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The Deutsches Museum, Munich by Otto Mayr, et al

1992; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tech.1992.0193

1097-3729

Robert Anderson,

History of Science and Medicine

210 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE German reader, it does so in a distorted mirror. Since American Genesis is now available in German, there is no longer a need for Schuler’s digest. He shows no sense of familiarity with the history of technology and its literature but seems to have chosen his sources indiscrimi­ nately. The technology of the first atomic bombs, for example, is drawn from two Wednesday editions of a Swiss daily newspaper. In the end it is not so much the number of misunderstandings and errors but the banality of the story that leaves the reader puzzled. It is surprising that in the second part of the book Schuler does not make much use of the information gathered in the first. Instead, he concentrates on the history of ideas for which very crude concepts of “technological systems,” “technocracy,” “military-industrial complex,” and “big business” seem to suffice. While acknowledging that there was and still is much to be criticized in modern technology and its social framework, Schuler sweepingly stigmatizes all critics he inves­ tigates as actually, or at least potentially, totalitarian. The main thrust of his polemical crusade is directed against environmentalists, the New Left, and its German counterparts. But “increasingly soured” Catholics and conservative critics of nuclear power are also condemned as only prima facie democrats. In the end the reader wonders how a criticism of technology that is legitimate in Schuler’s eyes would look. Unfortunately, he does not tell us but leaves us with a two-sentence conclusion stressing the importance of taking technology’s history into account and of a willingness to contribute to a technology respectful of man’s dignity. It is a great pity that this very interesting subject has not been treated with the scholarship and care it deserves. Ulrich Wengenroth Dr. Wengenroth is professor of history of technology and director of the Central Institute for History of Technology at the Technical University of Munich. He has published on the history of steelmaking, craft technology, and electrical engineering. His recent work focuses on a comparison of American and European technology in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Deutsches Museum, Munich. By Otto Mayr et al. London and New York: Scala and Rizzoli (dist.), 1990. Pp. 160; illustrations, index. $29.95. The Deutsches Museum in Munich is one of the very few large museums of science and technology in the world. (Science centers are another matter.) Those who know the city will recall the range of solid, somewhat dour buildings, erected between 1909 and 1982, that fills an island in the Isar. Foreign visitors to the museum may well leave the long sequence of galleries with their prejudices fulfilled: an impression of Teutonic thoroughness and edifying didacticism. This book starts to explain such responses. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 211 It was an electrical engineer, Oskar von Miller, who conceived the Deutsches Museum and who imbued his creation with a deeply ingrained philosophy extolling scientific and technological achieve­ ment. (The museum incorporates the original Ehrensaal, the hall of fame, to this day.) His inspiration came, it is said, from the Conser­ vatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris and from that part of the South Kensington Museum in London that became the Science Museum. Von Miller’s museum seems to bear only superficial resem­ blance to either now. The Deutsches Museum opened its doors in 1906 in the abandoned Nationalmuseum in Munich. Three years later it expanded into the barracks of the heavy artillery and finally it was moved to a purpose-built museum on its remarkable site. The question of why the major German science museum is not in the (then) capital city of Berlin is quickly and simply disposed of: von Miller was a Bavarian, and the museum is his creation. He was the son of the metal founder who cast the huge statue of Bavaria, known to all who visit the Theresienwiese to participate in the serious business of the Oktoberfest. Von Miller was a person who got things done. For the realization of his museum he was obdurate in his aim and he was able to rally support at the right level. His organizing...