In 1923, Thiessen was a supernumerary assistant at the University of Göttingen and from 1924 to 1930 was a regular teaching assistant. He joined the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in 1925. He became a Privatdozent at Göttingen in 1926. In 1930, he became head of the department of inorganic chemistry there, and in 1932 he also became an untenured extraordinarius professor. In 1933, Thiessen became a department head at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft. For a short time in 1935, he became an ordinarius professor of chemistry at the University of Münster. Later, that year and until 1945, he became an ordinarius professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and director of the KWIPC in Berlin-Dahlem. As director of the KWIPC, he transformed it into a model National Socialist organization. Thiessen was the main advisor and confidant to Rudolf Mentzel, who was head of the chemistry and organic materials section of the Reichsforschungsrat. Thiessen, as director of the KWIPC, had a flat on Faradayweg in Dahlem that the former director Fritz Haber used for business purposes; Thiessen shared this flat with Mentzel.
In the Soviet Union
Before the end of World War II, Thiessen had Communist contacts. He, Manfred von Ardenne, director of his private laboratory Forschungslaboratoriums für Elektronenphysik, Gustav Hertz, Nobel Laureate and director of the second research laboratory at Siemens, and Max Volmer, ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the Berlin Technische Hochschule, had made a pact. The pact was a pledge that whoever first made contact with the Russians would speak for the rest. The objectives of their pact were threefold: prevent plunder of their institutes, continue their work with minimal interruption, and protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past. On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne’s institute in an armored vehicle with a major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist. All four were taken to the Soviet Union. Von Ardenne was made head of Institute A, in Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi. Hertz was made head of Institute G, in Agudseri, about 10 km southeast of Sukhumi and a suburb of Gul’rips. Volmer went to the Nauchno-Issledovatel’skij Institut-9, in Moscow; he was given a design bureau to work on the production of heavy water. In Institute A, Thiessen became leader for developing techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation. In 1949, six German scientists, including Hertz, Thiessen, and Barwich, were called in for consultation at Sverdlovsk-44, which was responsible for uranium enrichment. The plant, which was smaller than the American Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plant, was getting only a little over half of the expected 90% or higher enrichment. Awards for uranium enrichment technologies were made in 1951 after testing of a bomb with uranium; the first test was with plutonium. Thiessen received a Stalin Prize, first class.
Peter Adolf Thiessen and Helmut Sandig Planung der Forschung
Peter Adolf Thiessen Erfahrungen, Erkenntnisse, Folgerungen
Peter Adolf Thiessen Forschung und Praxis formen die neue Technik
Peter Adolf Thiessen Vorträge zum Festkolloquium anlässlich des 65. Geburtstages von P. A. Thiessen
Peter Adolf Thiessen, Klaus Meyer, and Gerhard Heinicke Grundlagen der Tribochemie
Articles
Peter Adolf Thiessen Die physikalische Chemie im nationalsozialistischen Staat, Der Deutscher Chemiker. Mitteilungen aus Stand / Beruf und WissenschaftVolume 2, No. 5, May 9, 1936. Reprinted in English in Hentschel, Klaus and Ann M. Hentschel Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources 134-137 as Document 48. Thiessen: Physical Chemistry in the National Socialist State .
