For Lenard, Einstein’s Nobel Prize was the final straw. Sixty years of age, seemingly outmaneuvered by Einstein at every turn, and feeling increasingly isolated, with his most creative years as a scientist behind him and his colleagues deserting experimental physics for the empty promise of relativity, there was nothing for him to do but to support the National Socialist German Workers Party. Nazi rhetoric promised a new world order, one that would not tolerate the dark ravings of the relativity Jew.
Following the Leipzig conference, Lenard mostly stepped away from serious science, dedicating himself to reactionary politics. He further personalized his anti-Jewish fervor. Einstein was the living personification of the depraved Jewish spirit that had insinuated itself into German science. At his Heidelberg presentation in the spring of 1922, Lenard had declaimed, “At the end I want to tell you that I hope that you will not think of me as an adversary of Einstein, as sometimes is stated. I am far from it, as this would be much too little. It would be too low a goal.”
What Lenard wished for was not simply the defeat of his old foe but the complete erasure of Einstein’s ideas, writings, and pronouncements—a blank slate, as though Einstein had never been born.
Chapter 10
Lenard and Hitler
On the afternoon of March 23, 1933, less than two months after President Paul von Hindenberg had appointed him Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, Adolf Hitler sat amid the members of Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. He appeared to listen thoughtfully as the Social Democrat leader Otto Wel implored the Reichstag to vote down the Enabling Act proposed by Hitler’s right-wing coalition.
Hitler realized that being in this place, at this time, put him on the cusp of a historic moment. He had begun his political ascent as the head of propaganda of the ultra-nationalist German Workers Party. In 1920, he assumed leadership and renamed the organization the National Socialist German Workers Party. For much of the next decade, the party’s fortunes rose and fell inversely with the economy. But as the icy grip of the worldwide depression took hold in 1929, and unemployment became epidemic, the Nazis’ scapegoating of socialists, communists, and Jews for the general misery gained currency among the populace. Party membership soared.
Despite his apparent calm, Hitler’s brain was racing ahead to when he would take the podium. He had thoroughly prepared himself for what he expected would be the defining speech of his political career. In effect, the passage of the Enabling Act would give Chancellor Hitler and his cabinet absolute dictatorial powers to pass decrees without Reichstag approval or the meddling of the aged president.
Wel finished with an impassioned plea for German honor. German honor! If only the Social Democrats had thought about German honor during the past fifteen years of kowtowing to the crippling demands of the armistice. If only they had rejected the myth foisted upon the public that Germany had been responsible for the Great War. They’d had their day, one that had lasted far too long. The time was ripe for revolution. Hitler was confident that he had just listened to the last embarrassingly mewling Reichstag speech he would ever have to hear.
When the crowd quieted, Hitler rose and made his way to the podium. Attired in a dark khaki combat uniform, a white armband bearing the Nazi swastika prominently encircling his left arm, he paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. Germany’s parliament had assembled that day in the main chamber of Berlin’s Kroll Opera House, because a month earlier the Reichstag building had mysteriously burned to the ground. It had clearly been arson, but the persons who set the fire remained at large. For the Nazis, the crime had been a godsend. The razing of the Reichstag had provided Chancellor Hitler with a pretext for his subsequent actions. Characterizing the fire as a communist plot, Hitler declared emergency powers, suspending individual rights in the name of public safety. To many, it all seemed too neat, as though it had been the Nazis who actually had ignited the blaze.
With new elections scheduled for March 5, Hitler unleashed his SA storm troopers into the streets to disrupt the activities of competing political factions. The brief campaign was among the most brutal in history. Nationalist reactionary factions, communists, and centrists battled openly in the streets while police looked the other way. Despite the rampant violence and unprecedented voter intimidation, the elections left the Nazis and their coalition of like-minded parties just short of a clear majority.
