This was not the first time Fritz Arndt went to Turkey, who escaped from the persecution of Hitler in 1933 to save his life. Fritz Arndt was one of the three German chemists invited to reform Darülfünun in 1914, within the framework of the agreement between the German government and the Ottoman government.
He was born in 1885. He studied chemistry at the University of Freiburg. 1908 Became a professor at the University of Breslau. He went to Turkey during the First World War (1915). He was called upon to initiate and develop academic chemistry learning in Turkey. He worked as a chemistry professor at Darülfünun in Istanbul for many years. He returned to his native Germany in 1918, after Istanbul fell into the hands of the occupying forces. In 1934, he was invited to Istanbul University as a Professor. He spoke good Turkish. When he came for the second time, he worked tirelessly for 21 years in the academic training of Turkish chemists and the organization of their education. He returned to Germany in 1955. He died in Hamburg at the end of 1969.
Professor F Arnd, in his book Turkish Experimental Chemistry published in Istanbul, says the following about Aristotle: "The fact that the progress of science and science stopped in almost one thousand and five hundred years is partly the fault of Aristotelian philosophy."
Details of his life story
Coming from a wealthy merchant family, Arndt worked with many famous professors at many universities throughout his life. He received his doctorate at the University of Freiburg in 1908 with the highest marks. He concluded his studies at different universities with various publications. He passed the exam in 1912 and became an associate professor.
He married in 1914 and had three children. His eldest son, Heinz Wolfgang Arndt, studied economics at Oxford University in England, where he went with his father in 1933 and became a professor at the University of Canberra in Australia. His second son, Walter W. Arndt, was born in 1916; After a rather adventurous life, he became a professor of linguistics in the United States. His daughter, Bettina Arndt, studied painting in Lausanne and Vienna and spent her life as a painting conservator in the USA.
Leaving his country was not difficult for him. Arndt touches on this in his memoirs: “I had to make sacrifices to protect myself. Either I stay here and eventually, I'll grow old without doing anything. Or I would take an active part in world events. After being able to live in an environment that will fight against wrong education and conservative traditions.”
Arndt started to give his lessons in Turkish a year after his arrival; He even wrote two textbooks. Knowing that there would not be much progress in the science of chemistry with his theoretical book knowledge, Arndt attached great importance to experimental chemistry. He described this process in his memoirs as follows: “Learning Turkish and my students learning modern laboratory chemistry went hand in hand. This situation continued until he wrote a Turkish book that taught laboratory technique to the students in 1916 and explained it in his own Turkish.”