Alexander Soifer

Alexander Soifer
The
Scholar and the State
In Search of Van der Waerden

The Scholar and the State:
In Search of Van der Waerden
ThiS is a FM Blank Page
Alexander Soifer
The Scholar and the State:

In Search of
Van der Waerden
Forewords by
Dirk van Dalen
James W. Fernandez
Branko Grunbaum
Peter D. Johnson, Jr.
Harold W. Kuhn
Alexander Soifer
College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs, CO
USA
Small front cover photographs depict, from the upper left clockwise, Bartel L. van der
Waerden, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein. The larger photograph
depicts Bartel L. van der Waerden.
ISBN 978-3-0348-0711-1 ISBN 978-3-0348-0712-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8
Springer Basel Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014954614
Alexander Soifer 2015

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This book is dedicated to my parents, Yuri and
Rebecca Soifer, who gave me the gift of life, and
from the early childhood on greatly influenced my
moral principles and aesthetic taste; and to my
daughter Isabelle Soulay Soifer, a fellow poet at
heart.
Forewords
Foreword by Dirk van Dalen
In 1950 I was a freshman at the University of Amsterdam. Its Mathematics

Department had a reputation for excellent professors, albeit that the curric-
ulum was somewhat outdated. One of the outstanding professors was a
middle-aged, enthusiastic man, Bartel Leendert van der Waerden. At the
time he taught the analysis course for beginners. Coming straight from high
school I took this course, which struck me as a miracle of elegance offering
glimpses of treasures that were still beyond our grasp. Van der Waerden not
only taught us the routine techniques, but managed to instill in the percep-
tive student a sense of intrinsic beauty. It was a real disappointment when at
the end of the year he left for Zurich. Strangely enough, this man, who was
known around the world for his contributions to algebra, did not teach
algebra. In fact, the algebra course was assigned to a well-known number
theorist, who safely stuck to a late nineteenth-century tradition. We had to
thank Van der Waerden, who offered his students the latest version of his
Moderne Algebra in a paperback edition at a discount, for the opportunity to
become familiar with the more recent views on algebra.
As I was more interested in mathematics than in politics (and also
because there was little information on uncomfortable topics) I was not
aware of the fact that Van de Waerdens appointment in Amsterdam had its
history. Only much later I was told that the appointment was not a routine
matter because Van der Waerden had been teaching in Germany before and
during the war. And there it stopped until Alexander Soifer made me
familiar with the fact that Van der Waerdens German career was not at
all that unproblematic.
vii
viii Forewords
Soifers journey through a long list of archives, combined with an

intensive correspondence, had uncovered numerous details of Van der
Waerdens German intermezzo that raised serious questions and reproaches.
He deserves credit for sorting out the often contradicting evidence about a
number of scientists who were active in Nazi Germany. The reader may
draw his own conclusions from the present book. It is a merit of Soifers
book that the main character is not a notorious Nazi, or a despicable
manipulator, but an ordinary, honest, hardworking mathematician who ran
into problems that he had not foreseen.
The question remains, how could such a brilliant scholar make such
unfortunate choices? The mathematical side seems clear enough; for an
algebraist Germany was far superior to Holland. The political side is much
harder to understand. One thing should be clear: Van der Waerden was not
evil; looking back at the story of his life, one is tempted to accept the
explanation that he was far too clever. Like his fictional colleague,
Dr. Faust, he was convinced that his outstanding intelligence could outwit
the despicable opponents in the bastion of darkness. But he forgot that the
latter-day followers of Mephistopheles did not play the game by the rules;
logic, so to speak, was no object.
As a former student I feel sad about the role Van der Waerden played on
the social-political stage, but I cannot give up my admiration and sympathy
for the man who opened the doors of the mathematics mansion to a class of
freshmen, and showed us the beauty and profundity of our subject, the man
who saw that each student, after Napoleons words, carried a marshals
baton in his knapsack.
Utrecht, The Netherlands Dirk van Dalen

Forewords ix
Foreword by James W. Fernandez: On Acquiescence

in the Tribal Evil
There are many reasons why this so impressively researched biography

merits our attention. I would like to consider and briefly point out its vital
importance from an anthropological point of view. That is to say that
Professor Soifers book implicates the anthropologists and culture histo-
rians core interest in the evolution of culture and in the progress of human
evolution itself on this small contested planet. It also implicates
anthropologys core interest in a broadly thriving evolution of our humanity
and of our cultural creativity over long periods of time, Millennia is our
measure. There are many important and pressing reasons to be anxious
about our human future on this small planet over these long periods of
time. This book gives us insight into one of the sources of the threats to the
safekeeping of our humanity: the acquiescence of intelligent men and
women to the return of barbaric practices among their leaders, a return to
what we can call the tribal evil as happened in Germany and Western
Europe in the thirties and forties.
It has often been said that of all the animals of creation the most
dangerous is the human animal itself. Once this dictum applied only to the
hunters craftiness of mind and the power of his toolkit over the other
animals he pursued. But it now applies to the dreadful tools we humans
now possess for possible use in our ongoing, so often reptilian, contests with
each other. Very simply put, humans now have such power in our hands as
to make worrisomely easy the use of that power in mutual destruction. This
possibility was raised agonizingly during the recent Cold War in the policy
of Mutually Assured Destruction, a carelessly and indeed mad and inhu-
mane slogan in and of itself. That we could even think of that as a political
possibility should engage any mind with the possibility that the unthinkable,
in this and in future days and ages, may indeed be too easily
actionable. . .makes us think of the possibility of an ultimately angry end
to human evolution. It is true that this Cold War doctrine may have acted
prohibitively against the cataclysm it described. But that is hardly a perpet-
ual guarantee especially in the presence of the so frequent self-righteous
sense of religious or racial mandate and the salvational sense of ultimate
rewards when that mandate exercised by those who consider themselves as
more human and more preferred and, hence, ever ready to dehumanize
others.
The reader may be puzzled by the suggestion that this richly documented,
insightful but low keyed biographical study of a brilliant if mild-mannered
Dutch mathematician can be linked to such ultimate ponderings. But the
x Forewords
career experiences and choices, in the war-torn Europe of the thirties and
forties, of Bartel van der Waerden were also a test not only of his own career
but the relation of that career to a retrograde regime by any evolutionary
measure. The linkage occurs because this mild-mannered mathematician
was living through those years in which a cataclysm was occurring for a
particular set of people whose humanity was denied and the most cold-
spirited and inhumane destruction was being brought down upon them.
Van der Waerden, as we see, was never an active agent of the gangster
regime that had taken power over the nation where he chose to live. Indeed
his first and natural instinct was to protest mildly against its racist doctrines
and strictures. But over time, preoccupied with his professorial career and
the continuance of his mathematical investigations he acquiesced or, per-
haps, put from his mind the excrescence that had grown upon the German
nation and people in and among which he continued to live and, as far as
possible for a wartime situation, professionally prosper. His eminence of
mind must have easily enabled him to perceive and actively deny to the
gangster regime his presence and acquiescence. He had many opportunities
to emigrate. But instead, for a set of reasons largely tied up with stabilities in
family life, most likely, reasons of everyday life which any family person
can perhaps understand, he continued to be a very small feather in the cap of
a strutting party of megalomaniacs. Of such daily and familial acquiescence
are retrograde barbarian regimes constructed in the modern world, long past
the time that the barbarism and the barbarian condition they sought to
recreate once flourished in human evolution.
I am being more strident here in this short preface, perhaps, than Profes-
sor Soifer who quietly if from time to time ironically details and reveals
through his exceptional research of many years, Van der Waerdens slow
decline into acquiescence and eventual tortured self-justification. After the
war Soifer follows Van der Waerden in the eventual, if partial, self-
reckonings he was forced to make with his wartime choices or lack of
principled choices during those terrible years. We follow his toying both
before the war and after with his offers from America, or the possibilities of
a less regime-acquiescent professional life in Switzerland. And after the war
we follow his struggles, because of his years of acquiescence, to recover his
position of eminence in the Netherlands and more broadly in the mathemat-
ical world. In its way despite the brilliance of the protagonist this is a
biography of an everyman confronted with uncomfortable choices which
in their small way surely discourage or encourage the possibilities of the
presence of evil around him. The unhappy vicissitudes of Van der
Waerdens life become thereby a lesson to us all, and the everyman we all
are, in the not altogether unlikely event that barbarism and the tribal evil
rise again amongst us!!
Forewords xi
To be sure it has long been said of mathematicians, so often men and

women of a special bent of mind, that as a consequence of that bent they
enjoy what the Germans call narrenfreiheit, the freedom to a certain
irresponsibility of self, if not totally so at least to an eccentricity in many
of the responsibilities of social life. Perhaps there was something of that
narrenfreiheit in Van der Waerden. But Alexander Soifer, a mathemati-
cian himself, does not buy such privileged freedom from moral choice of the
brilliant. The author does not extend that eccentricity of mathematicians to
the kind of evasion and acquiescence so evident in Van der Waerdens
choices. One of the great values of this book is that it is a mathematician
seeing and understanding, as only a mathematician himself can, beyond
narrenfreiheit to the responsibility that all men and women have not only to
the humanity of their own culture but also and by extension to the humanity
of other cultures and peoples, with whom they live cohabiting together this
small and endangered planet. One might say that it is on the acquiescence of
mild-mannered men of privileged mind but of only tentative principle that
gangster regimes vaingloriously built their megalomanias.
The great German-American sociologist Alfred Schutz makes an insight-
ful distinction between Mitmenschen and Nebenmenschen, those whom we
live with and share intimately our life cycles, our family in the largest
sense as it were, and those who we live next to, our neighbors in the largest
sense, who as contemporaries are co-participants, though often on different
cultural terms in one way or another, with us. Our constant human struggle,
as Schutz well realized, was to be able to treat our Nebenmenschen as we
would our Mitmenschen.
Let me return here finally to the anthropologists interest in all this. And
let me employ two terms of anthropological character: the tribal evil and
transcendent humanization implicit in our prefatory remarks. Whatever
satisfactions of solidarity and the security of self-interested culture the tribal
and barbarian stage of human evolution brought to evolving humankind, it
also brought the senses of exclusivity and imperious self-righteousness of
category. These were senses consistent with the denials of humanity to the
others to the point, often enough carelessly, or with evil intent allowing or
actively advocating and accomplishing their extermination. This we must
recognize as the tribal evil writ large, any retrograde return to the tribal
stage of group exclusivity, a dehumanizing rather than humanizing move-
ment in human evolution.
One fears, reasonably I feel, that the long-run result of such returns to the
tribal evil, returns so often accompanied by a false nostalgia, would be the
MAD world we so recently contemplated and which it is so imperative we
transcend. What human evolution is above all about, one might argue, is
xii Forewords
transcendent humanization in which the other, the Nebenmenschen,

comes to be treated as a Mitmenschen in the grand evolutionary journey
of humankind in a small planet. My feelings about Professor Soifers book
are that it is an inspiring instance of transcendent humanization. It offers
an important enabling experience, an insight by which we contemporaries
can together fortify and humanize an evolving rather than a devolving
condition.
Chicago, IL James W. Fernandez

Forewords xiii
Foreword by Branko Grunbaum
The fact that this book is about the story of the life of a prominent
mathematician and the history of an important result he was the first to
prove may be enough to lead a potential reader to abandon the idea of
reading it. I never liked mathematics or I was always poor in mathemat-
ics are some of the excuses or justifications that may be given. However,
they do not apply to this book. True, Bartel Leendert van der Waerden was a
mathematician, and his result discussed here deals with somewhat abstract
mathematics. However, the book does not dwell on mathematicsformulas
are not a part of the text. Instead, concerning the star of the book we are
given a detailed and thoroughly documented story of his life that spanned
most of the twentieth century. That story reminds us of the (purported
Chinese) curse May you have an interesting life. Van der Waerdens life
was indeed interestingbut beyond that it suggests the great moral quan-
daries that many of us have been confronting, or may have to do so in the
future.
Soifer has spent many years and much effort to tease out the facts
concerning the life of Van der Waerden and his contemporaries. He dug
out from archives, museums, and other depositories, documents that were
forgotten for more than half a century. He also interviewed or corresponded
with many of the personages that were relevant to the main topic of the
book. This is particularly significant in view of the fact that many of these
people have since passed away.
To summarize the story: Born Dutch, Van der Waerden came to prom-
inence in the 1930s as a mathematician in Germany, at the time of ascent to
power of Hitler and his Nazis. Despite professional possibilities and offers
of positions outside Germany, he remained a professor in Germany, mainly
at Leipzig University, till the end of World War II in 1945. In the early years
of Hitlers rule Van der Waerden did object to some of the outrages
committed against Jews and others by the Nazis, but when his position in
Leipzig was threatened, he agreed to stop any public protests. After the end
of the war, he wished to return to the Netherlands at a high professional
position; in this he was supported by many, but strongly opposed by others
who did not forgive him his activities during the war years. Finally, in the
early 1950s he became a Professor at the University of Zurich; there the
behavior of a candidate during the war was deemed less important than his
professional standing. Details about all these events form the core of The
Scholar and the State, enriched by comments of varied length concerning
people around Van der Waerden. Without taking an explicit stand regarding
the morality of the actions involved, Soifer urges the reader to reach his or
her conclusions independently.
xiv Forewords
The second theme of the book concerns Van der Waerdens establishing
in the late 1920s a result in Ramsey Theory before Ramsey. The weakest
nontrivial case can be stated as follows: There is a number n such that
whenever n or more consecutive numbers are tagged with one of two tags
(colors) then there is a triplet of numbers of the same color that form an
arithmetic progression. (That is, the difference between the first of the
numbers and the second is the same as the difference between the second
and the third.) The actual result of Van der Waerden allows for any number
of colors, and for arithmetic progressions of any length; naturally, n depends
on these numbers. The fascination with this result is caused by the difficulty
of proving it, as well as with the history of its generalizations and simpli-
fications of the proofs. Most intriguingly, Soifer discovers the quite involved
prehistory of the result, which involves detective work in several countries.
As a perusal on any of the chapters will show, Soifer is a great storyteller,
engaging the reader in many ways. Reading this book may possibly over-
come the math phobia of some of the readers.
Seattle, WA Branko Grunbaum

Forewords xv
Foreword by Peter D. Johnson, Jr
Freeman Dyson divided mathematicians into two classes, frogs and birds.
The frogs, in whose ranks Dyson counted himself and almost every math-
ematician who ever lived, struggle toward understanding in a manner
evocative of the progress of a frog through a swamp, while the very rare
birds, having achieved flight, can look down on what they are trying to
understand from above, and so achieve a more profound understanding.
I am a frog mathematician who cannot imagine what might be in the mind
of a bird mathematician. Perhaps I am missing a faculty, like a color-blind
person who cannot imagine what the non-color-blind see, but it seems to me
that mathematics by its nature requires froggishness for its study. Frankly, I
am skeptical of the existence of bird mathematicians. Those counted as birds
are more likely, in my view, to be just very talented frogs, able to leap higher
than their peers from time to time.
Whether or not bird mathematicians exist, clearly frogs predominate in
mathematics. In history scholarship, it seems to me (I rank amateur, an
outsider) that the situation is quite different, and that the difference arises
from the nature of the subject. Consider this contrast:
Most children will, by age 10 or so, have noticed that whole numbers
whose decimal representation ends in 5 are divisible by 5. A significant
fraction will have noticed that odd + odd even, etc. On the other hand, an
elderly gentleman of my acquaintance tells me that when he was 5 years old,
in 1926, he had concluded that all wars last 4 years, because the only two
wars he had heard of, the Civil War and World War I, had each lasted
4 years. (I will not bore the reader by drawing out the point of this contrast
but it is worth noting that the mathematical observations cited are true, while
the 5-year-olds hypothesis about wars is not.)
History comes to us in bits and pieces, which we make into stories,
sometimes with lessons attached. The whole field is a call to festival for
the human propensities for gossip, conjecture, storytelling. Every amateur
historian (and I am one) starts as a bird and remains a bird. In mathematics
there are infallible standards and methods for deciding on truthyou cannot
fake birdhood just by making stuff up. Among historians, that is not the case.
Indeed, popular historians are popular in large measure because of the story
element in their accounts. Some come to believe in their stories to the point
that they are driven to grand conclusions (looking at you, Niall Ferguson!).
Serious historians are constrained by their reading of original materials, or
of whatever materials are available, but in many cases there are not enough
of these to assure the validity of accounts based on them. The bird
xvi Forewords
faculties of historians are indispensable, but if we are interested in what

really happened, we should maintain a healthy skepticism toward their
tales.
It is hard to be a frog historian. We need more of thembut will what
they write be interesting to read?
From the twentieth century we collect at least one great frog work of
history: The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In it, events are
recounted without facile assumptions about causes and motivesjust the
facts, with extensive documentationand, somehow, from the relentless
rhythm of the account a dramatic tapestry arises in the mind of the reader.
And now we have an even more purely frog experiment in history-
writing, coincidentally authored by another one-time Soviet refugee with
initials A.S.: The Scholar and the State: In Search of Van der Waerden, by
Alexander Soifer, a biography of Bartel van der Waerden, a great twentieth-
century mathematician, born and raised in the Netherlands, who navigated
the white-water rapids of twentieth-century fascism and World War II with
sometimes courageous and sometimes dubious skill and judgment from an
academic post at Leipzig University, smack in the middle of eastern Nazi
Germany. (Notice anything about that last sentence? The last part is glib
bird writing. O.K. for a dust cover, but too much of it will make you ill.)
Anyone who has read much of Professor Soifers previous masterpiece,
The Mathematical Coloring Book, an historical account of certain develop-
ments in mathematics, will know that Professor Soifer does not trade in
facile assumptions or reasonable-sounding guesses about how things came
about. Yes, he will advance opinions as to causes and motives, but they are
explicitly his opinions, advanced in proximity to quotations from letters,
memoranda, or documents that support the opinion. Professor Soifer is a
mathematician, and he brings a mathematical discipline to the writing of
history.
This book sets the standard for the frog approach to historyeven
Solzhenitsyn seems like a smooth-talking con man, compared to Soifer.
Yet, although the style is very different from Solzhenitsyns, and the
commitment to the unvarnished truth, or, at least, what we can know of
the unvarnished truth, is even more stubborn than Solzhenitsyns, the effect
is strangely the same: from the scrupulously rigorous account arises a full
mural of a life and an historical period, full of human complexity. Decisions
are not perfectly framed at the time they are made. Some are regretted,
others are fortuitous. Motives that seem perfectly reasonable in their time
may seem dishonorable in retrospect. People reconstrue their actions to
conform to the motives they wish they had had. Here I am resorting to
cartoonish simplification; to get the real effect, read the book.
Forewords xvii
The book is fascinating. Professor Soifer has done a great service to the
discipline of history, as well as deepening our understanding of the twenti-
eth century. One can hope that others will be inspired to follow Professor
Soifers example, at least in writing of the recent past, but it wont be easy.
The effort expended by the author in assembling a trove of primary mate-
rials, by appeal to the principals, including B.L. van der Waerden before his
death, and their families, and by tracking down correspondence and docu-
ments in governmental, state, and corporate records, is monumental. This,
young historians, is how hard you have to work to achieve froghood.
The biography of Van der Waerden is intriguing enough, but I must say
that I found even more interesting two excursions from that life, one of great
general interest, and the other probably only of interest to mathematicians.
The excursion of general interest was on the subject of the collaboration of
German physicists with the Nazis. This has been worked over elsewhere
there is even a play about it, Copenhagen. But my guess is that Alexander
Soifer has provided the most reliable and thorough account on this topic that
can be had. Thats just a guess. I am an amateur.
In the other excursion, Soifer updates and enlarges the history of Van der
Waerdens 1927 theorem, about trying to color blocks of consecutive
integers so as to avoid monochromatic arithmetic sequences of prescribed
lengths, that was given such a masterful treatment in The Mathematical
Coloring Book. I predict that, barring the destruction of civilization, the day
will come when humans will attempt what I would call meme history, the
high-powered offspring of intellectual history, in which the progress of
ideas through human discourse is traced. When that day comes, the hard
work of Alexander Soifer in finding out just how certain mathematical ideas
arose and were transmitted will, I hope, be recognized as foundational.
Professor Soifer sums up at the end of The Scholar and the State with an
eagles view of the unfortunate choices of Bartel L. van der Waerden and
Werner Heisenberg during the years 19331945 of Nazi rule in Germany.
His remonstrances are strong, but he never loses all sympathy with these
men, great in mathematics and science, with generally honorable, and
sometimes exemplary, moral qualities, who found themselves dwelling in
a moral sinkhole due to a sequence of deplorable decisions. I have inveighed
against birdishness in the writing of history in this foreword, but I think that
Alex Soifer has very much earned the right to express his opinion in
gathering the lessons of his tale, after all the evidence has been presented.
And to me, as one whose father and brother have served as scientists and
developers of technology in the American military-industrial complex,
xviii Forewords
Soifers warning to mathematicians and scientists strikes home: would I, in

the circumstances in which Van der Waerden and Heisenberg found them-
selves, have been any more morally nimble than they? Which of us can be
sure of the answer to such a question?
Auburn University, AL Peter D. Johnson Jr.

Forewords xix
Foreword by Harold W. Kuhn
In the best graduate schools of my generation, Modern Algebra was synon-

ymous with Van der Waerden, the author of the text of the same name. We
knew vaguely that the book was based on lectures by Emil Artin and Emmy
Noether and that the author had remained in Germany during World War II.
In this masterful book, Alexander Soifer unravels the origins of the book
and, with the obsessive attention of an engaged historian, uncovers many
details of Van der Waerdens life. Along the way, he answers with careful
documentation many questions about that long life.
I found much that was news to me in this detailed account, including his
relations to Springer, to Courant, and to the many mathematicians with
whom he corresponded during the war. Especially interesting to me are
the details of an offer to Princeton, which Soifer discovered by dogged
detective work.
Of course the central question is why did Van der Waerden stay in
Germany under the Nazis until his homeland, the Netherlands, was overrun?
Soifer answers this question in a convincing manner, offering along the way,
many wise insights into our individual responses to tyranny.
This book is an important contribution to the history of the twentieth
century, and reads like a novel with an ever-fascinating cast of characters.
We owe Soifer a huge debt for his steadfast devotion to this enterprise.
Princeton, NJ Harold W. Kuhn

Acknowledgments
My deep gratitude goes to Dirk van Dalen, James W. Fernandez, Branko