Hitler was not concerned about the electoral shortfall. He had thoroughly prepared for this moment. Nothing had been left to chance. Surveying the members of the Reichstag who were present that afternoon, he felt good about the Enabling Act’s chances for success. There was more than the usual number of empty seats. His storm troopers, who now surrounded the Opera to ensure there would be no interruptions, had rounded up the worker-backed communist members and many of the more outspoken Social Democrats. Many of these individuals would soon become guests of the Reich. They were destined to experience the grim hospitality of the newly built Dachau concentration camp. It would be the first of a number of such facilities intended to silence Nazi opposition.
Starting slowly and calmly, Hitler began his address:
Ladies and Gentlemen of the German Reichstag! By agreement with the Reich Government, today the National Socialist German Workers Party and the German National Peoples Party have presented to you for resolution a notice of motion concerning a “Law for Removing the Distress of Volk and Reich (the Enabling Act).” The reasons for this extraordinary measure are as follows: In November 1918, the Marxist organizations seized the executive power by means of a Revolution. Thus a breach of the Constitution was committed. . . . They sought moral justification by asserting that Germany or its government bore the guilt for the outbreak of the War.
His voice grew stronger and more emphatic as he denied Germany’s culpability for the Great War. He reeled off the crimes of the Weimar government, which he noted had caused “the severest oppression of the entire German Volk.” Spittle flew from his lips. His hands ticked off the reasons why the Reichstag must pass the Enabling Act, among them the mistreatment of ethnically German peoples living beyond Germany’s armistice-constricted borders and the impact of the egregious reparations demanded by the Allies as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Near the end, Hitler got to his “ask”:
It would be inconsistent with the aim of the [Nazi-led] national uprising, and it would fail to suffice for the intended goal if the Government were to negotiate with and request the approval of the Reichstag for its measures in each given case.
The Reich Government views a further session of the Reichstag as an impossibility under the present condition of a far-reaching state of excitation in the nation.
The outcome was never in doubt. The Reichstag, in essence, voted to relinquish authority and disband itself by the count of 491 to 94 in favor of the Enabling Act. The act, followed by the death of Hindenberg the next year, left Hitler with a clear path to cementing his victory by doing away with those he saw as his enemies, primarily Jews and communists. By the end of 1933, thirty thousand German citizens would be in government custody for “political crimes.”
Hitler’s ascent to Fuehrer of the Third Reich provided Philipp Lenard entrée into the most powerful halls of government. The Nazi party recognized Lenard to be an “Old Fighter,” among those who had joined the party prior to Hitler assuming power. Lenard’s speeches and writings evidenced his adoption of a reactionary philosophy that drove him toward the Nazi party as early as 1922. Beginning around that time, he’d begun to establish friendly personal relationships with a number of party leaders, including Hitler himself. Over the next several years, he became a familiar of Goebbels, Hess, and others among the Nazi leadership. Hitler wrote Lenard several very deferential personal letters, courting Lenard’s involvement in party activities. On October 23, 1926, Hitler wrote,
Highly esteemed professor!
Your amiable letter reached me late as I was away from Munich. Thank you very much indeed. On October 2nd or 3rd I was unable to
be in Karlsruhe, because the government of Baden prevented me from participating in any form [as part of the deal that released Hitler from serving his full sentence in prison]. I do sincerely hope that a conversation may be possible at another opportunity.
Hitler concluded the letter “With German Greetings,” which Lenard would certainly have recognized as a point of collegiality based on racial distinction.
After a 1927 donation of 100 marks, Lenard received a letter from Hitler, who was “grateful [for the] donation for the family of the killed in action Hirschmann and for the wounded. I want to thank you in their name as well as in the name of the movement.” Hitler’s reference to Georg Hirschmann confirms Lenard’s sympathies with and perhaps, by that time, membership in the party. Hirschmann was a shoemaker and a member of the Munich SA. He had led a group of fellow brown shirts in attacking a small street gathering of a rival political faction and had been clubbed in the head by a teenager named Karl Schott. He died the following day. At Hirschmann’s funeral, Hitler martyred the dead man as the fifth Nazi to die in action in 1927. He then employed the “us versus them” tactic that would become a staple of his popular speeches, promising that the political violence against the Nazi movement ensured Hirschmann’s would not be the last death they would mourn. To be a Nazi was to be oppressed but in the right. Despite the danger, the party would fight on.
