Hacker News Reader

Comment by MengerSponge | Hacker News Reader

Germany has a few premier universities, but they still haven't recovered from the Nazi era.

German universities tend to have an idiosyncratic research group structure that tends to underpay promising young talent, and mires that talent in a few extra loops of bureaucracy. A few of them are introducing a more "standard" tenure-track, which will help young academics make a like-for-like comparison.

It's unlikely that they'll be pay-competitive with American R1s, though.

View on HN

You are aware that much of the research is done outside of universities?

https://www.fraunhofer.de/en.html

https://www.mpg.de/en

https://www.helmholtz.de/en/

Sure, and their Federal labs are well-respected too:

https://ptb.de/

My post was about universities, not every research position available in the country.

and my post was that universities may have different tasks.

There is nothing left of the Nazi era in Germany. The leadership was executed in the Nuremberg show trials and the scientists were given an offer they couldn't resist or were outright kidnapped by the Soviet Union and United States. Nazi scientists made the US space program successful.

"Nothing left" isn't right. There are memorials, monuments, and several notable absences. Emmy Noether died in America, after all.

What memorials and monuments honoring the Nazis are left in Germany? There are none.

The last time I was in Berlin I found the Siegessäule where Speer moved it, largely as Speer modified it.

But less flippantly: the monuments and memorials are to people lost during the Nazi era.

Show trials?

Not nearly enough executions happened that should have.

Who was left out?

You mentioned them yourself. Operation Paperclip. These monsters got to live normal lives when they should have been thrown into a cave and the entrance demolished.

> Germany has a few premier universities, but they still haven't recovered from the Nazi era.

Dude, under which rock have you been hiding?! How does "not recovered from the Nazi era" manifest in your opinion?

Power, prestige, and productivity. Before the Nazis fucked up Germany its universities were better regarded than America's. Now, they're not as well regarded. They lost a lot of capability and prestige, and gained a little back. They haven't recovered to where they were.

What rock have I been working under? I've spent the last decade in American and German labs my dude.

Göttingen. We can know and we shall know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com