Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (in German Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft) was the name of a number of scientific institutes in Germany before World War II. After 1945 they were re-organised and renamed as Max Planck Institutes.
Founded on January 11, 1911 by Prussian secretary of cultural affairs, August von Trott zu Solz, and funded by public subscription, the institute was intended to further Prussian prestige as a research establishment independent both of universities and the state. Its founding president was theologian Adolf von Harnack and vice president, Gustav Krupp.
They provided the scenes of much scientific work of lasting value, including, in 1938, the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin. However, several of the biomedical institutes achieved infamy through their participation in National Socialist racial science, particularly in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.
List of institutes
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt/Main
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, founded 1911 in Berlin, Dahlem , it now houses the Institut for Chemistry of the Free University of Berlin
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, founded 1912 in Berlin
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Medical Research
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, in Berlin
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, founded 1911 in Berlin, Dahlem, now the Fritz Haber Institute
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign and International Private Law
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell Physiology
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research
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