Hans-Joachim Flechtner: Where does German Physics Stand Today? A Wartime Conference in Berlin [September 8, 1940

Abstract

On the 1st and 2nd of September a joint conference of the German Physical Society and the German Society of Technical Physics took place at the Polytechnic in Charlottenburg, Berlin.[1] The fact that such a scientific conference can take place in Germany in 1940, a war year, while it had to be cancelled in the previous year at the outbreak of the war [2] is, as the chairman of the Physical Society J. Zenneck emphasized in his opening speech,[3] a noble and fine indication of what the German leadership and the Armed Forces of the German nation have achieved in the past year: Within the country scientific work can continue on its course. The wartime conference of German physicists stems from the indispensability of the work itself, which is at the service of the people and the Reich today as seldom before. But now that new physical discoveries deeply affect the development of individual branches of physics, it is particularly essential that a researcher in a specialty sustain links to other branches, in order to preserve the possibility of constantly establishing new contacts with scientists in other specialties and benefiting from their working methods. It is the product of the times and a necessity today that we confine ourselves strictly to what is important and focus ourselves on these tasks. The absence of public discussion of the talks is a manifestation of this attitude. It was left to the scientists themselves to clarify points of controversy and to draw intellectual conclusions from the lectures in private conversations.