By the time Hitler wrote Lenard in April 1929, he had become very direct in his efforts to recruit Lenard to the cause. “Much to my regret, I have heard that you visited the office and did not meet me,” Hitler wrote. “I would be delighted to welcome you personally another time, soon. Maybe it would be possible for you to come to Nuremberg for the party convention.”
What Hitler saw in Lenard were several qualities that he must have coveted. Despite the fact that his National Socialist German Workers Party had grown enormously in popular support since he had joined the party in 1920, it was still viewed by many potential voters as too extreme. Hitler would have perceived Lenard’s reputation as a Nobel Prize–winning scientist as attractive in improving the Nazis’ image and helping to convert more moderate Germans to his cause. Moreover, Hitler recognized in Lenard’s feud with Einstein evidence that Lenard was a true believer. They saw eye-to-eye on the dangers of Jewish encroachment into German culture.
Finally, it wasn’t just Lenard whom Hitler was recruiting. Along with Lenard came Einstein. Very early in his political development, Hitler hit upon the Jews as a scapegoat for what ailed the German people. However, he recognized he had a problem. It was hard to demonize an entire race in the abstract. He needed concrete examples. The liberal, internationalist, and, most importantly, Jewish Einstein was exactly the right whipping boy to further his party’s popularity among an increasingly angry and xenophobic German electorate.
Lenard was sixty-one years old in 1933, when Hitler consolidated his power. Despite his age, he had lost little of his passion for his concerns about the threat to German culture posed by Einstein and the Jewish spirit. Nonetheless, he recognized that time would eventually slow him down. He increasingly involved his younger acolyte, Johannes Stark, in collaborations designed to achieve his ends. Lenard and Stark were well matched. If it were possible, Stark held even more extreme reactionary scientific and anti-Semitic views.
Born in a remote part of Bavaria to well-to-do parents, Stark was an academic wunderkind, achieving his doctoral degree at age twenty-three from the University of Munich. After six years as an assistant at Goettingen and a brief stint at the University of Hanover, he was appointed professor at the University of Aachen in 1909. At this time, he was considered, along with Einstein, to be a leading proponent of quantum theory. By 1912, however, his quarrelsome nature began to get him into trouble. A former colleague at Goettingen, Nobelist James Franck, said of Stark, “He was a pain in the neck in every aspect. However, I have to admit he had good ideas. And early on, he had this idea that photochemistry was a quantum process. Not as clearly as Einstein, but nevertheless, he had it.”
Beginning in 1912, Stark engaged in a series of quarrels with Einstein over his perception that Einstein was usurping credit for discoveries that was rightfully his. Over similar concerns, he also alienated the politically powerful Arnold Sommerfeld, who had supported him for the Aachen position.
Stark’s dispute with Sommerfeld cost him dearly and set him on the path to radicalization. In 1914, he had hoped to be named the professor at Goettingen. He lost that opportunity in a humiliating battle with Sommerfeld, who arranged for a favorite student, Peter Derbye, to be appointed to the post. Gaining nothing for his effort, Stark claimed that the unfortunate outcome was attributable to a “Jewish and pro-Semitic circle and its enterprising business manager [Sommerfeld].” He had to settle for a professorship at the less well-regarded University of Greifswald in 1917.
Following the war, Stark took up conservative politics in earnest. He eventually became the professor of physics in Wuerzburg, where one of Lenard’s lifelong adversaries, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, had long been the chair. Stark and the University of Wuerzburg were a poor match nearly from the start. Unlike Greifswald, where the faculty was quite conservative, the political atmosphere at the University of Wuerzburg was mostly liberal. Stark’s disappointment with the views of his Wuerzburg colleagues and nationally among the members of the German Physical Society led to him organizing the reactionary German Professional Community of University Physicists. In doing so, he unnecessarily alienated any number of natural scientists whose support might have stood him in good stead during his later years of struggle.
