 4900 and 8800 members, respectively (with a significant number of members in both organizations). On the other side of the iron curtain, the Che- mische Gesellschaft was founded in the German Dem- ocratic Republic in 1953. The Chemische Gesellschaft had more than 4000 members in the late 1980s and merged with the GDCh after the German reunification. In 1962 the GDCh and its 50-some staff moved into its present home, the Carl-Bosch-Haus in Frank- furt am Main, named after the co-developer of the Haber-Bosch process for nitrogen fixation for which he received the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1931. In the 1970s and 1980s internationalization became a pri- ority, and ecological aspects increasingly moved on the agenda. In 1982 the establishment of an Adviso- ry Committee on Existing Chemicals of Environmental Relevance (Beratergremium für umweltrelevante Alt- stoffe, BUA) with members from industry, government and science was created under the roof of the GDCh; it was an important development in the direction of ecological awareness. At the time of its 125th anniver- sary in 1992, the integration of the former members of East Germany’s Chemische Gesellschaft raised the photo by Christian Augustin (GDCh) GDCh membership to over 25 000. In 2013 the number one of the most prominent and influential chemists of of GDCh’s members exceeded 30 000. the 19th century. Another important development in In the second half of the 1990s, the GDCh was an the new millennium in which the GDCh played a piv- important protagonist in the reformation of the land- otal role was the transformation of the former, rath- scape of the European chemical journals. Under GDCh er weak Federation of European Chemical Societies leadership, the national journals of many continental (FECS) into the European Association of Chemical and European chemical societies were merged into new, Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS). By now EuCheMS has pan-European journals. The first of these journals was successfully established the biennial European Chem- Chemistry - A European Journal, others such as the istry Congress, operates an office in Brussels and has European Journal of Organic Chemistry, the European become an important and visible player on the Euro- Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, ChemPhysChem, and pean chemistry stage. ChemBioChem soon followed. As of today, the number In all these European and international activities, of national chemical societies working together in the IUPAC always played an important role for the GDCh. publishing partnership ChemPubSoc Europe has risen The German National Adhering Organization (NAO) to to 16, with the Swiss Chemical Society as its most re- IUPAC is the Deutsche Zentralausschuss für Chemie cent member. The ChemPubSoc portfolio includes 13 (DZfCh, German Central Committee for Chemistry), an journals plus the online magazine ChemViews. Among organization consisting of the GDCh and a number of those journals co-owned by ChemPubSoc Europe is other German chemistry organizations including the also ChemistryOpen, which in 2011 was the first gold German Chemical Industry Association; DZfCh’s sole Open Access journal launched by chemical societies. purpose is being the NAO to IUPAC. The GDCh runs ChemPubSoc Europe’s journals are all published with the office of theZentralausschuss and the GDCh Exec- Wiley-VCH. utive Director holds the same position also in the DZ- Together with other chemical organizations and fCh. The IUPAC Congress and General Assembly were the German Federal Ministry of Education and Re- hosted by the GDCh in 1974 in Hamburg and most re- search, GDCh orchestrated the highly successful na- cently in 1999 in Berlin. In 2011 GDCh played a key role tional Year of Chemistry in 2003 on the occasion of in the organization of the International Year of Chemis- the 200th anniversary of the birth of Justus von Liebig, try launched by the United Nations and IUPAC.
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GDCh today September 2016 GDCh was among the 36 societies Today, international cooperation is one of the main whose presidents or representatives signed a declara- topics of the GDCh. Since 2003, eleven bilateral coop- tion deploring the use of Chemical weapons in Syria eration alliances were signed with chemical societies and calling for the misusers of chlorine to be brought around the world, focusing on cooperation in organiz- to justice. ing scientific events and reciprocal bilateral name lec- In 2017 not only the GDCh, but also its youth or- tures, and enabling members to access conferences of ganization JungChemikerForum (JCF) celebrated an the partner society with reduced conference fees. The anniversary. The JCF was founded 20 years ago and latest Memorandum of Understanding was signed in consists of more than 10 000 members divided into February of this year with the Israel Chemical Society local groups (currently 54) of young chemists all over (ICS) on the occasion of the 82nd Annual Meeting of Germany. In addition to various local events, there are the ICS in Tel Aviv/Israel. also nationwide activities like job fairs, lecture tours, GDCh’s attention focuses also on the ethical com- workshops, national meetings and the main event: the mitment and responsibility that chemists should ad- “Frühjahrssymposium” (Spring Symposium) with par- here to. In 1998 the GDCh introduced its code of con- ticipants from all over Europe and beyond. Supporting duct. All