Edward Teller at Austrian TV - homages

[Franz Schönhofer <franz.schoenhofer@CHELLO.AT>]

Franz Schoenhofer

PhD, MR iR

Habicherg. 31/7

A-1160 Vienna

AUSTRIA

phone -43-0699-1168-1319



I never had the pleasure to meet Edward Teller personally, but I very

well remember a discussion on Austrian TV about nuclear issues, in which

Edward Teller participated. I do not and did not share his political

agenda about the nuclear race, but being interested in history and

especially in history of nuclear agenda and politics influenced by them

I am fully convinced that he played a very important role in recent

history and I fully esteem him as a very important contributor to

science.



If I remember correctly the discussion I want to refer to was in 1978,

just before there was a referendum in Austria on whether our ready-to-go

nuclear power plant should be started. (The referendum finished with -

what the greens called an overwhelming majority of - 50.4% "no" votes,

with a ridiculous low participation of about 60% of the population.) 



At this discussion there was of course the well-known distribution of

about five militant anti-nuclears against Teller. The anti-nuclears

started the discussion with an almost endless list of accusations,

especially accusing Teller for his contribution to the hydrogen-bomb.

One of them - Mr. Lötsch - was especially eager to make himself heard as

the top anti-nuclear, pro-environment advocate and put forward in some

sentences about ten accusations and even more topics, one of the

lousiest and best known tricks in the "art" of discussion. 



Edward Teller started to answer to Lötsch's accusations. He spoke to my

surprise a perfect German as spoken in Germany - no grammatical or

wording errors, most surprising no Hungarian accent (Ruth!). I am sure

that he came into contact with German in Hungary as a boy, but this must

have been the Austrian type. Thinking that he most probably learned

German during his studies in Germany in the 1920's this was amazing that

he fifty years later spoke it still fluently without accent!



Edward Teller had not taken any notes during the Lötsch accusations. He

started to calmly answer them one by one. Soon Lötsch started to

interrupt him and (well known lousy trick) accusing him of using to much

time of the discussion. Edward Teller looked smiling at him and told him

"You have put forward such a lot of topics, that I must have the

opportunity to answer them all, how much time this might take." Lötsch

and the others went down and they did not dare after Teller finished his

contribution after a rather long to start more attacks because they knew

that Teller would easily destroy their unjustified utterings with his

authority. 



So Edward Teller was without doubt a very outstanding personality. 



Franz





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