Abstract

“To Live is to be Fighter” – On the Relatioship of Science and Public Illustrated by the Example of Modern Ferrous Metallurgy at the Technical University Aachen. – The contribution pursues the question of how Fritz Wüst, professor of ferrous metallurgy at the Technische Hochschule Aachen , changed the configurations of influential agents, thus readjusting power structures in favour of the institute of metallurgy in Aachen. Science and the public are here understood as resources for one another. Through the establishment of his own technical journals, and cooperation with industry, interest groups, and the politics of Berlin, Wüst mobilised specific public relations for himself, and thus connected the Aachen iron metallurgy multifariously with the social network of the German Empire. He was well able to recognise the sensitive conditions of his times, using them for his own purposes in his lectures and publications. Thus, he stylised modern iron metallurgy to a motivating and formative force for the German Empire's world power ambitions. These politics for science demonstrate how at the institutional and intellectual level, the interweaving of scientific and political goals followed