Grunbaum, Peter D. Johnson, Jr., and Harold W. Kuhn, the first readers of
the entire manuscript, for their referee reports that appear here as forewords,
and valuable suggestions. A philosopher-historian, an ethnographer-
anthropologist, a geometer-aesthete, an algebraist-graph theorist, and an
economist-game theoristthey possess an incredible wisdom and intellect,
and have shared it with me most generously. I was thrilled to learn that this
manuscript became a family affair for James and Renate Fernandez1:
Renate and I have been making steady if slow progress through your
ms. We discuss it in the evening after dinner. Dirk van Dalen experienced
the main period of my narration as a boy in Nazi-occupied Holland, a
teenager during the de-Nazification of the Netherlands, and a student of
Van der Waerden at the University of Amsterdam in the fall 1950. And he
shared with me his unique Dutch insight while reading the manuscript twice
and providing me with the most detailed commentary over the course of
several months. In his own words,2 Being a Dutchman I have this built-in
feeling inherited from generations of farmers, fishermen, and schoolmasters
for the more delicate aspects of our words and expressions. Usually I am
not particularly fond of the proofreading stage, but in this case, I have
immensely enjoyed the process of finishing this book in dialogs with my
unique and distinguished referees.
One writes alone, and communicates only with an imaginary reader. This
is why it was so satisfying to read the report of the publisher-chosen referee,
Moritz Epple, Professor of History of Mathematics at Frankfurt University:
1
James W. Fernandez, August 19, 2013, e-mail to A. Soifer.
2
Dirk van Dalen, November 7, 2013, e-mail to A. Soifer.
xxi
xxii Acknowledgments
someone I havent met, so well understood this research, appreciated its

literary style, and contributed valuable suggestions. It was an honor to have
the past Executive Director of Springer-USA Ann Kostant as the copy editor
of this book. I am grateful to both of them for deep insight and fine taste.
I thank my editor Dr. Anna Matzener for coordinating the entire process.
My parents Yuri and Rebecca Soifer, a painter and an actress, lived
through the Russian Revolution of 1917, lawlessness that followed in
Ukraine, and the horrific World War II. They were separated for many
years, while Yuri served on the front and Rebecca worked in evacuation.
They gave me the gift of life, and from the early childhood on greatly
influenced my moral principles and aesthetic taste. This book about life
and fate, moral triumphs and failures, hard choices that are still with us all
today, is dedicated to them, and to my daughter Isabelle Soulay Soifer, a
fellow poet at heart. I am grateful to my other children Mark, Julia, and Leon
for playing at various times a major role in my life.
This book is a result of 20 years of historical research, and pondering on
the moral and philosophical issues surrounding the place of a scholar in the
society. The long years of writing have produced one immense benefit that a
quickly baked book would not possess. I have had the high honor and
distinct pleasure to discuss many questions of this research with senior
sages, Professors Bartel L. van der Waerden (19031996), Paul Erdos
(19131996), Henry Baudet II (19191998), Dirk J. Struik (18942000),
Herman J. A. Duparc (19182002), Beno Eckmann (19172008), Walter
Ledermann (19112009), and Nicolaas G. de Bruijn (19182012). I am in
eternal debt to their knowledge, memories, and insight. In working on this
book I have also learned much from Peter J. Knegtmans, Dirk van Dalen,
James W. Fernandez, Renate Lelep Fernandez, Branko Grunbaum, and
Harold W. Kuhn. Thank you all so very much.
My research into the life of Van der Waerden could not be based on
archival material alone. I am most grateful to Bartel Leendert van der
Waerden for his several letters answering my many questions, and to the
family members of the personages appearing in this book, who contributed
their memories and insight into this undertaking: Hans van der Waerden,
Dorith van der Waerden, Theo van der Waerden, Prof. Jochen Heisenberg,
Prof. Dr. Ernst Ulrich Baron von Weizsacker, Prof. Ernest Courant, and
Prof. Henry Baudet II. I thank fellow historians for their valuable contribu-
tions and feedback: Henry Baudet II, Dirk van Dalen, Moritz Epple, Charles
C. Gillispie, Peter Knegtmans, Thomas Powers, Reinhard Siegmund-
Schultze, Maya Soifer Irish, and Mark Walker.
I thank all those who have provided me with documents, photographs,
and permission to use them. Dorith van der Waerden and Theo van der
Acknowledgments xxiii
Waerden have generously shared the family history and rare photographs of
their uncle Bartel Leendert van der Waerden and the rest of their distin-
guished family. Henry Baudet II supplied photographs of his father P. J.
H. Baudet and also of his family with the legendary World Chess Champion
Dr. Emanuel Lasker. Dr. Mordecai Paldiel and Yad Vashem, The Holocaust
Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, provided docu-
ments related to granting Senta Govers Baudet the title of a Righteous
among the Nations. Humboldt University of Berlin shared documents from
the personnel file of Issai Schur.
I am grateful to the following colleagues, archivists, and archives for
providing valuable documents and photographs related to Bartel L. van der
Waerden, Werner Heisenberg, and other personages appearing in this book
(my gratitude and apologies go to all whom I inadvertently forgot to
mention): Dr. Peter J. Knegtmans, The University Historian, Universiteit
van Amsterdam; John Wigmans, Rijksarchief in Noord-Holland (RANH);
Prof. Dr. Gerald Wiemers, Martina Geigenmuller, and Sandy Muhl,
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig; Prof. Dr. Holger P. Petersson and his personal
archive; Prof. Dirk van Dalen; Alice Calaprice; Elena Nikolaevna Lambina;
Gertjan Dikken, Het Parool; Madelon de Keizer; Dr. Wolfram Neubauer,
Angela Gastl, and Corina Tresch De Luca, ETH-Bibliothek, ETH
(Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule), Z urich; Dr. Heinzpeter Stucki,
Universitatsarchiv, Universitat Zurich; Drs. A. Marian Th. Schilder,
Universiteitsmuseum de Agnietenkapel, Amsterdam; Maarten H. Tromp,
Centrale Archiefbewaarplaats, Universiteit Utrecht; Nancy Cricco, Univer-
sity Archivist, and her graduate student assistants, New York University;
Prof. Dr. Sibrand Poppema, President of Groningen University; James
Stimpert, Archivist, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Special Collections,
The Johns Hopkins University; Prof. Mark Walker; Pulitzer Prize winning
writer Thomas Powers; Prof. Nicolaas G. de Bruijn; Prof. Henry Baudet II;
Dr. Helmut Rechenberg, Former Director, Werner Heisenberg Archive,
Munich; Dr. Marion Kazemi, Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin;
Prof. Dr. Blum, Max-Planck-Institut f ur Physik, Munchen, and the Director
of the Werner Heisenberg Archive; G. G. J. (Gijs) Boink, Het Nationaal
Archief, Den Haag; The Library of Congress, Manuscript Division,
Washington D.C.; Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam;
Niels Bohr Archive Copenhagen and its Director Prof. Finn Aaserud; Gisela
Berg, Ivonne Vetter, and the Archives of the Mathematisches Forschung-
sinstitut Oberwolfach; Dekan Prof. Dr. Alexander Kreuzer, Nachlass von
Erich Hecke, Universitat Hamburg; Archivist Erica Mosner and the Shelby
White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Historical Studies-Social Science
Library Archive, Institute for Advanced Study Princeton; Prof. Nicholas
xxiv Acknowledgments
M. Katz, Former Chair, Department of Mathematics, and the Archive of the

Department of Mathematics, Princeton University; Mitchell C. Brown, Fine
Library, Princeton University; Don Pawl of the Interlibrary Department at
the University of Colorado; and yes, the Internet sources MacTutor History
of Mathematics Archive; Professorenkatalog der Universit at Leipzig; and
Wikipedia.
I thank my translators from the Dutch, Anthonie Arend van Zoeren,
Dr. Stefan van der Elst, and Prof. Marijke Augusteijn; and from the German,
Prof. Robert Sackett, Prof. Simon A. Brendle, Prof. Robert von
Dassanowsky, and Prof. Dr. Heiko Harborth. Translations from the
Russian and some from the German have been done by me. I thank Prof.
Dirk van Dalen who during the final stages of this work has verified and
improved translations of many documents from the German and the Dutch.
The research quarterly Geombinatorics provided an opportunity to gather
my thoughts and publish the first results of my research on Van der Waerden
in the form of four essays. Having read these essays, Professors Charles
Coulson Gillispie and Mark Walker suggested expanding my findings to a
book. I am grateful to them for this idea: prior to their advice I did not think
of writing an entire biographical book. On June 25, 2007, Gillispie, a
Princeton Professor of History since 1947 and the founder of the Princeton
Program in the History of Science, wrote a letter to Springer Executive
Director Ann Kostant recommending her to contract this not-yet written
book:
I have urged Professor Soifer to gather these articles into a book, both
mathematical and historical biography. They [four essays] meet the
highest standards of historical scholarship and would require very little
revision.
My University of Colorado bosses provided me with an opportunity to be
away for long periods of time at Princeton and Rutgers Universities for
which I thank my past Dean Thomas Christensen and Chancellor Pamela
Shockley-Zalabak. I am grateful to my Princeton Math colleagues and
friends for maintaining a unique creative atmosphere in the historic Fine
Hall, and Fred Roberts for the tranquility of DIMACS Center at Rutgers
University, where I spent 3 years doing research in mathematics and history.
I thank Springer Executive Directors Ann Kostant and Thomas
Hempfling for inviting this work and my nine other books to the historic
Springer, the same Springer that published Van der Waerdens classic
Moderne Algebra in 19301931.
Finally, Whats in a name? rhetorically asks Shakespeare. All
non-Dutch authors write Van der Waerdens name in the German style:
Acknowledgments xxv
van der Waerden. In spite of long years spent in Germany and Switzer-
land, the main personage of this book was born and raised in the Netherlands
and has always remained a Dutch citizen. Hence I will use the Dutch
grammatical rules in writing his name, i.e., I will always use the capital
V and write Van der Waerden, except when the last name is preceded
by the first name or the initials, in which case the Dutch rules dictate a small
v: Bartel van der Waerden and B.L. van der Waerden.
Contents
Foreword by Dirk van Dalen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Foreword by James W. Fernandez: On Acquiescence
in the Tribal Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Foreword by Branko Grunbaum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Foreword by Peter D. Johnson, Jr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Foreword by Harold W. Kuhn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
1 Greetings to the Reader: What Is History? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Why Van der Waerden and Why Me? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3 The Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4 The Joys of Young Bartel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5 Van der Waerden at Hamburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6 The Story of The Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
7 The Theorem on Arithmetic Progressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
8 From Gottingen to Groningen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
9 Transformations of The Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
10 The Algebraic Revolution That Produced Just One Book . . . 59
11 On to Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
12 The Dawn of the Nazi Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
xxvii
xxviii Contents
13 The Princeton Job Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

14 Eulogy for the Beloved Teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
15 One Faculty Meeting at Leipzig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
16 A Cloud of Suspicion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
17 Mathematische Annalen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
18 Germany Treacherously Invades Holland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
19 Barraus Succession at Utrecht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
20 A Dream of Gottingen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
21 Furniture and Scientific Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
22 Breidablik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
23 Home, Bittersweet Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
24 The New World or Old? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
25 The Defense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
26 Van der Waerden and Van der Corput: Dialog in Letters . . . 233
27 One Heartfelt Letter to a Friend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
28 A Rebellion in Brouwers Amsterdam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
29 The Het Parool Affair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
30 Job History 19451947 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
31 America! America! God Shed His Grace on Thee . . . . . . 295
32 Van der Waerden, Goudsmit, and Heisenberg: A Letteral
Triangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
33 On Active and Passive Opposition in the Third Reich . . . . 315
34 Van der Waerden in Defense of Heisenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
35 Professorship at Amsterdam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
36 Escape to Neutrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
37 The Theorem Becomes Classic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
38 Whose Conjecture Did Van der Waerden Prove? . . . . . . . . 379
39 Zuruck nach Zurich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Contents xxix
40 Reunions of Old Friends: Van der Waerden and

Heisenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
41 The Drama of Van der Waerden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
42 The Scholar and the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
43 Farewell to the Reader: I Hope and I Hope . . . . . . . . . . . 445
List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
Chapter 1
Greetings to the Reader: What Is History?
The past is never dead. Its not even past.

William Faulkner3
Life travels upward in spirals. He who takes pains to search the

shadows of the past below us, then, can better judge the tiny arc up
which he climbs, more surely guess the dim curves of the future above
him.
Stefan Zweig4
He alone reads history aright who, observing how powerfully cir-

cumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices
pass into virtues and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what
is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential
and immutable.
Thomas Babington Macaulay5
[Historical novelist] wants to understand the present, and thus

searches in history not for ashes but for flames.
Lion Feuchtwanger6
3
Requiem for a Nun, 1951.
4
Epigraph for Tolstoy by Stefan Zweig, David McKay Co., Philadelphia, 1939.
5
Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay, Machiavelli. (Originally published as a review of a
translation of the complete works of Machiavelli by J. V. Peries.)
6
American Shelter of Lion Feuchtwanger, program by Marina Efimova, New York, aired
on September 17, 2010, radio station Freedom, Moscow, in my translation from the
Russian.
Alexander Soifer 2015 1

A. Soifer, The Scholar and the State: In Search of Van der Waerden,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_1
2 1 Greetings to the Reader: What Is History?
I would truly like to find answers to the question in the chapters title
wouldnt you? History is . . .
What is it?
What have the history of the ancient world and the history of todays
America in common?
What is in common between the history of mathematics, and the history
of cinema? One answer is, I teach them both :-).
Perhaps, an anthropological approach is most enlightening, and we
should look into the function, and ask, what is history for? For what purpose
do we research and write it?
To satisfy our curiosity, a scientist would say.
Because history is there, like climbers speak about reasons to climb
mountains.
In order to never repeat the old mistakes, the Holocaust researchers
would hope.
In order to better understand ourselves, sociologists would propose.
In order to write moral tales of heroism and treachery like Hollywoods
Moses, starring Charlton Heston, or Othello with Sir Laurence Olivier?
(Actually, I prefer Othello directed by Orson Welles).
And how is the history packaged and delivered to the consumer? Should
there be a consumer, or is history a communication from one historian to
other historians, and the rest of the people are prevented from reading
history by special terminology and dullness of prose?
I recently realized that much of academic history is written just like
mathematics, relentlessly alternating theorem-proof-theorem-proof. Of
course, historians do not use the words theorem and proof. But they
start their works with the statements in this book we will show . . .
(theorem), and then they demonstrate its validity with deductive reasoning
(proof) and documents (axioms). Dont historians know the dominant opin-
ion of mathematics books that they are boring? Why then do they dumb
down a readers mind by a pseudo-mathematical discourse?
Or historians jump into the opposite extreme of weaving unscientific
fables of the Norman Cantor kind. In the best examples of this kind, we
get great reads, like A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar, and a good enough
film of the same title.
One thing historians ought to learn from mathematicians: The latter do
not abridge their axioms. Historians abridge their axiomsdocuments, quote
usually small fragments, and pour in their interpretations and analysis. What
is wrong with this established tradition? You, the reader, do not get to see
the axioms, and thus are unable to form your own opinion before reading the
authors view. I prefer to quote documents liberally, and introduce most
1 Greetings to the Reader: What Is History? 3
important documents in their entiretyso that you can see the context,
smell the roses of the years gone by and form your own views.
I would like to address here the perennial duality of the objective and the
subjective in history. Once a mathematical theorem is proven, it becomes a
fact, just as a verified historical document does. However, in building a
theory, the creator is free to subjectively choose which facts to use in his
trains of thought, and which trains of thought to then include in the theory
that is under construction. The overabundance of facts may make the
creation of an objective theory impractical if not impossible. History is
likewise subjective and even more so, for in addition to facts it uses soft
facts of eyewitness accounts.
Even objective informants could not remedy historys inherent subjec-
tivity. Akutagawa Ryunosuke ( , 18921927) brilliantly illus-
trates this in his 1922 story In a Grove, where three eyewitnesses present
self-incriminating (not self-defending!) accounts of a murder. Kurosawa
Akira ( , 19101998) goes even further in his 1950 masterpiece
film adaptation Rashomon of Akutagawa stories where he adds the fourth
informant.
As Friedrich Nietzsche put it in late 1886early 1887,
Against positivism, which stops at phenomena There are only facts,
I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpreta-
tions. We cannot establish any fact in itself: perhaps it is folly to
want such a thing. Everything is subjective, you say; but even this is
interpretation, the subject is not something given, it is something
added and invented and projected behind what there is. Finally, is it
necessary to place an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even this is
invention, hypothesis.
Insofar as the word knowledge has any meaning, the world is
knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it,
but countless meanings. Perspectivism.7
I believe that recording travails of human existence is a worthy endeavor,
especially if it is written in such a way that makes history a fine genre of
literature. One of my favorite historical novel writers Lion Feuchtwanger
challenges scholarly works of historians, while defending his genre. His
motto comes from Aristotle himself:
7
Friedrich Nietzsche, <First book: What is truth?>, Digital Critical Edition of Nietzsches
Works and Letters (eKGWB), Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (eds), http://www.
nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1886,7[60]
4 1 Greetings to the Reader: What Is History?
The artistic representation of history is a more scientific and serious

pursuit than the exact writing of history. For the art of letters goes to
the heart of things, whereas the factual report merely collocates
details.8
Feuchtwanger climbs onto the broad Aristotelian shoulders and furthers
the vision of writing history:
Forces moving the nations remain unchanged ever since the birth of
the written history. These forces determine contemporary history just
as they have determined the history of the past. To present these
recurrent forces in action is the goal of the author of a historical
novel. He wants to understand the present, and therefore searches in
history not for ashes but for flames.9
Yes, yesto understand the present is the super objective of the
historical novel writer, to use the term coined by the great Russian stage
director Konstantin Stanislavsky. However, nothing prevents a scholarly
work of history from setting the same super objective, and the scholar too
ought to search in history not for ashes but for flames. In faithfully
researching a culture of the past, a scholar ought to strive to better under-
stand problems of today. Then, my dearest Feuchtwanger, a scholarly
historical writing would be even more powerful than a brilliant fiction.
Why so? I hear you asking.
Because my reader will benefit from knowing that in my book he will
read about events that really did happen, letters that were really
exchanged, dialogues that really sounded in the halls of history.
Oh, but you would bore your reader to death, Feuchtwanger warns.
I promise you, Lion, to take the next step, forbidden in scholarly prose. I
will open my historical kitchen and let the reader join me in exploring
the past while pondering questions that are painfully important to the
present. And the future!
8
Epigraph for Feuchtwangers Proud Destiny a.k.a. Arms for America, The Viking
Press, New York, 1947.
9
American Shelter of Lion Feuchtwanger, a program by Marina Efimova, New York,
September 17, 2010, radio station Freedom, in my translation from Russian.
Chapter 2
Why Van der Waerden and Why Me?
Good history is possible when historians take the initiative to under-

take their own investigations of what has been accepted as fact.
Harriet Sepinwall10
It is hard to be a historian. It is difficult if you have not lived in the

time you write about, and if you have, it is even worse.
Nicolaas G. de Bruijn11
Bartel Leendert van der Waerden was a distinguished mathematician and

historian of science. He published the classic 1927 theorem on monochro-
matic arithmetic progressions in finitely-colored integers [Wae2]. The proof
of this magnificent theorem by Van der Waerden was made possible by the
pioneering conjecture of Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet and Issai Schur, hence
I named this classic result the BaudetSchurVan der Waerden Theorem
[Soi3]. Together with the 1916 Schur Theorem on monochromatic solutions
of the equation x + y z in finitely-colored integers [Sch], the Baudet
SchurVan der Waerden Theorem gave birth to the incredibly beautiful
new Ramsey Theory, even before Frank Plumpton Ramseys posthumous
1930 publication [Ram].
Professor Van der Waerden made major contributions to algebraic geom-
etry, abstract algebra, group theory, number theory, combinatorics, analysis,
probability theory, and statistics. In addition to mathematics, he contributed
to quantum mechanics, wrote on the psychology of discovery, and published
10
February 6, 1996 post on E-Holocaus Discussion Group. Sepinwall is a Professor at the
Holocaust Education Resource Center, College of Saint Elizabeth.
11
June 1, 2004 e-mail to Alexander Soifer [Bru8].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_2
6 2 Why Van der Waerden and Why Me?
most liberally on the history of mathematics, astronomy, and natural sci-

ences in antiquity. Among the many books, Van der Waerden wrote the
two-volume Moderne Algebra [Wae3], one of the most influential and
popular mathematical books ever written. This 19301931 book is still in
print today, nearly a century later!
Clearly, Van der Waerden deserved a book-length biography, better
several biographical books. It is therefore surprising that no monograph
had been dedicated to his life before I commenced my inquiry. Why is
that? I once asked Professor Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn, who in 1952
accepted Van der Waerdens chair at Amsterdam, after the latter moved to
Zurich. In reply, De Bruijn shared with me his Theory of Matters Bio-
graphical [Bru7]:
My advice to scientists who would like to have books about them after
their death is (apart from obvious things like doing important work and
having lots of students):
1. Stay in your country.
2. Stay in a single subject.
3. Dont get old.
And, if you do happen to get old: try to write an autobiography.
Van der Waerden missed points 1, 2, 3, and was too modest to write
an autobiography.12
In 1990 I started researching and writing The Mathematical Coloring Book
[Soi9]. In addition to presenting mathematics of coloring as an evolution of
ideas, I wanted to include biographies of all major creators of Ramsey Theory,
including B. L. van der Waerden. At the start of my writing, I thought that I
could simply quote the biographies, if not from Encyclopedia Britannica, at
least from biographical books and articles, written by professional historians
and historians of mathematics. It proved to be easier said than done. I
immediately ran into irreconcilable contradictions in published records. It
soon became clear that I had no choice but to do my own historical research
into the lives of the creators of Ramsey Theory. Of the many biographies,
Van der Waerdens was by far the most complex and controversial. Conse-
quently, it took the longest to research his life in the many archives of
Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and the United States.
12
Curiously, during the decades of our correspondence, N.G. de Bruijn did not follow his
own advice to preserve details of his life, or even to disclose what his initials N.G. stood
for. In the end, I convinced him to write his autobiography, which has appeared in my book
[Soi9].
2 Why Van der Waerden and Why Me? 7
In the process, I discovered many new documents, not introduced earlier

in historical scholarship. I dug up contemporaneous newspapers not used
before, which provided me with vivid snapshots of the day of their issue. I
discovered that most witnesses of the Nazi era and de-Nazification of
Europe were understandably reluctant to recollect, to relive those painful
times. A good number of my informants possessed vital information, and for
the first time conveyed it to me. This book would not penetrate the subject as
deeply without input from such eyewitnesses as N.G. de Bruijn,
H.J.A. Duparc, Beno Eckmann, and Paul Erdos.
While there were no books on the life of Van der Waerdennone of his
three homelands, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland produced anythere
were numerous biographical articles. One could make an argument that Van
der Waerdens life in general and the turbulent years 19331950 in partic-
ular were addressed in [Eis, Fre1, FTW, Dol1, Dol2, Fre2], etc. While this
would appear to be true, and every 5 years a few biographical articles did
appear (for the 60th birthday, the 65th birthday, . . ., the 90th birthday),
understanding his life in a satisfactory way required two indispensable
components: finding key documents scattered over numerous archives,
and exercising a great deal of impartiality. No one before 1994 (when I
entered the arena) had demonstrated either of these prerequisites. In fact,
most authors of celebratory articles desired to fabricate Van der Waerdens
image as a hero, and moreover a German hero. An anonymous referee of this
book complained about my scratching at the stars brilliant image, creating
thus a portrait full of antipodes. The reasons for this kind of portrait are hard
to understand. I can only answer, cest la vie, thats life, life is full of
contradictions, and Van der Waerden had his share of them. Whoever says
the truth shall die!13
The Biblical wisdom agrees with me, The waters wear the stones (Job
14:19). Stonewalling the truth will sooner or later collapse. The truth like
water will find its way out.
Yes, my anonymous referee, I know that many of my colleagues believe
that a scholar should be evaluated based on scholarly achievements alone,
without any regard to moral standards. However, I am with Albert Einstein,
who on November 20, 1950 wrote, in English [Ein4]:
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our
actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on
it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
13
This most fitting here sentence comes from the title of the 1981 documentary by the Dutch
film director Philo Bregstein about the murder of the great poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo
Pasolini; the original Dutch title is Wie de Waarheid Zegt Moet Dood.
Many of my predecessors apparently believed that a personal acquain-

tance with Van der Waerden automatically made them experts on his life.
Some of these authors were recognized historians of mathematics, and thus
their fine professional reputations gave credence to their superficial papers
on the life of Van der Waerden. Their repetition of Van der Waerdens own
words and explanations and uncritical copying from each other contributed
to mathematical folklore. However, these repetitions, mixed with cheer-
leading, and lacking in archival research and critical examination of facts,
hardly added up to history.14 Truly, Van der Waerdens words from the
preface to his fine book Science Awakening [Wae15] apply to his
biographers:
How frequently it happens that books on the history of mathematics
copy their assertions uncritically from other books, without consulting
the sources! How many fairytales circulate as universally known
truths!
Professor Miles Reids approach in his 1988 Cambridge University Press
book [Rei] did not contribute to history either when he wrote:
Rigorous foundations of algebraic geometry were laid in the 1920s and
1930s by Van der Waerden, Zariski and Weil (Van der Waerdens
14
My research on Van der Waerdens turbulent years 19311951 was largely finished and
my three essays waiting in Geombinatorics queue when in 2004 I received from a German
colleague a long Centenary article with the title nearly identical to the first installment [Soi4]
of my triptych: Van der Waerdens Leipziger Jahre 19311945 by the then Leipzig
University Professor of History of Mathematics Rudiger Thiele (Mitteilungen der DMV
12-1/2004, 820). It turned out that the title was about the only thing in common between
our works. It would require a long article for me to correct Thieles errors and challenge his
prejudices. For example, Thiele alleges It is natural that in particular Jewish emigrants have
attacked van der Waerden for his stay in Nazi Germany. It appeared as if Thiele blames the
Jews for their attacks on Van der Waerden. Everyoneand particularly a German histo-
rianshould have exercised better judgment and respect for the Jews who were harassed,
thrown from their jobs, forced into exile, sent to death camps, killed, and driven to commit
suicide. Moreover, there was no truth to Thieles allegation: Van der Waerdens critics Otto
E. Neugebauer and Oswald Veblen, for example, were not Jewish. Thiele quoted Veblen
writing in December 1933 about signs of growing anti-Semitism, as if establishing moral
equivalence between Nazi Germany and the United States. Yes, there was anti-Semitism in
America, as in all countries where Jews livedbut the Nazis gave a particularly bad name to
anti-Semitism. There is no moral equivalence, Professor Thiele: the difference between
American and German anti-Semitism is 6,000,000 dead bodies! Thiele promotes a
pre-ordained advocacy at the expense of an impartial analysis of even his Leipzig
Universitys archival documents made available to both of us. As a result, in my opinion
Prof. Thieles article contributed little to history in general, and to our understanding of Van
der Waerden in particular. In 2009 this article appeared in the form of a small book in
German, Van der Waerden in Leipzig.
contribution is often suppressed because a number of mathematicians

