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Robert Jungk

Austrian historian, journalist, and activist (1913–1994)

Summary

Austrian historian, journalist, and activist (1913–1994)

Field	Value
name	Robert Jungk
birth_name	Robert Baum
birth_date
birth_place	Berlin
death_date
death_place	Salzburg, Austria
occupation	Writer, Journalist, Historian, Peace campaigner
spouse	Ruth Suschitzky (m. 1948)
children	Peter Stephan Jungk
notable_works	Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists
awards	Right Livelihood Award (1986)
genre	Non-fiction
subject	Nuclear weapons, Future studies, Peace

Robert Jungk (; born Robert Baum, also known as Robert Baum-Jungk; 11 May 1913 – 14 July 1994) was an Austrian writer, journalist, historian and peace campaigner. He wrote mostly on matters relating to nuclear weapons.

Life

Jungk was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. His father, known as Max Jungk, was born David Baum in Bohemia.

When Adolf Hitler came to power, Robert Jungk was arrested and released, moved to Paris, then back to Nazi Germany to work in a subversive press service. These activities forced him during World War II to move through various cities including Prague, Paris, and Zürich. After the war, he continued working as a journalist.

His book Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, was the first published account of the Manhattan Project and the German atomic bomb project. Its first Danish edition implied that the German project's workers had been dissuaded from developing a weapon by Werner Heisenberg and his associates, a claim strongly contested by the Danish 1922 Physics Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr. This led to questions about a 1941 meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in Copenhagen, Denmark, which became the subject of Michael Frayn's 1998 play Copenhagen.

In 1986 Jungk received the Right Livelihood Award for "struggling indefatigably on behalf of peace, sane alternatives for the future and ecological awareness."

In 1992 he made an unsuccessful bid for the Austrian presidency on behalf of the Green Party.

Jungk died in Salzburg on 14 July 1994.

Personal life

In 1948 Jungk married Ruth Suschitzky (1913–1995). Their son is journalist and writer Peter Stephan Jungk.

Bibliography

Tomorrow Is Already Here, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954. Reportage on scientific and technical breakthroughs, a work of nascent dystopian 'futurism'. Much of it was about what developed from the Manhattan Project, as well as things like "electronic brains".
Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1958
Children of the Ashes, 1st English ed. 1961. About Hiroshima
The Nuclear State
The Everyman Project
Future Workshops

Recognition

1970: Honorary Professor at Technische Universität Berlin
1986: Right Livelihood Award
1989: Honorary Citizen of the City of Salzburg
1992: Alternative Büchner Prize
1993: Honorary Doctor of the University of Osnabrück
1993: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art
1993: Salzburg Award for Future Research
2000: The anti-Wackersdorf reprocessing plant-monument on Mozartplatz (Salzburg) is, among others also dedicated to him.

Notes

References

Calder, John. (17 July 1994). "Obituary: Robert Jungk". The Independent.
"Robert Jungk".
[https://jungk-bibliothek.org/robert-jungk-a-life-dedicated-to-the-future/ Robert Jungk – A Life Dedicated to the Future]
[http://www.peterstephanjungk.com/about-me/ Peter Stephan Jungk]

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

20th-century-austrian-historians 20th-century-austrian-journalists austrian-male-journalists 20th-century-male-journalists 20th-century-austrian-male-writers 20th-century-german-journalists historians-of-nuclear-weapons journalists-from-berlin jewish-german-journalists jewish-historians jewish-austrian-writers writers-from-salzburg austrian-anti–nuclear-power-activists futurologists sustainability-advocates the-greens-(austria)-politicians recipients-of-the-austrian-cross-of-honour-for-science-and-art candidates-for-president-of-austria politicians-from-salzburg austrian-people-of-german-descent 20th-century-austrian-jews 20th-century-german-jews 1913-births 1994-deaths

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