members pledge to act in a responsible and GDCh’s initiatives towards further internationalization sustainable way and to strictly oppose any misuse by own activities, the young GDCh representatives of chemistry, such as engaging in chemical weapons successfully launched an exchange program with the and illegal drugs. In 2015 a study commissioned by American Chemical Society, in which young German the GDCh of more than 700 pages was published in and American Chemists visit each other’s country and which the history of GDCh’s predecessor organizations participate in conferences. DChG and VDCh in the Nazi regime was documented by a historian. With this extensive and detailed study Celebrations the GDCh admits the responsibility of its predecessor organizations in the so-called “Third Reich.” And it Celebrating its sesquicentennial, the GDCh set up var- was also 2015, 100 years after the first use of chemi- ious events and other activities. The highlight was the cal weapons by German troops (under the leadership biennial conference “Wissenschaftsforum Chemie” of chemist Fritz Haber) in the Great War, when then with the motto ‘Chemistry – A Driving Force.’ The con- GDCh president Thomas Geelhaar and other represen- ference took place in Berlin from 10-14 September with tatives of chemistry organizations gathered in Ypres Nobel laureate and GDCh honorary member Roald to commemorate those who have suffered and died. Hoffmann as speaker at the festive opening ceremony At the 6th EuCheMS Chemistry Congress in Seville in (continued page 24)
Chemistry International January-March 2018 17 Green Chemistry for Sustainable Development
Sustainable Chemistry that was held in Venice (report 16. http://www.incaweb.org/education/summer_school_ Chem Int. Jan 1999, Vol 21, No 1 pp 17-21; https://doi. on_green_chemistry and http://www.incaweb.org/ org/10.1515/ci.1999.21.1.17c). Subsequently the outcomes education/ssgc.php of the workshop were approved at the OECD meeting 17. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/ in Paris, on 6 June 1999; see Series on Risk Management science-technology/basic-sciences/chemistry/green- No. 10: http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/ chemistry-for-life/ publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?doclanguage 18. https://iupac.org/unesco-phosagro-iupac-award-joint- =en&cote=env/jm/mono(99)19/PART1; ibid … PART2 and grants-spief-best-young-scientists/ PART3. For a review of the 7 principles, see PART3, p. 204. Note 1: IGCG records in Pure and Applied Chemistry (PAC) 7. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/TFM/ •• ICGC-1, Dresden, Germany, 10-15 Sep 2006 | PAC 2007, STIForum2017/OnlineDiscussion 79(11), 1833–2105 8. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ •• ICGC-2, Moscow, Russia, 14-20 Sep 2008 | PAC 2009, forum/?forum=88c 81(11), 1961-2129 •• ICGC-3, Ottawa, Canada, 15-18 Aug 2010 | PAC 2011, 9. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ 83(7), 1343-1406 forum/?forum=89 •• ICGC-4, Foz do Iguaçu/PR, Brazil, 25-29 Aug 2012 | PAC 10. http://www.unep.org/chemicalsandwaste/sustainable- 2013, 85(8), 1611–1710 chemistry-inputs-stakeholders •• ICGC-5, Durban, South Africa 17-21 Aug 2014 | PAC 2016, 11. https://isc3.org/events/mainstreaming-sustainable- see preface by L. Mammino, PAC 88(1-2), pp. 1-2, http:// chemistry-launch-isc3-iscnet/?mo=5&yr=2017 doi.org/10.1515/pac-2015-5009 and follow keyword 12. https://www.opcw.org/events-calendar/ ‘Green Chemistry V’ | report in Chem Int Jan 2015, p. 35 event/2017/11/16/event/tx_cal_phpicalendar/ •• ICGC-6, Venice, Italy 4-8 Sep 2016 | PAC 2018, 90(1 & 2) call_for_nominations_for_a_workshop_on_green_ in press | report in Chem Int Jan 2017, p. 36 and_sustainable_chemistry_in_the_context_of_the_ chemical_weapons_convention Pietro Tundo
(continued from page 17) Summary on Sunday, 10 September. Apart from the scientific With more than 30 000 members from academia, program, which included a one day Angewandte Che- industry and other areas, the GDCh today represents mie Symposium with prominent international speak- a large, important and vibrant community of experts. ers such as four Nobel Prize winners, several events Although most of the members have a chemistry back- for the public took place in Berlin. Another highlight ground, everyone who supports the society’s aims and was the introduction of the place where the DChG was goals and accepts GDCh’s code of conduct is invited to founded 150 years ago into GDCh’s Historic Chemical join the German Chemical Society. The organization’s Landmarks Program, in which the GDCh honored in history, the global network it is embedded in, and the particular the achievements of its founding President high scientific and ethical standards form the founda- August Wilhelm von Hofmann. The series of events tion for future-oriented activities. This involves using was concluded with the symposium ‘Experiment Fu- the innovative power of chemistry to pursue a world ture - Values Thinking in Chemistry,’ in which the role that provides safe and environmentally benign energy, of chemistry with regard to the future of education, clean water, healthy and sufficient food, and medical nutrition, health, and sustainability was addressed with support for all inhabitants of our planet. speakers from industry, academia, and NGOs such as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. (Check chemistryviews.org for GDCh Fact Wolfram Koch
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