of the immediate post-war period, including some of the leading
algebraic geometers, considered him a Nazi collaborator).
Even if leading algebraic geometers (presumably Oscar Zariski and
Andre Weil) had such an opinion, their fine mathematical achievements did
not automatically make them custodians of the historical truth. It was very
unfortunate that such a heavy accusation was leveled against Professor Van
der Waerden in Reids book unaccompanied by any substantiation at all. In
fact, Van der Waerden publicly criticized the Nazi regime from its inception
and until May 1935, at which time he was warned by the Leipzig University
administrators that meddling in German political affairs could cost him his
German professorship.
History is a reflection of life, a multi-faceted and complex life. And since
this is not a transfinite book, I inevitably had to make my choices which
threads to unroll, which to barely touch, and which not to touch at all. I trust
that other historians will make other choices, unroll different paths, and
present alternative views. I chose to write a book not about Van der
Waerdens mathematics, for this would have limited the readership of the
book to those who can read mathematical texts. This book is about the life
and fate of a scholar, a fine person from a distinguished family, who finds
himself in the Nazi tyranny, and inevitably accepts some compromises that
in my opinion lower his moral ground. I hope it will be read with profit by all
academicsand broader by all peoplewho face similar problems and
similar choices in present-day tyrannies and even present-day democracies.
Needless to say, Van der Waerden was important to Holland. He was one
of the two best Dutch mathematicians of the twentieth century (together
with Brouwer). Bartel belonged to the family of the beloved Congressman
Dr. Theo van der Waerden, Red Theo as he was called by his admirers.
After World War II, which he spent in Nazi Germany, Hollands brutal
occupier, Bartel returned home and became a subject of a national debate.
Based on the case of one person, Bartel van der Waerden, his country,
Holland, passed a national law prohibiting civil service jobsand that
included all professorshipsto all people who willingly served the enemy.
But why was Van der Waerden important to Germany? He was one of the
most brilliant young mathematicians of Europe, third on the list of the great
David Hilberts succession at Gottingen, the best among the famed algebra-
ist Emmy Noethers students, protege of the all-influential Richard Courant.
Van der Waerden authored Moderne Algebra [Wae3], perhaps, the most
popular mathematical text since Euclids Elements. And he was a close
professional, personal, and political friend of the second most important
personage in this book, Werner Heisenberg, one of the great physicists of the
twentieth century.
Why did I include Heisenberg in this book, when there are numerous
book-length biographies of Heisenberg? In Heisenberg biographies Van
der Waerden is rarely mentioned and if so, only in passing. The numerous
biographical articles about Van der Waerden practically never mention
Heisenberg. Why, one may ask? I think partly because mathematical biog-
raphers do not know about their close link, partly because they are trying to
make a German hero out of Van der Waerden, and any mention of the
scientific leader of the atomic research in Nazi GermanyHeisenberg
may compromise that image. And so, their friendship has never been
seriously explored.
In this book you will see Heisenberg from a different angle as a loyal
friend of Van der Waerden. You will take part in discussing for the first time
in full detail, Van der Waerden writing to Niels Bohr and Hans Kramers in
defense of Heisenberg. And you will see the commonality of decisions by
Van der Waerden and Heisenberg, such as staying in Nazi Germany when
they had offers to leave, and protesting firings of Jewish professors. In fact,
the stenography of the 1935 faculty meeting where they both, Van der
Waerden and Heisenberg, protest Jewish firings, has been substantially
quoted by me in The Mathematical Coloring Book [Soi9], but appears
here in its entirety, and with photos of all five protesters and one chief
defender of the Nazi regime (Arthur Golf). And so, in spite of the dozens of
Heisenberg biographies, there are new details in this book, including the
entire 4-page unpublished document On passive and active opposition in
the Third Reich, discovered and first discussed by Professor Mark Walker.
I have assembled a great wealth of material related to Van der Waerdens
life, especially his life during the years 19311951. In a number of instances
Van der Waerden is worthy of high praise. Other cases, in my opinion,
illustrate ever so clearly that ones response to living under tyranny without
willingly supporting it, can only be to leave, to engage in resistance, or to
compromise. My 20 years of research brought me to a conclusion that Van
der Waerden chose not to leave the Nazi tyranny and accept certain com-
promises with the regime in order to retain his professorship in Nazi
Germany. One of my many tasks was to see whether Van der Waerden
accepted responsibility for his Nazi era compromises after the Nazi regime
had collapsed.
I wanted to learn about the man behind the classic 1927 theorem of
Ramsey Theory before Ramsey, as I named the collection of a few
relevant results that appeared before the pioneering F. P. Ramseys 1930
paper [Ram]. The triptych of my findings, In Search of Van der Waerden,
Parts I, II, and III, first appeared on the pages of Geombinatorics [Soi4, Soi6,
Soi7], and was followed by Part Zero of the series, The Early Years
[Soi8]. After these four publications, I was able to find additional important
documents, and further analyze the record I had assembled. I reported my
findings in The Mathematical Coloring Book [Soi9]. Here comes the latest
update, based on the relevant chapters from The Mathematical Coloring
Book. Much of those chapters appears here verbatim, and why not: I am the
sole copyrights owner of The Mathematical Coloring Book, and I believe in
the American wisdom, dont fix if not broken. Moreover, the present book
dramatically expands those chapters, by a factor of three, and consequently
is a broader and deeper work. Is this the final word?
Of course not. This work is forever in progress, in search of the hero.
While I have found answers to nearly all of the questions I posed to myself, I
prefer to consider this book as a report on research in progress, In Search of
Van der Waerden. A complete insight into a man is impossible, I can only
aspire to come as close as I am able. Other historians will come in my place.
They will be too late to interview the incredible eyewitnesses I have been
privileged to consult. On the other hand, new researchers may discover
documents unknown to me and propose their own reasoning in interpreting
the enormous archival material that I have unearthed.
If the interest of my colleagues and friends at Princeton Math is any
indication, every intelligent reader would welcome an engagement in solv-
ing historical mysteries, especially those from the times of the Third Reich,
World War II, and de-Nazification of Europe. Translated into the Russian
[Soi10], the Van der Waerden chapters of The Mathematical Coloring Book
prompted a great interest in Russia. Much admired by me Moscow radio
station Freedom aired over the entire Russian territory and the Internet a
45-min interview with me about the fate of Van der Waerden and a role of a
scholar in tyranny. The station and its listeners felt that these problems were
their problems as well.
In the discussion of Alfred Brauers talk, D. A. Smith wrote [Bra2, p. 36]:
Mathematical history is a sadly neglected subject. Most of this history
belongs to the twentieth century, and a good deal of it in the memories
of mathematicians still living. The younger generation of mathemati-
cians has been trained to consider the product, mathematics, as the
most important thing, and to think of the people who produced it only
as names attached to theorems. This frequently makes for a rather dry
subject matter.
Starting with my 1990 book, How Does One Cut a Triangle? and
especially in writing The Mathematical Coloring Book, I attempted to not
just avoid creating more of a rather dry subject matter, and not just
intertwine mathematics and history. Rather I aspired to produce a specimen
of mathematics and history as a genre of literature, which could be as
exciting as fine historical novels without sacrificing the rigor of historical
research, perhaps even more exciting as only truth can be.
This book differs from the majority of historical research literature in a
number of ways. I unapologetically open my kitchen to you, so that you
join me in my research, ride with me on the trains of thought, feel the
adrenalin of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I try to use the present tense
as much as possible, so that you and I can live with the personages of this
narrative and not merely read about them. I often quote long documents in
their entirety to give you a flavor of the person and the epoch, and to give the
players in my drama greater roles while reserving a lesser part for myself. I
try to stay close to documents and eyewitnesses, not going further than one
step away from the evidence. I may disagree with the personages of my
book and on occasion argue with them, but I treasure the life and work of
Bartel L. van der Waerden, Johannes G. van der Corput, Werner Heisen-
berg, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, Peter Debye, Niels Bohr, Max Planck,
Albert Einstein, Erich Hecke, Issai Schur, P.J.H. Baudet, Henry Baudet II,
N.G. de Bruijn, and Beno Eckmann. I realize that in writing about them I
open my own integrity to your judgment. Albert Camus is absolutely correct
[Cam]:
To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and
that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.
Little did I know when I commenced this research how passionately
people feel still today about the Third Reich and World War II, European
suffering and the Holocaust. In a sense, writing a book on these topics is
akin crossing a mine field: one wrong wordand you are history. As an
illustration, it suffices to recall the fate of Daniel Goldhagen and his book
Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
I view historyas I do a written word in any fieldto be a genre of
literary art.15 History is inevitably subjective. In fact, I believe that every-
thing in this world is subjective, that objectivity is a mirage, or at best a
noble but unachievable goal. Even in writing my documentary prose, I have
to choose hundreds of documents out of thousands that I have assembled.
My book is a means of my self-expression, and so I feel compelled to
15
An anonymous referee complained, Considering history as a form of art is quite unusual
and might differ from what other publications in history would do. Exactly right: I do not
write usual booksthere are plenty of them collecting dust on the shelves of libraries.
express my views on some of the important issues that the personages of my

book are facing. Even in trying to be fair, I realize that some of you may
disagree with my views and lessons I have learned from history. I hope they
will publish their views, documents, and arguments, for in a substantive
constructive debate we get closer to the ever elusive truth.
I delight when I discover acts of kindness and compassion, preserved
between the pages of this tragic period of history like leaves of autumn
foliage between the pages of an old book. I am most interested in history
when observations of the past shed light on the problems of the present and
help us solve them. B. L. van der Waerden was a man of high moral
principles, a member of a great Dutch family of public servants. His choice
to stay the entire Nazi era in Germany put him under pressures of the
criminal state, pressures he has not always withstood unscathed. Analyzing
Van der Waerdens life under the Nazis allows us an insight into problems
of a scholar in a totalitarian state. You will readily realize that problems of
The Scholar and the State are with us today, and I discuss them at the end of
the book in the chapter of this title.
This super objective of keeping in mind problems of today should not in
any way affect the thoroughness of research into Van der Waerdens life.
Writing about his predecessors-anthropologists (Malinowski, E. E. Evans-
Pritchard, and others), James W. Fernandez observes [Fer], They have all
been ethnographers first and ethnologists second. Likewise, I pledge in this
book to be a historian first and a scholar concerned about current affairs
second.
Chapter 3
The Family
To Dorith & Theo van der Waerden,

whose help made this part of my research
possible, this chapter is gratefully dedicated.
I can tell you that I am very much impressed with the thoroughness
and integrity whereby it is written. I was also amazed that you have
been able to collect so many facts, letters and data from that period. So
much work! Your description is very objective but humane and it is
most interesting how out of all these facts slowly one gets an image of a
real person of flesh and blood behind these facts.
Dorith van der Waerden16
Thank you for sending me your triptych, which I read with great
interest! This history is so complex, but you got so much information, I
was astounded. Reading was very compellingmy greatest compli-
ment for the study you made.
Theo van der Waerden17
16
[WaD6].
17
[WaT3].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_3
16 3 The Family
Those of us fortunate to grow up in an inspiring family know how

profound the familys influence is. It may not be apparent in the early
years, but with age, it may become more clear. Mark Twain put it best:
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand
to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished
at how much the old man had learned in 7 years.
It is important to examine Van der Waerdens early years and elucidate
his relationship with his distinguished family, which included two members
of the Dutch Parliament and an Amsterdam judge.
According to Theo van der Waerden, Bartels nephew [WaT1, WaT2],
The Van der Waerden family originates (from what we know) in the
15th century from the Zuidelijke Nederlanden (the South of the coun-
try) later called Noord-Brabant (after the secession of Belgium in
1830), around (what is now) Eindhoven, in small villages, Catholics,
agriculturists.
This family tree is difficult to reconstruct and is not central to our
purposes. Let us fly over half a millennium to the subject of our investiga-
tion, Bartel (Bart) van der Waerden, who was born in Amsterdam on
February 2, 1903, in the family house at Hondecoeterstraat 5. He was the
first child of Dr. Theodorus (Theo) van der Waerden (August 21, 1876
EindhovenJune 12, 1940 Laren) and Dorothea van der Waerden, born
Dorothea Adriana Endt (late 1876 or 1877 WageningenNovember
14, 1942 Laren), who got married in Amsterdam on August 28, 1901.
Two more sons, Coenraad (Coen) and Benno (Ben), followed on December
29, 1904 and October 2, 1909 respectively.
Barts father, Dr. Theo van der Waerden, was the third of the eight
children, three girls and five boys, of Hendricus Johannes van der
Waerden,18 the owner of a large blacksmithing business (with
20 employees), and Johanna Huberta Cornelia Goossens. Dr. Theos grand-
daughter and Bens daughter, Dorith van der Waerden provides lively
details [WaD5]:
Listed by age [the 8 children were] Pauline, Justine, Theo, Jan,
Herman, Harry, Tjeu, and Anna. The 3 girls didnt marry. The oldest,
Pauline, became a nun, the second, Justine, took care of the family and
later of her parents and her brother Tjeu who was a bit retarded. The
5 boys were all sent to the Technical University of Delft where one
18
You can see his portrait with a pipe hanging on the wall in the family photos from 1916 to
1925 reproduced in this chapter.
3 The Family 17
Photo 1 Memorial Plaque for Dr. Theo van der Waerden by Jacobus de Graaff, Courtesy of
Theo van der Waerden
could become an engineer or architect. They had to study quickly in

order to make room (financially) for the next to study. Anna, the
youngest of the family, was very intelligent and wanted to study like
her brothers but was not allowed. While working, she went on studying
and later became a math teacher in secondary school.
Theo and his younger brother Jan studied civil engineering at the Delft
Technical University, where they both became socialists, among the first
students-socialists of Holland [WaT1]. Upon graduation c. 1910, Theo
18 3 The Family
Photo 2 Dr. Theo, Bart, Dorothea, Ben and Coen van der Waerden, 1916, Courtesy of Dorith van
der Waerden
3 The Family 19
Photo 3 Dr. Theo, Bart, Dorothea, Ben and Coen van der Waerden, 1925, Courtesy of
Dorith van der Waerden
20 3 The Family
taught mathematics and mechanics in Leeuwarden, Dordrecht and finally

for 20 years, 19021922, in Amsterdam. In 1911 he earned the degree of
Doctor of Technical Sciences by defending his thesis entitled Education and
Technology (Geschooldheid en Techniek).
A year earlier, on June 28, 1910, Dr. Theo van der Waerden was elected a
representative of SDAP (Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij), to the
Provincial government of North Holland, where he remained until 1919.
Theo was also editor of The Socialist Guide (De Socialistische Gids), where
after 1916 he started publishing articles on economic issues. From
September 17, 1918, and until his passing on June 12, 1940, he was a
SDAPs universally admired member of the House of Representatives
(Tweede Kamer) of the Dutch Parliament. Theo-the-grandson informs
[WaT1]:
[Dr. Theo van der Waerden] was beloved and important in Dutch
history. In 1939 he was to be the first Socialist Cabinet-minister, but
he was already ill.
Do not forget this anticipated high honor of a cabinet appointment, for it
will surface later in the book. Published on the day of his passing, Dr. Theos
moving eulogy19 was entitled A worker with a warm heart and a sober
mind (Een werker met een warm hart en een nuchtere geest):
The working class loses in him one of the pioneers of the socialism in
the Netherlands, who has not saved himself, a man, who always gave
the best he can offer to the people.
We remember him in gratitude and respect.
Barts mother, Dorothea van der Waerden, daughter of Coenraad Endt
and Maria Anna Kleij, came from a Dutch Protestant family. She was very
much loved by her three sons. As Bens daughter Dorith explains (e-mail
from December 23, 2005), Dr. Theo came from a Catholic family, Dorothea
came from a Dutch Protestant family, and together they were atheists.
When the three sons left the familys Amsterdam house at Hondecoe-
terstraat 5 in the later 1920s, Dr. Theo and Dorothea van der Waerden
moved 30 km out of Amsterdam to the town of Laren, well known as the
home to many famous Dutch artists and intellectuals, including
Netherlandss leading mathematician Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. Theo
built a magnificent house there at Verlengde Engweg 10.
19
Het Volk, June 12, 1940.
3 The Family 21
Photo 4 The Van der Waerden familys Amsterdam house at Hondecoeterstraat 5. Recent
photo by Theo van der Waerden, grandson of Dr. Theo van der Waerden
22 3 The Family
Holland was overwhelmed by German invaders in the course of five short

days in 1940: May 1015. As a Social-Democrat, Dr. Theo van der Waerden
would have certainly faced a prospect of prison or a concentration camp.
Records show that he denied the German occupiers that pleasure by
succumbing to cancer at 8 in the morning on June 12, 1940. He was
63 years old. After Dr. Theos passing, his wife Dorothea lived in the
Laren house together with her sister. The Death Certificate shows that she
was found dead on November 14, 1942 at 10 in the morning. Record books
of the town of Laren report that Dorothea committed suicide.20 The grand-
daughter Dorith van der Waerden, named in honor of Dorothea, informs:
My father [Ben, Barts brother] was called by her sister who lived with her
after Theo died. She said Do (as she was called) was missing. My father
went there and found her in a small lake [WaD2]. She was sixty years old. I
asked Dorith, a professional psychologist, about the reasons of Dorotheas
suicide. Of course, she did not know for sureno one doesbut she shed
light on possible causes of Dorotheas depression:21
About my grandmother: in the first place I did not know her, and my
family never spoke about her depression and death. So I can only
speculate as anyone else.
Today we know this illness can be hereditary but also be caused by
environmental factors, or both. Of course the environmental factors
were there: her husband died a year before and the Germans conquered
[and occupied] Holland at the time of her death. (Quite a few Dutch
people committed suicide at the occasion).
Barts middle brother Coen (December 29, 1904December 24, 1982),
who must have been named after his maternal grandfather, studied at Delft
Technical University like his father Theo and Uncle Jan before him. Coens
son Theo, named in honor of his grandfather, has provided me with much
information about his father [WaT1, WaT2]:
20
Parket Officier van Justitie Amsterdam, 19401949, inventory number 3 [Algemeen
Register, or Correspondentie-register, 1942]; Case number: 1981
Number of letter: 1095/42
Date of the letter: 17 Nov., 1942 [it says id., which means the same date as another letter
about another case directly above #1981] received by Officier van Justitie: 18 Nov., 1942
From: Burg[emeester van] Laren NH. [Noord-Holland] sending in: official report about
the death of Dorothea Adriana Endt by means of suicide answer sent by Officier van Justitie:
18 Nov., 1942 to: Burg. Laren NH.
Content answer: verlof tot begraven (consent to bury the deceased).
21
[WaD7], e-mail in English.
3 The Family 23
After the war, in 1947 he [Coen] . . . became Secretary of the Board of

the Arbeiderspers [The Workers Press], a few years later C.E.O. of this
company. The company was the biggest publishing company in the
Netherlands, editing the biggest newspaper Het Vrije Volk and editing
an enormous quantity of books. He left as C.E.O. in 1966 because his
wife (my mother) was very ill. She died in 1968 at the age of 65.
During two periods Coen was a member of the Senate (Eerste
Kamer) of the Dutch Parliament for PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid),22
for the total of 10 years (19571966 and 19701971)23 and was one of
the leaders of his party. Coen was also a spokesman on economic
issues and a member of the union wing of PvdA.
Coen and Johanna Cornelia Teensma, whom he married in 1931,
had three children, Carla, Theo and Dorien, born in 1935, 1937 and
1941 respectively. Carla, a TV producer, married the well-known
journalist Johannes Christiaan Jan (Han) Lammers, who was an active
member of PvdA just like his father-in-law Coen. He served as an
Alderman of the City of Amsterdam and later, in 1985, became Queen
Beatrix High Commissioner (19861996) of the large new province
Flevoland recovered from the sea. Theo studied Law at the University
of Amsterdam and became Director of the Dutch Cocoa and Chocolate
Association. Dorien became a painter.
I have learned much about Barts youngest brother Benno (Ben) and his
heroic conduct during the Nazi period in Germany and the German occu-
pation of Holland from his daughter Dorith [WaD0]:
My father, Benno, born 2 October 1909, died 9 of May 1987. My
mothers name was Rosa Eva Louise Weijlhere comes the Jewish
rootborn 26 July 1909. She died 4 years ago. They met in 1939 and
married 4 months later in the same year. He attended what we call a
gymnasium; contrary to his father and two brothers he had no inclina-
tion towards mathematics. He was the youngest. He studied law
[University of Amsterdam, 19271932] and became a lawyer. He
had his own office, one room, in a Grachtenhuis [i.e., a house by one
of Amsterdams canals] with other lawyers, and lived in the attic,
2 rooms. There my mother also came to live, and the three children
22
PvdA, literally Labor Party, was founded in 1946 as a continuation of SDAP, the party of
Coens father Theo, which was joined by the Liberal-Democratic Association (Vrijzinnig-
Democratische Bond, or VDB) and the Christian-Democratic Union (Christelijk-
Democratische Unie, or CDU).
23
The first time he left the Senate due to his wifes poor health; the second time due to his
own health problems.
24 3 The Family
were all born there during the war. This is somewhat amazing, but I
think they were too old to wait with children and hoped the war would
be over soon. During the occupation, there was no work for a lawyer
but after that he started again but applied for the job of a judge. This
was always his dream, and he was appointed in 1949 [as a judge of the
City of Amsterdam]. As a judge, he was very much interested in the
rehabilitation of criminals after their punishment was over. He started
an organization in Holland for help to prisoners and especially help to
re-socialize them afterwards and help them to find jobs, and so on. He
was very well known for being a humane judge interested in the
personal circumstances of people in front of him, he was always polite
and respectful. Politically he was a socialist like his father and Brother
Coen, but as a judge, he found it not right to be a member of any
particular political party, so he was no longer active here. My mother
was a [medical] Dr., but most of her life she was a housewife.
The fact that my father married a Jewish woman was no coincidence
I believe. In the thirties my father was active in helping German Jews
to escape from Germany to Holland. During the occupation, he made
false identity cards for Jews and helped them to change identity. I do
not know much more about it as this period was never spoken about in
our family as in most families.
My parents had 3 children: myself, Dorothee Louise, born 13 May
1941; Brother Han, 14 April 1943; and Sister Anneke, 8 February
1945. My brother has a shop of old vintage posters. My sister is a well-
known artist, ceramics. I am a psychologist. I am the only one who is
again politically active in local politics for a green leftist party
GroenLinks.
Bartel Leendert van der Waerden was understandably proud to belong to
this distinguished family of public servants. In the difficult postwar times, he
will invoke his father and brothers as high arbiters of Bartels character and
integrity.
3 The Family 25
Photo 5 From the left: Camilla, Bartel, Theodorus, Coenraad, Dorothea and Benno van der
Waerden; 30th Anniversary of Theo & Dos marriage, Circa August 28, 1931, Freudenstadt,
Southern Germany. Courtesy of Coenraads son Theo van der Waerden
Chapter 4
The Joys of Young Bartel24
The familys collective memory preserves a funny, but telling story about
young Bartel. It was shared by his aunt Annemarie van der Waerden:
When Bart was a youngster his father told him not to hang onto cars
with his bicycle. Next time he was spotted hanging to a streetcar. His
father was angry of course. But Bart said totally innocently: but father,
you said not to hang onto cars!?
In 1919 Bartel graduated from a high schoolhis student fraternity was
B.R.E.E.R.O. (Blide Ruchtigheyt Ende Eenigheid Rackt Ons), founded in
1904and entered the University of Amsterdam very earlyhe was just
16 (as was L. E. J. Brouwer before him when the latter entered the same
university).
24
The connoisseurs of German literature have undoubtedly noticed in this title the homage
to The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) by Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, 1774, and The Joys of Young Werther (Die Freuden des jungen Werthers) by
Friedrich Nicolai, 1775.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_4
28 4 The Joys of Young Bartel
Photo 6 Bartel at 16 ( first row, fourth from the right). Inauguration in the Amsterdam
Student Corps (Amsterdamsch Studenten Corps), 1919; Courtesy of Theo van der Waerden.
P. 28
Dirk van Dalen in his remarkable two-volume biography [Dal1, Dal2]25

of L. E. J. Brouwer provides very lively and telling remarks on the student
life and personality of young Bartel:26
The study of mathematics was for him the proverbial piece of cake.
Reminiscing about his studies, he said: I heard Brouwers lectures,
together with Max Euwe and Lucas Smid.27 The three of us listened to
the lectures, which were very difficult, he treated the integration theory
of Lebesgue along intuitionistic lines, and that works. It was very
curious, Brouwer never paid any attention to the audience. All the
time he gazed at a point on the opposite wall. He lived in Laren, rather
isolated. . . He immediately departed after the lecture, so that it was
very difficult to make contact with Brouwer. Van der Waerden
meticulously took notes in class, and usually that was enough to master
all of the material. Brouwers class was an exception. Van der
Waerden recalled that at night he actually had to think over the
material for half an hour and then he had in the end understood it.
25
See my review of it in Geombinatorics XVI(2), 2006, 278284, and in Zentralblatt f
ur
Mathematik.
26
[Dal2], pp. 516519.
27
Max Euwe, the 1935 World Chess Champion; Lucas Smid, an insurance mathematician.
4 The Joys of Young Bartel 29
Van der Waerden was an extremely bright student, and he was well
aware of this fact. He made his presence in class known through bright
and sometimes irreverent remarks. Being quick and sharp (much more
so than most of his professors) he could make life miserable for the
poor teachers in front of the blackboard. During the rather mediocre
lectures of Van der Waals Jr., he could suddenly, with his character-
istic stutter, call out: Professor, what kind of nonsense are you writing
down now? He did not pull such tricks during Brouwers lectures, but
he was one of the few who dared to ask questions.
As we will see, such sarcasm toward his colleagues will become quite
characteristic of Van der Waerden. When the time came for the final
examination and the doctoral thesis, Van der Waerdens supervisor was
not Brouwer as one could expect. Van Dalen explains [Dal2]:
One would think that such a bright student was a man after Brouwers
heart. The truth is that Brouwer had no affinity with Van der Waerdens
mathematics; furthermore, Brouwer wanted to be left alone to do his
own mathematics. A clever young man, who would interrupt his own
contemplation with bright remarks and questions, was the last thing in
the world he wished for. He certainly appreciated Van der Waerdens
mathematical gifts.
Indeed, on October 21, 1924, Brouwer writes a letter of introduction for
Van der Waerden, addressed to Gottingens Privatdozent topologist
Hellmuth Kneser:28
In a few days my student (or actually Weitzenbocks) will come to
Gottingen for the winter semester. His name is Van der Waerden. He is
very intelligent and has already published several papers (namely, on
Invariant Theory). I do not know whether for a foreigner, who wants to
register, there are difficult formalities to fulfill. Nevertheless, it would
be very valuable for Van der Waerden, if he could find some assistance
and guidance. May I ask if he could call you in this regard? Thank you
very much in advance.
This letter of introduction must have been very important to Van der
Waerden, for in his ETH (Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, Z
urich)
archive, I found both Brouwers original and a few copies in Van der
Waerdens handwriting. Brouwer, who appeared so self-centered to so
many colleagues, actually shows almost motherly care for young Bartel
28
ETH, Hs 652 10563, 10563a, and 10563b.
when he tries to get him the Rockefeller (International Education Board, or

