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anniversary
20 imdc03 2012
Professor Max Delbrück
the naming of the new
center
The proposal was to name the new
research center after the German-
American Nobel laureate, Max Delbrück,
who from 1934 to 1939 collaborated
and published jointly with colleagues
in Buch. In the spring of 1992, Ganten
visited the widow Manny Delbrück in
her house in Pasadena, California,
where she had lived together with her
husband until his death. She immediately
agreed to the naming of the
new institute after her husband and
gave Ganten Delbrück’s original Nobel
Prize diploma to take back to Berlin. In
Ganten’s view, Max Delbrück is a role
model as scientist and human being in
every respect. Together with Nikolai W.
Timoféeff-Ressovsky and Karl Günter
Zimmer – Delbrück laid the foundation
for molecular genetics. He embodied
the best tradition of science and
never allowed anything, not even any
political system to dissuade him from
his convictions. He maintained the
connection to Berlin-Buch even during
the period of the GDR. During the war
and the post-war period, he promoted
and supported the Berlin artist
Jeanne Mammen. Her pictures are now
exhibited in the Jeanne Mammen Hall.
strength through
tradition
Detlev Ganten is an internationally
oriented scientist who has lived and
worked in several countries. He and
his wife emigrated from Germany
to Canada, and his two sons have
Canadian citizenship. He lived for a
long time in the U.S. and France. His
view of Germany is influenced by the
great upheavals in German history: the
many small states, the collapse of the
German Empire in 1918, the turbulent
twenties, the totalitarian and undemocratic
periods and the disasters of the
First and Second World Wars. It was not
until reunification that he was able to
build an inner emotional connection
to Germany. The time after the fall of
the Wall was an exciting time. What
reconciled him with Germany was
the renewed reflection on the great
traditions of intellectual history, the
Detlev Ganten and Manny Delbrück, widow of Max Delbrück, at the MDC,
May 24th, 1994 / from left / Photo: Uwe Eising © MDC
common culture and science. These
traditions had not been lost during
the division of Germany in East and
West and exhibited their unifying force
during this time in a very special way.
The joint endeavor of rebuilding the
reunified Germany as land of science
and culture, with peaceful relations
to its eastern and western neighbors
– this was for him an incredible
motivation. With many Buch colleagues
such as Heinz Bielka, Jens Reich, Erhard
Geißler, Peter Langen, Georg Krause,
Klaus Ruckpaul, Volker Wunderlich and
many others, who for him embodied the
scientific tradition at Buch, he learned
the importance tradition can have for
the future. In this period, the staff
council under the leadership of Marion
Bimmler also played an important
role in keeping us on track toward our
ultimate goal with the institute. All of
the staff at Buch, both new and old,
had preserved or gained a common
ethos – the awareness of a tradition
of great science in Buch, in Berlin, in
Germany.
the mDc is created
Research at the new Max Delbrück
Center meant: high standards,
personal responsibility, small groups
and flat hierarchies. A management
group was formed, coordinators were
appointed, the Extended Management
Committee (ELK) and the Executive
Management Committee (GLK) were
constituted. The MDC developed into a
modern research institution. When the
hospitals of the old Academy institutes
were transformed into university
hospitals (belonging first to the Free
University, and then to the Charité),
the hospital budgets were renegotiated
and increased. Many old employees
were taken over into the new system,
and new employees were hired. New
scientists were appointed – Rainer
Dietz, Peter M. Schlag, Bernd Dörken
and Friedrich C. Luft – who came to
Berlin-Buch to bring together clinical