Nikolaus Riehl
Encyclopedia
Nikolaus Riehl was a German industrial nuclear chemist. He was head of the scientific headquarters of Auergesellschaft
. When the Russians entered Berlin
near the end of World War II
, he was invited to the Soviet Union
, where he stayed for 10 years. For his work on the Soviet atomic bomb project
, he was awarded a Stalin Prize, Lenin Prize
, and Order of the Red Banner of Labor
. When he was repatriated to Germany in 1955, he chose to go to West Germany
, where he joined Heinz Maier-Leibnitz
on his nuclear reactor
staff at Technische Hochschule München
(THM); Riehl made contributions to the nuclear facility Forschungsreaktor München (FRM). In 1961 he became an ordinarius professor of technical physics at THM and concentrated his research activities on solid state physics, especially the physics of ice and the optical spectroscopy of solids.
, Russia
in 1901. His mother was Russian and his father was a professional German engineer employed by Siemens and Halske
. With this background, Riehl spoke fluent German and Russian. From 1920 to 1927, he was educated at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
and Humboldt University of Berlin
. He received his doctorate in nuclear chemistry
from the University of Berlin in 1927, under the guidance of the nuclear physicist Lise Meitner
and the nuclear chemist Otto Hahn
; his thesis topic was on Geiger-Müller counters
for beta ray spectroscopy
.
, where he became an authority on luminescence
. While he completed his Habilitation
, he continued his industrial career at Auergesellschaft, as opposed to working in academia. From 1927, he was a staff scientist in the radiology
department. From 1937, he was head of the optical engineering department. From 1939 to 1945, he was the director of the scientific headquarters.
Auergesellschaft had a substantial amount of “waste” uranium
from which it had extracted radium
. After reading a paper in 1939 by Siegfried Flügge
, on the technical use of nuclear energy from uranium, Riehl recognized a business opportunity for the company, and, in July of that year, went to the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) to discuss the production of uranium. The HWA was interested and Riehl committed corporate resources to the task. The HWA eventually provided an order for the production of uranium oxide, which took place in the Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg
, north of Berlin
.
, as American, British, and Russian military forces were closing in on Berlin, Riehl and some of his staff moved to a village west of Berlin, to try and assure occupation by British or American forces. However, in mid-May 1945, with the assistance of Riehl’s colleague Karl Günter Zimmer
, the Russian nuclear physicists Georgy Flerov
and Lev Artsimovich
showed up one day in NKVD colonel’s uniforms. The use of Russian nuclear physicists in the wake of Soviet troop advances to identify and “requisition” equipment, materiel, intellectual property, and personnel useful to the Russian atomic bomb project is similar to the American Operation Alsos
. The military head of Alsos was Lt. Col. Boris Pash
, former head of security on the American atomic bomb effort, the Manhattan Project
, and its chief scientist was the eminent physicist Samuel Goudsmit. In early 1945, the Soviets initiated an effort similar to Alsos (Russian Alsos
). Forty out of less than 100 Russian scientists from the Soviet atomic bomb project’s
Laboratory 2 went to Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia in support of acquisitions for the project.
The two colonels requested that Riehl join them in Berlin for a few days, where he also met with nuclear physicist Yulii Borisovich Khariton
, also in the uniform of an NKVD colonel. This sojourn in Berlin turned into 10 years in the Soviet Union! Riehl and his staff, including their families, were flown to Moscow on 9 July 1945. Eventually, Riehl’s entire laboratory was dismantled and transported to the Soviet Union.
Other prominent German scientists from Berlin who were taken to the Soviet Union at that time, and who would cross paths with Riehl, were Manfred von Ardenne
, director of his private laboratory Forschungslaboratoriums für Elektronenphysik, Gustav Hertz, Nobel Laureate and director of Research Laboratory II at Siemens
, Peter Adolf Thiessen
, ordinarius professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin
and director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemi und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) in Berlin-Dahlem
, and Max Volmer
, ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the Berlin Technische Hochschule
. Soon after being taken to the Soviet Union, Riehl, von Ardenne, Hertz, and Volmer were summoned for a meeting with Lavrentij Beria
, head of the NKVD
and the Soviet atomic bomb project.
When a Soviet search team arrived at the Auergesellschaft facility in Oranienburg, they found nearly 100 tons of fairly pure uranium oxide. The Soviet Union took this uranium as reparations, which amounted to between 25% and 40% of the uranium taken from Germany and Czechoslovakia at the end of the war. Khariton said the uranium found there saved the Soviet Union a year on its atomic bomb project.
