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2026-10-06 Wayback Machine: TU Berlin "TU intern" May 2001 article and reader responses - Hilgenberg-OC

Pages (German originals; I read them through Chrome's automatic English translation, so wording below is a translation, not the original German): - Article: K.-H. Jacob, "Theorie 'Vom wachsenden Erdball'. Zum Gedenken an Ott Christoph Hilgenberg (1896-1976)", TU intern, May 2001. [web] https://web.archive.org/web/20021223153613/http://www.tu-berlin.de/presse/tui/01mai/hilgenb.htm - Reader responses page (posts May 2001 to Nov 2002). [web] https://web.archive.org/web/20021223154811/http://www.tu-berlin.de/presse/tui/01mai/hilgenb_lb.htm Query path: German Wikipedia weblink "Kurz-Biografie Hilgenbergs (Memento ...)".

Article (Jacob, interested party: organiser of the 2001 Lautenthal colloquium and co-editor of the honour volume)

  • Hilgenberg 1934-1938 permanent assistant and lecturer at the Chair of Gear Technology (Getriebelehre) at TH Berlin, "without abandoning his research in rock physics"; a professorship "was thwarted by his refusal to become a member of the Nazi Party". (Third account of the NSDAP refusal; it comes from the same circle as Scalera-Braun.)
  • Volkssturm, severely wounded; then curator at the TH library for mechanical and precision engineering literature; obtained release of 10,000 technical books from the former Luftkriegsakademie Gatow from the British; retrieved books from the Soviet zone by truck; declined a Federal Cross of Merit nomination.
  • Dr.-Ing. 1948; in the 1950s illustrated his concept in "six paleoglobes"; 1974 main work met "a mixture of skepticism and rejection".
  • Announces the colloquium "Erdexpansion - eine missverstandene geowissenschaftliche Theorie?", Niedersächsisches Bergbaumuseum Lautenthal/Harz, 26 May 2001, and Jacob's Urania Berlin lecture of 15 Oct 2001. Links to http://mindepo1.bg.tu-berlin.de/laumoko.html and James Maxlow's site.
  • Note: the article says the landmasses fit on a globe of about half the present diameter (the book's own figure is 0.62-0.65; see archive-org note).

Reader responses (selection; each is that writer's view, with stake where evident)

Supporters and witnesses: - Rainer Fiedler-Volmer (18 May 2001): studied at the TU Berlin Geology Institute in the early 1960s and knew Hilgenberg personally; describes him as an exceptional scientist, open to discussion, who continued "undeterred by all the rejection and, sometimes even insulting, ignorance". (Witness account of Hilgenberg's reception.) - Dr.-Ing. Hermann H. Oppermann (20 May 2001): knew Hilgenberg at the geological institute. - G. Scalera (reported by Jacob, 29 May 2001): brought four replica Hilgenberg globes (made by Roman cabinetmakers) to Lautenthal and lent them to TU Berlin for three months; "globe workshops now exist in more than ten countries". Colloquium attended by more than 80 people, with press and TV coverage. - Dr. Stefan Cwojdzinski, Polish Geological Institute (9 May 2001): several Wroclaw geologists work on expansion. - Martin Kokus (Bloomsburg University, USA), Bob Tuttle, Johannes Jürgenson (suggests Konstantin Meyl's neutrino-conversion idea as the mass source; Meyl is an interested party), Stephen Hurrell (dinosaur size and reduced gravity; author of a 1994 book on it), Volker Müller, Olaf Müller (cites H.-J. Zillmer), Joachim Siegert, Georg Schießl (mentions earlier colloquium with Dr. Pfeufer), Prof. W. Grosch, others. - Erich Nerad (posts 2002) and Jacob (11 Mar 2002): an appendix (Word document) on Hilgenberg's life and work produced after correspondence with the "Institut für Gravitationsforschung (IGF)", to be presented at the New Concepts in Global Tectonics (NCGT) conference, La Junta, Colorado, 5-11 May 2002; also a summary of Jacob's NCGT lecture (PDF 30 KB) and a conference report (PDF 4 MB). Not opened. Critics: - Prof. Gerhard Bruhn, Mathematics, TU Darmstadt (24 May, 26 Jun, 6 Aug, 10 Dec 2001): expansion "massively violates the law of conservation of mass"; denying subduction "contradicts reality" (cites seismic tomography, E. Lausch, Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Jan 2000, pp.16-21); notes Pascual Jordan's proposed cause (decreasing gravitational constant after Dirac) lacks quantitative proof; meteorite input is far too small to supply mass. He objects to the speaker on "physical foundations" (a vortex-physics author whose book traces ether-to-matter growth to "J. Yarkowski in 1888 and O. Hilgenberg in 1933"). - Prof. Ruedi Seiler, TU Berlin (29 May 2001): most published arguments are "gut-feeling"; asks the press office to uphold standards of argument. - Dr. Ulf Thorweihe, TU Berlin (21 May 2001): "there is no discussion of the Earth Expansion Theory in modern geoscience". - TU Press Office reply (9 Aug 2001, Dr. Kristina R. Zerges): most readers ask "for clarification of this hypothesis by science". - The page also links follow-up TU intern articles: "Unsere Erde: Theorien und Emotionen" (June 2001) and "Erdexpansion 'ad acta' gelegt" (July 2001, by a "Mr. Franz" and colleagues, apparently the expert reply). Not opened.

Bearing on the claims

  • Claim 6 / reception: a documented 2001-2002 exchange inside Hilgenberg's own university, with named supporters (two who knew him) and named critics, and the critics' arguments (mass conservation, subduction tomography, no mechanism). This is the closest thing to a recorded expert reply found so far; the 1974 open letter's addressees' reply is still not found.
  • Priority 3: lineage named by Bruhn's quotation (Yarkovsky 1888 to Hilgenberg 1933) and alternatives named by readers (Jordan/Dirac decreasing G; Meyl neutrinos; Herndon).
  • Priority 4: the July 2001 "ad acta" article and the IGF correspondence (Nerad appendix) are records to fetch next run.