The Uranium Club by Miriam E Hiebert

Author:Miriam E Hiebert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2023-03-29T09:02:27+00:00

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From his seat at the University of Leipzig, Heisenberg watched in horror as the ideological perversions of physics offered by Lenard and Stark took hold, and the principles of modern physics, the crown jewel of German scientific superiority, which Heisenberg himself had played a large part in developing, began disappearing from classrooms and lecture halls across the country.

As a leading voice in German physics, Heisenberg felt that it was his duty to take on the “spectre of national hubris manifesting itself so clearly in ‘aryan physics.’”4 Heisenberg continued to teach relativity in his classrooms and gave a series of lectures defending the viewpoint of “true physics” as he saw it as well as defending the physicists, his friends and colleagues, who had developed it. In February 1936, he even published an article in the Völkischer Beobachter, a typically pro-Nazi newspaper, attempting to calmly and reasonably explain to a public audience the importance of not abandoning true physics. But as Elisabeth astutely observed, “Heisenberg had underestimated his opponent.”5

At the time of his marriage to Elisabeth in April 1937, Heisenberg was finishing up what was intended to be his final semester of teaching at the University of Leipzig. He had been offered an appointment at his alma mater, the University of Munich, taking the place of his retiring doctoral supervisor Arnold Sommerfeld.

When the newlyweds arrived in Munich that July, a few weeks later than expected due to illness, Heisenberg called the university chancellor to let him know of his arrival and ask for more information regarding his new appointment. Heisenberg was surprised by the terseness of the chancellor’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Have you already seen6 Das Schwarze Korps?” the chancellor asked, referring to the pseudonews publication of Hitler’s SS.

Heisenberg, who did not make a habit of reading the propaganda paper, had no clue what the chancellor was referring to. He ran down to the nearest shop and bought a copy of the July 15 issue. Inside, he was stunned to see the headline WHITE JEWS IN THE SCIENCES. The article, penned by none other than Johannes Stark, contained a full-throated personal and ideological attack on Heisenberg himself, referring to Heisenberg and his theoretical-physics colleagues as “Einstein disciples.”7

While Heisenberg was singled out in this article, the attacks were aimed more broadly at modern physics, linking it to Judaism and declaring it decidedly non-German. The article read: “Heisenberg is only one example among several others. All of them are puppets of Jewry in German intellectual life and must disappear just as the Jews themselves.”8 In a few paragraphs, Stark had pitted Heisenberg, his work, and all of modern physics squarely and explicitly in opposition to the Nazi regime.

Heisenberg was at a loss for what to do. This article was surely going to cost him his new position at the University of Munich. But beyond that, Heisenberg feared, it might cost him his reputation as an expert and authority of the highest caliber. Suddenly, Heisenberg found himself relegated to a similar fate as his Jewish colleagues.

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