The Intellectuals in the Third Reich

THE INTELLECTUALS IN THE THIRD REICH H. STEINHAUER I T HE official prophets of the New Germany have :-eceived m?re than their due shar~ of attention In the foreign press. The sensatIonal and) ' at times, fantastic notions of Herren Hitler, Goebbels, Rosenberg, and Streicher have diverted our attention from the many intellectuals who direct Germany's cultural institutions and write for the better class of journals. What is the attitude of these artists, writers, scholars, and scientists to the Third Reich? Do they welcome the National Socialist Weltanschauung) do they recoil from it in horror, or do they accept it because they are powerless to do anything else? Such answers as have been given to these questions, even by competent observers of the German scene, are very unsatisfactory. On the one hand we are left withthe impression that all, or nearly all, of the German intellectuals have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. From the opposite camp we are told that "thinking Germany " is a Inass of seething discontent. Neither of these views is, of course, true. There have been a few men of extraordinary courage, who have publicly expressed their disapproval of National Socialist cultural policy. Some of them are in concentration camps, others have left the country, while the rest have been allowed to remain at their posts. The following instances should dispel the myth of subservient docility. The eminent physicist Max Planck, a Nobel Prize winner, came out openly in defence of internationalism in science. The theologian Karl Barth refused to take an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler· and left Germany. The scientific jOl1rnal Die Naturwissenschajten (February 499 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY 16l 1934) carried a eulogy of the recently deceased Jewish chemist Fritz Haber. Haber, a Nobel Prize winner, had been head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for ,Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry until the National Socialist seizure of powerlwhen .he resigned his post and moved to Cambridge University. The author of the obituary notice in the Naturwissenschajten, the physicist Max von Laue, refers to the Institute in which Haber has worked as his (i.e., Haber's) Institute. After listing the chemist's great achievements in science, he continues:On May 2, 1933 Haber tendered his resignation. Themistocles has gone down in history, not as the exile at the court of the Persian king, but as the victor of Salamis. Haber will go down in history as the genius who invented the process for combining nitrogen with oxygen, which forms the basis for extracting nitrogen from the air; as the man ... who achieved a triumph in the service of his country and all.humanity. A year later Haber's many friends and admirers decided to celebrate the anniversary of his death. The National Socialist authorities got wind of the plan and forbade its execution. The celebration was held in defiance of the prohibition. The N~nety-third Congress of G'erman Natural Scientists and Physiciansl held in September, 1934, was opened by the Fuhrer of the National Socialist physicians, Dr. Wagner, who demanded that all German science have a . National Socialist Weltanschauung. Dr. Wagner was followed by the president of the Congress, Geheimrat Professor Dr. C. Bosch, who emphasized· the absolute necessity of maintaining the universal aims of the natural sciences, thus flatly contradi~ting the admonitio'n of the official Fuhrer. Spontaneous applause greeted the remarks of Werner Heisenberg concernIng Einstein's 500 THE INTELLECTUALS IN THE THIRD REICH _ theory of relativity, without which, said Heisenberg, progress in physics was impossible. Protests against the Goebbels spirit have by no means been conhned to the scientists. The liberal Frankfurter Zeitung has published a series ofsly, devastating criticisms of the official Nazi thinkers. These attacks are of necessity carefully worded, so as to give the Ministry of Propaganda no excuse for suppressing the paper; but for the alert, intelljgent reader they lose none of their effectiveness . The Deutsche Rundschau suggested editorially that it would greatly strengthen Germany's position in the cultural world if she were represen ted at the PEN club by well-known authors, rather than by young men who had given exemplary service to the National Socialist cause...