From 1945 to 1950, Riehl was in charge of uranium production at Plant No. 12 in Ehlektrostal'
(Электросталь). German scientists, who were mostly atomic scientists, sent by the Soviets, at the close of World War II, to work in the Riehl group at Plant No. 12 included A. Baroni (PoW), Hans-Joachim Born
, Alexander Catsch
(Katsch), Werner Kirst, H. E. Ortmann, Przybilla, Herbert Schmitz (PoW), Sommerfeldt, Herbert Thieme, Tobein, Günter Wirths
, and Karl Günter Zimmer
. While Born, Catsch, and Zimmer had collaborated with Riehl in Germany, they were actually not part of Auergesellschaft but with N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij’s Genetics Department at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft’s Institut für Hirnforschung (KWIH, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research) in Berlin-Buch. Riehl had a hard time incorporating these three into his tasking at Plant No. 12 on his uranium production tasking, as Born was a radiochemist, Catsch was a physician and radiation biologist, and Zimmer was a physicist and radiation biologist.
The Ehlektrostal’ Plant No. 12, by the last quarter of 1946, was delivering about three metric tons of metallic uranium per week to Laboratory No. 2., which was later known as the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy
. By 1950, Plant No. 12 was producing about one metric ton per day, and it was not the only metallic uranium production plant in operation.
After the detonation of the Russian uranium bomb, uranium production was going smoothly and Riehl’s oversight was no longer necessary at Plant No. 12. Riehl then went, in 1950, to head an institute in Sungul', where he stayed until 1952. Essentially the remaining personnel in his group were assigned elsewhere, with the exception of H. E. Ortmann, A. Baroni (PoW), and Herbert Schmitz (PoW), who went with Riehl. However, Riehl had already sent Born, Catsch, and Zimmer to the institute in December 1947. The German contingent at the institute in Sungul’ never exceeded 26 – in 1946 there were 95 people at the facility, which grew to 451 by 1955, and the German contingent had already left a few years before that. Besides those already mentioned, other Germans at the institute were Rinatia von Ardenne (sister of Manfred von Ardenne, director of Institute A, in Sukhumi) Wilhelm Menke, Willi Lange (who married the widow of Karl-Heinrich Riewe, who had been at Heinz Pose’s Laboratory V, in Obninsk), Joachim Pani, and K. K. Rintelen. The institute in Sungul’ was responsible for the handling, treatment, and use of radioactive products generated in reactors, as well as radiation biology, dosimetry, and radiochemistry. The institute was known as Laboratory B
, and it was overseen by the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD
(MVD after 1946), the same organization which oversaw the Russian Alsos
operation. The scientific staff of Laboratory B – a ShARAShKA
– was both Soviet and German, the former being mostly political prisoners or exiles, although some of the service staff were criminals. (Laboratory V, in Obninsk
, headed by Heinz Pose
, was also a sharashka and working on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Other notable Germans at the facility were Werner Czulius, Hans Jürgen von Oertzen, Ernst Rexer
, and Carl Friedrich Weiss.)
Laboratory B was known under another cover name as Объект 0211 (Ob’ekt 0211, Object 0211), as well as Object B. (In 1955, Laboratory B was closed. Some of its personnel were transferred elsewhere, but most of them were assimilated into a new, second nuclear weapons institute, Scientific Research Institute-1011, NII-1011, today known as the Russian Federal Nuclear Center All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics, RFYaTs–VNIITF. NII-1011 had the designation предприятие п/я 0215, i.e., enterprise post office box 0215 and Объект 0215; the latter designation has also been used in reference to Laboratory B after its closure and assimilation into NII-1011.)
One of the political prisoners in Laboratory B was Riehls’ colleague from the KWIH, N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij, who, as a Soviet citizen, was arrested by the Soviet forces in Berlin at the conclusion of the war, and he was sentenced to 10 years in the Gulag
. In 1947, Timofeev-Resovskij was rescued out of a harsh Gulag prison camp, nursed back to health, and sent to Sungul' to complete his sentence, but still make a contribution to the Soviet atomic bomb project. At Laboratory B, Timofeev-Resovskij headed the radiobiology department at Laboratory B, and another political prisoner, S. A. Voznesenskij, headed the radiochemistry department. At Laboratory B, Born, Catsch, and Zimmer were able to conduct work similar to that which they had done in Germany, and all three became section heads in Timofeev-Resovskij’s department.
Until Riehl’s return to Germany in June 1955, which Riehl had to request and negotiate, he was quarantined in Agudseri (Agudzery) starting in 1952. The home in which Riehl lived had been designed by Max Volmer
and had been previously occupied by Gustav Hertz, when he was director of Laboratory G.
For his contributions to the Soviet atomic bomb project
, Riehl was awarded a Stalin Prize (first class), a Lenin Prize
, and the Hero of Socialist Labor
medal. As part of the awards, he was also given a Dacha
west of Moscow
; he did not use the dacha. For work at Plant No. 12, Riehl’s colleagues Wirths and Thieme were awarded a Stalin Prize and the Order of the Red Banner of Soviet Labor
, also known and the Order of the Red Flag.
