RUINED BY NAZIS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 123, 27 May 1942, Page 8

RUINED BY NAZIS

UNIVERSITY SPIRIT

DISTORTED TEACHINGS

'•Germany cannot go on indefi-1 nitely suppressing her best brains without suffering to some extent in her war effort." said Mr. \V. H. Cocker, president of the Auckland University College, in addressing the Auckland Creditmen's Club today on "The Nazis and the Universities." He declared that Germany could not escape the effects of losing a great number of her highly skilled research workers, and the deterioration in the universities must add to the difficulties in ousting the Nazi spirit at the conclusion of the war. For a century before the war, said Mr. Cocker, German universities held an honoured place in the world of learning. The Germans had developed almost a religious reverence for their university institutions, and their professors were held in high honour. No student of science in any country could afford not to know German scientific works, and German doctorates were much coveted. There was a strong libera! tradition in the universities, and there were few branches of science and learning in which Germany did not excel.

With the advent of the Nazis, continued Mr. Cocker, all this was changed. There ceased to be any such thing as a disinterested search for truth. All research and all unversity teaching had to be directed towards probing those things in which the Nazis believed. Any university professors who refused to teach in accordance with Nazi doctrines were not only deprived of their posts but suffered persecution and in many cases imprisonment.

Nazi doctrines made a special appeal, he said, to immature students, and in many universities student bodies were placed in authority and given special protection by the Nazi party. These students could not be disciplined by any university authority, and frequently they organised outbursts against professors, resulting in their removal. The Nazis replaced university rectors by persons of their own party, most of whom had no academic distinction, loarnmg "became prostituted, and the universities departed from their ideals of disinterested learning. Many distinguished scientists escaped to other countries, but the tragedy of the situation was that on. the whole the universities acquiesced.-

"The result is - that, especially on the? scientific side. Germany for some time has been living on her intellectual capital." said Mr. Cocker.

"Little research has been done, and many of the best men have gone. It. has been suggested that she is now suffering in her war effort because of the absence of many of her leading scientists."