Technical University of Munich:Dark sides of the excellence university
Reading time: 5 mins
The official curriculum vitae in the showcase reveals nothing about the NS ties of the namesake: the students Paul Bachmann and Olga Rybalt in front of the Willy Messerschmitt drawing room.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
The Technical University still honors Nazi supporters with doctorates and room names. Students are now taking action against this – and the TUM seems surprised.
By Bernd Kastner
You have to climb a flight of stairs to reach the hall. There is a display case at the entrance. Olga Rybałt looks at it and says: It is strange for you to read what is posted here, in the mechanical engineering building of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). A kind of tabular curriculum vitae of the aircraft designer Willy Messerschmitt hangs in the showcase, after whom the drawing room is named. You can find out when Messerschmitt built which machines. There is nothing on it about his affiliation with the National Socialists, nor about forced laborers and concentration camp inmates. Someone has half draped a more critical bio over it.
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