Heisenberg returned his thanks in August 1934 by refusing to sign a proclamation by the German Nobel Laureates for his support of the Fuehrer and Chancellor. His response then was, ‘Although I personally vote ‘yes,’ political declarations by scientists seem to me improper, since this was never a normal practice even formerly. Therefore, I do not sign’. . . . This response exemplifies the Jewish mentality of its author. . . . 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.
The last paragraph called upon Johannes Stark to comment on its contents, as though he’d had nothing to do with instigating the article to begin with. In his commentary, Stark acknowledged the wisdom of the Das Schwarze Korps article in his opening sentences: “The preceding article is basically so appropriate and complete that further additions would really be superfluous.” However, his approval did not stop him from inscribing another five hundred words on his favorite themes.
Himmler had read enough to know that things had gotten out of hand. Left to their own devices, Lenard and Stark’s rhetoric might get Heisenberg killed by some crazed storm trooper or, worse, run him out of Germany where another country might pick him up. He would have to call off Stark and his aged mentor, Philipp Lenard, at least until he decided how to handle this affair. He would be in a bind no matter how things turned out. War was coming, and they would need Heisenberg’s brain, but if his office simply ignored the situation, he’d have Stark at his door. Not to mention Mutti. As though he didn’t already have enough to do without inserting himself into the petty squabbles of scientists!
The heat on Himmler turned up a notch when, just five days after the original article was published in Das Schwarze Korps, a letter dated July 20, 1937, from a University of Leipzig colleague of Heisenberg’s, Friedrich Hund, turned up at the offices of Reichminister for Science, Education, and National Culture Bernhard Rust. The letter complained of Stark’s “abusive statements” about Heisenberg “that exceeded all bounds of decency.” The author closed his letter with “I have confidence that you, Mister Reichminister, will prevent the President of the Reich Physical and Technical Institute from injuring the honor of our science any further in this matter.”
Luckily, much of the decision concerning what to do about Heisenberg was taken out of Himmler’s hands by Heisenberg himself. On July 21, 1937, Heisenberg wrote directly to Himmler demanding either Himmler’s approval of Stark’s attacks or that he lodge an objection with Stark and warn him not to engage in future attacks. He further requested that he undergo a formal investigation of the charges made in the sequence of articles appearing in Das Schwarze Korps.
Himmler thought Heisenberg’s suggestion an excellent idea and conducted his investigation with a vengeance. He had three members of his personal staff—all former students of physics—install microphones in Heisenberg’s home and attend his lectures at Leipzig University. On several occasions, Heisenberg was brought to Gestapo headquarters to undergo daylong interrogations that left him shaken. The investigators spent an inordinate amount of time on Heisenberg’s sexuality. It was rumored that the married scientist was a homosexual, a crime under Nazi law, punishable by imprisonment in a concentration camp.
Exactly one year to the day, July 21, 1938, Himmler wrote two letters that settled the issue. One letter he sent to SS Gruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, essentially saying that Germany could not afford to lose or silence Heisenberg, as he was necessary to the education of a generation of scientists. The other letter was a personal note to Heisenberg:
I have had your case examined with particular care and scrutiny, since you are recommended to me by my family. I am happy to be able to inform you today that I do not approve of the offensive article by Das Schwarze Korps and that I have put a stop to any further attacks on you. I hope that I can see you at my office in Berlin someday in the autumn—though only very late, in November or December—so that we can have a man-to-man talk about this.
Himmler signed the letter “With friendly greetings and Heil Hitler!” and added a postscript: “I do find it appropriate, though, that in the future you separate clearly for your students acknowledgment of scientific research results from the scientist’s personal and political views.” Going forward, Heisenberg was to make a point about the source of the information he’d imparted and advise his students of the source’s standing from the perspective of the Third Reich.
