A Historical Drama from the Life of the City of Göttingen in Three Acts, with a Prologue and an Epilogue
The fragmentary nature of the universe does not quite appeal to me.
I shall have to pay a visit to a learned German.
His dealings with existence are brief:
By bringing everything into a rational arrangement,
With an old dressing gown and other rags
HE WILL PATCH THE HOLES IN CREATION.
— Heinrich Heine
Prologue
Universities in the Middle Ages, or How It All Began
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Europe had 65 universities; by the end of the century, there were already 79. Many institutions of higher learning enjoyed great renown, including those of Paris, Bologna, Cambridge, Kraków, Oxford, and Prague. They still exist today, proud of their rich history and traditions. In the Middle Ages, instruction was conducted in Latin, which was the key to internationalism: Germans, Frenchmen, and Spaniards could study under an Italian professor. The very word “university” (from the Latin for “community” or “corporation”) also arose in connection with the international character of these institutions. The problem was that while Latin was necessary and sufficient for students from different countries to acquire knowledge and communicate with one another, dealing with the local population—from bakers to innkeepers—required the local language. Without it, students found themselves in awkward situations and were often cheated, while the assistance of the municipal courts was beyond their means. To protect their defrauded fellows from local merchants, teachers and students formed an association known as a “university.” Its purpose was self-government, with elected leadership and its own court. A medieval university usually had three faculties: law, medicine, and theology (the latter also encompassing philosophy). Despite their independence from secular and municipal authorities, the universities were nevertheless subject to control—by the Church, which exercised an indirect influence over the entire institution through the theologians. The oldest universities in Germany, including those in Heidelberg, Freiburg, Munich, Tübingen, and Marburg (where, incidentally, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov pursued his studies), were organized according to the same principle.
Act One
A Precious Gift from the English King to the German People
The idea of creating a university independent not only of secular authorities but also of theologians had existed for a long time. According to historians, the great scholar Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed a detailed plan for such a university. He lived in Hanover and, as a lawyer and philosopher, served as a political adviser not only to the electors of Hanover but also to other princely courts in Europe. His plan for a new university gathered dust in the Hanoverian rulers’ files for almost fifty years and might have remained there to this day. But the complicated family and political games of Europe’s rulers unexpectedly led to the accession of King George II to the British throne in 1727; he was also Elector of Hanover. Seeking to win over the German population, particularly its intellectuals, George brought Leibniz’s papers to light. In 1737, a university was founded in the town of Göttingen, in southern Lower Saxony on the banks of the Leine River, and it was destined to play an exceptionally important role in human history.
George, who was elected honorary rector of the university, spared no expense on his creation. After all, he had the finances of England itself at his disposal! The most expensive equipment was purchased with British pounds, a magnificent library was rapidly assembled, and the most distinguished scholars were invited. With the help of this money, even the perpetual French, English, and German wars and quarrels could be kept away from the cradle of science. In short, a major international scientific center arose in a small German town, free from secular or ecclesiastical control.
Among its students, alongside ordinary undergraduates, were children of princes and kings from all over Europe, including the offspring of Russian noblemen. In 1825, Heinrich Heine, whose verses I used as the epigraph, graduated from the university’s law faculty. In the nineteenth century, the Brothers Grimm taught philology, while Carl Friedrich Gauss taught mathematics until almost the middle of the century, followed by Felix Klein from 1886. It was Gauss and Klein who turned Göttingen into a center of mathematics. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Göttingen school of physics flourished. In 1921, one of its graduates, the brilliant theoretical physicist Max Born, returned to work at the university. The outstanding physicist James Franck arrived from Hamburg. Planck, Joliot-Curie, Niels Bohr, and Norbert Wiener gave lectures there. Among Nobel Prize winners, no fewer than thirty (!) scholars were graduates of Göttingen. In short, it was Germany’s most international institution of higher learning, famous throughout the world. Its graduates scattered across the continents, spreading knowledge, goodness, and enlightenment—with perhaps one exception, which is what this story is really about.
Act Two
The Future “Father of the Atomic Bomb” as a Student at Göttingen University
Americans were particularly fond of Göttingen. Although America had no shortage of universities of its own—the famous Harvard, for example, had been founded in 1636—the fresh wind of free scientific inquiry blew from Göttingen. American students called themselves “Columbuses in Reverse,” because they crossed the ocean in search of discoveries in the opposite direction from Columbus. Especially large numbers of Americans studied in Göttingen after the First World War. They brought dollars with them, which were most welcome to the university, badly damaged financially by the war.
