Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft - Under National Socialism

Under National Socialism

The DPG was in opposition to National Socialism’s persecution of the Jews in general, and their promotion of Deutsche Physik, in particular. On 7 April 1933, barely two months after Adolf Hitler seized power on 30 January 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, was passed; under this law, Jewish civil servants and regime opponents were removed from their jobs. These policies had significant effects on physics in Germany through significant qualitative and quantitative losses of physicists as a result of emigration and through political decisions overriding those based on academic and scientific considerations; 25% of the physicists holding academic positions in the period 1932-1933 were lost due to the policies. The opposition can be illustrated by just a few examples, such as the DPG not immediately dismissing Jews after passage of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, Max von Laue’s address at the opening of the 1933 physics convention in Würzburg, opposition to Johannes Stark exercising the Führerprinzip in attempting to become the dictator of physics, and Carl Ramsauer’s opposition to the politicization of education:

• When the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed in 1933, the DPG dragged its feet in the dismissal of Jews for more than five years. It was not until the end of 1938, on the initiation of Herbert Stuart and Wilhelm Orthmann, that the DPG asked Jewish members to withdraw their membership.

• Max von Laue, as chairman of the DPG, gave the opening address at the 1933 physics convention held in Würzburg. In it, he compared the persecution of Galileo and the oppression of his scientific views on the Solar theory of Copernicus to the then conflict and persecution over the theory of relativity by the proponents of Deutsche Physik, against Einstein’s theory of relativity, labeled as “Jewish physics.”

• Johannes Stark, a holder of the Nobel Prize in Physics, was a proponent of Deutsche Physik. Acting under the Führerprinzip, Stark attempted to become “dictator of physics,” as part of a plan to reorganize and coordinate German scientific societies to National Socialist ideology and policies. These actions brought opposition from members of the DPG. For example, Max von Laue, in 1933, blocked Stark’s regular membership in the Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Furthermore, also in 1933, Stark, President of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR), ran for president of the DPG against Karl Mey, the industrial physicist and head of Osram. Stark received only two votes! In retribution, Stark canceled the DPG’s use of its rooms in the PTR, deleted PTR travel expenses for its personnel to attend DPG meetings, and forbade PTR personnel from lecturing at DPG meetings.

• Carl Ramsauer, president of the DPG 1940 to 1945, and his deputy, Wolfgang Finkelnburg, steered a relatively independent course from the party line of the National Socialists and against Deutsche Physik, which was anti-Semitic and anti-theoretical physics, especially including modern physics, i.e., quantum mechanics. Early in 1942, as chairman of the DPG, Ramsauer, on Felix Klein’s initiative and with the support of Ludwig Prandtl, submitted a petition to Reich Minister Bernhard Rust, at the Reichserziehungsministerium (Reich Education Ministry). The petition, a letter and six attachments, addressed the atrocious state of physics instruction in Germany, which Ramsauer concluded was the result of politicization of education.