It was ironic that Stark had gone after Heisenberg based on the younger man’s relationship with Einstein. Although Heisenberg’s work owed much to Einstein’s, the two were somewhat distant with each other and never resolved fundamental differences in key conceptions of theoretical physics. Heisenberg later recalled a conversation he’d had with Einstein concerning the role that theory played in the progress of science. In a conversation about the structure of the atom following Einstein’s attendance at a lecture that Heisenberg delivered in 1926 at the University of Berlin, Einstein invited Heisenberg to walk with him. Years later, Heisenberg remembered what they’d discussed:
Heisenberg: Since a good theory must be based on directly observable magnitudes, I thought it more fitting to restrict myself to these [observations of emitted radiation], treating them, as it were, as representatives of electron orbits.
Einstein: But you don’t seriously believe that none but observable magnitudes must go into a physical theory?
Heisenberg: Isn’t that precisely what you have done with relativity?
Einstein: Possibly I did use this kind of reasoning, but it is nonsense all the same. . . . It is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. . . . It is the theory which decides what we can observe.
In essence, Heisenberg was drawing his arguments from the experimentalists, albeit in a much more civilized manner than Lenard or Stark, neither of whom was prone to mannerly subtleties.
In taking stock of what had transpired between Stark and Heisenberg, it was clear to Himmler that Stark had not progressed with the times. Stark presented several specific liabilities that he could no longer abide. First, he was an unrepentant ideologue who unfailingly seemed to make enemies. An internal SS report commissioned by Himmler found that although Stark was philosophically aligned with the National Socialist movement, he was politically inept. His insistence on fostering only research that met his own tightly circumscribed criteria too often ran afoul of the pragmatic needs of the state. To Himmler, good research was research that served the interests of the Reich.
Moreover, Stark failed to recognize the importance to Himmler of his own special interest in research. Himmler was a devotee of the occult. He had been pursuing evidence in support of the “world ice theory,” which hypothesized that modern-day Aryans were descendants of an ancient Aryan culture that had ruled the world. Himmler had incorporated into the SS a research division known as Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe, which had commissioned several expeditions to Germany, Finland, and Sweden to conduct archeological and anthropological investigations that Himmler felt would support his contentions.
Karl Weigel, a member of Himmler’s Ahnenerbe research group, requested funding from Stark’s German Research Fund for an Ahnenerbe project. Stark rejected the proposal, arguing that Ahnenerbe was “unscientific.” The ensuing SS report was forwarded to Himmler. Himmler interpreted Stark’s failure to demonstrate any understanding of, take an interest in, or have his research fund sponsor projects dealing with Himmler’s theories as a rejection of Himmler’s beliefs.
Stark also had other failings that now made him a target. He had never enjoyed the support of German scientists, to whom he appeared power hungry and overbearing. Several years previously, the responsibility for overseeing scientific research had been transferred from the highly supportive Reichminister Wilhelm Frick to Bernhard Rust, with whom Stark had previously scuffled. Perhaps for some inadvertent slight or simply for the thrill of the intrigue at the highest leve
ls of German government, Rust claimed that Stark had made derogatory comments about the Reich’s scientific policies to outsiders, and as punishment halved his research budget.
Perhaps most significantly, Stark had a way of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. He had gotten himself into considerable trouble by calling for the punishment of a local National Socialist official who had been convicted of embezzlement, which ran afoul of a powerful regional party official. Unwittingly, Stark had violated a party rule concerning jurisdiction. The Nazi Party took him to court, calling for his dismissal. Although ultimately an appeals court refused to progress to trial in recognition of Stark’s early support of Adolf Hitler, Stark was humiliated.
In the end, even his friends in the party turned on him. Alfred Rosenberg no longer published his articles in Voelkischer Beobachter, nor were his opinions welcome in Das Schwarze Korps. A major pet project failed miserably. He had invested a great deal of the Reich’s money in a misguided scheme to alchemically turn peat hewn from the swamps of southern Germany into gold. To avoid this chicanery coming to light, he was required to “voluntarily” step down from his post with the German Research Fund. In Stark’s mind, the concatenation of events proved what he had known all along: there was a conspiracy against him.
