is the title of a new doctoral thesis in German language by Albrecht Pohlmann, 1910, University of Halle.

It describes also Ostwald’s activities with the Bridge, the Munich "Institute for the Organization of Intelellectual Work" (Chapter 4. 2. 2) and contains some further chapters of interest also for media historians like chapter 8.3. "The copied image" and others.

Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909, is among the scientists who have devoted themselves to the principles of visual design. This dissertation comprehensively represents, for the first time, the genesis of his colour theory in the scientific, art political, art historical and aesthetic context of its time. Since 1903 he devoted himself to painting technique, and finally, in 1914, he developed a colour atlas on behalf of the Deutscher Werkbund. His aim was to create an authoritative colour system as a means of understanding for artists, designers and architects, given the confusingly large amount of new colourants. Ostwald established a new theory of body colours based upon the four-colour theorem of Ewald Hering, which made it possible to measure colours in a simple manner. At the same time, from the organizing principles of his colour system (a colour solid in the form of a double cone) he developed a colour harmony. After World War I, he encountered protest of expressionist artists. Constructivists and functionalists took particular interest in his theories, such as with the Dutch ‘De-Stijl’ group, the Russian avant-garde movement and at the Bauhaus, where Ostwald taught in 1927 at the invitation of Walter Gropius. The main objective of his art technological research was to create a universal grammar of visual media in the era of the second technological revolution, hence his interest in photography, abstract film and picture transmission. The reproducibility of works of art appeared to him to be the requirement of a democratic society. His practical art technological experiments were embedded in a comprehensive art and media theory, which Ostwald had developed on the basis of his “Energetics” (1891) and his positivist “Philosophy of Nature” (1902).

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One of the lesser‑known projects of the German physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, a 1909 Nobel laureate and one of the last major scientific figures to oppose atomism, was the creation of an association for the ‘organization’ of science. … Among the plethora of ‘unity of science’ efforts that became prominent during the years preceding the First World War, the Bridge was distinctive for Ostwald’s emphasis on the ‘international organization’ of science as a means of furthering ‘scientific effiiciency’. [2] Although its tenure was short—from 1909 to 1914—the Bridge became the centre of a number of projects intended to promote ‘scientific efficiency’ through ‘organization’.

“The organization of organizers through the Bridge” – Title of a Bridge publication by Ostwald

From Energism, Ostwald claimed to have derived a ‘moral law of science’, the energetic imperative: ‘Do not waste energy, but transform it into a more useful form.’ [6] The ‘energetic imperative’ became, in turn, the basis for Ostwald’s stress on the ‘efficient organization’ of science. […] Ostwald, then, viewed the Bridge as a means of ‘organizing’, within the scientific community the ‘efficiency’ demanded by the ‘energetic imperative.’ All projects of the Bridge were to be ‘applications of the single fundamental idea of organization.’ [7] One project of the Bridge—a project to promote Esperanto as the exclusive language of international scientific conferences—resulted from Ostwald’s insistence that an auxiliary language would facilitate ‘more direct communication’ between scientists and eliminate the ‘energy waste’ involved in translations. Ostwald described still another project—the World Format—as an effort to ‘maximize the efficient use of energy’ by standardizing publication formats. The World Format was a standardized format for published scientific reports and abstracts; it even included specific dimensions for the size of paper on which reports were to be printed. Similarly, Ostwald believed that the Bridge would promote ‘efficiency’ in science by attempting to extend the metric system of weights and measures ‘into English speaking countries’.

From: Holt, Niles R. ‘Wilhelm Ostwald’s “The Bridge”â€, British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 10, Part 2, no. 35, July 1977, pp. 146-150. See also: Niles R. Holt, A Note on Wilhelm Ostwald’s Energism, Isis, 61 (1970) 3, 386-389

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• Hapke, Thomas: Wilhelm Ostwald, the “Brücke” (Bridge), and connections to other bibliographic activities at the beginning of the twentieth century. In: Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems / Edited by Mary Ellen Bowden, Trudi Bellardo Hahn, Robert V. Williams. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 1999. S. 139-147.

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