IEB for short) fellowship. On April 8, 1925, in handwritten English,
Brouwer sends a letter to Dr. Augustus Trowbridge (18701934), Head of
IEB Office in Paris (formerly Physics Professor at Princeton):29
I am somewhat anxious that the blank forms filled up for Van der
Waerden may not reach you before the date of April 15. I sent them to
Miss Professor Noether (Van der Waerdens proper teacher in
Gottingen) who has to sign them as seconder next to me as proposer,
but they do not come back, so I suppose Miss Noether to be absent
from Gottingen, and out of regular postal communication with her
home (March and April are vacation months in Germany).
On the blank forms Van der Waerden requests a stipendium for
7 months (a summer semester of 3 and a winter semester of 4 months)
in the amount of $100 a month.
The application is successful, and Van der Waerden is awarded this
Rockefeller fellowship at Gottingen University for 7 months (19251926)
for studying abstract algebra under Emmy Noether. Dirk Van Dalen
observes:
Given Van der Waerdens algebraic interests, the person to take care of
him was Emmy Noether. Once in Gottingen, under Emmys wings,
Van der Waerden became a leading algebraist. Emmy was very
pleased with the young Dutchman, That Van der Waerden would
give us much pleasure was correctly foreseen by you. The paper he
submitted in August to the Annalen is most excellent (Zeros of poly-
nomial ideals). . ., she wrote to Brouwer [on November 14, 1925].
Van der Waerden is indeed well received at Gottingen. He impresses not
only the officially under-appreciated Jewish liberal woman Emmy Noether,
but also Gottingens official leaders of mathematics David Hilbert and
Richard Courant. We will meet all three of them later in our story. Both
Hilbert and Courant will write letters of recommendation for the young
Dutchman in the near future.
Curiously, Van der Waerden writes his thesis in 1925 in Holland, while
fulfilling his military duty at the marine base in Den Helder. Van Dalen
brings up an episode, which is typical of impressions of the navete Van der
Waerden will leave on people throughout his life [Dal2]:
29
Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC). I am most grateful to Prof. Reinhard Siegmund-
Schultze for providing me with this and a few other 1925, 1927, and 1933 documents from
RAC related to Van der Waerden.
4 The Joys of Young Bartel 31
In mathematics Van der Waerden was easily recognized as an out-

standing scholar, but in the real world he apparently did not make
such a strong impression. When Van der Waerden spent his period of
military service at the naval base in Den Helder, a town at the northern
tip of North Holland, his Ph.D. advisor [Hendrik de Vries] visited him
one day. He said later that the commander was not impressed by the
young man, he is a nice guy but not very bright.
One question remains a mystery to me: why did Van der Waerden not
defend his doctorate at his beloved Gottingen? Van Dalen seems to be
equally puzzled [Dal2]:
Notwithstanding his popularity in Gottingen, Van der Waerden came
back to Amsterdam for his doctors degree. Perhaps, he would have
liked Brouwer as a Ph.D. advisor, but Brouwer systematically discour-
aged students from writing a dissertation under his supervision.
Brouwer was not interested in the honour, pleasure and toil of the
Ph.D. advisor role. . . It was de Vries who took the role of Ph.D.
advisor of the young Bartel upon himself. The topic of Van der
Waerdens dissertation was enumerative geometry, a subject that was
later treated in a monograph by de Vries himself [1936]. Van der
Waerdens dissertation [De algebraiese grondslagen der meetkunde
van het aantal (The algebraic foundations of enumerative geome-
try), 1926] earned him instant fame in the world of algebraic geom-
eters for its importance as a solid basis of the subject.
Van Dalens assessment, Instant fame in the world of algebraic geom-
eters, is a high bar to clear. To verify it, I go to Princeton Universitys Fine
Library and become the first person ever (!) to check out Van der Waerdens
1926 dissertation [Wae1]. This obscure 37-page brochure (plus a few pages
of a Preface), in Dutch without any proofs, printed, I conjecture, in a tiny
number of copies, could not have possibly made the author famous. Van der
Waerdens algebraic geometry fame will be earned, but later, by his long
series of fine articles on the subject published in the most prestigious and
well-read Springer-Verlag journal Mathematische Annalen.
In the Preface to his dissertation, Van der Waerden thanks his Promotor
(thesis advisor) Hendrik de Vries, and his professors R. Weitzenbock,
Emmy Noether, L.E.J. Brouwer, and G. Mannoury. He also gives credit to
Professor Johan Antony Barrau, whom we will meet again several times in
this book:
The first one [weakness in the argument] was brought to my attention
by a remark of Professor Barrau, who had observed that the theorem
concerning the number of intersections of a curve and a surface in the

projective R3 space that is generally credited to Bezout had only been
proved by Bezout in the very special case in which the curve is a
complete intersection of two surfaces. Professor Barrau outlined for
me two possible proofs in the ensuing exchange of letters, one of the
proofs indicated by Professor Wolff, relied on the theory of Riemann
Surfaces.
Nicolaas G. de Bruijn once shared with me a precious recollection of Van
der Waerdens Promotor Hendrik de Vries [Bru7]:
The following story might interest you. I guess I once heard it from
[Arend] Heyting. At the University of Amsterdam there was a well-
known geometry professor H. de Vries. The story is that H. de Vries
told later that in one particular year he had three brilliant students:
B. L. van der Waerden, Max Euwe, and C. Zwikker, and that [the
World Chess Champion] Euwe was the best one of the three. Zwikker
became a physics professor.
Chapter 5
Van der Waerden at Hamburg
Photo 7 Hamburg Mathematicians, 1927, From the left: Petersson, Furch, Artin, Herglotz,
Reidemeister, Brauner, Haack, Hoheisel, Slotnik, Reinhardt, Schreier, Blaschke, Behnke,
Kloosterman, Van der Waerden; Archives of P. Roquette, Courtesy of the Archives of the
Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach
In 1975 Van der Waerden commences to tell the Story of Hamburg [Wae20]:
[In 1926] I went to Hamburg as a Rockefeller fellow to study with
Hecke, Artin and Schreier.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_5
34 5 Van der Waerden at Hamburg
He confirms it to the interviewer on May 4, 1993 [Dol1]:

After one semester at Gottingen, Courant started to take notice of
me. He procured for me, on the recommendation of Emmy Noether,
a Rockefeller grant for one year. With this I studied another semester
at Gottingen and one semester at Hamburg with Artin.
It is relevant that Van der Waerden recalls being a Rockefeller fellow at
Hamburg, but these are his recollections 49 and 67 years later. Much earlier,
on April 15, 1951, upon his arrival at the University of Zurich, Van der
Waerden writes in his autobiography for Dozentenalbum:30
Nach meiner Promotion zum Dr. phil. in Amsterdam 1926, wurde ich
Assistant [!] bei Artin in Hamburg.
Furthermore, in his 1930 Moderne Algebra [Wae3], Van der Waerden
enumerates his Hamburg duties when he lists the sources of this book:
A lecture [course] by E. Artin on Algebra (Hamburg, Summer
session 1926).
A seminar on Theory of Ideals, conducted by E. Artin, W. Blaschke,
O. Schreier, and the author [i.e., Van der Waerden] (Hamburg, Winter
1926/27).
I asked Hamburg University what position Van der Waerden had occu-
pied at Hamburg in 19261927. My inquiry was answered by Dekan
Fachbereich Mathematik Prof. Dr. Alexander Kreuzer on January 11, 2006:
For sure [sic] he was not a Wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft of the
Mathematische Seminar of the University of Hamburg and therefore
not an Assistant of any of the Professors. (At this time the word
Assistant was not used).
He is not mentioned in the Vorlesungsverzeichnis (like every offi-
cial member of the University)31 and he has not given a lecture. He
was here for one [sic] Semester and we believe that he has still had a
Rockefeller fellowship (or any other money not from the University
Hamburg).
30
Zurich University Archive, Dozentenalbum, Bd III, p. 52.
31
Formally Dekan Kreuzer is correct. However, we see in winter 19261927 semesters
Vorlesungsverzeichnis (schedule) in the section Fur hohere Semester, 561 Vortragsseminar
uber Algebra: Prof. Artin, Prof. Blaschke, Dr. Schreier. Fr[eitag] 122 MathS[eminar],
just as Van der Waerden reported in Moderne Algebra above, except his name is missing in
Vorlesungsverzeichnis. I venture to conjecture that he was simply added to the leaders of this
seminar too late for Vorlesungsverzeichnis to reflect his participation.
5 Van der Waerden at Hamburg 35
Hamburg Universitys Prof. Dr. Karin Reich of the Geschichte der

Naturwissenschaften, Mathematik und Technik and of the Department
Mathematik, confirmed Kreuzers words, while hinting that I would learn
it all if I only read other biographers:
As far as Van der Waerden is concerned, I cant give you any other
information than R. Thiele or A. Kreuzer have done. There was no
affiliation, Van der Waerden was a Rockefeller Fellow, which is
mentioned in all [sic] the biographies on Van der Waerden.
Professor Reich is right: it is mentioned in all the biographiesbut does
it make it true? One must pause and retreat: after all, the German authors,
especially Hamburg University historians, know Hamburg University history
bestor do they? To begin with, Van der Waerden contradicts Kreuzers
statement that He was here for one Semester. We read [Wae20]:
I met Artin and Schreier nearly every day for two or three semesters.
Van der Waerdens Gottingen mentor Richard Courant knew much better
than my present Hamburg colleagues whether Van der Waerden was a
member of the Mathematics Seminar. Contemporaneously, on November
29, [19]26, Courant addresses his letter to Herrn Dr. v.d. Waerden, Ham-
burg. Mathem. Seminar der Universit at.32 Furthermore, according to
Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, the author of the definitive book [Sie2] on
the Rockefeller mathematical charities, the Rockefeller archive contain no
mention of Van der Waerden ever receiving another Rockefeller fellowship:
not in 19261927 or in 1933 (in 1933 the record shows that at least he
applied for it).
We know for certain that Van der Waerden was at Hamburg on January
15, 1927, for the Rockefeller official Wilbur Earle Tisdale, the new assistant
to Augustus Trowbridge, the head of the Paris Office of the International
Education Board (IEB), writes in his diary on January 15, 1927:33
I talked for more than an hour with Van der WAERDEN, who finished
[!] his fellowship this [1926] spring. He is now Assistant [!] to Prof.
Hecke, but will go in April to Gottingen as Assistant to Prof. Courant
and Prof. Emmy Noether. This is quite a boost for him and he attributes
it to the opportunities afforded by his fellowship.
32
New York University, Archive, Richard Courant Papers.
33
The Rockefeller Archive Center, Tislog (Tisdales Log). I am most grateful to Reinhard
Siegmund-Schultze for providing me with this and other Rockefeller Archive Centers
documents related to Van der Waerden.
36 5 Van der Waerden at Hamburg
So the man, who would have provided the Rockefeller money to Van der
Waerden, states that Van der Waerden was not a Rockefeller fellow at
Hamburg, but rather Assistant to Prof. Heckemoreover, he states that
contemporaneously. Further in his notes, Tisdale records Van der Waerden
describing himself in January 1927 as Van der Waerden, assistant [!] in
algebraic geometry and algebra.
On the other hand, on July 23, 1928, the Curators of the University of
Groningen submitted the following information to the Minister of Educa-
tion, Culture and Sciences of the Netherlands:
He [Van der Waerden] received his doctorate in Amsterdam in 1926;
after that he was Assistent to Prof. Blaschke at Hamburg.34
This is repeated in the appendix to the Dutch mathematics magazine
Euclides,35 where under the June 1931 photograph of the young and hand-
some Bartel, we read among other:
Assistent to Prof. Blaschke in Hamburg 192728.
Thus, Van der Waerden was at Hamburg University in a position of
Assistent, without teaching duties, but taking part in the running of the
seminar together with Artin, Blaschke and Schreier. Formally he assisted
Heckeas I view Tisdales notes to be the most reliable documentor else
Blaschke or Artin, but of course his main goal for being at Hamburg was to
learn abstract algebra from Emil Artin. From the Van der WaerdenCourant
correspondence,36 we know that Van der Waerden was at Hamburg during
the summer and the winter semesters of 19261927. And we know that this
was, perhaps, one of the most important times of his mathematical life.
The Hamburg time also allows an insight into the views and personality
of Van der Waerden. During the already mentioned January 15, 1927
interview with Van der Waerden, Tisdale notes Van der Waerdens predi-
lection for categorical opinions:
While he [Van der Waerden] is young, he has very clear and definite
opinionsperhaps too much so. I talked to him concerning
Kloosterman37 and, in his frank way, he told me he considered
34
Het Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, finding aid number 2.14.17, record number 73dossier
B.L. van der Waerden (Archive of the Ministry of Education).
35
Euclides, 7th year (i.e., 1931), No. 6. By the way, they erred in the dates, which should
have been 19261927.
36
New York University, Archive, Richard Courant Papers.
37
Hendrik Douwe Kloosterman (19001968), later a professor at the University of Leiden
(19471968).
5 Van der Waerden at Hamburg 37
Kloosterman to be lazy, an average straight forward worker, but

temperamental and requiring conditions to be just right before he can
work. . . His feeling is that [Edmund] Landau, at Gottingen, is a man
without particular vision.38
In spite of being too critical of his colleagues, Van der Waerden leaves a
positive overall impression on Tisdale:
Van der Waerden appeals to me as a very intense, gifted and enthusi-
astic individual. He has the unfortunate defect of stammering, espe-
cially in his more intense moments, but he is so agreeable to talk to that
the defect is rather minimized. I explained to him how the seriousness
of such fellows as himself might be influential in justifying the
appointment of future fellows, to which he reacted most enthusiasti-
cally and agreeably.
During the interview, Van der Waerden favorably evaluates his Hamburg
mathematical group, as Tisdale records:
He feels that the school at Hamburg is exceptionally strong, especially
considering its youth. Prof. Blaschke in differential geometry, Prof.
Hecke in algebraic numbers and Prof. Artin in algebraic numbers and
algebra in general form a very strong nucleus with [Otto] Schreier,
private lecturer and assistant, in theory of groups; van der Waerden,
assistant in algebraic geometry and algebra; [Hans] Petersson, assis-
tant in analytical theory of numbers; [Heinrich] Behnke, assistant to
Hecke, in analytical functions; with Kloosterman, I.E.B. Fellow in
analytical theory of numbers; Zwirner, in algebraic numbers; and
Haacke (later assistant at Jena) in geometry.
38
A year later this celebrated number theorist, or according to Van der Waerden man
without particular vision, will be askedand will writea glowing recommendation for
Van der Waerdens successful appointment to a full professorship at Groningen.
Chapter 6
The Story of The Book
Emil Artin (18981962), a framer of abstract algebra, promised Richard

Courant to write a book on abstract algebra for the Courant-edited Yellow
Series of Springer-Verlag. During the summer of 1926 he gave a course on
abstract algebra attended by Van der Waerden who took meticulous notes.
Artin agreed to share the writing of his book, based on his lectures, with the
23-year young Dutchman. However, as we all know, The Book appeared a
few years later under one name, that of the Student and without the Master.
What happened is a question of enormous importance, for The Book has
become one of the most famous and popular books in the history of
mathematics. Yet, I found no research published on this subject. Van der
Waerden told his Story of The Book, his interviewers and his former Ph.D.
students repeated it, and most historians and mathematicians uncritically
accepted thus invented fairytale. I invite you to join me in taking a close
look at the documents. It is most appropriate first to give the podium to
Professor Van der Waerden, who in 1975, after Artins passing, tells us how
enormous Artins contributions to The Book really were [Wae20]:
Artin gave a course on algebra in the summer of 1926. He had
promised to write a book on algebra for the Yellow Series of
Springer. We decided that I should take lecture notes and that we
should write the book together. Courant, the editor of the series,
agreed. Artins lectures were marvelous. I worked out my notes and
showed Artin one chapter after another. He was perfectly satisfied and
said, Why dont you write the whole book?
The main subjects in Artins lectures were fields and Galois Theory.
In the theory of fields Artin mainly followed Steinitz, and I just worked
out my notes. Just so in Galois Theory: the presentation given in my
book is Artins.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_6
40 6 The Story of The Book
Of course, Artin had to explain, right at the beginning of his course,

fundamental notions such as group, normal divisor, factor group, ring,
ideal, field, and polynomial, and to prove theorems such as the
Homomorphiesatz and the unique factorization theorems for integers
and polynomials. These things were generally known. In most cases I
just reproduced Artins proofs from my notes.
I met Artin and Schreier nearly every day for two or three semesters.
I had the great pleasure of seeing how they discovered the theory of
real fields, and how Artin proved his famous theorem on the repre-
sentation of definite functions as sums of squares. I included all this in
my book (Chapter 10). My sources were, of course, the two papers of
Artin and Schreier in Abhandlungen aus dem mathematischen Seminar
Hamburg 5 (1926), p. 83 and 100.
Van der Waerden gives further credits to Artin (ibid.):
In chapter 5 (Korpertheorie) I mainly followed Artin and Steiniz. . .
Chapter 7 on Galois Theory was based on Artins course of
lectures. . .
In chapter 10 . . . (a) the ArtinSchreier theory of real fields and
representation of positive rational functions as sums of squares . . . In
treating subject (a) I closely followed the papers of Artin and Schreier.
Van der Waerden repeats his story during the 1993 interview, and the
interviewer-historian, Professor Dold-Samplonius publishes it [Dol1]:
Artin was supposed to write a book and wanted to write it with
me. Having finished the first chapter, I showed it to Artin. Then I
sent him the second and asked him about the progress of his part of the
book. He hadnt yet done anything. Then he gave up the idea of writing
the book with me. Nevertheless, the book is based on lectures of Artin
and Noether.
The idyllic picture is further embellished by Dold-Samplonius in her
1997 eulogy of Van der Waerden [Dol2]:
Artin gave a course on algebra that summer, and, based on Van der
Waerdens lecture notes, the two planned to coauthor a book on
algebra for Springer-Verlags Yellow Series. As Van der Waerden
worked out his notes and showed Artin one chapter after another, Artin
was so satisfied that he said Why dont you write the whole book?
Artin was so satisfied, Van der Waerden and Dold-Samplonius lead us
to believe. In fact, Artin was so dissatisfied that he obviously refused to
write the book together with Van der Waerden. I readin disbeliefthe
6 The Story of The Book 41
revealing Richard Courants August 6, [192]7, letter to Van der Waerden

(I am including for you the facsimile of this letter in this chapter):39
Dear Herr v.d. Waerden!
Herr Artin has sent me a copy of the enclosed letter about which I
am somewhat astonished and concerned. Do you understand Artins
attitude? I dont. Is there any personal sensitivity behind this or are
these differences of an objective nature? In any case, one cannot force
Artin. But I would like to hear your opinion before I answer him.
I hope you have not angered him.I wish you a good recovery and
a good vacation, and remain with friendly greetings
Your [Courant]
Photo 8 Facsimile of August 6, 1927, letter from Courant to Van der Waerden. New York
University, Archive, Courant Papers
Clearly, Artin refused to write The Book with Van der Waerden, and thus
astonished Courant. Artin must have felt offended by Van der Waerden,
but how?
39
Typed letter in German, sent from Gottingen to Hamburg; New York University, Archive,
Courant Papers.
The New York University Archive preserves numerous letters Courant

has written and received. Artins letter is not there. Did Courant destroy it or
did the letter fall into the black hole of history? ETH in Zurich contains
countless letters Van der Waerden has written and received. The copy of
Artins letter sent by Courant to Van der Waerden is not there. Did Van der
Waerden destroy it or did the letter fall between the cracks of the historical
floor? Yes, I know, some of Van der Waerdens papers burned when his
Leipzig house was bombed on December 4, 1943 and that could explain the
missing letter, but for example, quoted earlier Brouwers October 21, 1924
letter of recommendation withstood the Allied bombing. Are we to give up
our attempts to find out why Artin dropped out as a coauthor of The Book?
No, not so fast. Let us look at the surviving shreds of evidence. The skies are
cloudless on November 29, 1926, as we glance at Courants letter to Van der
Waerden:40
Dear Herr Van der Waerden!
What about this admission of your Habilitation. It would be very
good to get this thing moving.
How are you doing otherwise? How is the book by Artin and you
coming along?
We see the first clouds in Van der Waerdens December 2, 1926 reply to
Courant:41
The Yellow Book is making progress; I have finished writing a large
part; I have half-finished other parts, and the plan for the whole is
becoming more precise in details through the conversations with Artin,
the only thing is that Artin himself writes very little.
So, Artin has given his course on which the book is to be based, Artin is
making his material more precise in details through the conversations, but
Artin himself writes very little, oras Rudyard Kipling would have put it
(see How the Camel Got His Hump in Just So Stories [Kip])Artin does
not fetch and carry like the rest of us. Two months later, on February
2, 1927, we observe the skies becoming overcast as the Student is dissatis-
fied with the Master:42
My coexistence with Artin is still very fruitful. He forever digs up nice
things that will also have to come into the book, and from our
40
Typed letter in German; New York University, Archive, Courant Papers.
41
Handwritten letter in German; New York University, Archive, Courant Papers.
42
conversations many details emerge by which the proofs are simplified