While Riehl’s work for the Soviet Union netted him significant prestige and wealth, his primary motivation for leaving Russia was freedom. Riehl arrived in East Germany on 4 April 1955; however, by early June he had fled to West Germany
. Once there, he joined Heinz Maier-Leibniz on his nuclear reactor
staff at Technische Hochschule München
, where he made contributions, starting in 1957, to the nuclear facility Forschungsreaktor München (FRM). In 1961 he became an ordinarius professor of technical physics there and concentrated his research activities on solid state physics, especially the physics of ice and optical spectroscopy of solids.
Auergesellschaft
The industrial firm Auergesellschaft was founded in 1892 with headquarters in Berlin. Up to the end of World War II, Auergesellschaft had research activities in the areas of gas mantles, luminescence, rare earths, radioactivity, and uranium and thorium compounds. In 1934, the corporation was...
. When the Russians entered Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
near the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he was invited to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, where he stayed for 10 years. For his work on the Soviet atomic bomb project
Soviet atomic bomb project
The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb , was a clandestine research and development program began during and post-World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the United States' nuclear project...
, he was awarded a Stalin Prize, Lenin Prize
Lenin Prize
The Lenin Prize was one of the most prestigious awards of the USSR, presented to individuals for accomplishments relating to science, literature, arts, architecture, and technology. It was created on June 23, 1925 and was awarded until 1934. During the period from 1935 to 1956, the Lenin Prize was...
, and Order of the Red Banner of Labor
Order of the Red Banner of Labour
The Order of the Red Banner of Labour was an order of the Soviet Union for accomplishments in labour and civil service. It is the labour counterpart of the military Order of the Red Banner. A few institutions and factories, being the pride of Soviet Union, also received the order.-History:The Red...
. When he was repatriated to Germany in 1955, he chose to go to West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, where he joined Heinz Maier-Leibnitz
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz was a German physicist. He made contributions to nuclear spectroscopy, coincidence measurement techniques, radioactive tracers for biochemistry and medicine, and neutron optics...
on his nuclear reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
staff at Technische Hochschule München
Technical University of Munich
The Technische Universität München is a research university with campuses in Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan...
(THM); Riehl made contributions to the nuclear facility Forschungsreaktor München (FRM). In 1961 he became an ordinarius professor of technical physics at THM and concentrated his research activities on solid state physics, especially the physics of ice and the optical spectroscopy of solids.
Education
Riehl was born in Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in 1901. His mother was Russian and his father was a professional German engineer employed by Siemens and Halske
Siemens
Siemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...
. With this background, Riehl spoke fluent German and Russian. From 1920 to 1927, he was educated at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University is a major Russian technical university situated in Saint Petersburg. Previously it was known as the Peter the Great Polytechnical Institute and Kalinin Polytechnical Institute .-Imperial Russia:...
and Humboldt University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
. He received his doctorate in nuclear chemistry
Nuclear chemistry
Nuclear chemistry is the subfield of chemistry dealing with radioactivity, nuclear processes and nuclear properties.It is the chemistry of radioactive elements such as the actinides, radium and radon together with the chemistry associated with equipment which are designed to perform nuclear...
from the University of Berlin in 1927, under the guidance of the nuclear physicist Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner FRS was an Austrian-born, later Swedish, physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize...
and the nuclear chemist Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn FRS was a German chemist and Nobel laureate, a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is regarded as "the father of nuclear chemistry". Hahn was a courageous opposer of Jewish persecution by the Nazis and after World War II he became a passionate campaigner...
; his thesis topic was on Geiger-Müller counters
Geiger counter
A Geiger counter, also called a Geiger–Müller counter, is a type of particle detector that measures ionizing radiation. They detect the emission of nuclear radiation: alpha particles, beta particles or gamma rays. A Geiger counter detects radiation by ionization produced in a low-pressure gas in a...
for beta ray spectroscopy
Spectroscopy
Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between matter and radiated energy. Historically, spectroscopy originated through the study of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, e.g., by a prism. Later the concept was expanded greatly to comprise any interaction with radiative...
.
Early years
Riehl initially took a position in German industry with AuergesellschaftAuergesellschaft
The industrial firm Auergesellschaft was founded in 1892 with headquarters in Berlin. Up to the end of World War II, Auergesellschaft had research activities in the areas of gas mantles, luminescence, rare earths, radioactivity, and uranium and thorium compounds. In 1934, the corporation was...
, where he became an authority on luminescence
Luminescence
Luminescence is emission of light by a substance not resulting from heat; it is thus a form of cold body radiation. It can be caused by chemical reactions, electrical energy, subatomic motions, or stress on a crystal. This distinguishes luminescence from incandescence, which is light emitted by a...
. While he completed his Habilitation
Habilitation
Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...