Most of Germany’s natural scientists watched the demise of Stark and Lenard’s influence with satisfaction. The pair had made few friends during their time lording over the natural sciences, and Stark’s interpretation of the Fuehrer Principle had quashed debate. Deutsche Physik became a terminal footnote to what, before the civil service law, had been a remarkable flowering of German science. The few remaining advocates of Deutsche Physik were silenced. In 1940, National Socialist leadership called for the recognition of relativity theory and quantum mechanics as acceptable bases for scientific work. Lenard’s twenty-year fight against Einstein, the man, and his far-reaching theories finally was over. His influence at an end, the long-retired professor faded into obscurity. War was coming. War demanded a more pragmatic approach to scientific investigation.
Stark returned to his family estate in rural Bavaria, where he suffered the aftereffects of his disillusionment with the Nazi bureaucracy. Still a target of retribution for his many enemies, Stark’s son Hans was arrested by the Gestapo on a trumped-up charge of being too kind to a Polish slave laborer and was sent to the Eastern front. When Stark tried to resign from the National Socialist Party, local officials forced him to remain a Nazi by making further threats upon his son’s life. Toward the end of the war, Stark’s rural estate was taken over by an SS officer who eventually gave way to the occupation of the American military.
In 1945, Stark was arrested by the Allied authorities. He faced trial for war crimes. In court, old enmities came home to roost. Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg, and Arnold Sommerfeld all testified against him. From the other side of the Atlantic, Einstein submitted written testimony that Stark had been “a highly egocentric person with an unusually high craving for recognition . . . [and a] paranoid personality.” On June 20, 1947, a tribunal found Johannes Stark guilty, and classified him as bearing major guilt (Hauptschuldiger). Despite being over seventy years old, he was sentenced to four years at hard labor.
The appeals process reversed the initial verdict, downgrading his offenses to those of a “follower.” According to the appeals court, Stark had “never acted unilaterally to cause damage to non-National Socialists among his colleagues” and that “his ideological advocacy for National Socialism had never led to condemnable actions.” He paid a fine of 1,000 marks and was freed.
In their prime, Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark had experienced something close to absolute power over the German scientific community. They had held in their hands the lives of tens of thousands and almost without exception had used their authority for ill. Their decline was abrupt and painful, all the more so because they failed to see their own complicity in the factors that had led to their fall. They had been active participants in the era of Nazism. By their mindless adherence to a philosophical belief in the superiority of one race over another, they caused irreparable harm to countless lives and, ultimately, had much to do with the decimation of their own country.
Epilogue: Unapologetic Lives
Gingerly grasping the nail between his right thumb and forefinger, Philipp Lenard tapped his hammer tentatively at first, then with a bit more vigor. He tested the nail to be certain that it held firmly in the whitewashed plaster. Bent with age, his arms restricted by the tight-fitting dark suit he had donned for his birthday portrait earlier in the day, he turned to lift from his desk a framed photograph. His hands shook as he raised it high and looped the frame’s braided wire hanger over the nail. He took a step backward to improve his perspective before alternately sliding the dark wood frame left and right until it was perfectly aligned, top and bottom parallel with the ceiling.
Lenard gazed at the image, soaking in every detail as though he feared it might vanish. The portrait depicted a powerful visage caught, seemingly unaware, in a serious contemplative moment. The Fuehrer’s eyes stared intently from the base of a high, smooth brow. Lenard knew, firsthand, the eyes to be a brilliant piercing blue and how unnerving it could be to stare into their unblinking intensity. Beneath the distinctive nose sat the small swath of hair that had become so recognizable as to become fodder for caricature. The professor smiled his old man’s smile, further deepening the furrows that lined his face. He was eighty years old that day. What a remarkable surprise. He could not have imagined a better gift.
Lenard seated himself at his desk, but only for an instant. Unable to contain his excitement, he grasped his cane and pushed himself halfway out of his chair to scrutinize once more the signature in the lower corner of the portrait. The Fuehrer, himself, had signed it. He glanced again at the image. To Lenard, the pathos in the Fuehrer’s expression expressed all that need be said. He had sacrificed everything, even gone to prison, to restore the Fatherland to its rightful place, chief among nations. Lenard experienced a frisson of pleasure, imagining that at this very moment, perhaps, the Fuehrer’s armies were exacting harsh retribution upon those who had unfairly humbled the German people following the Great War.
