not well-known and attracted little attention”. This was in contrast to the trailblazing publications in the polymer chemistry field, which caused a stir and led to fierce
controversy from 1920 onwards. More is said about this in the next section.
2 The Life and Work of Hermann Staudinger: 1920–1932
The 1920s are generally idealised as the “golden age”. Contrary to the cliche ´, they
were in fact a decade with both ups and downs – for Hermann Staudinger too. The
chemist, who had been working in Zurich since 1912, started the decade spectacularly. In 1920, he published his “Macromolecular Manifesto”, which gave plastics
chemistry its foundations but was rejected resoundingly by the organic chemistry
establishment. The opposition that Staudinger faced as a result threatened to isolate
him, but he defended his theory stubbornly and continued his attempts to prove
experimentally the existence of the “giant molecules” he had postulated in theory.
This was a project with an uncertain outcome at first and Staudinger suffered
setbacks in his private life too: his father died in 1921 and in 1926 he was divorced
from his wife Dora, ne ´e Fo ¨rster (1886–1964), who bore him four children in the
20 years of their marriage. 1926 marked the start of a new stage in his career as
well – and one that was to prove successful: Staudinger left Zurich and returned to
Germany and a position at Freiburg University. He enjoyed recognition and fame
here in the Breisgau region – and finally retired from his academic career there too.
It was also a happy time for Staudinger again in his private life. He married the
biologist Magda Woit (1902–1997) in 1928, who was also his companion in his
scientific endeavours up to his death in 1965.
In Germany at the beginning of the 1920s, the war was over and the monarchy
was a thing of the past. Hitherto-unknown Republican freedom quickly helped
people to forget the authoritarian state. “Anything goes” was the message spread by
intellectuals; cities became the stage for experimenting with “liberte ´” and “libertinage”. A great deal was changing in plastics chemistry too. New empirical
findings demanded a theoretical basis, but rigid, outdated thinking could not simply
be abandoned as long as the explanatory concepts needed were still nebulous. A
paradigm shift was in the air, but the “experimental stage” had not yet been passed:
The term ‘plastic’ very gradually started to establish itself via a magazine of the same name
that was started in 1911 by the (German, editor’s note) chemist Richard Escales
(1863–1924). Nothing at all was, however, known about how these plastics were in actual
fact structured and by what principles they could be synthesised in a laboratory until late in
the 1920s. The progress that was nevertheless evident [. . .] was not based on systematic
research but was instead attributable to an explosive cocktail mixed together from such
ingredients as experience, speculation, acquired know-how and plenty of sheer luck. [2,
p. 79]
Basic research was vital in this uncertain situation. Hermann Staudinger did
pioneering work in this field at ETH in Zurich. He was interested in “determining
the composition” ([10], p. 15 and [1], p. 77) of polymers, i.e. of the fascinating class
Courageous Questioning of Established Thinking: The Life and Work of Hermann. . .
89
controversy from 1920 onwards. More is said about this in the next section.
2 The Life and Work of Hermann Staudinger: 1920–1932
The 1920s are generally idealised as the “golden age”. Contrary to the cliche ´, they
were in fact a decade with both ups and downs – for Hermann Staudinger too. The
chemist, who had been working in Zurich since 1912, started the decade spectacularly. In 1920, he published his “Macromolecular Manifesto”, which gave plastics
chemistry its foundations but was rejected resoundingly by the organic chemistry
establishment. The opposition that Staudinger faced as a result threatened to isolate
him, but he defended his theory stubbornly and continued his attempts to prove
experimentally the existence of the “giant molecules” he had postulated in theory.
This was a project with an uncertain outcome at first and Staudinger suffered
setbacks in his private life too: his father died in 1921 and in 1926 he was divorced
from his wife Dora, ne ´e Fo ¨rster (1886–1964), who bore him four children in the
20 years of their marriage. 1926 marked the start of a new stage in his career as
well – and one that was to prove successful: Staudinger left Zurich and returned to
Germany and a position at Freiburg University. He enjoyed recognition and fame
here in the Breisgau region – and finally retired from his academic career there too.
It was also a happy time for Staudinger again in his private life. He married the
biologist Magda Woit (1902–1997) in 1928, who was also his companion in his
scientific endeavours up to his death in 1965.
In Germany at the beginning of the 1920s, the war was over and the monarchy
was a thing of the past. Hitherto-unknown Republican freedom quickly helped
people to forget the authoritarian state. “Anything goes” was the message spread by
intellectuals; cities became the stage for experimenting with “liberte ´” and “libertinage”. A great deal was changing in plastics chemistry too. New empirical
findings demanded a theoretical basis, but rigid, outdated thinking could not simply
be abandoned as long as the explanatory concepts needed were still nebulous. A
paradigm shift was in the air, but the “experimental stage” had not yet been passed:
The term ‘plastic’ very gradually started to establish itself via a magazine of the same name
that was started in 1911 by the (German, editor’s note) chemist Richard Escales
(1863–1924). Nothing at all was, however, known about how these plastics were in actual
fact structured and by what principles they could be synthesised in a laboratory until late in
the 1920s. The progress that was nevertheless evident [. . .] was not based on systematic
research but was instead attributable to an explosive cocktail mixed together from such
ingredients as experience, speculation, acquired know-how and plenty of sheer luck. [2,
p. 79]
Basic research was vital in this uncertain situation. Hermann Staudinger did
pioneering work in this field at ETH in Zurich. He was interested in “determining
the composition” ([10], p. 15 and [1], p. 77) of polymers, i.e. of the fascinating class
Courageous Questioning of Established Thinking: The Life and Work of Hermann. . .
89