Among Göttingen families, it became customary to take in American students as paying guests. The young men brought the energy of the wider world into the life of a provincial town; in return, they received warmth and comfort at home. There are even reports that most professors’ wives on every continent trace their origins to little Göttingen in Germany. The quiet, cozy town literally lived for its university. Professors were treated like princes of the blood and surrounded with universal respect. Students who stayed out until late at night were treated with understanding. Landladies, trained by generations of students, were accustomed to lending them money and took pride in such self-sacrifice. Scholars did not stop thinking about their problems even while relaxing. Waiters had strict instructions not to wipe hastily scribbled formulas from dining tables or throw away napkins left by university guests if anything had been written on them.
In 1926, an American physics student named Julius Robert Oppenheimer arrived in Göttingen. His father, a prominent New York businessman, had emigrated from Germany to the United States in his youth. The young man stood out not only for his extraordinary abilities but also for his absent-mindedness. Although absent-mindedness was hardly likely to astonish the people of Göttingen, legends about Oppie, as he was called, survive in the town to this day.
They say that once, while riding a bicycle, he suddenly found the solution to a difficult formula. Oppie simply stopped pedaling and naturally fell off, without interrupting his mental calculations for even a second. A passerby approached to help him up, only to be greeted by an indignant shout: “Don’t you dare disturb me! Can’t you see I’m busy?”
On another occasion, he wanted to find the exact weight of a letter he intended to send to his father in New York. He rushed into the nearest shop and asked the salesgirl, “Do you have a baby’s cradle? I want to take a little risk!” The girl thought she was about to be assaulted and began shouting for help. Among the people who came running were some students, and only their assistance saved Oppie from trouble. It turned out that he had wanted to ask, “Do you have a scale? I need to weigh something.” But his German was still far from perfect. Instead of “Haben Sie eine Waage? Ich möchte etwas wiegen,” he said, “Haben Sie eine Wiege? Ich möchte etwas wagen.”
Together with other students, Oppie attended physics lectures in the building of the Second Physics Institute. Very often, however, their classes turned into walks through the countryside surrounding the town. During one such walk on a warm spring day in 1927, they discussed what could possibly account for the inexhaustible energy of the sun, which at that very moment was warming their heads so pleasantly. The subsequent development of this idea led to the creation of the hydrogen bomb. But who could possibly have imagined such a thing then? Göttingen lived its intense and happy life. The sun shone serenely through the windows of the most celebrated and international university.
Act Three
The Sad End of a Story That Began So Well
Yet a few weeks in the spring of 1933 were enough to destroy that remarkable reputation. Respected scholars of different nationalities who refused to accept the “new order” and failed to meet Aryan notions of racial purity were expelled. Most of them represented Göttingen’s school of physics—or, more precisely, atomic physics. Among them were the great physicists Max Born and James Franck. The protests of the professors who remained accomplished nothing. The mathematician Hilbert vividly summed up the state of the university at a banquet: “Colleagues! Let us drink to our university, which no longer exists!”
Indeed, the glorious university no longer existed, but Göttingen’s school of physics was saved thanks to the courage of Niels Bohr, who offered his colleagues refuge at his university in Copenhagen. Göttingen scholars threatened by the Führer’s punitive sword suddenly found invitations in their mailboxes to attend some seminar in Copenhagen that they had never heard of, or to give a series of lectures, even though Copenhagen already had plenty of people capable of giving them. Once they arrived, they could calmly consider their next steps. Many remained to work in Copenhagen.
But after Albert Einstein left Berlin for Princeton, America, in the autumn of 1933, most of Göttingen’s exiles followed him. Thus, thanks to Hitler’s efforts, the United States became the center of modern physics and the world’s “atomic forge.” In 1942, the Göttingen graduate Julius Oppenheimer—the very same absent-minded student Oppie—was appointed head of a secret atomic project in America, to which he invited some of his Göttingen colleagues. The project was called “Trinity.” There were also three bombs. The first, a test device, was detonated on July 16, 1945, near the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. The second destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; the third wiped Nagasaki off the face of the earth.
Epilogue
And so the story ends... As for the University of Göttingen, having survived the “dark” years along with the rest of Germany, it once again became one of the world’s leading scientific research centers. And still, at this most international of European institutions of higher learning, students from different countries, just as thousands of young people did before them over two centuries, enthusiastically sing “Gaudeamus igitur.” And to ensure that they pass their examinations, they kiss the bronze girl Lisa, standing with her geese in Göttingen’s Town Hall Square.