Lenard turned his attention to the large, khaki-colored envelope that had arrived by courier earlier in the day. If the Fuehrer had sent only the photograph, that would have been ecstasy. But, in fact, there had been a letter too. A personal letter from the Fuehrer. He wiped his fingers on his fine wool trousers before laying his hands on the letter. Skimming the contents, Lenard came quickly to the words that, despite his having read them several times, still dizzied him with their praise. “With you, the National Socialists’ thoughts have had a courageous supporter and brave fighter since the beginning, who effectively curtailed the Jewish influence on science and who always has been my faithful and appreciated colleague. This shall never be forgotten.”
Lenard nodded. He had supported the National Socialist’s cause long before the politics of the times demanded it. In retrospect, he had been impetuous. But when the Nazis came to power, the gamble paid off. The party awarded Lenard its highest honors. After his retirement in 1932, the Reich had immortalized him by naming for him the Institute of Physics at the University of Heidelberg, where he had been the director for most of his career. The Philipp Lenard Institute, he thought, and nearly spoke the words aloud.
Grand as these accolades were, the professor felt there had been something lacking. The public had not loved him in the same way it had favored other scientists, even those of lesser accomplishment. He had never escaped his deep disappointment in the scant public recognition his discoveries had garnered. Receiving the Nobel Prize for his work describing the emanations of cathode ray tubes had been the zenith. But even then, neither his colleagues nor the masses had properly acknowledged the importance of his contributions. He had been in the thick of so many discoveries. Without so much as a nod in his direction, covetous charlatans and fame seekers had
stolen the credit that rightfully was his.
He picked up his pen, writing on the inner leaf of the 1935 program for the inauguration of the Philipp Lenard Institute of Physics in Heidelberg, “I was repeatedly honored; my thinking, however, was not observed. I have rebelled against such nonsense for six years. Now, as I am eighty years old, I have become too old to further come into action, as has already been the case with my writings.”
How had he become so old? Even the exertion of writing discomfited him. He stretched his neck against the constricting dark tie and starch-stiff collar that bit into his thin, old man’s skin. The Fuehrer had put his finger on the problem—“the Jewish influence.” The Jews had duped his Aryan colleagues into believing their degenerate theories. Together, they had cheated him of his proper place in the pantheon of great scientists. The misplaced public fuss over the white Jew, Roentgen, had been a prime example. Roentgen, the famous Wuerzburg professor. Lenard well knew that Roentgen was not a Jew, but it was as though he were. He had been a friend of Jews, and he had thought like one. Roentgen had somehow blundered into perceiving the existence of X-rays. He had blithely accepted the credit as though his discovery had leapt from some wellspring of scientific sorcery, as though Lenard had not spent years laying out the fundamental groundwork. The world was so unfair. Without Lenard’s signal contributions, the world would never have heard the name of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. It still rankled that Roentgen died never having acknowledged Lenard’s role as the true “mother of the X-ray.” The Reich corrected that oversight, belatedly crediting Lenard with the discovery, but it had held little meaning. It came too late. Consumed by war, the world took little notice.
Lenard returned his attention to the letter. The business with Roentgen had been largely a private matter. Hitler was thinking of something entirely different when he penned his reference to “the Jewish influence.” Einstein. The charlatan and his great Jewish fraud, the theory of relativity. Einstein had posed a much greater threat. The Jew and his claims for his theories of relativity stood in opposition to the essence of Lenard’s Deutsche Physik, to the superiority of Aryan physics. The ludicrous public comparisons of Einstein’s theories to the works of the greatest scientific thinkers of the past mocked the Aryan spirit. Lenard’s dealings with Einstein had been his greatest trial. In testament, he had written, “If I had known that mankind would run itself down so badly during my lifetime, that man would degrade from Friedrich the Great to Friedrich Ebert, from Newton to Einstein, I would have never resolved in my youth to serve the best men of my time.”
The Man Who Stalked Einstein Page 20