150 Years of Chemical Society in Germany

The Beginning of a Chemical Society in Germany

The Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (DChG) was founded in Berlin on 11 November 1867 by Adolf Baeyer, August Wilhelm Hofmann, and other distinguished scientists. Hofmann became its first president. The society was largely modelled after the Chemical Society of London which was founded 26 years earlier in 1841. Hofmann had been living and working in London since 1845 where he was the first director of the Royal College of Chemistry. In 1861 Hofmann became president of the Chemical Society of London of which he was a member since his arrival in London. Thus, Hofmann is presumably one of the very few, if not the only person, who was president of two important national chemical societies.

In 1868 the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft published its first scientific journal, Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft (Reports from the German Chemical Society). The journal was published under that name (or slight variations thereof) until 1997 when it merged with other journals to become the European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry. The other more recent predecessor of today’s GDCh, the Verein Deutscher Chemiker (VDCh) (Association of German Chemists), was founded twenty years later, in 1887. While the DChG drew its membership mostly from chemists in academia, the VDCh’s focus was on chemists working in the chemical industry. The journal the VDCh produced for its members is still published today by the GDCh and is one of the internationally most renowned chemistry journals: Angewandte Chemie (which literally translates into Applied Chemistry and hints to the industrial background of the VDCh members).

The first job placement service for chemists was launched under the aegis of the VDCh in the year 1900. A few years later, the VDCh’s first technical divisions (“Fachgruppen”) were created as a reaction to the increasing specialization of the field. Many of these divisions still exist today and are important pillars of the GDCh. Currently the GDCh has a total of 26 technical divisions covering all areas of modern chemistry (with the exception of physical chemistry which is represented by its own society, the Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie, founded in 1894). In the early years of the 20th century, the German chemical societies also established the first scientific awards. These include the August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze, established in 1903 with Henri Moisson and Sir William Ramsay as first awardees, the Liebig-Denkmünze, first awarded in 1903 to Adolf von Baeyer, and the Emil-Fischer-Medaille, introduced in 1910 with award winners such as Otto Hahn in 1919. All these awards are conferred by the GDCh to outstanding chemists until this day. Another important highlight was the joint foundation by DChG, VDCh and the predecessor of today’s Verband der Chemischen Industrie (VCI, the German Chemical Industry Association) of a publishing house in 1921: Verlag Chemie. This publishing house was later owned by the GDCh until it was sold to Wiley in 1996 and renamed in Wiley-VCH. It still remains GDCh’s most important publishing partner.

From the DChG to the GDCh

The National Socialist era in Germany did not leave the GDCh’s predecessor organizations unscarred. Application of the so-called Führerprinzip, which suspended democratic election and decision-making processes became obligatory. Jewish employees lost their jobs and Jewish members were partly expelled. The chemical organizations were incorporated into the NS-Bund Deutscher Technik (the National Socialist Federation of German Technology). After the war, the DChG and the VDCh both ceased to exist (formal dissolution followed only many years later) and were merged to form the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, first founded in the British zone in 1946 and then in West Germany as a whole in 1949. The first president of the GDCh was Karl Ziegler, who in 1963 won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on catalysis. In the early 1950s, membership of the GDCh passed the 5000 mark and by 1958, the GDCh had more than 10 000 members. As a comparison, the highest number of members of DChG and VDCh occurred in the year 1930 when the two 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 Chemische Gesellschaft was founded in the German Democratic 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 Frankfurt 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 priority, and ecological aspects increasingly moved on the agenda. In 1982 the establishment of an Advisory Committee on Existing Chemicals of Environmental Relevance (Beratergremium für umweltrelevante Altstoffe, 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 anniversary in 1992, the integration of the former members of East Germany’s Chemische Gesellschaft raised the GDCh membership to over 25 000. In 2013 the number of GDCh’s members exceeded 30 000.

In the second half of the 1990s, the GDCh was an important protagonist in the reformation of the landscape of the European chemical journals. Under GDCh leadership, the national journals of many continental European chemical societies were merged into new, pan-European journals. The first of these journals was Chemistry - A European Journal, others such as the European Journal of Organic Chemistry, the European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, ChemPhysChem, and ChemBioChem soon followed. As of today, the number of national chemical societies working together in the publishing partnership ChemPubSoc Europe has risen to 16, with the Swiss Chemical Society as its most recent member. The ChemPubSoc portfolio includes 13 journals plus the online magazine ChemViews. Among those journals co-owned by ChemPubSoc Europe is also ChemistryOpen, which in 2011 was the first gold Open Access journal launched by chemical societies. ChemPubSoc Europe’s journals are all published with Wiley-VCH.

