Applied Science in the Service of the State: A History of Applied Entomology in National Socialism

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Moritz Epple
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 447390884

The proposed research project aims at examining the field of applied entomology in National Socialist Germany and during the immediate post-war years. In doing so, the project aims at analyzing the forms in which this practically oriented branch of biology, academically first established in Germany from World War I until the late 1920s, gained scientific, public, political and military attention and support during National Socialist rule and World War II. Moreover, the project intends to examine which epistemic, institutional and personal connections are to be found between the applied scientific field of entomology and the structures of the German state. For this purpose, (a) the main institutions of economic entomology in Germany will be explored, including the Deutsches Entomologisches Institut and the departments of entomology at the Biologische Reichsanstalt and the Hamburger Institut für Tropenmedizin. Given the growing military relevance of entomology (e.g. for the control of diseases such as typhus or malaria), the research project will also closely explore entomologic institutions that were oriented towards war purposes, such as the entomological institute at the Reichsuniversiät Posen, the malaria training forces of the Militärärztliche Akademie and the entomological institute at the concentration camp in Dachau. Second, (b) the activities of pivotal scientific actors in the field will be examined, in particular, the careers of Karl Escherich, Erich Martini und Karl Friederichs. Finally, (c) an analysis of programmatic discourses that were addressed by entomologists to various forms of audiences outside their field should allow to answer the question if and how entomologists’ programmatic aims were interconnected with ideological and political objectives of government agencies and political groups.On all three levels, the research is guided by the overall question of how the chemically oriented pest control practices of applied entomology that, developed during World War I and the Weimar Republic, competed with a program of biological control in applied entomology that emerged in the early 1930s and which gained practical relevance in World War II. The project will study how the development of applied entomology in National Socialist Germany was shaped by this rivalry of methods. Given that the method of biological control was developed in close connection to the emerging field of scientific ecology and its vocabulary, and since the entomologist Karl Friederichs is considered to be one of the founders of scientific ecology in Germany, this project also contributes to an early history of ecology in Germany, beyond the threshold of the year 1945.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants