This collection includes the papers and personal science library of Herbert Holl, a German astronomer and physicist. Holl’s career represents several significant historical moments in 20th-century physics, particularly the era immediately before and during World War II, and the post-war transplantation of German scientists to the US to establish the American space program.

The Collection

Dr. Holl’s collection includes heavily annotated books, correspondence and papers. By all accounts, Holl was very meticulous in organizing his papers and library. He was an avid bibliofile. His library occupied several rooms of his home in Huntsville, Alabama, totalling four or five thousand books, with a special emphasis in German literature. Holl’s library inventory is an interesting source for understanding the culture of the German scientific community in Huntsville.

The Holl Collection includes many hard to find pre-war German publications, such as Josef Pernter, Meteorologische Optik (Wein, 1922). Of the 558 titles acquired, 404 are in German; 3 are in Russian; and 364 are by authors not previously represented in the History of Science Collections. Over 100 titles were published before 1940, and another 100 between 1941 and 1950. (View catalog records.)

Biographical Sketch

Born in Hamburg in 1913 to a poor family, Herbert Holl educated himself through evening classes, then pursued university study at Hamburg and Jena, and eventually became an astronomer. At the beginning of World War II he worked at the observatory of the University of Jena on a series of optical experiments which led to the completion of his doctoral dissertation, in 1943 under Prof. H. Seidentopf, on the changing brightness and color of the sky during the dawn.

From 1941 to 1943 he served in the German Air-Force as a meteorologist, and at some point was stationed as far east as Odessa, before being called back to Jena for compulsory service to the German Weapon Office (Heereswaffenamt) before the end of the war. Immediately after the war (June, 1945) he arranged a transfer from Russian-controlled Thuringia to American-controlled Heidenheim. He continued to work in West Germany on various light-scattering phenomena and astronomical problems in optics from 1945 to 1952. From 1953 to 1958 he worked as a research physicist for the Junkers corporation in Wernau.

In 1959 he emigrated to Huntsville, Alabama to work for the ABMA (Army Ballistic Missile Agency), Redstone Arsenal, in the Aeroballistic Division (later transfered to NASA). During part of this time he worked with Wernher von Braun. He became frustrated when the most interesting work at NASA was being outsourced, so in 1961 he left the space program for the US army, working for ARGMA (Army Rocket and Guided Missile Agency) in the Future Missiles Systems Division, where he continued until his death in 2000. Much of his later work pertained to SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), e.g., target detection.

Holl’s papers are published in Reichsberichte fuer Physik, Optik, Astronomische Nachrichten and NASA Technical Notes. His bookplate (shown above, right) features the constellation of Orion the Hunter above the motto per aspera ad astra (“through difficulties, to the stars”).

The Holl collection and archive hold a value for research that exceeds the sum of the separate parts. Historians using materials in the Holl collection may attend to the marginalia in the books and to the correspondence and papers in search of a holistic portrait of the context of the momentous events and notable communities in which Holl took part.