or new contexts are uncovered. Even if he does not work on the book
directly, it is still coming forward.
It seems that Artin has not only provided a well thought out lecture
course, ready for note-taking, but he further contributes to the joint book:
he forever digs up nice things, many details emerge by which the proofs
are simplified or new contexts are uncovered. But Artin wont plough like
the rest of us (Kipling again), and the Student is upset that the Master does
not work on the book directly and, just as in his letters to Courant, probably
accuses the Master to his face of not writing down his fair share of nice
things. As Van der Waerden recalls, He [Artin] hadnt yet done anything
[sic].43 That would explain Artins explosion and refusal to write his book
with this Student. Now we can better understand the quoted above 1993
interview [Dol1]. In fact, Van der Waerden tells us the truth, but not all the
truth and without the context behind it, the context that would have allowed
us to understand what happened. Let us revisit it, now that we have
established the context and thus are able to understand Van der Waerdens
words:
[I] asked him [Artin] about the progress of his part of the book. He
hadnt yet done anything. Then he gave up the idea of writing the book
with me.
But never mind the Master: the Student has gotten everything he needs,
and can now publish The Book by himself, with the blessing of his mentor
and the Yellow Series founder and editor Richard Courant.
As a mathematician, I have coauthored a number of works with others. It
never mattered to us who would write down joint ideas and proofs. Such
great mathematicians as Israel M. Gelfand, Paul Erdos, and Saharon Shelah
often left the writing of joint works to their coauthors. I know that first-hand,
for Erdos and Shelah have been my co-authors. I am surprised by Van der
Waerdens narrow interpretation of coauthorship. Producing a book requires
not merely writing it down, but first of all discovering and assembling
numerous ideas, theorems, proofs, trains of thought, giving the whole
material a structure and style. In all these chores Artins contributions
were overwhelming, and to publish The Book of Artins ideas and proofs
without Artin at least as a coauthor was unfair, in my opinion. It could be
classified as an act of nostrification. I let the expert, Richard Courant,
define the term [Cour]:
43
[Dol1].
A certain duty exists, after all, for a scientist to pay attention to others
and give them credit. The Gottingen group [of which Courant had been
one of the leading members!] was famous for the lack of a feeling of
responsibility in this respect. We used to call this processlearning
something, forgetting where you learned it, then perhaps doing it better
yourself, and publishing it without quoting correctlythe process of
nostrification. This was a very important concept in the Gottingen
group.
Indeed, a very important concept and a very unfortunate practice. I am
compelled to introduce here the notion of nostrification squared, practiced
at Gottingen and many other places on this earth, when a senior professor
has his students write his booksof course, for the sake of students
learning experiencemodestly compensates them for the work, financially
or in kind, and does not give them credit as coauthors. Richard Courant
reached formidable heights in nostrification squared. Saunders Mac Lane,
who spent the years 19311933 at Gottingen, recalls [Mac]:
Richard Courant, administrative head of the Institute [of Mathematics
at Gottingen University], lectured and managed the many [!] assistants
working on the manuscript of the CourantHilbert book.
Courant used not only his students, but such fine professors, his former
Ph.D. students, as Franz Rellich, Van der Waerdens brother-in-law, and
Kurt Otto Friedrichs to write, for example, chapters of the famous Courant
Hilbert book. Even when Professor Friedrichs came to the United States in
1937, he was expected by Courant to pay his dues. Constance Reid reports
her interview with Friedrichs himself [Re2, p. 196]:
Courant found him [Friedrichs] a room and paid him to help with the
second volume of CourantHilbert, which was now finished except the
final chapter.
So I was his assistant again. That was fine with me. Most immi-
grants to this country start at the bottom. I felt natural about it.
I wish Kurt Friedrichs read Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca
[Sen], for he would have known that no slavery is more base than voluntary
slavery.
Courant liked nostrification squared so much that he had the audacity to
apply it to American mathematicians in his new homeland. Let us take a
brief look at the story of the deservedly celebrated book What Is Mathemat-
ics? As probably many of you, I read it with delight as a high school student.
In fact, my Moscow State University mathematics circle teacher gave its
rare Russian translation to me as a prize for solving a difficult problem. Now
that I hold in front of me a copy of its first 1941 edition, I see that the title
lists two authors, Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins; however, copy-
rights belong to Richard Courant alone, dedication is to Courants children
only, and the preface is signed by Courant alone and nowhere even mentions
Robbins. Robbins received from Courant a set of mimeographed notes
which were a course he had given sometime previously, which were written
up by someone who had taken the course, a student, and they formed about a
quarter or a third of material that finally ended up in the book
[Re2]. Robbins spent over two years developing and writing the book in
his elegant prose, and yet he had to fight even for his name appearing on the
title page of What is Mathematics? Robbins was never shown royalty
calculations for this bestselling book. From time to time, he received from
Courant a modest check, but the family stopped even these payments after
Courants passing away.
Van der Waerden has benefitedand will benefita great deal from
such a prominent and supremely connected supervisor and mentor as Rich-
ard Courant: several years later Courant is going to make Van der Waerden
an editor of the prestigious journal Mathematische Annalen and a coeditor of
the famous Yellow Series of Springer-Verlag books. At the same time,
Courant provided a poor example of a scholars conduct. But let us return
to The Book.
On the title page of The Bookwhat an unusual place for acknowledge-
mentsVan der Waerden gives credit to Artins lectures (and Noethers
lectures) as being used in the bookbut is that enough? Numerous
theorems, proofs, and ideas contributed by Artin are not credited to Artin.
Van der Waerden publishes the two volumes in 1930 and 1931 in the
Yellow Series. The great book has a great success. It excites and inspires
generations of mathematicians (me included), and brings B. L. van der
Waerden world-wide fame.
Unquestionably, Van der Waerden deserves credit for writing down and
editing the book. How much credit depends upon how close the book is to
Artins lectures and how publishable Artins lectures were. Those who
attended Artins summer 1926 lectures are no longer with us and thus cannot
help us answer this question. But during my long 20022004 and 2006
2007 work at Princeton University, I found among the present Princeton
professors a good number of Artins students from his Princetons 1946
1958 years: Gerard Washnitzer (who took all of Artins courses 1947
1952), Harold W. Kuhn, Robert C. Gunning, Hale F. Trotter, Joseph
J. Kohn, and Simon B. Kochen. Independently interviewed, they were
amazingly unanimous in their assessments of Artins lectures, unanimous
even in epithets they used to describe the lectures. Tall, slender, handsome,
with a cigarette in one hand and chalk in the other, without ever any notes
(except, sometimes a small piece of paper extracted for a second from a
jacket pocket), Artin delivered elegant, smooth, well thought out lectures, so
much so, that notes, carefully taken, could be quite close to a finished book.
Harold W. Kuhn, who took Artins 1947 course, recalls:
Artins lectures were composed like a piece of music, with introduc-
tion, exposition, development, recapitulation and coda.
So, would transcribed lectures form a book? I asked Harold, who
replied:
Absolutely. In fact, lecture notes formed several of Artins books, on
the Galois Theory, on the Cauchy Theorem, etc.
Van der Waerden took such notes in his generation; Serge Lang did so in
his.44 In his book [Lan1, p. vi], Lang calls Van der Waerdens book Artin
NoetherVan der Waerdenfair enoughbut then he should have called
his own book ArtinLang, nest-ce pas?
There was another way to credit and honor the teacher. Van der Waerden
gave a noble example of it, when he had not nostrified somebody elses
lecture notes. But of course, this was a special case of his admired mentor,
Fraulein Emmy Noether [Wae20]:
I took notes of the latter [Emmy Noethers] course, and these notes
formed the basis of Emmy Noethers [!] publication in Mathematische
Zeitschrift 30 (1929) p. 641.
The Book is prominently mentioned by Van der Waerden in his 1982
Oxford talk [Wae30], in which he quotes Hermann Weyls Memorial
Address for Emmy Noether:
A large part of what is contained in the second volume of Van der
Waerdens Modern Algebra must be considered her [i.e., Noethers]
property.
Van der Waerden then responds to Weyls remark with modesty and
admiration for Noether [ibid.]:
I gladly admit that this is perfectly true.
44
Since Artin taught me algebra, my indebtedness to him is all-pervasive, writes Lang in
the Preface of his Algebra book [Lan1].
Chapter 7
The Theorem on Arithmetic Progressions
Now again about the respectability of combinatorics. Even in 1926,

when Van der Waerden proved the conjecture, the subject was not
mainstream.
At the Bad Kissingen September 1927 annual meeting of the Deutsche

Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV for short, the German Mathematical
Society), Bartel L. van der Waerden announced a proof of the following
theorem [Wae2]:
For any positive integers k, l, there is N N(k,l) such that the set of
positive integers 1, 2, . . ., N, partitioned into k classes, contains an
arithmetic progression of length l in one of the classes.
The Dutch Professor Wouter Peremans, Ph.D. 1949 under Van der
Waerden, writes [Per, p. 135] that this result . . . made him [Van der
Waerden] at one stroke famous in the mathematical world.46
I truly love this classic result, and this is why I became interested in Bartel
L. van der Waerdens life in the first place. However, I confess that the
original appearance of this result could not have possibly made Van der
Waerden at one stroke famous in the mathematical world. Indeed, it took
time for this theorem to be noticed and taste for such new Ramsey-type ideas
45
[Bru5.5].
46
Peremans also writes: The problem circulated in German mathematical circles in the
twenties and famous mathematicians like Artin and Schreier tried in vain to solve it. Van der
Waerden succeeded. No substantiation of this myth is known to me. In fact, Van der
Waerden himself contradicts it [Wae13, Wae14, Wae16, Wae18, Wae26].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_7
48 7 The Theorem on Arithmetic Progressions
to develop. Initially Van der Waerden himself must not have thought highly
of the value of this result and did not expect others to appreciate it, for
he published it in a second order Dutch journal Nieuw Archief voor
Wiskunde, whereas his algebraic geometry papers that he considered
important, he published in the prestigious journal Mathematische Annalen.
Nicolaas G. de Bruijn, who knows best, explains [Bru3, p. 116]:
Old and respectable as the Wiskundig Genootschap may be, it has
never been more than a small countrys mathematical society. Accord-
ingly, it is not surprising that the societys home journal, the Nieuw
Archief voor Wiskunde, has a relatively small circulation, and, as a
second order effect, the Nieuw Archief does not get more than a small
part of the more important contributions of the Dutch to mathematics.
De Bruijn elaborates on Van der Waerdens paper and the obscurity of
combinatorics at the time in his January 15, 2004 e-mail to me [Bru5.5]:
Now again about the respectability of combinatorics. Even in 1926,
when Van der Waerden proved the conjecture, the subject was not
mainstream. Van der Waerden did not send his paper to one of the
leading mathematical journals, like the Mathematische Zeitschrift, but
to the Nieuw Archief, home journal of the Dutch Mathematical Soci-
ety, a journal that was unavailable in many libraries.
From Van der Waerdens captivating reminiscences of How the Proof of
Baudets Conjecture Was Found [Wae13, Wae14, Wae16, Wae18, Wae26,
Soi9], we learn that the proof was obtained as the result of collaboration of
three mathematicians, Emil Artin, Otto Schreier and Bartel L. van der
Waerden, but credited to just one, who published the result. Let me repeat
a passage from Van der Waerdens reminiscences:
Finding the proof of Baudets conjecture was a good example of team
work. Each of the three of us contributed essential ideas. After the
discussion with Artin and Schreier I worked out the details of proof
and published it in Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde 15, p. 212 (1927).
A thorough historian of mathematics (if such an endangered species
exists) would contradict me by pointing out credit to Artin in the footnote
of this 1927 publication [Wae2]. Indeed, we read:
The conjecture that the generalization from k 2 to arbitrary k would
work by induction, comes from Herr Artin.
Artin and Schreier contributed much moreVan der Waerden told us so
in detail [Wae13, Wae14, Wae16, Wae18, Wae26, Soi9]thus, the theorem
7 The Theorem on Arithmetic Progressions 49
could have been published under the names of all three coauthors. Let me
defend Van der Waerden here: he most likely did not realize the significance
of the result and thus likely gave no thought to joint authorship, for as we
have seen, he published it in a little read journal of the Dutch Mathematical
Society.
As you will discover in Chapter 38, Van der Waerden in fact proved the
conjecture discovered independently by Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet and
Issai Schur. As Van der Waerden informed me, he had never met either of
his coauthors of what I equitably named [Soi3] the BaudetSchurVan der
Waerden Theorem.
Chapter 8
From Gottingen to Groningen
In the waning days of February 1927, Van der Waerden successfully passes
his Habilitation at Gottingen University under the wing of Richard Courant,
thus curing his Dutch doctorate. In April 1927 he becomes Courants
Assistent, and Privatdozent at Gottingen. More great news come the follow-
ing year when Professor J. A. Barrau decides to vacate his Groningen
position and move to Utrecht. The Groningen faculty make a proposal on
July 18, 1928, which is approved by the curators of the university, who on
July 25, 1928 in turn advise the Minister:47
Curators of Groningen University to the Minister of Education, Cul-
ture and Sciences.
We have the honor to send your Excellency the advice of the faculty
of mathematics and physics with respect to the filling of the vacancy
that was created by Professor Dr. J. A. Barrau who has left for Utrecht.
In the first place we recommend Dr. B. L. van der Waerden privaat-
docent at the University of Gottingen. Dr. van der Waerden is still
young, 25 years. He defended his doctorate at Amsterdam in 1926;
after that he was Assistent to Prof. Blaschke at Hamburg and then
became privaat-docent and Assistent to Prof. Courant at Gottingen,
where he is now.
Mr. van der Waerden is a son of the member of the Second
Chamber, Catholic and Socialist and the son most likely also affiliates
with the same party, although nothing is known about any involvement
in politics and nothing has surfaced.
47
Nationaal Archief, Den Haag; Finding Aid 2.14.17, record number 73dossier B.L. van
der Waerden; Department of Education, Arts and Sciences.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_8
52 8 From Gottingen to Groningen
Professors Blaschke at Hamburg, Noether and Landau at Gottingen,

as well as Professor Weyl at Zurich highly value him in person and
work; they regard him as one of the best and already one of the top
young mathematicians.
According to the notifications we have received, he is being seri-
ously considered for a professorship at Rostock [Germany] and it is for
this reason that the faculty urges a swift appointment. We are in
complete agreement with the faculty who point out the great impor-
tance of binding this young scientist to our university and thus to his
fatherland.
Also, in the second place we propose the mathematician
Dr. Schouten, professor at Delft, who is undoubtedly a very knowl-
edgeable person.
We recommend your Excellency to give the advice to her Majesty
the Queen for reasons mentioned above, to propose in the first place
filling this vacancy with Dr. B. L. van der Waerden, privaat-docent at
the University of Gottingen. It is unknown to us whether Mr. van der
Waerden is willing to accept the vacant position at our University, but
we believe that this is the case. We would like to make sure that your
Excellency wishes to pursue this. We will however restrain from doing
so if this is what Your Excellency desires.
The Curators of the State University of Groningen
Geertsema [hand signed]
Chairman
Following several exchanges between the Curators and the Cabinet, on
August 7, 1928, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands assents to the
appointment. I am presenting here the entire document in order to give
you the flavor of Royal Decree:48
Queen of the Netherlands, Princess
of Oranje-Nassau, Etc., Etc., Etc.
7 August 1928
Upon the recommendation of our Minister of Education, Culture
and Sciences of August 2, 1928, No. 93, Cabinet;
In accordance with articles 86 and 88 of the Higher Education
Statutes;
HAVE APPROVED AND UNDERSTOOD:
48
Ibid.
8 From Gottingen to Groningen 53
to appoint to the State University at Groningen, to Professor49 in the

Faculteit50 of Mathematics and Physics to teach elementary mathe-
matics, analytical, descriptive and higher geometry:
Dr. B. L. van der Waerden, privaat-docent at the University of
Gottingen, with an annual salary of seven thousand and five hundred
gilders (f.7.500.--) including pension fund.
Our Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences is ordered to
implement this ruling, of which documentation will be sent to the
Public Accounting Office.
Amsterdam, August 7th 1928
(signed) WILHELMINA
And thus, Professor Bartel Leendert van der Waerden was born at the
tender age of 25!
History possesses its own sense of humor; it also repeats itself. We see
both at the junctions of the lives of Bartel L. van der Waerden and Johan
Antony Barrau (18731953).
Act One of their story, according to Van der Waerden, takes place during
Van der Waerdens high school years. In 1993, when he conveys this story
to the interviewer [Dol1], Van der Waerden ridicules the Groningen profes-
sor Barrau for allegedly making numerous mistakes in his book on analyt-
ical geometry. He writes to the author about it. Barrau is impressed andin
an elegant complimentinforms Van der Waerden that he would like Van
der Waerden to succeed him if he were to leave Groningen. To the contrary,
we have learned in chapter 4 that Van der Waerden acknowledged with
gratitudeand with no disrespecthis correspondence with Barrau in the
Preface to his 1926 doctoral dissertation.
Act Two of the story takes place in 1927, when Barrau does move from
Groningen to Utrecht, and his chair is indeed offered to Van der Waerden.
The following year, on May 6, 1928, Van der Waerden enters the Barrau
chair at Groningen, with the assistance of glowing recommendations from
such celebrities as Hermann Weyl, Edmund Landau, and Emmy Noether.
Van der Waerden could have likely found a lesser ranked professorship at a
higher ranked German university. But Groningen makes the 25-year young
man a Full Professor, a feat that only the other great Dutch mathematician
L.E.J. Brouwer achieved at exactly the same age.
49
The Dutch title used here, Hoogleeraar, is equivalent to an American full professor.
50
In order to avoid confusion, I will often use the Dutch term Faculteit and German Facultat.
These terms are equivalent to College or School in the United States, which are academic
units and building blocks of a typical American university. The term faculty in the US stands
for the body of professors of a college or a school.
54 8 From Gottingen to Groningen
Act Three of the BarrauVan der Waerden story will have to wait until
December 1942. We will play it out on the pages of Chapter 19.
Amazingly, I reach Johan Antony Barrau in just two steps. For decades, I
have corresponded with Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn, who actually met
Barrau, and in his January 6, 2004 e-mail [Bru5.2] writes to me about it:
I have seen Barrau only once in my life: in 1935 I passed an exami-
nation at The Hague in order to get a certificate for teaching mathe-
matics (I was only 17 at that time!) and in one of the geometrical
subjects I was orally examined by Barrau, an old gentleman with an
enormous beard, whose name I knew because of his quite respectable
book on analytic geometry.
Meanwhile, here at Groningen something very important happens in the
life of the hero of this book. In the middle of his Groningen years, in 1929
Bartel L. van der Waerden accepts a particularly productive visiting
appointment at Gottingen: in July he meets there his future wife. The
beautiful Camilla Rellich, two years Bartel junior (born September
10, 1905), is the sister of Franz Rellich, who in the same year (1929) defends
his Ph.D. dissertation under Richard Courant. Already on September
27, 1929, Bartel and Camilla unite in marriage that will last a lifetime.
Their first child, Helga, is born in Groningen on July 26, 1930. Their other
two children will be born in Germany: Ilse on October 16, 1934, and Hans
Erik on December 7, 1937.
Groningen seems to have been a stepping stone for a number of fine
mathematicians. Van der Corput was there too, and Van der Waerden recalls
learning much of mathematics from him. Most importantly, at Groningen
Van der Waerden finished The Book.
Chapter 9
Transformations of The Book
The Book was the main outcome of Van der Waerdens years at Groningen.
Everyone who has written a book would agree that Van der Waerden proved
to be a great expositor of the new abstract view of algebra. He writes in the
preface of the 1930 first edition of Volume 1 that The Book, started as
Artins lecture notes, has substantially changed, and by the time of its
release, it was difficult to find Artins lectures in it. I know of no way to
verify this statement today. Granted, Van der Waerdens contribution must
have grown significantly from 1927 to 1930. However, it is also clear that an
unusually large contribution of the non-author Artin remained insufficiently
credited in The Book, as we have seen when we cited Van der Waerdens
own 1975 words. The Book became an instant classic, enjoyed by many
generations of mathematicians. I too remember reading during my freshman
university year (19661967) the early Russian translation (Vol. 1, 1934;
Vol. 2, 1937) with great delight and profit. The book was so valuable and
rare that I was not allowed to take it home, and had to read it in the
mathematics library of my university.
Unlike his mentors Brouwer and Hilbert, Van der Waerden apparently
did not have firm principles related to the foundations of mathematics that
he was willing to fight for, as the story of changingand changing back
his Moderne Algebra book shows. It is surprising that the quick learner, Van
der Waerden has seemingly failed to see the importance of the battle over
the foundations that raged for decades, and to take a firm position on it. The
leading historian of the Axiom of Choice Gregory Moore writes in his
wonderful book [Moo]:
In 1930, Van der Waerden published his Modern Algebra, detailing the
exciting new applications of the axiom [of choice]. . . Van der
Waerdens Dutch colleagues persuaded him to abandon the axiom in

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_9
56 9 Transformations of The Book
the second edition of 1937. He did so . . . [which] brought such a strong

protest from his fellow algebraists that he was moved to reinstate the
axiom [of choice] and all its consequences in the third edition of 1950.
Indeed, in January 1937, in the Preface to the second edition of Volume
1, Van der Waerden discloses the surprising transformation of The Book
[Wae6]:
I have tried to avoid as much as possible any questionable [sic]
set-theoretical reasoning in algebra. Unfortunately, a completely finite
presentation of algebra, avoiding all non-constructive existence
proofs, is not possible without great sacrifices. Essential parts of
algebra would have to be eliminated, or the theorems would have to
be formulated with so many restrictions that the text would become
unpalatable and certainly useless for a beginner. . .
With the above mentioned aim in mind, I completely omitted those
parts of the field theory which rest on the axiom of choice and the well-
ordering theorem. Other reasons for this omission were the fact that, by
the well-ordering principle, an extraneous [sic] element is introduced
into algebra and, furthermore the consideration that in virtually all
applications the special case of countable fields, in which the counting
replaces the well-ordering, is wholly sufficient. The beauty of the basic
ideas of Steinitz classical treatise on the algebraic theory of fields is
plainly exhibited in the countable case.
By omitting the well-ordering principle, it was possible to retain
nearly the original size of the book.
Then in the July 1, 1950 Preface to the third edition of Volume 1, I read
with puzzlement Van der Waerdens justification of the reversal [Wae11]:
In response to many requests, I once again included sections about
well-ordering and transfinite induction, which were omitted in the
second edition, and on this foundation, I presented the theory of fields
developed by Steinitz in all its generality.
It appears as if the victory of Brouwers intuitionism, which manifested
itself in the second edition, was short lived. In the end, Hilberts set theoretic
foundation of mathematics triumphed in The Book.
On March 15, 1977, Dirk van Dalen, the biographer of L.E.J. Brouwer,
interviewed Van der Waerden and has kindly shared with me the text of that
interview, and so we can hear Van der Waerden himself commenting on the
transformations of The Book, on his commitment to good pedagogy, and his
fluctuating views:
9 Transformations of The Book 57
Van Dalen: In your book on algebra you took different positions on

constructivism, where at one time the well-ordering theorem was
included and another time not. You have a paper on effective factor-
ization of polynomials. Was that under the influence of Brouwer?
Van der Waerden: Yes, of course. That varying position in differ-
ent editions was not a change of fundamental position, philosophically
I have always been fluctuating, but that was for pedagogical reasons.
If you look at the factorization in two factors, then I think it may be
good pedagogy to show it constructively. Later I thought to do it as I
used to.
Chapter 10
The Algebraic Revolution That Produced
Just One Book
Van der Waerdens Moderne Algebra became so popular because of its

remarkable quality, but also, it seems to me, because no competition
occurred. Indeed, started by Emmy Noether and Emil Artin, the algebraic
revolution swept mathematics in the 1920s and 1930s, yet for decades only
one book on the new abstract algebra was published. Why did this happen?
Documents show that a 3-volume book by one of the leading algebraists
Richard Brauer was under contract with Springer and in the works. As the
coeditor of Springers Yellow Series, in which Brauers book was to appear,
Van der Waerden, it appears to me, was not eager to publish this book. Let
us look at the facts together.
Even though Richard Courant was Jewish (in the Third Reich definition),
as a combatant in World War I he was exempt from the April 7, 1933 Third
Reichs Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service that
removed Jews from the ranks of professors. Nevertheless, on May 5, 1933
he was served a letter of dismissal from Gottingen University. Courant first
fought the dismissal but then accepted a years visit invitation from Cam-
bridge University and informed Van der Waerden accordingly:51
Between the 24th and 28th of October I am supposed to give lectures for
students in Holland in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Groningen and Leiden,
and for that reason I want to depart from here on the 22nd. Presumably
from Holland I will travel directly to England. I have an invitation to
Cambridge for the next academic year.
51
Courant to Van der Waerden, letter of October 10, 1933. New York University, Archive,
Courant Papers.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_10
60 10 The Algebraic Revolution That Produced Just One Book
Because of this departure, Richard Courantand the publisher Ferdinand