, he continued his industrial career at Auergesellschaft, as opposed to working in academia. From 1927, he was a staff scientist in the radiology
Radiology
Radiology is a medical specialty that employs the use of imaging to both diagnose and treat disease visualized within the human body. Radiologists use an array of imaging technologies to diagnose or treat diseases...
department. From 1937, he was head of the optical engineering department. From 1939 to 1945, he was the director of the scientific headquarters.
Auergesellschaft had a substantial amount of “waste” uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
from which it had extracted radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
. After reading a paper in 1939 by Siegfried Flügge
Siegfried Flügge
Siegfried Flügge was a German theoretical physicist and made contributions to nuclear physics. He worked at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Chemie and worked in the German Uranverein...
, on the technical use of nuclear energy from uranium, Riehl recognized a business opportunity for the company, and, in July of that year, went to the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) to discuss the production of uranium. The HWA was interested and Riehl committed corporate resources to the task. The HWA eventually provided an order for the production of uranium oxide, which took place in the Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg
Oranienburg
Oranienburg is a town in Brandenburg, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Oberhavel.- Geography :Oranienburg is a town located on the banks of the Havel river, 35 km north of the centre of Berlin.- Division of the town :...
, north of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
In the Soviet Union
Near the close of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, as American, British, and Russian military forces were closing in on Berlin, Riehl and some of his staff moved to a village west of Berlin, to try and assure occupation by British or American forces. However, in mid-May 1945, with the assistance of Riehl’s colleague Karl Günter Zimmer
Karl Zimmer
Karl Günter Zimmer was a German physicist and radiation biologist, known for his work on the effects of ionizing radiation on DNA. In 1935, he published the major work, Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur, with N. V...
, the Russian nuclear physicists Georgy Flerov
Georgy Flyorov
Georgy Nikolayevich Flyorov was a prominent Soviet nuclear physicist.-Biography:Flyorov was born in Rostov-on-Don and attended the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute Georgy Nikolayevich Flyorov (March 2, 1913 – November 19, 1990) was a prominent Soviet nuclear physicist.-Biography:Flyorov was born...
and Lev Artsimovich
Lev Artsimovich
Lev Andreevich Artsimovich was a Soviet physicist, academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences , member of the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences , and Hero of Socialist Labor .- Academic research :Artsimovich worked on the...
showed up one day in NKVD colonel’s uniforms. The use of Russian nuclear physicists in the wake of Soviet troop advances to identify and “requisition” equipment, materiel, intellectual property, and personnel useful to the Russian atomic bomb project is similar to the American Operation Alsos
Operation Alsos
Operation Alsos was an effort at the end of World War II by the Allies , branched off from the Manhattan Project, to investigate the German nuclear energy project, seize German nuclear resources, materials and personnel to further American research and to prevent their capture by the Soviets, and...
. The military head of Alsos was Lt. Col. Boris Pash
Boris Pash
Boris T. Pash was a United States Army officer.-Biography:He was born in San Francisco, California, on June 20, 1900. His father was Rev. Theodore Pashkovsky , a Russian Orthodox priest who had been sent to California by the Church in 1894...
, former head of security on the American atomic bomb effort, the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
, and its chief scientist was the eminent physicist Samuel Goudsmit. In early 1945, the Soviets initiated an effort similar to Alsos (Russian Alsos
Russian Alsos
The Russian Alsos was an operation which took place in early 1945 in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and whose objectives were the exploitation of German atomic related facilities, intellectual materials, materiel resources, and scientific personnel for the benefit of the Soviet atomic bomb...
). Forty out of less than 100 Russian scientists from the Soviet atomic bomb project’s
Soviet atomic bomb project
The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb , was a clandestine research and development program began during and post-World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the United States' nuclear project...
Laboratory 2 went to Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia in support of acquisitions for the project.
The two colonels requested that Riehl join them in Berlin for a few days, where he also met with nuclear physicist Yulii Borisovich Khariton
Yulii Borisovich Khariton
Yulii Borisovich Khariton was a Soviet physicist working in the field of nuclear power...
, also in the uniform of an NKVD colonel. This sojourn in Berlin turned into 10 years in the Soviet Union! Riehl and his staff, including their families, were flown to Moscow on 9 July 1945. Eventually, Riehl’s entire laboratory was dismantled and transported to the Soviet Union.
Other prominent German scientists from Berlin who were taken to the Soviet Union at that time, and who would cross paths with Riehl, were Manfred von Ardenne
Manfred von Ardenne
Manfred von Ardenne was a German research and applied physicist and inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics, and radio and television technology...
, director of his private laboratory Forschungslaboratoriums für Elektronenphysik, Gustav Hertz, Nobel Laureate and director of Research Laboratory II at Siemens
Siemens
Siemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...
, Peter Adolf Thiessen
Peter Adolf Thiessen
Peter Adolf Thiessen was a German physical chemist. He voluntarily went to the Soviet Union at the close of World War II, and he received high Soviet decorations and the Stalin Prize for contributions to the Soviet atomic bomb project.-Education:Thiessen was born in Schweidnitz .From 1919 to...
