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Mathematics, discipline, and nation-building: The case of E. A. Weiss
Tue, July 14, 9:15 to 10:45am, Edinburgh Futures Institute, 1.55English Abstract
Why promote mathematical thinking, especially amongst the youth, the Bonn-based and NSDAP-affiliated mathematician E. A. Weiss (1900-1942) asked in a pamphlet published in 1933. Drawing on romantic imagery and Nazi propaganda, Weiss put forth a view of mathematics as an essential ingredient in the formation of disciplined, cultured, and united members of a new German society. This view, in turn, informed Weiss’s own activities in organising mathematical camps for young boys and girls (in which geometrical memoirs were read alongside Italian fascist literature), as well as his appreciation of various mythologised figures in the history of mathematics, such as Gaspard Monge or Évariste Galois.
This paper examines Weiss’s promotion of mathematics as a component of Nazi education and situates it against the backdrop of his close proximity with Bonn-based mathematician and philosopher Eduard Study (1862-1930). The latter was not only Weiss’s mentor, but also the author of polemical texts on the supposed decline of mathematics (and, more broadly, scientific pursuits) within the Weimar Republic and a proponent of a “realist outlook” on geometry rooted in intuition, rigour, and intellectual discipline. It will be argued that the uptake of Study’s anxious, declinist narratives in a national socialist context fueled much of Weiss’s own endeavours. Furthermore, a comparison with other NSDAP-affiliated mathematicians (especially Ludwig Bieberbach) will be drawn and their strategic uses of other declinist figures active during the Weimar Republic (especially Oswald Spengler) will be sketched.