Springer52wanted to find somebody who could serve as a figurehead
editor while Courant would pull all the strings from Cambridge. The choice
naturally fell on Courants protege, Van der Waerden to whom Courant
offered the job just before leaving Germany, on October 10, 1933:53
I want to ask you therefore the following, based on a conversation that
Neugebauer and I recently had with [Ferdinand] Springer. It is prob-
able that because of my uprootedness, my work as the editor of the
Yellow Series at Springer will be a little bit hampered, and so we
thought about whom one can take in as a representative in case of
such hindrance, and in the process we agreed, without any trouble, that
you would be the obvious person for this role. I want to ask you today
whether in principle you are inclined to do this.
Courant adds, It would not be a large burden on you, as Courant expects
to make all the decisions himself. The protege immediately accepts in his
October 13, 1933 letter to Courant.54 Things change, however, when Courant
is not offered an extension of his stay at Cambridge. Now Courant has to
move to the United States, and may have difficulties pulling such long strings.
Thus, during Courants New Year vacation visit of his family in Gottingen,
he elevates Van der Waerden to a more-or-less real editor of the Yellow Series
and a member of the Editorial Board of the Mathematische Annalen, and
informs Van der Waerden about it in the January 6, 1934 letter:55
During the short visit last week I spoke explicitly with Springer about
different things, among others about the case of the Annalen. In the
meantime, as Hilbert told me, you have accepted the invitation to join
the Editorial Board; I hope and I hope that this signifies the beginning of a
continual reenergizing of the Annalen Editorial Board. Springer feared
that Hilbert has somewhat mixed things up, which can easily happen, but
still it is no longer necessary for me do anything in this case.
In regard to the editing of my [sic] Yellow Series, I would like, as we
have already considered this, to regard you from now on as the editor,
with the thought in the back of my mind, that in case I should go to
America for a longer time, you could take care of the thing possibly
more than in a purely formal capacity.
52
Ferdinand Springer, Jr. (18811965).
53
54
55
10 The Algebraic Revolution That Produced Just One Book 61
During the years 19261927, Courant is formally cordial, addressing

his habilitation student and assistant with Lieber Herr Van der Waerden!
and signing letters with Ihr. Van der Waerden likewise greets Courant
with Sehr geehrter Herr Professor and ends with Ihr ergebener
[devoted] B.L.v.d. Waerden. Starting with 1929, the correspondence
between Courant and Van der Waerden shows their greater closeness.
Courant uses family-like first name greeting Lieber Bartel! and signs off
with Dein, while Van der Waerden uses Lieber Courant and Dein
B.L.v.d. Waerden.56 Of course, as in any family, closeness does not exclude
disagreements.
Now we are ready to look at the story of Richard Brauers Algebra. The
year is 1935. Richard Courant, who by now lives in New York, is surprised
and unhappy to see his Yellow Series young editor Van der Waerden
starting to change and cancel some of the existing book contracts. Courant
offers his and Emmy Noethers (now at Bryn Mawr College near Philadel-
phia) defense of Brauers book against Van der Waerdens reservations, in
July 16, 1935 letter to Van der Waerden:57
I find it to be a mistake to change something in the contracts and
agreements that have existed for years, for example with Richard
Brauer. Brauers book, whose new plan I will soon send to [F. K.]
Schmidt,58 has been spoken through in this past year repeatedly with
Emmy Noether, and will certainly not be a superfluous publication.
Van der Waerden opens his August 10, 1935 letter sent from Laren,
Holland, where he is vacationing at his parents house, with an apology:59
I am sorry that my letter appeared aggressive to you. This was not my
intention. I very much appreciate your efforts concerning the Yellow
Series and agree with most of your proposals.
He then informs Courant of making a bold move of excluding Courant,
the Yellow Series founder, from the loop and going straight to the publisher
Ferdinand Springer. However, he cannot just disregard his mentor Emmy
Noethers opinion:
Concerning Brauer (R.), I assumed that B. [Brauer] himself, as
Schmidt suspected, did not really want to get too involved with the
56
German Dein vs. Ihr correspond English Thou vs. You, but of course, Thou in
English is usually reserved for communication with God.
57
58
Friedrich Karl Schmidt, Van der Waerdens co-editor of the Yellow Series.
59
Typed hand-signed letter in German; New York University, Archive, Courant Papers.
book. If that is wrong and if even Emmy Noether agrees to the book,
then for the time being I withdraw my reservations. However, I will be
very interested in looking at the proposal that the author of course will
send us, and form an opinion on that basis. In any case, I agree with
Schm[idt] and Spr[inger] that there is no hurry in view of the current
state of the market for books on algebra. In other words, one should
definitely not try to push it forward.
Courant is outraged with his protege going to Ferdinand Springer before a
consultation with Courant. He starts his August 20, 1935, 5-page letter as
follows:60
I did not find it pleasant that discussions . . . instead of being conducted
between us first were taken to Springer without an attempt at prior
agreement with me, for Springer through this episode would get an
impression, as if in a number of cases my basic point of view is being
disregarded.
Courant throws his unconditional strong support behind Richard Brauer:
Under no circumstances could I declare myself in agreement with any
step against Richard Brauer.
Courant then offers a rareand valuable for usinsight into the story of
Brauers book, going back to the famous algebraists Ferdinand Georg
Frobenius and Issai Schur:61
Once again the prehistory: An age-old plan of the publication of
Frobeniuss algebra lectures through Schur was transformed a long
time ago into the plan of the publication of Schurs lectures. Schur then
named Richard Brauer as a coauthor and eventually shifted the whole
thing on to him. After very careful consultations at the time, also with
Emmy Noether, the contract was undertaken, in which it was clearly
expressed that it would be an elementary concrete algebra and in
certain sense an enlargement of your book.
When not long afterwards the Nazi revolution came and Brauer
went to America, we expressly discussed with Springer the issue
whether under these changed circumstances, also of business circum-
stances, the plan should be adhered to. Springer himself desired this
quite strongly at the time, and even in order to help Brauer, paid him a
not-an-insubstantial advance of royalties. Over here Brauer worked a
60
61
We have here a rare chain of famous algebraists: Schur was a student of Frobenius, and
Brauer a student of Schur.
lot on the book, by the way, continually in close contact with Emmy
Noether, with whom he was more closely connected here than anyone
else.62 The only serious competition to Brauers book seems to me to
be Perron. In the past, Springer was continually of the position that the
existence of a competition book in another press posed no problems for
him. Brauers book will be very different from Perrons book in an
extraordinary number of points. Therefore it can be hoped that it can
still find readers in Germany. Over here where Brauer without a doubt
has a big career and where he is praised and appreciated far and wide,
his book has a substantial chance (by the way, Brauer has become a
professor at Toronto).
I wrote to [F. K.] Schmidt of a possible modification of the plan
where a division into three volumes was foreseen. The first [volume] is
an elementary introduction, directed at wide circle of readers, the
second onerefinements, and the third Galois Theoryall three rel-
atively independent. The first volume could soon be ready. At this
point I have pushed Brauer continually because after everything that
has happened, this seemed to me what Springer wanted. But if the
principle of speed is going to be explicitly given up, one can say to
Brauer, you should take time, and in all probability, one can select the
English language instead of the German. One can also, if you and
Schmidt are in agreement, suggest changes in the plan. I believe that in
both of the named cases [second being Szegos book], todays stand-
point within Germany that non-Aryan authors represent a problem,
should be set aside as much as possible. But it is clear to me, that for
Springer, in order to exist, and also for the reason that he wants to serve
the cause, such standpoints occasionally have to play a role, and force
him to be especially cautious.
Van der Waerden must have felt threatened by Courants plan to publish
Brauers book as an enlargement of Van der Waerdens book. However,
the following two weeks bring shocking news of Ferdinand Springer firing
his key Jewish employees. In view of this, Courant begins to think that
Springer may no longer approve publication of books by Jewish refugee
scientists, including Richard Brauer. On September 3, 1935 Courant gives
up his fight for Brauers book:63
62
Brauer and Noether saw each other regularly. Brauer spent 19341935 academic year at
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as Herman Weyls assistant, while Emmy
Noether taught at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia and during that year conducted a
weekly seminar at Princeton University.
63
From Neugebauer I received a very short message, according to which

non-Aryan employees have been released like crazy from Springer-
Verlag, including Arnold Berliner and Fr aulein Strelitz . . .
It is of course clear that our correspondence regarding Szego, Brauer,
Wintner, etc., appears in a new light because of this turn of events.
Springer must have been under heavy pressure for a long time and have
become more fearful and cautious than he showed me directly.
Finally, in the September 28, 1935 letter, victorious Van der Waerden
considers to possibly publish, in a very distant future, just one elementary
volume of Brauers three-volume book project:64
There is no hurry with Brauers book, since the book does not fill in a
gap in the textbook literature. Since the author has started, he should
take his timelots of timeto complete the elementary part of it. But
the planned second (or third? I am still unclear about this) volume
Galois Theory, Schmidt and I would like to suppress it in no
uncertain terms. Galois Theory is so well represented in so many
books and also so completely represented in the Yellow Series that a
new textbook of this kind seems completely superfluous. I assume that
even Brauer, who as we know has better things to do, realizes that.
Courant tries to write a response on October 15, 1935, but does not send
itan unusual hesitation for such a confident communicator. Finally he
rewrites the letter and sends his reply on October 18, 1935:65
In the concrete publisher affairs which we are discussing I see no other
deserving resort than to terminate Brauers contract. For the present he
seems to be fairly frightened and sad concerning this prospect. How-
ever, since Brauer has the strongest rear cover by Flexner, Veblen, and
Weyl, it will be easy for him to publish his book with an American
publisher or with one of the publishers being in development. Without
any doubt, if his book is written rather well, it will have success
over here.
Van der Waerden seems not to be satisfied with terminating Brauers
book contract based just on the political situation in Nazi Germany. He,
seems to me, desires a scholarly victory. In his reply, Van der Waerden
states that Brauers book. . . is not justified by any scholarly [sic] interest.
He drafts a letter to Richard Brauer terminating the contract between Brauer
64
Typed hand-signed letter; New York University Archive, Courant Papers.
65
Typed letters; both the unsent and the sent copies survive; New York University Archive,
Courant Papers.
and Springer-Verlag and on November 1, 1935 sends it to Courant for

review and delivery:66
Enclosed is a letter to Brauer that I ask you to read and, if you have no
heavy objections, send on to Brauer, whose current address I do not
know. From it you will see that after a long conversation with Schmidt,
I have still come to the position that Brauers book would represent for
us a considerable impediment that is not justified by any scholarly
interest. After long reflection I decided to request from him a book on
the Invariant Theory. But if your efforts to find an American publisher
for his book succeed, I am very much in agreement. About the
Invariant Theory we can still talk to him when this book is done.
In his November 16, 1935 reply, Courant is surprised by Van der
Waerdens rare showing of some tact and informs the latter about the
delivery of the bad news to Brauer:67
Your letter to Brauer I foundof course, not in absolute terms but
relative to youso carefully diplomatic, and also so nice and heartfelt,
that I sent it on to him without any reservations. For myself I have
written to him several times and now that he has overcome the shock I
am hoping to receive his answer.
Courant is relieved, as on November 26, 1935 he reports Brauers accep-
tance of the termination of his contract:68
Dear Bartel:
At the same time you have probably received a letter from Brauer
stating that the whole affair has been settled rather satisfactorily.
Unlike Van der Waerden, Richard Brauer was not a charismatic expos-
itor. Encouraged by Schur, Springer and Courant, Brauer went along with
writing a book, and even a 3-volume set of books. Van der Waerdens
opposition, coupled with the anti-Semitic and anti-emigrant pressures on
Ferdinand Springer in the Third Reich, stopped this most promising project.
In the end, Van der Waerden fended off the competition, and Brauer went
back to his favorite pastime, research. The world of mathematics has never
gotten to see the 3-volume Algebra by Richard Brauer. We did, however, get
a huge 3-volume set of Brauers collected research papers [BraR].
66
Typed hand-signed letter; New York University Archive, Courant Papers.
67
Typed letter; New York University Archive, Courant Papers.
68
Typed letter; New York University Archive, Courant Papers.
Photo 9 Bartel L. van der Waerden (left) and Richard Brauer, Photo by Wolfgang Gaschutz,
Courtesy of the Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach
Chapter 11
On to Germany
Ever since his student years, Bartel L. van der Waerden aspired to a job in
Germany, perhaps the place-to-be for a mathematician at the time. The
leading German mathematicians had a very high opinion of him. To see
this, it suffices to observe that Van der Waerden was ranked 3rd on the list of
the all-important David Hilberts succession at Gottingen.69 The Dutch
academics knew about it, and tried to lure Van der Waerden to remain in
Holland. Van Dalen informs:70
There were forces that tried to keep Van der Waerden in Holland. It
was in particular Paul Ehrenfest71 who made an effort to get Van der
Waerden appointed in Leiden . . . He was aware that Leiden could not
compete with Gottingen [no university could at the time!], The idea
that in the fall you will start to work here, and that Leiden will develop
into one of the centres of mathematics has been so much fixed in my
head . . ., that I would be totally discouraged if you were snapped away
in the last moment [February 6, 1930].
How serious the Leiden University option was, is clear from the fact that
the great David Hilbert himself had at Ehrenfests request written a recom-
mendation for Van der Waerden. However, on May 1, 1930, Van der
Waerden informs Erich Hecke that he intends to remain at Groningen for
69
February 9, 1930 letter from Richard Courant to Paul Ehrenfest, cited in [Dal2], p. 688,
footnote 28.
70
[Dal2], pp. 687688.
71
Paul Ehrenfest (18801933), professor of physics at Leiden (19121933), a close friend of
Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_11
68 11 On to Germany
the time being; I have refused a call to Leiden, he writes.72 This was the
first serious blow to Holland from her young and talented scholar. Why did
Bartel refuse a fine offer from his homeland? He had something else in
mind. Let me introduce a new player to our story.
Photo 10 Peter Debye, Leipzig, 1928. Courtesy of Leipzig University
72
Nachlass von Erich Hecke, Universit
at Hamburg.
11 On to Germany 69
Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije on March 24, 1884 in Maas-

tricht, Holland, Peter Debye was the favorite student of the famed physicist
Arnold Sommerfeld, whose later students included Werner Heisenberg,
Wolfgang Pauli, and Hans Betheall four of these Sommerfeld students
would win Nobel Prizes! In 1927, Leipzig University was incredibly lucky
to hire two of these future Nobel Laureates, Debye (Nobel Prize in Chem-
istry, 1936) and Heisenberg (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1932), to professor-
ships in physics. Moreover, Debyes Zurich talented assistant, Felix Bloch
(Ph.D. 1928 under Heisenberg), also a future Nobel Laureate (1952), moved
to Leipzig with him. Later, in 1934, Debye leaves for a professorship at the
University of Berlin and lifelong tenure as the director of the Kaiser-
Wilhelm-Institut f ur Physik. However, shortly after the start of the World
War II, Debye is ordered (or so his early biographers reported) to accept
German citizenship if he were to remain the directornever mind his
lifelong tenure. Debye chooses to keep his Dutch citizenship and on January
16, 1940, leaves the Third Reich for the United States, where he will serve
for the rest of his illustrious career as a professor and chairman of the
chemistry department at Cornell University.
This is all I originally intended to share with you. However, in 2006 Sybe
Izaak Rispens book Einstein in Nederland. Een intellectuele biografie [Ris]
caused a great controversy. Rispens reported that on December 9, 1938,
Debye as the chairman of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft sent a
letter informing the members as follows:
In light of the current situation, membership by German Jews as
stipulated by the Nuremberg laws, of the Deutsche Physikalische
Gesellschaft cannot be continued. According to the wishes of the
board, I ask of all members to whom these definitions apply to report
to me their resignation. Heil Hitler!73
As a result, Utrecht University stripped Debyes name from one of its
institutes, while Maastricht University pondered on renaming its Peter
Debye Prijs voor natuurwetenschappelijk onderzoek (Peter Debye Prize
for Scientific Research). Investigations and reports that followed, provide
a great material for numerous books and articles, some already published
and others yet to be written. Debye appears to have been an opportunist who
maintained back up plans, connections with the United States and Nazi
Germany. The range of Debyes assessments is wild, from a Nazi collabo-
rator to an Allied spy recruited by the famous spy Paul Rosebud. In the end,
Utrecht University has reversed itself and retained The Debye Institute for
73
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Debye
70 11 On to Germany
Nanomaterials Science (DINS), while Maastricht University has not

retained the Debye Prize. I would love to share more striking details and
debates with you, but clearly, it would take us too far off course, and I am
duty bound to return to Germany, year 1930.
I thought that the two Dutchmen, Debye and Van der Waerden, working
at the same German university, should have interacted. But if they worked
under one roof, they would not write letters to each other, a serious loss for
me as an historian! Can we get any insight into their relationship? Now we
can, thanks to two letters, apparently new to historical scholarship, kindly
provided to me by the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, now called Max Planck
Gesellschaft. From the June 19, 1930 handwritten in Dutch letter, we learn
that Peter Debye helped his young fellow Dutchman to ensure fine terms of
appointment at Leipzig and advised Bartel on a realistic option of keeping
Dutch citizenship while serving as a professor in Germany:74
Physics Institute, Leipzig, June 19, 1930
Dear Mr. v. d. Waarden [sic]!
Groningen
It was a great pleasure for me that the Ministry has acted the way we
[i.e., Leipzig University] have. Recently I have heard from [Dekan of
Philosophischen Fakult at of Leipzig University Leon] Lichtenstein
that your plan is to get to know the institutions of Leipzig. Regarding
your conversation with representatives of the Ministry in Dresden, that
is excellent and I hope for the same as my colleagues in mathematics,
namely that it would be possible to offer you so much good fortune at
our university that you will be able to decide making your abilities
available here.
Until now it was difficult for anybody who was not born in Germany
to accept an offer from a German university. In order to officially
accept a position of professor, in the past it was necessary to immedi-
ately accept German citizenship. In other countries such as Switzer-
land, for example, this has always been different. These days in
Germany those two things, the position of professor and State citizen-
ship, are no longer inseparably connected to one another. I myself, for
instance, am still a Dutch subject and I am certain that you will find
just as few difficulties in case you wish to remain a Dutch subject.
74
Handwritten letter in Dutch; Archiv der Max Planck Gesellschaft, Nachlass P. Debye, III
Abt., Rep 19, Nr. 842.
11 On to Germany 71
Lichtenstein thought that it may be of importance to you to be

informed about this point and has therefore asked me to write to you.
That is something I prefer to do because I thus have an opportunity to
assure you also of my standpoint (that of physics [department]), that I
would like nothing better than your enjoying yourself here and I
having the opportunity to welcome you as a colleague in Leipzig.
Documents in the National Archive of the Netherlands show that 8 days
later, on June 27, 1930, Leipzig University became officially interested in
considering Van der Waerden for a position of ordinarius, the approximate
German equivalent of an American full professorship.
72 11 On to Germany
Photo 11 Bartel L. van der Waerden, Leipzig, June 1931. Courtesy of Leipzig University
11 On to Germany 73
Van der Waerden does not just get on a train and leaves for Germany. On
January 16, 1931, he sends a handwritten letter to Queen Wilhelmina of the
Netherlands seeking Royal approval for his departure:75
To H[er] M[agesty] The Queen of the Netherlands
The undersigned Dr. Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, Professor at
the State University of Groningen, requests Your Majestys permission
to resign from the States service effective 1 May 1931, due to his
appointment on this date as Professor at the Saxon University of
Leipzig.
With all due respect,
B.L.v.d. Waerden
In the January 22, 1931, letter the curators of Groningen University
recommend to the Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences to grant
Van der Waerden an honorable discharge.76 Consequently, on February
11, 1931, Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina issues her Royal decree:77
We Wilhelmina, By Grace of God
Queen of the Netherlands, Princess
of Oranje-Nassau, Etc., Etc., Etc.
11 February 1931
Upon the recommendation of our Minister of Education, Culture
and Sciences of February 6, 1931, No. 493, Department of Higher
Education;
In accordance with articles 86 of the Higher Education Statutes;
Effective May 1, 1931, at his request, to grant honorable discharge
to Professor Dr. van der Waerden as a Professor at the State University
of Groningen.
Our Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences is ordered to
implement this ruling, of which documentation will be sent to the
Public Accounting Office.
s Gravenhage,78 February 11, 1931
(signed) WILHELMINA
75
Handwritten letter in Dutch; Nationaal Archief, Den Haag; Finding Aid 2.14.17, record
number 73dossier B.L. van der Waerden; Department of Education, Arts and Sciences.
76
Ibid.
77
Ibid.
78
The old name of Den Haag.
74 11 On to Germany
Thus the attempts to keep Van der Waerden in Holland failed, and he
succeeds Otto Holder as Professor at Leipzig University. On May 1, 1931,
28 years of age, Bartel Leendert van der Waerden starts as an ordinarius at
the Universit at Leipzig. He did negotiate with the Germans to keep his
Dutch citizenship. However, he neglected to ask in advance the Dutch
Crown for the permission to retain his Dutch citizenship while serving a
foreign state. As Van der Waerden will explain to J.G. van der Corput after
the war,79 he submitted his request to the Queen, but only 2 days before his
departure for Germany. A half a year later he was told that the intended
approval could not be given after the fact. So now I was stateless, Van der
Waerden recollects.
Van der Waerden apparently does not worry too much about being
stateless, for only two years later, in late 1933, when he finds himself
stateless in Nazi Germany, will he submit a request for renaturalization.
The request will be granted, but only after Congressman (Second Chamber)
Dr. Theo van der Waerden had no other part in it except that he insisted on
a speedy treatment of the Act of Parliament80 and after a furor in the First
Chamber (similar to the U.S. Senate) of the Dutch Parliament. I am grateful
to Dirk van Dalen for forwarding to meand translating in the period
stylethe following sarcastic report published on December 13, 1933 in
the newspaper Het Handelsblad:
NATURALIZATION OF Dr B.L. VAN DER WAERDEN.
___________
The First Chamber expresses criticism.
____________
According to the preliminary report of the First Chamber on the bill
concerning the naturalization of Dr. B.L. van der Waerden, the Cham-
ber insisted on an explanation of the reasons why the minister has
advanced the introduction of this bill. The members found it hard to
avoid the impression, that the person concerned had in 1931 at the
appointment in Leipzig [footnoteerroneously called Leiden]
adopted a rather cavalier attitude with respect to his nationality. For
he had failed to ask the Crowns permission to enter into the service of
a foreign state. Now, however, the possession of the Dutch nationality
seems again to appeal somewhat to the requester. One would be glad to
learn, whether practical motives have led to this change of position,
and if yes, which ones.
79
Read in Chapter 26 Van der Waerdens undated reply to Van der Corputs August 20, 1945
letter. It is held in the ETH Archive, Hs 652: 12153.
80
Ibid.
11 On to Germany 75
Germany in 1931 was the center of the mathematical world, and Leipzig,
although not a match to Gottingen and Berlin, was a very fine university,
with a flourishing world-class program in physics. This transfer could be
viewed as a significant promotion from Van der Waerdens prior full
professorship at Groningen University in Holland. On his arrival in Leipzig,
Bartel is accompanied by his Austrian wife of one year Camilla and their
baby daughter Helga.
Once at Leipzig University, Bartel L. van der Waerden joins the seminar
conducted by the physicists Werner Heisenberg, who will soon win the
Nobel Prize for the creation of quantum mechanics. . .,81 and Friedrich
Hund,82 a Leipzig professor since 1929 (immediately after the World War
II, Hund will serve a year as a Prorektor of Leipzig University).
Photo 12 Heisenbergs Seminar: Blass, Heisenberg, Trefflitz, and Hund. Courtesy of Leip-
zig University
81
Werner Karl Heisenberg (19011976); Nobel Prize. 1932; Max Planck Medal, 1933.
82
Friedrich Hund (18961997); Max Planck Medal, 1943.
76 11 On to Germany
Photo 13 B.L. van der Waerden Lecturing at Leipzig, ca. 1931. Courtesy of Leipzig
University
11 On to Germany 77
Photo 14 Werner Heisenberg Lecturing at Leipzig, ca. 1931. Courtesy of Leipzig University
Van der Waerden was an extremely quick learner. He picked up physics

from them as he had earlier learned algebra from Emmy Noether and Emil
Artin, and soon lectured in the Heisenberg seminar. Friedrich Hund recalls
[Hun]:
Leipzig of those years included Van der Waerden. We did not uni-
formly understand many things from his lectures on group theory and
78 11 On to Germany
quantum mechanics (1931/32). . . From these lectures Van der

Waerdens known book has been created.
Indeed, already the following year, in 1932, Van der Waerden publishes a
book on applications of group theory to quantum mechanics in the Springer
Yellow Series [Wae4].
Werner Heisenberg held fond memories of Niels Bohrs famous seminar
in Copenhagen which he attended in the 1920s. He tried to reconstruct the
spirit and quality of that seminar at Leipzig. Heisenbergs seminar was the
powerhouse of thinkers on matters physical. Heisenbergs students and
guests included Felix Bloch (Nobel Prize 1952), Friedrich Hund, the
Russian genius Lev Landau (Nobel Prize 1962), the future American hydro-
gen bombs leading creator Edward Teller, the future member of the Man-
hattan project Victor F. Weisskopf, the HeisenbergHundBohr student
Carl-Friedrich Baron von Weizsacker, the future Princeton professor Ariel
Wintner, and many other outstanding minds.
Van der Waerden becomes a friend of the young Carl-Friedrich von
Weizsacker, and his curious and gentle examiner. On February 12, 2011,
Carl-Friedrichs son, Professor Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, shared with
me a story he heard from his father:
Dear Alexander,
It so happened that I was in touch with Thomas Goernitz [one of the
closest colleagues of Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker] recently who
brought back to my memory that my father was extremely thankful
to Bartel Leendert van der Waerden after the latter had served as the
examiner in physics at the Ph.D. exams. My father was extremely
young at the time, 21 years old only, and felt he was very inexperi-
enced in experimental physics. But Van der Waerden was fascinated,
so it seems, with what my father knew and explained in theoretical
physics, so he let him speak and speak and the time was over before
they could turn to experimental physics. And the whole thing ended in
a top rating for my father.
That was in 1933, one of the darkest years for Germany and the
world, as you know.
For Heisenberg, von Weizsacker became the closest confidant. In
October 1934, Werner writes to his mother:83
83
[Cas], p. 228.
11 On to Germany 79
Only the friendship with Carl Friedrich, who struggles in his own
serious way with the world around us, leaves open to me a small
entry into that otherwise foreign territory.
Photo 15 Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, 1934. Courtesy of Leipzig
University
Van der Waerden and Heisenberg soon become close personal friends as
well, as the following letter suggests:
Leipzig May 11, 193.
Dear Herr Heisenberg,
Whether we build or not is still a daily subject of discussion. It is
very exciting. Nevertheless, today I would like to make use of your
friendly agreement and ask you in a most friendly way only until 15th
of August provisionally for 6000 marks.84 I would then have a basis to
negotiate the sale of the land. If we should then still not buy any land,
then you would lose nothing in the process. Then nothing would have
happened.
84
In 1934, 6,000 marks were equivalent to US$2,299, quite a substantial amount for
that time.
80 11 On to Germany
With many thanks and heartfelt greetings,

Your
Van der Waerden
Hitlers ascent to power at the dawn of 1933 found Bartel van der
Waerden contemplating his second Rockefeller (IEB) fellowship.
Chapter 12
The Dawn of the Nazi Era
From 1933 till 1940 I considered it my most important duty to help

defend the European culture, and most especially science, against the
culture-destroying National Socialism.
Bartel L. van der Waerden85
The compromises you will have to make will later be held against
you, and quite rightly so. . . But in the ghastly situation in which
Germany now finds herself, no one can act decently.
Max Planck to Werner Heisenberg86
85
The Defense; July 20, 1945; a handwritten document in Dutch; Rijksarchief in Noord-
Holland (RANH), Papers of Hans Freudenthal, mathematician, 19061990, inv. nr. 89.
86
[Hei2].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_12
82 12 The Dawn of the Nazi Era
Photo 16 Albert Einstein, ca. early 1930s, Photo by E. Zieber. Courtesy of Alice Calaprice
Following Hitlers January 30, 1933 assent to power, the majority of