, ordinarius professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
and director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemi und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) in Berlin-Dahlem
Dahlem (Berlin)
Dahlem is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in southwestern Berlin. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a part of the former borough of Zehlendorf. Dahlem is one of the most affluent parts of the city and home to the main campus of the Free University of Berlin with the...
, and Max Volmer
Max Volmer
Max Volmer was a German physical chemist, who made important contributions in electrochemistry, in particular on electrode kinetics. He co-developed the Butler–Volmer equation. Volmer held the chair and directorship of the Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry Institute of the Technische...
, ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the Berlin Technische Hochschule
Technical University of Berlin
The Technische Universität Berlin is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. Translating the name into English is discouraged by the university, however paraphrasing as Berlin Institute of Technology is recommended by the university if necessary .The TU Berlin was founded...
. Soon after being taken to the Soviet Union, Riehl, von Ardenne, Hertz, and Volmer were summoned for a meeting with Lavrentij Beria
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....
, head of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
and the Soviet atomic bomb project.
When a Soviet search team arrived at the Auergesellschaft facility in Oranienburg, they found nearly 100 tons of fairly pure uranium oxide. The Soviet Union took this uranium as reparations, which amounted to between 25% and 40% of the uranium taken from Germany and Czechoslovakia at the end of the war. Khariton said the uranium found there saved the Soviet Union a year on its atomic bomb project.
From 1945 to 1950, Riehl was in charge of uranium production at Plant No. 12 in Ehlektrostal'
Elektrostal
Elektrostal , known as Zatishye until 1938, is a city in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located east of Moscow. Population: 135,000 ; 123,000 ; 97,000 ; 43,000 . Town status was granted to it in 1938.-Industry:...
(Электросталь). German scientists, who were mostly atomic scientists, sent by the Soviets, at the close of World War II, to work in the Riehl group at Plant No. 12 included A. Baroni (PoW), Hans-Joachim Born
Hans-Joachim Born
Hans-Joachim Born was a German radiochemist trained and educated at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie. Up to the end of World War II, he worked in Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij’s Abteilung für Experimentelle Genetik, at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung. He was taken...
, Alexander Catsch
Alexander Catsch
Alexander Catsch was a German-Russian medical doctor and radiation biologist. Up to the end of World War II, he worked in Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timefeev-Resovskij’s Abteilung für Experimentelle Genetik at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung...
(Katsch), Werner Kirst, H. E. Ortmann, Przybilla, Herbert Schmitz (PoW), Sommerfeldt, Herbert Thieme, Tobein, Günter Wirths
Günter Wirths
Günter Wirths was a German chemist who was an authority on uranium production, especially reactor-grade. He worked at Auergesellschaft in the production of uranium for the Heereswaffenamt and its Uranverein project. In 1945, he was sent the Soviet Union to work on the Russian atomic bomb project...
, and Karl Günter Zimmer
Karl Zimmer
Karl Günter Zimmer was a German physicist and radiation biologist, known for his work on the effects of ionizing radiation on DNA. In 1935, he published the major work, Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur, with N. V...
. While Born, Catsch, and Zimmer had collaborated with Riehl in Germany, they were actually not part of Auergesellschaft but with N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij’s Genetics Department at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft’s Institut für Hirnforschung (KWIH, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research) in Berlin-Buch. Riehl had a hard time incorporating these three into his tasking at Plant No. 12 on his uranium production tasking, as Born was a radiochemist, Catsch was a physician and radiation biologist, and Zimmer was a physicist and radiation biologist.
The Ehlektrostal’ Plant No. 12, by the last quarter of 1946, was delivering about three metric tons of metallic uranium per week to Laboratory No. 2., which was later known as the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy
Kurchatov Institute
The Kurchatov Institute is Russia's leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear energy. In the Soviet Union it was known as I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy , abbreviated KIAE . It is named after Igor Kurchatov....
. By 1950, Plant No. 12 was producing about one metric ton per day, and it was not the only metallic uranium production plant in operation.
After the detonation of the Russian uranium bomb, uranium production was going smoothly and Riehl’s oversight was no longer necessary at Plant No. 12. Riehl then went, in 1950, to head an institute in Sungul', where he stayed until 1952. Essentially the remaining personnel in his group were assigned elsewhere, with the exception of H. E. Ortmann, A. Baroni (PoW), and Herbert Schmitz (PoW), who went with Riehl. However, Riehl had already sent Born, Catsch, and Zimmer to the institute in December 1947. The German contingent at the institute in Sungul’ never exceeded 26 – in 1946 there were 95 people at the facility, which grew to 451 by 1955, and the German contingent had already left a few years before that. Besides those already mentioned, other Germans at the institute were Rinatia von Ardenne (sister of Manfred von Ardenne, director of Institute A, in Sukhumi) Wilhelm Menke, Willi Lange (who married the widow of Karl-Heinrich Riewe, who had been at Heinz Pose’s Laboratory V, in Obninsk), Joachim Pani, and K. K. Rintelen. The institute in Sungul’ was responsible for the handling, treatment, and use of radioactive products generated in reactors, as well as radiation biology, dosimetry, and radiochemistry. The institute was known as Laboratory B
Laboratory B in Sungul’
Laboratory B in Sungul’ was one of the laboratories under the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD that contributed to the Soviet atomic bomb project. It was created in 1946 and closed in 1955, when some of its personnel were merged with the second Soviet nuclear design and assembly facility. It was...