Together with other chemical organizations and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, GDCh orchestrated the highly successful national Year of Chemistry in 2003 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Justus von Liebig, one of the most prominent and influential chemists of the 19th century. Another important development in the new millennium in which the GDCh played a pivotal role was the transformation of the former, rather weak Federation of European Chemical Societies (FECS) into the European Association of Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS). By now EuCheMS has successfully established the biennial European Chemistry Congress, operates an office in Brussels and has become an important and visible player on the European chemistry stage.

photo by Christian Augustin (GDCh)

In all these European and international activities, IUPAC always played an important role for the GDCh. The German National Adhering Organization (NAO) to IUPAC is the Deutsche Zentralausschuss für Chemie (DZfCh, German Central Committee for Chemistry), an organization consisting of the GDCh and a number of other German chemistry organizations including the German Chemical Industry Association; DZfCh’s sole purpose is being the NAO to IUPAC. The GDCh runs the office of the Zentralausschuss and the GDCh Executive Director holds the same position also in the DZfCh. The IUPAC Congress and General Assembly were hosted by the GDCh in 1974 in Hamburg and most recently in 1999 in Berlin. In 2011 GDCh played a key role in the organization of the International Year of Chemistry launched by the United Nations and IUPAC.

GDCh today

Today, international cooperation is one of the main topics of the GDCh. Since 2003, eleven bilateral cooperation alliances were signed with chemical societies around the world, focusing on cooperation in organizing scientific events and reciprocal bilateral name lectures, and enabling members to access conferences of the partner society with reduced conference fees. The latest Memorandum of Understanding was signed in February of this year with the Israel Chemical Society (ICS) on the occasion of the 82nd Annual Meeting of the ICS in Tel Aviv/Israel.

GDCh’s attention focuses also on the ethical commitment and responsibility that chemists should adhere to. In 1998 the GDCh introduced its code of conduct. All members pledge to act in a responsible and sustainable way and to strictly oppose any misuse of chemistry, such as engaging in chemical weapons and illegal drugs. In 2015 a study commissioned by the GDCh of more than 700 pages was published in which the history of GDCh’s predecessor organizations DChG and VDCh in the Nazi regime was documented by a historian. With this extensive and detailed study the GDCh admits the responsibility of its predecessor organizations in the so-called “Third Reich.” And it was also 2015, 100 years after the first use of chemical weapons by German troops (under the leadership of chemist Fritz Haber) in the Great War, when then GDCh president Thomas Geelhaar and other representatives of chemistry organizations gathered in Ypres to commemorate those who have suffered and died. At the 6^th EuCheMS Chemistry Congress in Seville in September 2016 GDCh was among the 36 societies whose presidents or representatives signed a declaration deploring the use of Chemical weapons in Syria and calling for the misusers of chlorine to be brought to justice.

In 2017 not only the GDCh, but also its youth organization JungChemikerForum (JCF) celebrated an anniversary. The JCF was founded 20 years ago and consists of more than 10 000 members divided into local groups (currently 54) of young chemists all over Germany. In addition to various local events, there are also nationwide activities like job fairs, lecture tours, workshops, national meetings and the main event: the “Frühjahrssymposium” (Spring Symposium) with participants from all over Europe and beyond. Supporting GDCh’s initiatives towards further internationalization by own activities, the young GDCh representatives successfully launched an exchange program with the American Chemical Society, in which young German and American Chemists visit each other’s country and participate in conferences.

Celebrations

Celebrating its sesquicentennial, the GDCh set up various events and other activities. The highlight was the biennial conference “Wissenschaftsforum Chemie” with the motto ‘Chemistry – A Driving Force.’ The conference took place in Berlin from 10-14 September with Nobel laureate and GDCh honorary member Roald Hoffmann as speaker at the festive opening ceremony on Sunday, 10 September. Apart from the scientific program, which included a one day Angewandte Chemie Symposium with prominent international speakers such as four Nobel Prize winners, several events for the public took place in Berlin. Another highlight was the introduction of the place where the DChG was founded 150 years ago into GDCh’s Historic Chemical Landmarks Program, in which the GDCh honored in particular the achievements of its founding President August Wilhelm von Hofmann. The series of events was concluded with the symposium ‘Experiment Future - Values Thinking in Chemistry,’ in which the role of chemistry with regard to the future of education, nutrition, health, and sustainability was addressed with speakers from industry, academia, and NGOs such as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. (Check chemistryviews.org for GDCh Fact of the Monthwww.chemistryviews.org/view/gdch150.html and Highlight of the GDCh Jubilee Year 2017www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/10643896/Highlight_of_the_GDCh_Jubilee_Year_2017.html)

Summary

With more than 30 000 members from academia, industry and other areas, the GDCh today represents a large, important and vibrant community of experts. Although most of the members have a chemistry background, everyone who supports the society’s aims and goals and accepts GDCh’s code of conduct is invited to join the German Chemical Society. The organization’s history, the global network it is embedded in, and the high scientific and ethical standards form the foundation for future-oriented activities. This involves using the innovative power of chemistry to pursue a world that provides safe and environmentally benign energy, clean water, healthy and sufficient food, and medical support for all inhabitants of our planet.

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