Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations by Werner Heisenberg

Author:Werner Heisenberg [Heisenberg, Werner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ensayo, Ciencias naturales, Filosofía, Memorias
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1969-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

11

Discussions about Language (1933)

The golden age of atomic physics was now fast drawing to an end. In Germany political unrest was increasing. Radical groups of the right and the left came out into the streets, fought in the backyards of the poorer quarters and tried to break up each other’s meetings. Almost imperceptibly, tension mounted, even at the university and during faculty meetings. For a time I tried to close my eyes to the danger, to ignore the ugly scenes in the street. But, when all is said and done, reality is stronger than all our wishes—this time it entered my consciousness in the form of a dream. One Sunday morning I was due to go on a bicycle tour with Carl Friedrich, and I had set the alarm clock for five o’clock. Just before I woke up, I saw a strange vision in my half-sleep. I was walking up the Ludwigstrasse in Munich at first light, just as I had done in the spring of 1919. The street was bathed in a reddish, increasingly intense and uncanny glow. Crowds of people with scarlet and black-red-and-white flags were streaming from the Victory Gate toward the university fountains and the air was filled with noise and uproar. Suddenly, just in front of me, a machine gun began to cough. I tried to jump to safety and woke up; the sputtering of the gun was simply the ringing of my alarm clock, and the reddish light the morning sun on my bedroom curtains. From that moment I knew that we were once again facing hard times.

After the catastrophe of January 1933 I took just one more happy holiday with old friends, long remembered by all of us as a beautiful but painful farewell to the “golden age.”

I had the use of a skiing hut on an alpine meadow high above the village of Bayrischzell on the southern slope of the Grosse Traithen. It had been restored by friends from the Youth Movement after an avalanche had half-destroyed it. The father of one of my comrades, a timber merchant, had supplied the necessary materials and tools, the farmer who owned the hut had carried them up to the meadow during the summer, and within a few glorious autumn weeks my friends had put up a new roof, repaired the shutters and fixed up a dormitory inside. As a reward, all of us were allowed to use the hut as a skiing hostel, and for Easter 1933 I invited Niels and his son Christian, Felix Bloch and Carl Friedrich for a skiing holiday. Niels, Christian and Felix decided to come to Oberaudorf straight from Salzburg, where Niels had an engagement, and climb the rest of the way. Carl Friedrich and I had gone up two days earlier to fix things up and to lay in provisions. A few weeks earlier, during the good weather, cases of food had been delivered to the Brünnstein refuge, whence we had to carry them up to our hut, just under an hour’s walk away, in rucksacks.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.