, and it was overseen by the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
(MVD after 1946), the same organization which oversaw the Russian Alsos
Russian Alsos
The Russian Alsos was an operation which took place in early 1945 in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and whose objectives were the exploitation of German atomic related facilities, intellectual materials, materiel resources, and scientific personnel for the benefit of the Soviet atomic bomb...
operation. The scientific staff of Laboratory B – a ShARAShKA
Sharashka
Sharashka was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system...
– was both Soviet and German, the former being mostly political prisoners or exiles, although some of the service staff were criminals. (Laboratory V, in Obninsk
Obninsk
Obninsk is a city in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located southwest of Moscow. Population: Obninsk is one of the major Russian science cities. The first nuclear power plant in the world for the large-scale production of electricity opened here on June 27, 1954, and it also doubled as a training...
, headed by Heinz Pose
Heinz Pose
Rudolf Heinz Pose was a German nuclear physicist.He did pioneering work which contributed to the understanding nuclear energy levels. He worked on the German nuclear energy project Uranverein. After World War II, the Soviet Union sent him to establish and head Laboratory V in Obninsk...
, was also a sharashka and working on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Other notable Germans at the facility were Werner Czulius, Hans Jürgen von Oertzen, Ernst Rexer
Ernst Rexer
Ernst Rexer was a German nuclear physicist. He worked on the German nuclear energy program during World War II. After the war, he was sent to Laboratory V, in Obninsk, to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project...
, and Carl Friedrich Weiss.)
Laboratory B was known under another cover name as Объект 0211 (Ob’ekt 0211, Object 0211), as well as Object B. (In 1955, Laboratory B was closed. Some of its personnel were transferred elsewhere, but most of them were assimilated into a new, second nuclear weapons institute, Scientific Research Institute-1011, NII-1011, today known as the Russian Federal Nuclear Center All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics, RFYaTs–VNIITF. NII-1011 had the designation предприятие п/я 0215, i.e., enterprise post office box 0215 and Объект 0215; the latter designation has also been used in reference to Laboratory B after its closure and assimilation into NII-1011.)
One of the political prisoners in Laboratory B was Riehls’ colleague from the KWIH, N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij, who, as a Soviet citizen, was arrested by the Soviet forces in Berlin at the conclusion of the war, and he was sentenced to 10 years in the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
. In 1947, Timofeev-Resovskij was rescued out of a harsh Gulag prison camp, nursed back to health, and sent to Sungul' to complete his sentence, but still make a contribution to the Soviet atomic bomb project. At Laboratory B, Timofeev-Resovskij headed the radiobiology department at Laboratory B, and another political prisoner, S. A. Voznesenskij, headed the radiochemistry department. At Laboratory B, Born, Catsch, and Zimmer were able to conduct work similar to that which they had done in Germany, and all three became section heads in Timofeev-Resovskij’s department.
Until Riehl’s return to Germany in June 1955, which Riehl had to request and negotiate, he was quarantined in Agudseri (Agudzery) starting in 1952. The home in which Riehl lived had been designed by Max Volmer
Max Volmer
Max Volmer was a German physical chemist, who made important contributions in electrochemistry, in particular on electrode kinetics. He co-developed the Butler–Volmer equation. Volmer held the chair and directorship of the Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry Institute of the Technische...
and had been previously occupied by Gustav Hertz, when he was director of Laboratory G.
For his contributions to the Soviet atomic bomb project
Soviet atomic bomb project
The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb , was a clandestine research and development program began during and post-World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the United States' nuclear project...
, Riehl was awarded a Stalin Prize (first class), a Lenin Prize
Lenin Prize
The Lenin Prize was one of the most prestigious awards of the USSR, presented to individuals for accomplishments relating to science, literature, arts, architecture, and technology. It was created on June 23, 1925 and was awarded until 1934. During the period from 1935 to 1956, the Lenin Prize was...
