I there was an urgent need for reform of the education system at Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, which was seen as a prerequisite for meeting the requirements of a modern industrial society. Intense discussions were held on the aim of extending the curriculum beyond the purely technical education in order to prepare the engineer for his leading role in society. A concrete step in this direction was taken in 1924, when the 'General Faculty', which until then had combined all the non-technical subjects, was divided into a Department of Mathematics and Natural Science and a Department of Cultural Studies and Political Science. Moreover, the measures taken to provide students with knowledge outside their own field of study included the upgrading of Economics and the creation of professorships in political science, history of technology and sociology. During World War II Like other academic institutions in Germany, TU Darmstadt suffered an exodus of scholars following the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933. Most notably, Gerhard Herzberg, the 1971 Nobel laureate in chemistry, was dismissed from TU Darmstadt in 1934 because his wife was Jewish and emigrated with his family to Canada. On the night of 11/12 September 1944, eighty per cent of the city, including many of the university's buildings, were destroyed during a bomb attack. For a short period in 1945, parts of the TH Darmstadt may have been closed by decree of the Allies before it was reopened in 1946. The electrical engineering department remained continuously functional, doing work under contract with the U.S. Army to build components of the V-2 guidance system. "But we have to be careful how we word this production order because we don't want the Russians to know that we are cranking up the V-2 system." In spite of the difficult post-war situation, university staff and students alike managed to settle down to university work in the severely damaged buildings, which had to be used as a makeshift solution. Post World War II As early as 1947, Technische Hochschule Darmstadt hosted the first Internationaler Kongress für Ingenieurausbildung (International Congress on Engineering Education), at which the participants discussed the moral responsibility of the technical intelligentsia and of the scientific elite in politics and society. In view of the disastrous consequences of the war, the participants (with the exception of the Americans, who had already contracted with THD faculty to continue weapon development), committed themselves henceforth to