Karl-Heinrich Riewe

Karl-Heinrich Riewe was a German physicist. After World War II, he was sent to Russia to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project. After going on strike at a defense related facility in 1948, he was accused of sabotage. He was sentenced to 25 years in the GULAG and disappeared.

Career

In Germany

In June 1941, Riewe co-authored a paper[1] electron optics and plasma physics with the nuclear physicist Fritz Houtermans. At this time, Houtermans is known to have been at the Forschungslaboratoriums für Elektronenphysik (Research Laboratory for Electron Physics), a private laboratory of Manfred von Ardenne, in Berlin-Lichterfelde. The paper cites the two as being at a facility in Berlin; other papers by Riewe, three years earlier (see below), cited him as being at a facility in the community of Berlin-Wilmersdorf, which is in the vicinity of Berlin-Lichterfelde.

In Russia

Near the close of World War II, the Soviet Union sent special search teams into Germany to locate and deport German nuclear scientists or any others who could be of use to the Soviet atomic bomb project. The Russian Alsos teams were headed by NKVD Colonel General A. P. Zavenyagin and staffed with numerous scientists, from their only nuclear laboratory, attired in NKVD officer’s uniforms. The main search team, headed by Colonel General Zavenyagin, arrived in Berlin on 3 May, the day after Russia announced the fall of Berlin to their military forces; it included Colonel General V. A. Makhnjov, and nuclear physicists Yulij Borisovich Khariton, Isaak Konstantinovich Kikoin, and Lev Andreevich Artsimovich. Targets on the top of their list were the physics facilities in Berlin and its environs.[2]

Riewe was sent to the Russia to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project, at Heinz Pose’s Laboratory V in Obninsk, either in the initial sweep by the special search teams or later by Pose’s six-month recruitment trip, from March to August 1946, with NKVD General Kravchenko and two other officers.[3][4]

In 1948, two scientists at Laboratory V, Riewe and Dr. Renger, went on strike for reasons of their work conditions or hoping to be sent back to Germany after their two-year contracts expired. As their actions where while working on a defense project, they were accused of being ring-leaders of sabotage and imprisoned. Riewe received a sentence of 25 years in the Soviet GULAG and disappeared. Tamara Andrjuschenko recalled hearing that Riewe had been executed for sabotage.[5]

Postscript

Riewe’s widow moved to Sukhumi, where at that time there was workforce of 300 Germans working at Manfred von Ardenne’s Laboratory A, in Sinop,[6][7] a suburb of Sukhumi. She eventually married the German draftsman Willi Lange. In 1950, Lange, his wife, Lange’s daughter Hannelora, and his wife’s children by Riewe, moved to Sungul', where he worked at Nikolaus Riehl’s Laboratory B, also known under another cover name,[8] Объект 0211 (Ob'ekt 0211, Object 0211).[9][10][11][12] After 1953, they were quarantined in the Agudzery (Agudseri) transition camp, after which Germans returned to Germany.[13][14]

Selected literature

Bibliography

Notes

  1. ↑ Fritz Houtermans | Fritz G. Houtermans and Karl-Heinrich Riewe Über die Raumladungswirkung an einem Strahl geladener Teilchen von rechteckigem Querschnitt der Blende, Archiv für Elektrotechnik Volume 35, Number 11, 686-691 (1941).
  2. ↑ Oleynikov, 2000, 5-6.
  3. ↑ See the discussion of Heinz Pose for details of his Laboratory V, in Obninsk.
  4. ↑ Oleynikov, 2000, 14 and References #123 and #131 on p. 29.
  5. ↑ Oleynikov, 2000, 14 and References #131, and #154 on p. 29.
  6. ↑ Oleynikov, 2000, 11-12.
  7. ↑ Naimark, 1995, 213.
  8. ↑ The Russians used various types of cover names for facilities to obfuscate both the location and function of a facility; in fact, the same facility could have multiple and changing designations. The nuclear design bureau and assembly plant Arzamas-16, for example, had more than one designation – see Yuli Khariton and Yuri Smirnov The Khariton Version, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, 20-31 (May 1993). Some facilities were known by post office box numbers, почтовом ящике (pochtovom yashike), abbreviated as п/я. See Maddrell, 2006, 182-183. Also see Demidov, A. A. On the tracks of one “Anniversary” [In Russian] 11.08.2005, which relates the history changing post office box designations for Arzamas-16.
  9. ↑ Timofeev-Resovskij, N. V. Kratkaya Avtobiograficheskaya Zapiska (Brief Autobiographical Note) (14 October 1977).
  10. ↑ “Я ПРОЖИЛ СЧАСТЛИВУЮ ЖИЗНЬ” К 90-летию со дня рождения Н. В. Тимофеева-Ресовского (“I Lived a Happy Life” – In Honor of the 90th Anniversary of the Birth of Timofeev-Resovskij, ИСТОРИЯ НАУКИ. БИОЛОГИЯ (History of Science – Biology), 1990, № 9, 68-104 (1990). This commemorative has many photographs of Timofeev-Resovskij.
  11. ↑ Ratner, V. A. Session in Memory of N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij in the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences [In Russian], Vestnik VOGis Article 4, No. 15 (2000).
  12. ↑ Izvarina, E. Nuclear project in the Urals: History in Photographs [In Russian] Nauka Urala Numbers 12-13, June 2000.
  13. ↑ Oleynikov, 2000, 14 and References #131, and #154 on p. 29.
  14. ↑ Maddrell, 2006, 179-180.
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