Recent events surrounding the proposed British boycott of Israeli academics gave me a strange feeling of Deja vu. I could not put my finger on it until last week, when my eyes fell on a bookshelf loaded with old volumes of Nature, the major British science magazine, and ZOOOP — the mind works miracles. It took it a split second to recall that volume 133, for year 1934 contains two interesting letters by the German chief scientist Johannes Stark, (Physics Nobel Laureate, 1919, and the discoverer of the “Stark Effect”) in which he explains to his British colleagues why Jewish professors should be dismissed from German universities.
I think it is instructive to read these letters as reminders; first, that the idea of targeting academics for the purpose of making a political statement was not invented in 2007 by British activists and, second, that even the minds of great scientists can fall victim to logical deformities and blindness of facts when when they discover who the real bad guys are.
Especially relevant are Stark’s arguments:
2. It is not meant to be an attack on the freedom of scientific investigation; rather, it is designed to give scientific persons every possible help for their work.
Deja vu?
As a historical anecdote that should not alarm any of our British colleagues, in 1947, following the end of World War II, Stark was classified as a “Major Offender” and received a sentence of four years imprisonment by a denazification court.
His two letters are printed below.
NATURE
vol 133, February 24, 1934, page 290
Letters to the Editor
[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, nor to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. No notice is taken of anonymous communications.]
International Status and Obligations of Science
In his Huxley Memorial Lecture, extracts from which were published in NATURE of December 23, Prof. A. V. Hill has made detailed statements regarding the treatment of German scientists by the National-Socialist Government. These statements are not in accordance with the truth.
As a scientist, whose duty it is to discover and proclaim the truth, I venture to place on record the
following facts as against the inaccurate assertions of Prof. Hill.
The National-Socialist Government has introduced no measure which is directed against the freedom of scientific teaching and research; on the contrary, they wish to restore this freedom of research
wherever it has been restricted by preceding governments. Measures brought in by the National-Socialist Government, which have affected Jewish scientists and scholars, are due to the attempt to curtail the unjustifiable great influence exercised by the Jews. In Germany there were hospitals and
scientific institutes in which the Jews had created a monopoly for themselves and in which they had taken possession of almost all academic posts. There were in addition, in all spheres of public
life in Germany, Jews who had come into the country after the War from the east. This immigration had been tolerated and even encouraged by the Marxist government of Germany. Only a very small part of the 600,000 Jews who earn their living in Germany has been affected by the National-Socialist Measures. No Jewish civil servant was affected who had been in office before August 1, 1914, or had served at the front for Germany or her allies or whose father or son had fallen in the War.
Prof. Hill asserts that something more than a thousand scholars and scientific workers have been dismissed, among them some of the most eminent in Germany. In reality not half this number have left their posts, and among these there are many Jewish and slightly fewer non-Jewish scientists
who have voluntarily given up their posts. Examples are the physicists Einstein, Franck, Born, Schrodinger and in addition Landau, Frankel (mathematician), Frankel (gynaecologist), Prausnitz (hygienist), and others. Prof. Hill says that there are 100,000 people in concentration camps in
Germany and that they are there only because they wished to have freedom of thought and speech. The truth is that there are not even 10,000 in the concentration camps and and they have been sent there, not because of their desire for freedom of thought and speech, but because they have been guilty of high treason or of actions directed against the community. It must also be said that no women and children are imprisoned in the concentration camps in order to bring pressure to bear upon their husbands and fathers.
It would be a good thing to keep political agitation and scientific research apart. This is in the interests of science as well as in the interests of international scientific co-operation. But when a scientist does mix politics with science, he should at any rate fulfill the first duty of a scientist, which is conscientiously to ascertain the facts before coming to a conclusion.
J. Stark
Physikalisch-Technische Reichanstalt,
Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Feb. 2.
vol. 133, April 21, 1934, Page 614
The Attitude of the German Government towards Science
In spite of my letter in NATURE of February 24, there still seems to exist in English scientific circles a misunderstanding of the attitude of the new Government in Germany towards science and of the reasons why Jewish scientists have left the country. May I be allowed therefore to point out the
following facts?
It must be emphasized once more that it is far from the thought of the National Socialist Government to make an attack on the freedom of scientific investigation; rather is it anxious to give scientific persons every possible help for their work. I have myself on many occasions been asked by the
National Socialist Ministers to join them in assisting individual scientific persons and institutes.
The National Socialist Government has not subjected Jewish scientists to exceptional treatment, or forced them to emigrate: it has passed a law for the reform of the Civil Service which applies to all kinds of officials, not only to those concerned with science. According to this law, non-Aryan
officials were obliged to leave their positions if they were not appointed before 1914, or if they had not fought at the front in the War, or had not lost fathers or sons in the War. No Government can be denied the right to make such rules in the interests of its own people, and no group of officials, for example, scientific ones, can be made an exception to such a general law. As a matter of fact, however, in a number of individual cases an exception was made to the advantage of Jewish scientists.
Various jewish scientists, without being forced to do so, have given up their professorships and moved to other countries. This they have done, as some of them have declared openly, out of sympathy with their Jewish kinsfolk who were affected by the law. This attitude can be understood
and appreciated. One should not, however, set them up outside Germany as martyrs of unjust treatment by National Socialist Germany, nor quote them as signs of the denial of intellectual freedom in Germany. This would be a misunderstanding of the actual position.
The withholding of criticism of the new regime in Germany, or at least a conscientious regard for the truth in scientific circles, will be to the advantage not only of international co-operation but also of the Jewish scientists themselves.
J. Stark
(President)
Physikalisch-Technische Reichanstalt,
Berlin