, and the Hero of Socialist Labor
Hero of Socialist Labor
Hero of Socialist Labour was an honorary title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. It was the highest degree of distinction for exceptional achievements in national economy and culture...
medal. As part of the awards, he was also given a Dacha
Dacha
Dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...
west of Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
; he did not use the dacha. For work at Plant No. 12, Riehl’s colleagues Wirths and Thieme were awarded a Stalin Prize and the Order of the Red Banner of Soviet Labor
Order of the Red Banner of Labour
The Order of the Red Banner of Labour was an order of the Soviet Union for accomplishments in labour and civil service. It is the labour counterpart of the military Order of the Red Banner. A few institutions and factories, being the pride of Soviet Union, also received the order.-History:The Red...
, also known and the Order of the Red Flag.
Return to Germany
In 1954, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR, German Democratic Republic) and the Soviet Union prepared a list of scientists they wished to keep in the DDR, due to their having worked on projects related to the Soviet atomic bomb project; this list was known as the “A-list”. On this A-list were the names of 18 scientists, dominated by members of the Riehl group, which worked at Plant No. 12 in Ehlektrostal'.While Riehl’s work for the Soviet Union netted him significant prestige and wealth, his primary motivation for leaving Russia was freedom. Riehl arrived in East Germany on 4 April 1955; however, by early June he had fled to West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. Once there, he joined Heinz Maier-Leibniz on his nuclear reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
staff at Technische Hochschule München
Technical University of Munich
The Technische Universität München is a research university with campuses in Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan...
, where he made contributions, starting in 1957, to the nuclear facility Forschungsreaktor München (FRM). In 1961 he became an ordinarius professor of technical physics there and concentrated his research activities on solid state physics, especially the physics of ice and optical spectroscopy of solids.
Personal
Riehl and his wife Ilse, had two daughters, Ingeborg (oldest) and Irene. Riehl had a son who had died of natural causes and was buried in Germany.Selected Literature and Patents
The majority of these literature citations have been garnered by searching on variations of the author’s name on Google, Google Scholar, the Energy Citations Database.- P. M. Wolf and N. Riehl Über die Zerstörung von Zinksulfidphosphoren durch - Strahlung, Annalen der Physik, Volume 403, Issue 1, 103-112 (1931)
- P. M. Wolf and N. Riehl Über die Zerstörung von Zinksulfidphosphoren durch - Strahlen. 2. Mitteilung, Annalen der Physik, Volume 409, Issue 5, 581-586 (1933)
- Nikolaus Riehl Transparent Coating, Patent number: CA 350884, Patent owner: Degea Aktiengesellschft (Auergesellschaft), Issue date: June 11, 1935, Canadian Class (CPC): 117/238.
- Nikolaus Riehl Light-Modifying Article and Method of Producing the Same, Patent number: 2088438, Filing date: Jun 2, 1934, Issue date: Jul 27, 1937, Assignee: Degea.
- N. Riehl and H. Ortmann Über die Druckzerstörung von Phosphoren, Annalen der Physik, Volume 421, Issue 6, 556-568 (1937)
- N. Riehl New results with luminescent zinc sulphide and other luminous substances, Trans. Faraday Soc. Volume 35, 135 - 140 (1939)
- N. Riehl Die „Energiewanderung“ in Kristallen und Molekülkomplexen, Naturwissenschaften Volume 28, Number 38, Pages 601-607 (1940). The author was identified as being at the wissenschaftlichen Laboratorium der Auergesellschaft, Berlin.
- N. Riehl, N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij, and K. G. Zimmer Mechanismus der Wirkung ionisierender Strahlen auf biologische Elementareinheiten, Die NaturwissenschaftenDie NaturwissenschaftenNaturwissenschaften is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer on behalf of several learned societies.- History :...
Volume 29, Numbers 42-43, 625-639 (1941). Riehl was identified as being in Berlin, and the other two were identified as being in Berlin-Buch. - N. Riehl Zum Mechanismus der Energiewanderung bei Oxydationsfermenten, Naturwissenschaften Volume 31, Numbers 49-50, 590-591 (1943)
- N. Riehl, R. Rompe, N. W. Timoféeff-Ressovsky und K. G. Zimmer Über Energiewanderungsvorgänge und Ihre Bedeutung Für Einige Biologische Prozesse, Protoplasma Volume 38, Number 1, 105-126 (1943). The article was received on 19 April 1943.
- G. I. Born (H. J. Born), N. Riehl, K. G. ZimmerKarl ZimmerKarl Günter Zimmer was a German physicist and radiation biologist, known for his work on the effects of ionizing radiation on DNA. In 1935, he published the major work, Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur, with N. V...
, Title translated from the Russian: Efficiency of Luminescence Production by Beta Rays in Zinc Sulfide, Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR Volume 59, March, 1269-1272 (1948) - N. Riehl and H. Ortmann Über die Struktur von Leuchtzentren in aktivatorhaltigen Zinksulfidphosphoren, Annalen der Physik, Volume 459, Issue 1, 3-14 (1959). Institutional affiliations: Technische Hochschule und Liebenwalde, Munich; Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich.