Stark might have weathered the philosophical disputes, but the scientific differences between Stark and the Wuerzburg faculty were considerable and, ultimately, unbridgeable. Many of the natural scientists had fully embraced the new theoretical physics. As such, they could be disdainful of the simplistic notions held by classical, experimental physicists. When Stark accepted the thesis of his student Ludwig Glazer on the optical properties of porcelain, his colleagues cried foul on several grounds. Foremost, they questioned whether the topic really represented a sufficient advance to warrant granting an advanced university degree. They charged the topic was too applied, too simplistically practical. They mocked Stark for conferring a “doctorate of porcelain.”
They also had qualms about Stark’s motivations, charging that it was Glazer’s right-wing politics, so akin to Stark’s own, that had led to Stark’s acceptance of Glazer’s work. Lastly, it was discovered that several years earlier, Stark had invested heavily in a porcelain-manufacturing concern. Even though the rules concerning conflicts of interest were lax in those times, this revelation earned him considerable criticism. Something of a hothead, and holding little sway with his faculty, Stark concluded that the University of Wuerzburg was a nest of “Einstein-lovers” and resigned his chair.
Shortly after leaving his position in Wuerzburg in 1923 and entering the commercial sector, Stark published a book that would dog him for its intemperance and help to ensure that, despite applying for six different university appointments over the next decade, he would not receive serious consideration for another academic post until Hitler came to power in 1933. The Current Crisis in German Physics heavily criticized theoretical physics and its practitioners. He had earlier reversed his support for quantum theory, and he now attacked it with a vengeance, citing it along with relativity theory as topics that should be banned from the educational curriculum throughout Germany.
Stark also drew unflattering parallels between the theory of relativity and certain social, moral, and political changes occurring at the time, referred to as “relativism.” This was a common theme among relativity naysayers. At the core of relativism is the absence of absolutes in morality, acceptable behavior, and philosophy, a fearful thought for many stolid German Protestants.
Stark doubtlessly understood that relativity had nothing to do with relativism, but he exploited the homonymic similarity of the two words as one more reason
to be suspicious of Einstein’s work. He resurrected Lenard’s now familiar complaint that Einstein had unduly promoted the theory of relativity in the “un-German” popular press. While the text fell short of outright anti-Semitic statements, the message came through clearly: the Jews were at the heart of what Stark considered the “crisis.”
Because of the stir it caused, many more scientists likely read Max von Laue’s review of Stark’s book in the journal Die Nurwissenshaften than actually read the book itself. Von Laue, a well-respected professor of physics at the University of Berlin, had received the 1914 Nobel Prize for demonstrating that X-rays were diffracted by crystals. Von Laue’s assessment of the book dismissed the attacks on his friend Einstein as unworthy of comment. However, he took Stark to task for making unfavorable comments about physics and physicists:
But Mr. Stark should really have preserved enough respect for his own former activity to not debase it publicly. . . . This severance [his resigning at Wuerzburg] surely did not take place without some conflict. . . . All in all, we would have wished that this book had remained unwritten, that is, in the interest of science, in general, of German science, in particular, and not least of all in the interest of the author, himself.
During the 1920s and into the next decade, as the frequency and stridency of their attacks intensified, Lenard and Stark recruited junior scientists who were aligned with their philosophy or whom they could bully into joining them in writing articles reflecting their personal point of view. One example is an article by a student of Stark’s, Willi Menzel, following the publication of Lenard’s Deutsche Physik. In the January 29, 1936, edition of Volkischer Beobachter, Menzel virtually parroted sections of Lenard’s introduction to his book, making assertions identical to Lenard’s but framing them as his own. Ambitious and venal, Menzel proved a willing accomplice to Lenard and Stark’s attacks:
The Man Who Stalked Einstein Page 14