Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
7.7
Weigmann
Hans Weigmann was born 1897 in Kiel and became professor in Rostock and
Berlin. After 1939 he joined the armed forces as Nazi chief officer (“NS-
F¨hrungsoffizier”). He was posted missing in action and is assumed to have died
1944 in Belarus (Buddrus and Fritzlar
2007
, 432-433).
Isard writes: “Weigmann's writings on general location theory are very difficult
to comprehend, both because of a vague style and the complexity of the basic
concepts.” Isard nevertheless recommends these concepts to the reader as disclos-
ing “
...
some of the most promising channels of exploration for further theoretical
development.” (Isard
1949
, 489).
I absolutely disagree. Weigmann's concepts are not complex, they are confuse,
without any serious theoretical background and with no relation to empirical
observations. They are a labyrinth of empty phrases, published 1931 in the
Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv
(Weigmann
1931
).
4
Isard also cites another brochure,
Politische Raumordnung
, dated 1935. The subtitle is
Gedanken zur Neugestaltung
des deutschen Lebensraumes
(Weigmann
1935
). The wording of the subtitle is
typical for Nazi writings of the time
.
This is a Nazi pamphlet against the urban way
of life, against the idea of individuality of human beings, and against the critical
intellect. Weigmann propagates the notion of
Volksgemeinschaft
—the Nazi term
used to emphasize the antagonism between the Weimar and third Reich society—as
the basic concept of spatial planning. To Weigmann, the
Volksgemeinschaft
is the
“
denial of the primacy of intellect and thus of urban life in general.” Note that
this is meant as praise, not condemnation! To substantiate this praise, he claims it to
be “
...
one of the most important discoveries of modern sociology that thinking
destroys the basis of social life.” (Weigmann
1935
, 24).
I would like to mention at this point in passing that the role of German
“Raumforschung” in Nazi-Germany is another and sad chapter in the history of
science. University researchers in spatial planning designed Heinrich Himmler's
Generalplan Ost
, a planning project based on displacement and murder of the
non-German and Jewish population in the East. The leading person was the
agricultural economist Konrad Mayer (Heinemann
2006
;R¨ssler
1989
,
2001
;
Rieter
2014
), who after the war returned to a position as a respected professor in
spatial planning in Hannover, and a leading person in the
Akademie f
...
ur
€
4
Though a translation is difficult, I give an example: “At this occasion we discover the proper
heuristic value of the Gestalt-view as it, by the order of Gestalt-importance, easily integrates into
the entireness the
quale
of an individual circumstance whose special characteristic threatens to
destroy the closeness of the physiognomic impression. It uses the notion of 'basic-Gestalt' by
which a fixed point of reference for the individual assessment of significance is gained, which in
other words substitutes a connected entireness in the way that not logical or temporal precedence
of the
causa
but the heaviness of the Gestalt-weight
is decisive for qualifying a circumstance as
Gestalt-kernel or basic-Gestalt.” (Weigmann
1931
, 10)
Gestalt
, meaning something like shape or
form, is a philosophical notion nowadays mainly appearing in psychology.
quale
is something that
has its own quality,
causa
is Latin for “cause”.
...