- N. Riehl and R. Sizmann Production of Extremely High Lattice Defect Concentration in the Irradiation of Solid Bodies in Reactors [In German], Zeitschrift für Angewandte Physik Volume 11, 202-207 (1959). Institutional affiliation: Technische Physik der Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- N. Riehl, R. Sizmann, and O. J. Stadler Effects of Alpha-Irradiation on Zinc Sulfide Phosphors [In German], Zeitschrift für Naturforschung A Volume 16, 13-20 (1961). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- K. Fink, N. Riehl, and O. Selig Contribution to the Question of the Cobalt Content in Reactor Construction Steel [In German], Nukleonik Volume 3, 41-49 (1961). Institutional Affiliations: Phoenix-Rheinrohr A.G., Düsseldorf; and Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- N. Riehl and R. Sizmann Effects of High Energy Irradiation on Phosphors [In German], Physica Status Solidi Volume 1, 97-119 (1961). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- N. Riehl Effects of High Energy Radiation on the Surface of Solid Bodies [In German], Kerntechnik Volume 3, 518-521 (1961). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- H. Blicks, N. Riehl, and R. Sizmann Reversible Light Center Transformations in ZnS Phosphors [In German], Z. Physik Volume 163, 594-603 (1961). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- N. Riehl, W. Schilling, and H. Meissner Design and Installation of a Low Temperature Irradiation Facility at the Munich Research Reactor FRM, Res. Reactor J. Volume 3, Number 1, 9-13 (1962). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- S. Hoffmann, N. Riehl, W. Rupp, and R. Sizmann Radiolysis of Water Vapor by Alpha-Radiation [In German], Radiochimica Acta Volume 1, 203-207 (1963). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- O. Degel and N. Riehl Diffusion of Protons (Tritons) in Ice Crystals [In German], Physik Kondensierten Materie Volume 1, 191-196 (1963). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- R. Doll, H. Meissner, N. Riehl, W. Schiling, and F. Schemissner Construction of a Low-Temperature Irradiation Apparatus at the Munich Research Reactor [In German] Zeitschrift für Angewandte Physik Volume 17, 321-329 (1964). Institutional affiliation: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich.
- N. Riehl and R. Sizmann The Abnormal Volatility of Alpha-Irradiated Materials [In German], Radiochimica Acta Volume 3, 44-47 (1964). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- H. Blicks, O. Dengel, and N. Riehl Diffusion of Protons (Tritons) in Pure and Doped Ice Monocrystals [In German], Physik der Kondensierten Materie Volume 4, 375-381 (1966). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- O. Dengel, E. Jacobs, and N. Riehl Diffusion of Tritons in NH4-Doped Ice Single Crystals [In German], Physik der Kondensierten Materie Volume 5, 58-59 (1966). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- H. Engelhardt, H. Müller-Krumbhaar, B. Bullemer, and N. Riehl Detection of Single Collisions of Fast Neutrons by Nucleation of Tyndall Flowers in Ice, J. Appl. Phys. Volume 40: 5308-5311(Dec 1969). Institutional affiliation: Technische Hochschule, Munich.
- N. Riehl, A. Muller, and R. Wengert Release of trapped charge carriers by phonons generated by alpha-particles [In German], Z. Naturforsch., Volume 28, Number 6, 1040-1041 (1973). Institutional affiliation: Technische Universität, Munich.
- N. Riehl and R. Wengert Charge carrier release in He-cooled crystals by phonon fluxes generated by impinging hot gas atoms, by heat pulses, or by alpha-particles, Journal: Phys. Status Solidi (a), Volume 28, Number 2, 503-509 (1975). Institutional affiliation: Technische Universität, Munich.
Books
- Nikolaus Riehl and Henry Ortmann Über den Aufbau der Zinksulfid-Luminophore (Verl. Chemie, 1957)
- Riehl, Nikolaus, Bernhard Bullemer, and Hermann Engelhardt (editors). Physics of Ice. Proceedings of the International Symposium, Munich, 1968 (Plenum, 1969)
- Fred Fischer and Nikolaus Riehl Einführung in die Lumineszenz (Thiemig, 1971)
- Nikolaus Riehl and Frederick SeitzFrederick SeitzFrederick Seitz was an American physicist and a pioneer of solid state physics. Seitz was president of Rockefeller University, and president of the United States National Academy of Sciences 1962–1969. He was the recipient of the National Medal of Science, NASA's Distinguished Public Service...
Stalin’s Captive: Nikolaus Riehl and the Soviet Race for the Bomb (American Chemical Society and the Chemical Heritage Foundations, 1996) ISBN 0-8412-3310-1. This book is a translation of Nikolaus Riehl’s book Zehn Jahre im goldenen Käfig (Ten Years in a Golden Cage) (Riederer-Verlag, 1988); Seitz has written a lengthy introduction to the book. This book is a treasure trove with its 58 photographs.
External links
- History – Technische Hochschule München