Germans, and academics no exception, came onboard of the winning Nazi
ship. Albert Einstein who announced his intention to remain in a voluntary
exile from his country, called for the world to unite against the Nazi danger.
12 The Dawn of the Nazi Era 83
On March 17, 1933, The New York Times publishes the report entitled
DR. EINSTEIN URGES HITLER PROTESTS:
Albert Einstein appealed yesterday for the moral intervention of the
world against Hitlerism in Germany and the campaign of oppression
waged by Hitlerites against the opposition.
The Nazi response was immediate. The New York Times reports on
March 21, 1933 in NAZIS HUNT ARMS IN EINSTEIN HOME:
Special Cable to the New York Times.
BERLIN, March 20.Charging that Professor Albert Einstein had
a huge quantity of arms and ammunition stored in his secluded home in
Caputh, the National Socialists sent Brown Shirt men and policemen to
search it today, but the nearest thing to arms they found was a bread
knife.
Professor Einsteins home, which for the present is empty, the
professor being on his way back to Europe from the United States,
was surrounded on all sides and one of the perfect raids of recent
German history was carried out. The outcome was a disappointment to
those who have always regarded Professor Einsteins pacifist utter-
ances as a mere pose.
The elimination of the Jews from responsible positions goes on.
In Berlin more Jewish physicians have been dismissed from the
hospitals. All Jewish judges hitherto sitting on criminal courts have
been relieved of office. They are to be placed in civil courts, it is said.
Jews are also forbidden to continue to function as State prosecution
attorneys. This movement, started in Breslau, apparently is spreading
all over Prussia . . .
From Kaiserslautern it is reported that the National Socialist leader
for the Palatinate has demanded the resignation of all Jewish
burgomeisters and members of municipal administration and has had
them arrested.
The Russian thinker and exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky insightfully
assesses the situation in Germany and points out the complacency of
academics in his June 10, 1933 article [Tro]:
The immense poverty of National Socialist philosophy did not, of
course, hinder the academic sciences from entering Hitlers wake
with all sails unfurled, once his victory was sufficiently plain. For
the majority of the professorial rabble, the years of the Weimar regime
were periods of riot and alarm. Historians, economists, jurists, and
philosophers were lost in guesswork as to which of the contending
criteria of truth was right, that is, which of the camps would turn out in
the end the master of the situation. The fascist dictatorship eliminates
the doubts of the Fausts and the vacillations of the Hamlets of the
university rostrums. Coming out of the twilight of parliamentary
relativity, knowledge once again enters into the kingdom of absolutes.
Einstein has been obligated to pitch his tent outside of the boundaries
of Germany.
On the plane of politics, racism is a vapid and bombastic variety of
chauvinism in alliance with phrenology. As the ruined nobility sought
solace in the gentility of its blood, so the pauperized petty bourgeoisie
befuddled itself with fairy tales concerning the special superiorities of
its race.
The April 7, 1933, Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil
Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums) was signed
and put into an immediate effect by Reich Chancellor87 Adolf Hitler, Reich
Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, and Reich Minister of Finance
Johann Ludwig (Lutz) Graf Schwerin von Krosigk. The law rid German
universities of all Jewish (by Nazi definition) professors, except civil ser-
vants in office prior to August 1, 1914, those who fought at the Front for the
German Reich or its Allies in the World War, and those whose fathers or
sons fell in the World War.88
Leipzig Universitys leading bureaucrats, who did not wish to fall behind
the swiftly rolling Nazi cleansing machine, immediately expressed their
limitless support for the efforts of the government directed at the limitation
of Jewish influence at German universities, and inquired from Dresden
what they should do with the foreigner Van der Waerden and the Jew Felix
Bloch:89
Philosophical Facult at of Leipzig University
to the Ministry of Peoples Education in Dresden
Leipzig, April 10, 1933
Regarding Reichs Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil
Service of 7 April 1933.
Among the teachers of Leipzig University who are possibly affected
by the Law for the Reinstatement of the Professional Civil Service of
7 April 1933, there is in the Facult
at of Philosophy
87
Equivalent to Prime Minister.
88
These exceptions were pushed through by the German President Paul von Hindenburg
(18471934) when he appointed Hitler to serve as chancellor.
89
Typed letter in German; Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 17.
Professor Dr. Bartel van der Waerden.

The undersigned Dekan of the Facult at of Philosophy regarded
as his duty on the one hand, in accordance with his knowledge of the
personnel matters, to submit to the government documents for the
treatment of this question. On the other hand, to emphasize those
aspects, regarding the scholarly work of the university or regarding
personal conduct that is in favor of the colleague in question.
The ones named the non-Aryans and also foreigners among the
professors are Professor Dr. Bartel van der Waerden and Privatdozent
Dr. Felix Bloch. We do not know how the government intends to deal
with this kind of a case, involving a foreigner, but we need to stress
that Professor Dr. van der Waerden is a highly reputed mathematician.
Privatdozent Dr. Felix Bloch, a student of Professor Heisenberg, is
regarded as a very promising theoretical physicist.
P.S.: We agree without reservation with the efforts of the govern-
ment directed at the limitation of Jewish influence at German univer-
sities, but may we be permitted to stress that the Facultat of Philosophy
at Leipzig is one of the least Jewified Facultats. We can deny in good
conscience that the influence of the Jewish element somehow threat-
ening the spirit of the Facultat needs to be identified or feared.
(Signed) Weickmann [Dekan]90
By some accounts, Leipzig University alone lost 35 academics to dis-
missal, resignation, forced retirement, and death.91 Heisenbergs brilliant
assistant and a companion in hiking and skiing outings, Felix Bloch was
among those dismissed for being Jewish. Bloch asked for and received help
from Heisenbergs mentor, coauthor, and friend, Physics Nobel Prize Lau-
reate for 1922 Niels Bohr. In June 30, 1933 letter to Bohr, Heisenberg is
grateful for . . . your efforts on behalf of our young physicists, whose well-
being lies in all our hearts, and apologizes for the new Third Reich, for all
of that which is now happening in this country.92 A year later Bloch will
accept a job at Stanford University.
90
Ludwig Friedrich Weickmann (18821961); Dr. of Mathematics 1911; Habilitation in
Geophysics 1922; both recognitions received at Munich University. He joined the Nazi Party
late, in 1940, and apparently without sharing its core anti-Semitism.
91
[Cas], p. 437.
92
[Cas], pp. 223 and 437.
Photo 17 Van der Waerden, ca. 1933. Courtesy of Leipzig University
The 1933 firings include Van der Waerdens teachers and mentors at
Gottingen, Emmy Noether and Richard Courant. These perturbations briefly
affect Van der Waerden, who is alleged to be a foreigner (correctly) and a

Jew (incorrectly). Friedrich, the leader of the mathematics students orga-
uhrer der mathematischen Fachschaft), argues that as a foreigner
nization (F
Van der Waerden is not fit to be the Director of the Mathematics Institute.
Van der Waerden is afraid of losing his professorship, and on March
29, 1933, writes about his worries to Richard Courant, who on April
15, 193393 replies to Van der Waerden, vacationing at his parents house
in Laren, Holland, as follows:
I find it laughable if you believe that there is any threat to your Leipzig
position because you are Dutch. Instead, I am very afraid for your
Leipzig colleague L. [Friedrich Levi, who was Jewish].
In his defense against Friedrichs accusations, Van der Waerden writes
the following letter to Dekan Ludwig Weickmann of Philosophical Facultat
at Leipzig on May 18, 1933:94
Your Magnificence!
I have just learned from you that the Ministry possesses a letter in
which it is claimed that I am of a non-Aryan descent. I declare that I do
not know how that conclusion was reached and who could have written
this to the Ministry. I am a full-blooded Aryan and I can prove that if
necessary, because my ancestry can be tracked for three generations.
With loyal regards,
Yours
B. L. v. d. Waerden95
93
New York University Archive, Courant Paper.
94
Handwritten letter in German; Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 18.
95
See the facsimile of this letter in this chapter.
Photo 18 B. L. van der Waerden claims his full-blooded Aryanness. Courtesy of Leipzig
University
The number of Aryan generations in Van der Waerdens ancestry quickly

grows, for the next day, on May 19, 1933, Leipzigs Rektor Achelis96
informs Minister Hartnacke of Saxony, that the accusation of Van der
Waerden being non-Aryan is incorrect, that Van der Waerden has a proof
that five [sic] generations of his ancestors have been Christians, and thus
Van der Waerden should be able to retain his directorship.97
What is wrong, you may ask, with being an Aryan and declaring it? Ever
since Mein Kampf, Hitler aspired to create in the future the Germanic State
of the German Nation (Germanischer Staat Deutscher Nation). The terri-
torial claims for the Greater Germanic Reich, while changed over time,
invariably included the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia and the Low
Countries (Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg). The Dutch people, exclud-
ing the Jews and other undesirables, have been viewed as Germanic, or
Aryan. In view of this, Van der Waerden merely states the fact of being
96
Hans Georg Achelis (18651937).
97
Typed letter in German; Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 21.
Aryan, i.e., a Dutch Christian, coming from the family of many generations
of Christians. The problem with his statement of fact lies elsewhere. Declar-
ing his Aryanness, in my opinion, is not noble at the time when his
colleagues and mentors Emmy Noether, Richard Courant and many others,
are thrown from their jobs for things beyond their control, simply for being
Jewish. This reminds me of the opposite example depicted in the 1925 novel
Jew S uss by the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger. In it Suss, who has lived
his entire life as a Jew, is facing death for being Jewish. Unexpectedly, he
learns of being not Jewish. All he has to do to survive is to disclose that in
reality he is Aryan. Yet Suss chooses to meet his death as a Jew, the Jew he
has been all his life.
Even those Jews, who were exempted from firing under the April 7, 1933
law, found themselves under an immense pressure to resign. Nazi students
boycotted and disrupted classes of Jewish professors, one of whom was the
Gottingen number theorist Edmund Landau. Van der Waerden mentions his
actions against Landaus boycott in The Defense, a document he will
write for the de-Nazification Boards of Utrecht and Amsterdam Universities
after the war: In 1933 I traveled to Berlin and Gottingen to protest the
boycott of [Edmund] Landaus classes by Gottingen Nazi students.98 In
June 1933, the great physicists Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg, the
latter by now Van der Waerdens close friend, circulate a petition in support
of Van der Waerdens Gottingen mentor Richard Courant, who fights his
unlawful dismissal as a veteran of World War I.99
By no means had everyone immediately understood how dangerous
the Nazi regime promised to be. The United States official early posture
was to order a cup of coffee and view the confrontation between Nazism and
Socialism. Some Americans, e.g., members of the Emergency Committee in
Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, the U.S. Emergency Rescue Committee,
the Unitarian Service Committee, etc. were rescuing children and great
minds of Europe, such as Albert Einstein, Emmy Noether, Marc Chagall,
Max Ernst, Erich Maria Remarque, Lion Feuchtwanger,100 Thomas Mann,
98
The Defense, handwritten in Dutch; RANH, Papers of Hans Freudenthal, mathemati-
cian, 19061990, inv. nr. 89.
99
[Cas], p. 212.
100
Feuchtwangers incredible rescue alone can inspire a book or a movie. Reverend Sharp
took him from Marseille, through fascist Spain to Portugal, and from there over Atlantic to
the United States. Days after the rescue, Feuchtwanger inscribed his book Paris Gazette To
Waitstill Hastings Sharpe, This very good and helpful friend of mine. Lion Feuchtwanger.
Boston, October 16th 1940. This book is in front of me as I am writing these lines. Reverend
Sharpe and his wife Martha were awarded the high title of Righteous Among Nations for
Heinrich Mann, Berthold Brecht, etc. Others, such as J. Edgar Hoover

and his FBI agents, were spying on the saved refugees and even trying
to get some of them, Lion Feuchtwanger included, deported out of the
United States (read more in Alexander Stephans excellent monograph
Communazis [Ste]). To my disbelief, I learned that even the founder and
first director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Abraham
Flexner, with full support of one of the leading Princeton Math professors
and future chair Solomon Lefschetz, ridiculed Albert Einstein for being an
outspoken anti-Nazi, as you can see from Flexners September 28, 1933
letter to Felix M. Warburg of New York City:101
Dear Mr. Warburg:
In reply to Miss Emanuels note containing the cables from you and
Lockar Lampson I am writing to you as follows:
Suggest you cable Lockar Lampson as follows signing your name
opinion here in academic and official circles strongly to effect that
Professor Einstein should not participate in Albert Hall meeting
regardless of subject of his discussion Please give him my former
telegram as well as this Unquote Am writing you
I may add that last night Professor Lefschetz, who holds the highest
professorship in mathematics in Princeton University and is himself a
Russian Jew, came to see me and asked me if I could not in some way
shut Einstein up, that he was doing the Jewish cause in Germany
nothing but harm and that he is also seriously damaging his own
reputation as a scientist and doing the Jewish situation in America
no good.
I may add for your private information that I am seriously
concerned as to whether it is going to be possible to keep him and
his wife in this country. I have been pleading with them all summer to
show the elements of common sense, and their replies have been vain
and foolish beyond belief. You have doubtless noticed in the morning
paper that the German Government has retracted in part its attitude
toward Jewish merchants. Einstein is simply making it as hard as
possible for the German Government to climb down. Scores of
they helped hundreds flee Nazi regime during [the] Holocaust. They are two of only three
Americans so honored, third being Varian Fry of the U.S. Emergency Rescue Committee.
101
I am grateful to the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Historical Studies-
Social Science Library Archive of the Institute for Advanced Study Princeton and the
archivist Erica Mosner for providing a copy of this letter and permission to reproduce it. A
good part of this letter was first quoted by Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze in his monograph
[Sie3].
individuals in New York and in Princeton have spoken to me about

him, his wife and their conduct, and without a single exception in
thorough condemnation, despite the fact they are all bitterly opposed
to the present German regime. Though he is of course not a Commu-
nist, he is now only partially a Pacifist. The clipping, which Miss
Emanuel sends, is correct in maintaining that his presence on the
platform will do no good to anybody. The case is very different with
a man like Austen Chamberlain, who has been Foreign Secretary and
is a Christian gentleman, and in his hands it ought to be left.
To cap the climax, Einstein has made practically no sacrifice what-
soever. He and his wife are better taken care of today than they have
ever been in their life if they will only behave themselves. Other
German Jewish scholars like Frank and Haber, both Nobel Prize
medalists, have actually given up their posts either voluntarily or
through suppression and allowed the world to judge, with the result
that they are more highly esteemed than ever and their dignity has hurt
the German Government a good deal more than Einsteins everlasting
publicity.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely yours,
Abraham Flexner
Bringing Albert Einstein to the Institute for Advanced Study was the
greatest luck of Abraham Flexners life. How many people would know
today, in 2014, of the Institute for Advanced Study if Einstein had not
worked there? And yet, like the worst kind of appeasers of Nazi Germany,
Flexner and Lefschetz are looking for some way to shut Einstein up, to
prevent him from speaking against Nazism! Have they forgotten about the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution guaranteeing the free-
dom of speech? And what about the indecency of blaming Einstein for
Flexners help, He and his wife are better taken care of today than they
have ever been in their life? Perhaps, Flexner and Lefschetz merit a little
break: after all they are American Jews, removed by the Atlantic Ocean
from the horrors of Nazi Germany, and not wise enough to comprehend
Nazism at its early stage. Surely Richard Courant, himself a Jewish refugee
from Nazi Germany, understood and appreciated Einstein using his acclaim
and reputation to warn the world about the danger of Nazism? Sadly,
Shakespeare comes to mind: Et tu, Brute? You too, Brutus? Constance
Reid reports [Re2, pp. 139140]:
Einstein, who had been in America for the past few months, had been
making a number of widely publicized statements deploring brutal
acts of violence and oppression against persons of liberal opinion and

Jews . . . in Germany [which] have aroused the conscience of all
countries remaining faithful to ideals of humanity and political liber-
ties. On March 29 [1933] . . . the government in Berlin had announced
that Einstein had inquired about taking steps to renounce his Prussian
citizenship.
Even though Einstein does not consider himself a German,
Courant wrote, he has received so many benefits from Germany that
it is no more than his duty to help dispel the disturbance he has caused
. . . What hurts me particularly is that the renewed wave of anti-
Semitism is . . . directed indiscriminately against every person of
Jewish ancestry, no matter how truly German he may feel within
himself, no matter how he and his family have bled during the war
and how much he himself has contributed to the general community. I
cant believe that such injustice can prevail much longerin particu-
lar, since it depends so much on the leaders, especially Hitler, whose
last speech made quite a positive impression on me.
So much for the acclaimed cleverness of Richard Courant: Einstein is
ungrateful, and Hitler leaves quite a positive impression on Courant! Even
the well-known anti-Nazi, Nobel Laureate for Physics and Einsteins friend
Max von Laue urged Einstein to abstain from politics:102
Here they are making nearly the entirety of German academics respon-
sible when you do something political.
It sounded as if the German academics did not wish to do or say much and
be responsible for anything. Einstein summed up his position in his reply to
von Laue. His words call on scholars to leave the ivory tower and assume
responsibility for affairs of the world, to be counted in the struggle for truth
and justice:103
I do not share your view that the scientist should observe silence in
political matters, i.e., human affairs in the broader sense . . . Does not
such restraint signify a lack of responsibility? Where would we be had
men like Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Humboldt thought
and behaved in such a fashion? I do not regret one word of what I have
said and am of the belief that my actions have served mankind.
102
Von Laue to Einstein; letter from June 26, 1933; quoted from [Cas], p. 207.
103
Einstein to von Laue; letter from May 26, 1933; quoted from [Cas], 207208.
What about the great old man of physics Max Planck? Surely, he could
understand Einsteins sacrifice in service of the world? Not so. As Dominic
Bonfiglio correctly observes, Planck had already confused cause and effect
. . . by telling Einstein that his outspokenness in America was making it
worse for Jews in Germany:104
Upon arrival in Antwerp on March 28 [1933], Einstein went immedi-
ately to the consulate to renounce his German citizenship. In his letter
of resignation to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Einstein
expressed his gratitude toward the institution and his affection for its
members, but felt that dependence on the Prussian government under
the present circumstances . . . to be intolerable. Unfortunately, the
Academy didnt respond with the same reserve. On April 1 [1933], the
first boycott of Jews day, it issued a statement declaring that there
was no reason to regret Einsteins resignation due to his atrocity
propaganda abroad.
Einstein wrote Planck [President of the Academy] in protest. He had
only advocated diplomatic pressure against Hitlers government; he
specifically warned against general anti-German agitation. But Planck
was beyond persuasion. He had already confused cause and effect a
few weeks earlier by telling Einstein that his outspokenness in Amer-
ica was making it worse for Jews in Germany.
Later that May, as Nazis and their sympathizers were preparing
to burn 20,000 books in Berlin, Max Planck was recorded in the
Academys minutes as saying that through his political behavior
[Einstein] himself rendered his continued membership in the Academy
impossible. There were few things that surprised Einstein more about
Hitlers rise to power than the way the majority of German academics
responded to it. In August, Einstein told a colleague that he probably
wouldnt see his country of birth again.
Einstein never did. The prominent Einsteins critics should recall words
of the XVIII century French playwright Molie`re and own the responsibility
for their inaction:
It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are
accountable.
104
Dominic Bonfiglio, Einsteins Summer House in Caputh, http://www.einsteinsommerhaus.
de/index.php?id455&L1
Einstein opposed Nazi Germany not only as a great orator in public

square. He also tried to help individual victims of Nazism. On April
23, 1933, he wrote to his friend Maurice Solovine:105
If you see any Jewish academicians who are refugees from Germany,
please have them get in touch with me. I would like to try with some
friends to found a free university abroad (England?) for Jewish
teachers and professors; it might at least meet their most pressing
needs and create a sort of intellectual refuge.106
Einstein was not alone in understanding what a dreadful catastrophe was
happening in the world. The well-known mathematician and scientist Rich-
ard von Mises, on a train taking him from Vienna to his first exile destina-
tion, Istanbul, wrote on November 6, 1933 in his diary the sad, reserved, and
dignified Position toward the Events of Our Time:107
I count myself among the class of so-called intellectuals who are so
little appreciated today. . . The only really valuable and dignified work,
which nobody should be allowed to withdraw from without reason,
seems to me emendatio intellectus humani, the preservation and
growth of the intellectual property of mankind [reference to Benedict
de Spinoza].
The rulers of the Third Reich instruct me that emphasis on intellec-
tual interests and on the exact sciences is but an outgrowth of my
belonging to that race that they themselves experience as alien. To
them it appears that physical exercise, sports and training, above all the
ability to defend oneself physically and attack, are at least equally
important as intellectual education. The political benefit to the nation
should be the highest measure of worth and dignity, right and wrong of
any action, leaving open whether the nation itself understands that
benefit accurately. Humanity in the sense of an educational ideal is
as decidedly rejected as the principled consideration of humanistic
attitudes, prescribed by the Jewish-Christian religions of all
denominations.
I know quite well that the Fathers house has many mansions, and I
do not claim to have the key to the only right one. But I am not young
105
Albert Einstein, Letters to Solovine, Philosophical Library, New York, 1987.
106
A university did not materialize. On May 30, 1933, Einstein writes about it from Oxford
to Max Born: I originally intended to create a university for exiles. But it soon became
apparent that there were insurmountable obstacles, and that any efforts in this direction
would impede the exertions of individual countries [BE].
107
[Sie3], 374375.
enough to relearn from scratch and not old enough to adapt for my
convenience contrary to my conviction. Therefore, I cannot do other-
wise than resolutely and unequivocally uphold the old principles of
civilization, by which empires much more important than the ephem-
eral Third have acquired and maintained greatness: the primacy of
the intellect over violence, of freedom over force, of humanity over
politics.
The 1930s American governments official policy of appeasement toward
Nazi Germany was regrettable, to say the least. However, it reflected the
position of the majority of the American population. The major wire service
Associated Press (AP) allows us to clearly see this. On March 7, 1934, AP
reports from New York City:
Twenty-two speakers presented the Case of Civilization against Hit-
ler at a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden, New York, March
7. Edward J. Neary, Executive Committee member of the American
Legion, is shown [this text was accompanied by a photo of E.J. Neary]
as he presented the case of war veterans against Hitler. The audience
was composed of liberals, Jews, and other anti-Nazis.
I am shocked to read the last sentence of this AP report. Hitler has been in
power for over 14 months, yet AP and the American people do not get
it. The report insinuates that only fringe elements of the American society
are against Nazi Germany: liberals, Jews, and other anti-Nazis! However,
closer to the start of the war, the American public opinion will slowly shift
against Nazi Germany. Mass demonstrations will follow. One such very
large Stop Hitler Parade will take place in Manhattan on March 25, 1939.
Chapter 13
The Princeton Job Offer
When you do historical research, it pays to keep your eyes open and mind
concentrating on the subject matter of your research at all times. The
20 months of 20032004 I worked at Princeton University as a Visiting
Fellow. In translation from the British, this title means a visiting
researcher. And so I researched math, sometimes jointly with John
H. Conway, other times with the Israeli Distinguished Visitor of Rutgers
University Saharon Shelah. I was constantly thinking about Van der
Waerden and his fate, and discussed my findings with the grateful and
valuable audience of Princeton Math colleagues during the daily coffee
hours. From the grapevine I heard that once upon a time Van der Waerden
was offered a job here, but no evidence has ever been published. In the
spring of 2003 I asked the departmental administrator Scott Kinney for any
relevant documents. He checked in the file room, and told me there was no
record, maybe because he did not actually come to work here, Mr. Kinney
concluded. My 2003 inquiries into the Princeton University Archive and
into the Institute for Advanced Study Archive penned the same result. There
are countless dead ends in the maze of an historical research; was I at one?
A year later, when I was about to leave Princeton, I decided to try and see
whether there existed any trace of a Princeton faculty discussion about
inviting Van der Waerden. In my June 3, 2004, e-mail I queried the
Mathematics Department Chair, Nick Katz:
As you probably know, I am writing a book on Ramsey Theory
together with the history of its early creators. You would provide my
historical research a very essential help if you allow me to read
minutes/notes of Princeton math department faculty meetings for
19331934 (or better yet 19331945). Best wishes! Alexander

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_13
98 13 The Princeton Job Offer
Imagine my delight when the following day I received Nicks reply:

I have left both the minutes you requested, and also the minutes of
what seems to have been a university-wide research committee, with
Scott, for you to look at. We only ask that these materials, which are
irreplaceable, stay in the building. Good luck with your book. Best,
Nick
Irreplaceable? You bet! This was a treasure trove, unclaimed and unread
by anyone in three quarters of a century! Chairs at Princeton Math usually
rotate every 3 years, and these two priceless folders, holding the concise
history of Princeton, quietly sat in a drawer of the chairs desk. One of the
two old-fashioned folders was entitled Department of Mathematics,
Minutes of Department Meetings, September 29, 1931March 29, 1949.
The other untitled folder contained Minutes of the Research Committee,
later called Scientific Research Committee of Princeton University, together
with various financial documents, dating from January 23, 1926 to 1949.
The minutes of the Mathematics Department did not mention Van der
Waerden. However, the minutes of the Research Committee recorded a job
offer Princeton University made to him!
Purely coincidentally, right at the time when Van der Waerden was
proving his Aryanness, Princeton University was offering to get him out
of the ugliness of the young Nazi state and to bring him in as a visiting
professor. I read the yellowed pages with the greatest interest: A meeting of
the Research Committee was held on Tuesday, May 9, 1933, in Dean [of the
Faculty Luther Pfahler] Eisenharts office, Fine Hall, at 12:00 noon. Present:
Dean Eisenhart, Professors [Edwin Grant] Conklin [Biology], [Rudolph]
Ladenburg [Physics], [Solomon] Lefschetz [Mathematics], [Henry Norris]
Russell [Astronomy] and [Sir Hugh] Taylor [Chemistry].108 Section 2 of
these minutes is of our prime interest:
Dean Eisenhart reported the desire of the Department of Mathematics
to secure Professor van der Waerden of Leipzig on the Mathematics
funds for the first term of 193334 at a salary of $3500. Dean Eisenhart
reported that in this case also there would be a delay on account of
uncertain conditions in Germany.
By this also Dean Eisenhart referred to section 1 of these minutes,
which is important to us as well and reads as follows:
108
Archive of the Department of Mathematics, Princeton University.
13 The Princeton Job Offer 99
Dean Eisenhart reported the inability of Professor Heisenberg to give a

definite answer to the offer of an eight weeks engagement at a salary of
$3000 at the present time owing to the conditions in Germany. Pro-
fessor Heisenberg suggested that he might be able to give a definite
reply at the end of the year. Dean Eisenhart has written to Heisenberg
on the assumption that his letter meant the end of the academic year
and suggested that decision by July would be acceptable.
Section 7 of the minutes is relevant too:
Professor Lefschetz raised the question of alternatives to Professor
Heisenberg in case it was found impossible to secure his services.
After discussion, it was decided that the matter be left in abeyance
until further reports were available concerning the German situation.
The Princeton Research Council choices were a good predictor of Nobel
Prize winners. At another 1933 meeting, the Council identified Erwin
Schrodinger, who would win a Nobel Prize in Physics for 1933, as a backup
for Heisenberg, the soon to be Nobel Prize winner for 1932.
But let us return to the Third Reich, year 1933. With few exceptions, in
April 1933 the Jews are thrown out from all German universities. Heisen-
berg and Planck circulate a petition in defense of Richard Courant, who as a
World War I German combatant is entitled to an exception. The petition is
unsuccessful; Courant has to leave Germany. Doesnt this episode clearly
illustrate the lawlessness of the new Third Reich? Apparently not to
Heisenberg, who wants to wait and see how the German situation develops.
He does not like to lose the best Jewish German physicists, including his
assistant Felix Bloch, because it is bad for physics in Germany. But he is
excited about the Nazi promise of the German national revival. On October
6, 1933, unbelievably, Heisenberg writes to his mother about much good
in the Nazi intentions:109
Much that is good is now also being tried, and one should recognize
good intentions.
As the XI century abbot Saint Bernard of Clairvaux observed, The road
to hell is paved with good intentions. And Nazi Germany has certainly been
en route to that destination.
Following the wishes of the Research Committee and Mathematics
Department, Princeton University offers Professor Van der Waerden a
Visiting Professorship for the September 15, 1933February 15, 1934
109
Werner Heisenberg, October 6, 1930 letter to his mother; quoted from [Cas], pp. 208 and
435.
semester. On June 27, 1933, the latter asks Dekan Ludwig Weickmann for
the approval of his Princeton visit:110
To His Magnificence Dekan of the Philosophical Facult
at at Leipzig.
I would like to inform Your Magnificence that I received a presti-
gious invitation to give invited lectures at the University of Princeton
(America) in the winter term 1933/34. As it becomes clear from the
attached letters, Princeton offers optimal conditions for scientific
research and inspiration by interaction with other mathematicians.
For that reason I intend to accept the invitation if a leave of absence
is approved for September 15 to February 15, and an appropriate
replacement can be found.
I therefore ask the Facult
at to forward my application for the leave
of absence to the Government. The directors of the Mathematics
Institute will contact you with suggestions regarding my replacement.
Respectfully submitted,
B.L. v.d. Waerden
The wheels of the young Nazi bureaucracy move surprisingly swiftly in
this case. The following day, on June 28, 1933, a letter supporting the leave,
is sent to the Facult
at by the three codirectors of the Mathematics Institute:
Professors Van der Waerden, Paul Koebe, and Leon Lichtenstein.111 On
June 30, 1933, Dekan Weickmann throws his support in a letter to the Saxon
Ministry of Peoples Education in Dresden.112 On July 15, 1933, Van der
Waerden sends a letter to Dekan Weickmann inquiring whether the Dekan
has any news from the Ministry,113 and on the very same day Dekan in turn
sends his inquiry to Councilor Seydewitz of the Ministry.114 On July
18, 1933, Seydewitz sends two letters: one to Dekan Weickmann, approving
the leave without pay (as is requested by Van der Waerden, who is to be paid
well by Princeton); and to Privatdozent115 Dr. Friedrich Karl Schmidt of
Erlangen University, inquiring whether the latter would accept a replace-
ment position at Leipzig.116 On July 24, 1933, Schmidt accepts the replace-
ment job and is ready to come to Leipzig to discuss his salary.117 Thus
110
111
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 23.
112
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, pp. 2425.
113
114
115
Roughly equivalent to an associate professor, but without a guaranteed salary.
116
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, pp. 28 and 30.
117
everythingall approvals and the replacementis ready for the cross-

Atlantic voyage of the Van der Waerden family, when five days later, on
July 29, 1933, Bartel van der Waerdens letter shocks everyone (even me as
I read these documents):118
To the Saxon Ministry of Peoples Education
Attention Councilor Seydewitz
Since in my opinion (and also in the opinion of the directors of
Mathematics Institute) my presence at the Mathematics Institute this
coming winter is urgently necessary, I respectfully ask the Ministry to
revoke the leave that has already been approved. I will inform my
replacement Dr. F. K. Schmidt as well as the Philosophical Facult at
about my decision.
Yours respectfully,
B.L.v.d. Waerden
Thus, Van der Waerden has jumped through numerous bureaucratic
hoops but in the end rejects his deservedly won high prize of a Princeton
job! Shakespeare would have summarized the Princeton story as Much Ado
about Nothing.
This was the first major junction in the life of Van der Waerden: had he
come to Princeton, as a fine and young mathematician Van der Waerden
would have most likely received further, more permanent offers from
Princeton University or from the recently founded in Princeton Institute for
Advanced Study. His lifeand the history of algebraic geometrywould
have been different. But Van der Waerden chose to remain in Nazi Germany,
as did his friend Werner Heisenberg, who during several prewar years has not
accepted job offers from Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of
Michigan, and other fine American universities. Heisenbergs devotion to
doing physics in Germany and his nationalism as reasons for staying in the
Third Reich have been well established ([Wal1], [Wal2], [Pow], [Cas], etc.).
Van der Waerdens Princeton opportunity has not been discussed in detail and
backed by documents until my unearthing of the old dusty Princeton folder.
Van der Waerdens most surprising rejection of the Princeton offer begs a
natural question: why did he do it? He explains it in the August 12, 1933
letter to Oswald Veblen, the first permanent mathematics professor of the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton:119
118
119
Library of Congress. Manuscript Division; copy sent to me without identification of its
location within this vast archivepossibly from the Veblen Papers.
Like you, I am very sorry that we will not meet in Princeton next
winter, but it was really impossible for me to leave Leipzig at this time.
As we have learned from the Leipzig University archive, all permissions
were granted. It therefore appears that Van der Waerden prefers courtesy to
the truth in his letter to Veblen. But what is the truth?
Van der Waerden asks his mentor Richard Courant to help him receive a
second Rockefeller (IEB) Fellowship, this time for work in algebraic geom-
etry in Italy, primarily under Federigo Enriques and Francesco Severi in
Rome. On March 2, 1933, Courant, still at Gottingen, pays Van der Waerden
the highest praise and informally and personally asks Dr. W. E. Tisdale,
the Rockefeller Official in Paris, whether the support for Van der Waerden is
possible:120
Van der Waerden in spite of his considerable youth is currently one of
the most outstanding mathematicians in Europe. For the occupation of
the Hilbert Chair he was one of the 3 candidates of the faculty. Now for
some years Van der Waerden has successfully begun to deal with the
problems of algebraic geometry and it is his serious objective to really
develop this area for Germany. In fact, the geometric-algebraic tradi-
tion in Germany is almost extinct, while in Italy in the course of the
past decades it has blossomed.
Tisdale receives the letter on March 6, 1933, and the same day replies to
Courant, asking to have Van der Waerden provide more details, which Van
der Waerden does in his March 12, 1933 two-page letter (received in Paris
on March 31, 1933). This letter, written in English, provides an insight into
Van der Waerdens view of the state of algebraic geometry:121
Algebraic geometry, originated in Germany in the work of Clebsch,
[Emmy Noethers father Max] Noether and others, has been continued
during the last 30 years nearly exclusively by Italian mathematicians:
Enriques, Castelnuovo, Severi, and others. They have developed
methods and theorems, which are of extremely high interest both for
algebra and geometry, but which are still awaiting an exact algebraic
foundation: The contact between Italian geometry and German algebra
is missing. I think this is a typical case in which your Foundation can
help. I know the algebraic methods which can serve as a base for
120
A typed hand-signed 3-page letter in German. Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC);
Collection IEB, Series 1, Sub-series 3, Box 61, Folder 1027.
121
Ibid.
algebraic geometry very well, perhaps best of all German

mathematicians.
Thus, Van der Waerden considers himself to be the best German math-
ematician for the job of putting algebraic geometry on the foundation of
abstract algebra, and he very well may be correct. Moreover, for the first
time in written records that I have found, Van der Waerden casts himself
here as a German mathematician. For his visit Van der Waerden requests the
winter semester of 19331934:
It would be desirable for me to stay half a year in Italy, and more
especially in Rome with Prof. Severi and Prof. Enriques . . . A winter
semester should be preferable, as I can then stay half a year in full term
in Italy, and need a replacement for teaching in my place only during
the 4 months of a winter semester. Perhaps the replacement could be
paid from your stipend, whereas I could live on my salary, if the Saxon
Government is willing to consent in this . . . I have acquired a sufficient
knowledge of the Italian language.
A successful Rockefeller (IEB) fellow first time around, Van der
Waerden, surely, expectsand deservedly soan easy approval of his
second fellowship. So, has Van der Waerden simply preferred Rome over
Princeton? Indeed, I found a proof of it in his own wordseven before he
jumped through all the Leipzig bureaucratic hoopsin an (undated, but
definitely written in May or else June of 1933) letter to Richard Courant:122
I still thank you many times for your efforts at Rockefeller. I only got a
reply from Tisdale that now there are sufficient documents to discuss
the case with his colleagues in Paris . . .
I have an offer from Princeton University, with a stipend, to spend
the coming winter semester (Sept.Jan.) there. This offer came already
at the beginning of April [1933]. But it does not tempt me as much as
the Rome trip; I also do not know whether the regime will allow this
much of a leave of absence.
As we know, at some pointmore precisely, on July 24, 1933Van der
Waerden has learned that the regime will allow this much of a leave of
absence. He may have hoped even as late as in the late July 1933 to get the
Rockefeller money for half a year in Rome. Is this why Van der Waerden
cancelled the approved by all parties visit to Princeton? Perhaps, but there
could have been another important reason for not going to Princeton or to
122
Handwritten letter in German, 1933, undated, written in May or June; New York Uni-
versity, Courants Papers.
Rome: Van der Waerden does not really wish to leave Germany for the first
winter of the Third Reich:123
I cannot judge yet whether it is not smarter to spend this winter in
Leipzig.
What is so smart about staying in Nazi Germany during the winter of
19331934? We will never know for sure, but a plausible question is in
order: Did Van der Waerden not wish to raise suspicion of the young and
already cruel Nazi regime? Now that Van der Waerden is not going to go to
Princeton anyway, it is easier for him to be conscientious:124
I believe I will suggest to the Americans that this time they could
spend their money better than to get me out because I still have a
position that I can keep.
It appears likely that the Rockefeller people, once they learned of the
Princeton offer to Van der Waerden, have chosen to use their funds to
support those mathematicians who depended solely upon Rockefeller
money, and thus decided not to fund Van der Waerdens second fellowship.
According to the leading researcher of mathematics support by the Rocke-
feller Foundation and author of the monograph on the subject [Sie2]
Reinhardt Siegmund-Schultze, the Rockefeller Center has no approving
documents, which implies that Van der Waerdens request has not been
funded. In fact, already on March 29, 1933, the Rockefeller official
Dr. W. E. Tisdale shows a complete knowledge of Van der Waerdens
situation in his diary:125
Van der Waerden, past fellow now at Leipzig is excellent. As a matter
of fact Princeton wants to get him in the faculty to replace shifts due to
Flexners activity [i.e., the creation of the Institute for Advanced
Study]. They will probably ask him to come for a semester in which
they could have a mutual exchange of view.
Yes, the Princeton position would have likely become permanent for Van
der Waerden. It seems clear that Princeton mathematicians have been
unhappy about Van der Waerdens smart choice to stay in Nazi Germany
when they offered him a great opportunity to get out. As we will see later,
they will remember this rejection after the war, when Van der Waerden will
become willingmoreover, eagerto come to Princeton from
war-devastated Holland.
123
Ibid.
124
Ibid.
125
Rockefeller Archive Center, Tisdale Log 7 (1933), p. 27.
Alas, we ought to return to Nazi Germany, year 1934. On August 1, the

cabinet passes a law to take effect upon Paul von Hindenburgs death (that
conveniently took place the following day) that abolishes the office of the
president and adds its authorities to those of the chancellor. Thus F
uhrer und
Reichskanzler Hitler is born. On 19 August, 1934, the ballot measure to
merge the presidency with the chancellorship is approved by 90% of the
electorate. Right then, in August 1934, the traditional loyalty oath required
of all military and civil service employees is replaced by an oath of
allegiance to Hitler personally. As is expected of him, Van der Waerden
signs and dates his oath on November 1, 1934 (see its facsimile in this
chapter):126
I affirm that I have taken the following oath today:
I swear: I will be faithful and obedient to the F
uhrer of the German
Reich and People, Adolf Hitler, I will obey the laws and fulfill my
official duties conscientiously, so help me God.
Photo 19 B. L. van der Waerdens Oath of Allegiance to Hitler. Courtesy of Leipzig

University
Werner Heisenberg, probably unhappy with the humiliation of a personal

oath to Hitler, pulls the time but finally signs the oath in January of 1935.
126
Chapter 14
Eulogy for the Beloved Teacher
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein
Photo 20 From the left: Ernst Witt; Paul Bernays; Helene Weyl; Hermann Weyl; Joachim
Weyl, Emil Artin; Emmy Noether; Ernst Knauf; Unknown; Chiuntze Tsen; Erna Bannow
(later Mrs. Ernst Witt), Nikolausberg (near Gottingen), Photo by Natasha Artin, 1932,
Courtesy of the Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_14
108 14 Eulogy for the Beloved Teacher
When on April 7, 1933, Van der Waerdens mentor Emmy Noether was
fired from Gottingen University for being Jewish (and liberal), she got a job
at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia in the United States. The liberal
arts college for women with emphasis on high quality teaching was not a
good match for research oriented Noetherthe Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton would have been a much better fit. But it was a job in
a safe place at the difficult time of emerging Nazism, and Noether made the
best of it by creating a small dedicated circle at Bryn Mawr and running a
seminar at Princeton.
On April 14, 1935 she passed away from complications after a serious
surgery. I have got to quote in its entirety a beautiful letter to the editor
Albert Einstein published on May 5, 1935, in the New York Times:
The efforts of most human-beings are consumed in the struggle for
their daily bread, but most of those who are, either through fortune or
some special gift, relieved of this struggle are largely absorbed in
further improving their worldly lot. Beneath the effort directed toward
the accumulation of worldly goods lies all too frequently the illusion
that this is the most substantial and desirable end to be achieved; but
there is, fortunately, a minority composed of those who recognize
early in their lives that the most beautiful and satisfying experiences
open to humankind are not derived from the outside, but are bound up
with the development of the individuals own feeling, thinking and
acting. The genuine artists, investigators and thinkers have always
been persons of this kind. However inconspicuously the life of these
individuals runs its course, none the less the fruits of their endeavors
are the most valuable contributions which one generation can make to
its successors.
Within the past few days a distinguished mathematician, Professor
Emmy Noether, formerly connected with the University of Gottingen
and for the past two years at Bryn Mawr College, died in her fifty-third
year. In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians,
Fraulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical
genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.
In the realm of algebra, in which the most gifted mathematicians have
been busy for centuries, she discovered methods which have proved of
enormous importance in the development of the present-day younger
generation of mathematicians. Pure mathematics is, in its way, the
poetry of logical ideas. One seeks the most general ideas of operation
which will bring together in simple, logical and unified form the
largest possible circle of formal relationships. In this effort toward
14 Eulogy for the Beloved Teacher 109
logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the

deeper penetration into the laws of nature.
Born in a Jewish family distinguished for the love of learning,
Emmy Noether, who, in spite of the efforts of the great Gottingen
mathematician, Hilbert, never reached the academic standing due her
in her own country, none the less surrounded herself with a group of
students and investigators at Gottingen, who have already become
distinguished as teachers and investigators. Her unselfish, significant
work over a period of many years was rewarded by the new rulers of
Germany with a dismissal, which cost her the means of maintaining
her simple life and the opportunity to carry on her mathematical
studies. Farsighted friends of science in this country were fortunately
able to make such arrangements at Bryn Mawr College and at
Princeton that she found in America up to the day of her death not
only colleagues who esteemed her friendship but grateful pupils whose
enthusiasm made her last years the happiest and perhaps the most
fruitful of her entire career.127
World-renown mathematicians, who knew Emmy Noether well, wrote
profound and touching eulogies: Hermann Weyl in the USA; Pavel
Aleksandrov in the Soviet Union, where Noether was planning to visit
later that same year. Nazi Germany was another matter. A eulogy for a
Jew and a liberal would be positively not appreciated by the Nazi govern-
mental and academic authorities. Nevertheless, this is exactly what Van der
Waerden did. He published in the Mathematische Annalen, where he was an
associate editor, a heartfelt Obituary of Emmy Noether ([Wae27], translated
into English in [Dic]). Let us pause in our narrative and pay homage to
Emmy Noether and her favorite pupil Bartel L. van der Waerdens bravery:
Our science has suffered a tragic loss. On April 14, 1935, Emmy
Noether, our devoted collaborator at the Mathematische Annalen for
many years, a highly unique person, and a scientist of great impor-
tance, died following a surgical operation. She was born in Erlangen
on March 23, 1882, the daughter of the well-known mathematician
Max Noether.
Her originality, absolutely beyond comparison, was not a matter of
her bearing, characteristic though it was. Nor did it exhaust itself in the
fact that this highly gifted mathematician was a woman. Rather, it lay
127
Einstein wrote his letter in German, and her last years the happiest was somewhat an
exaggeration introduced by the translator, the Institute for Advanced Study Director
Abraham Flexner (see [Sie3], p. 214).
110 14 Eulogy for the Beloved Teacher
in the fundamental structure of her creative mind, in the mode of her

thinking, and in the aim of her endeavors. Since the form of her
thinking was primarily mathematical, and her aim was directed spe-
cifically toward scientific insight, it is necessary to analyze her math-
ematical work to gain an understanding of her personality.
The maxim by which Emmy Noether was guided throughout her
work might be formulated as follows: Any relationships between
numbers, functions, and operations only become transparent, generally
applicable, and fully productive after they have been isolated from
their particular objects and been formulated as universally valid
concepts.
Emmy Noether did not arrive at this principle as a result of her
experience with the significance of the scientific methodrather, it
was an a priori principle, fundamental to her thinking. She was unable
to grasp any theorem, any argument unless it had been made abstract
and thus made transparent to the eye of her mind. She could only think
in concepts, not in formulas, and precisely here laid her strength. It was
the very nature of her mind which compelled her to invent conceptual
forms which were suitable as carriers for mathematical theories . . .
When she lost permission to teach in Gottingen in 1933 and was
appointed by the Womens College of Bryn Mawr (Pennsylvania), she
succeeded in gathering again a school around herself within a short
time, both at Bryn Mawr and in nearby Princeton. Her research which
had passed through the fields of commutative algebra, commutative
arithmetic, and non-commutative algebra, now turned to
non-commutative arithmetic but was abruptly terminated by her
death . . .
The entirely non-visual and non-calculative mind of hers was prob-
ably one of the main reasons why her lectures were difficult to follow.
She was without didactic talent, and the touching efforts she made to
clarify her statements, even before she had finished pronouncing them,
by rapidly adding explanations, tended to produce the opposite effect.
And yet, how profound the impact of her lecturing was! Her small,
loyal audience, usually consisting of a few advanced students and
often of an equal number of professors and guests, had to strain
enormously in order to follow her. Yet, those who succeeded gained
far more than they would have from the most polished lecture. She
almost never presented completed theories; usually they were in the
process of being developed. Each of her lectures was a program. And
no one was happier than she herself when the program was carried out
by her students. Entirely free of egotism and vanity she never asked
14 Eulogy for the Beloved Teacher 111
anything for herself but first of all fostered the work of her students.
She always wrote introductions to our papers, formulating for us the
principal ideas which we, as beginners, could never have grasped and
pronounced with her clarity. She was both a loyal friend and a severe
critic. It is these qualities which made her so valuable an editor, too, for
the Mathematische Annalen . . .
During her last eight years in Gottingen, prominent mathematicians
from all over Germany as well as abroad came to consult with her and
attend her lectures. In 1932, together with E. Artin, she received the
Ackermann-Teubner memorial award for arithmetic and algebra. And
today, carried by the strength of her thought, modern algebra appears
to be well on its way to victory in every part of the civilized world.
Chapter 15
One Faculty Meeting at Leipzig
In Germany itself this situation was aggravated by the isolation of the

individual. Communication became increasingly difficult only the
most intimate friends dared to speak their minds to one another.
Werner Heisenberg128
128
[Hei2], p. 164.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_15
114 15 One Faculty Meeting at Leipzig
Photo 21 Leipzig Faculty, including some major players of the May 8, 1935 Faculty
Meeting. From the left, first row: Friedrich Klinger, Werner Heisenberg; second row:
Bernhard Schweitzer, Joachim Wach; third row: Hermann Heimpel, Theodor Hetzer,
Konstantin Reichardt, and Dekan Helmut Berve. April 1935, Courtesy of Leipzig University
15 One Faculty Meeting at Leipzig 115
May 1935 started with the Governor (Reichsstatthalter) of Saxony Martin

Mutschmann dismissing five Jewish professors from Leipzig University
Dr. of Medicine Bettmann, and four Philosophical Facult at professors:
Joachim Wach (theology), Benno Landsberger (Semitic and Eastern philol-
ogy), Friedrich Wilhelm Daniel Levi (mathematics), and Fritz Weigert
(photo chemistry), all veterans of World War I, and as such exempt from
dismissal under the April 7, 1933 Law. On Friday, May 2, 1935, Leipzigs
new Rektor, the psychologist Felix Emil Krueger (18741948), appointed
just in April 1935, discussed these firings with the Staatssekretar Theodor
Vahlen (coincidentally a mathematician himself), who was in charge of the
Third Reichs university appointments in the Reichserziehungsministerium
and reported directly to the Reichsminister Bernhard Rust.
Rektor Krueger announced these firings on Wednesday, May 8, 1935 in
the afternoon at the faculty meeting of the Philosophical Facult at. He
wanted to merely test the facultys sentiments, and not have a full-blown
discussion. However, five professors bravely questioned the legality and
morality of the firings and forcefully spoke in support of their fired Jewish
colleagues. They were Bartel L. van der Waerden, who led the fight;
physicists Werner Heisenberg and Friedrich Hund, whom you have already
met in this book; classical archeologist Bernhard Schweitzer (18921966),
who later earned the honor of being the first post-World War II Rektor of
Leipzig University (May 1945December 1945); and Russian-born German
and Nordic philologist Konstantin Reinhardt (1904, St. Petersburg, Russia
1976, New Haven, USA), who in three years would leave Germany for the
United States.
Short-tempered (as is often the case with bureaucrats in tyranny) Nazi
officials demanded an immediate report. The Saxon Ministry of Peoples
Education issued an urgent demand (tomorrow by 1 P.M.) for the pre-
cise text of the meeting. The recording secretary Junker reconstructed the
meetings stenography on May 21, 1935, based on the detailed notes he had
taken during the meeting.
Let me translate for you the entire reconstructed stenography, which is so
cinematographic that we can hear voices of the participants and see their
actions.129 For a better visualization, I will insert the photos of the five
heroes and one villain of the meeting.
129
Typed 4-page document in German; Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, pp. 3640; I kept
the abbreviations as they appeared in the German original.
Transcript.
Ministry of Peoples Education Dresden-N 6, May 17, 1935
To the Rektor of the University
Leipzig.
It has been alleged that the following happened at the faculty
meeting of the Philosophical Fakult at on Wednesday afternoon: It
has been asserted that Professor v.d. Waerden openly protested against
the actions of the Governor (Reichsstatthalter). He pointed out that
Wach had been a combatant in the war and the law explicitly stated
that veterans of non-Aryan descent were exempt from the dismissal.
So this would be abuse of the law and he himself [Van der Waerden]
would feel ashamed if a man who gave his blood for him were now
treated in such a way. He asked the Fakult at to make a unanimous
resolution opposing the [dismissal] decision.
It is asserted that nobody objected, but I forbade Professor Golf130
to speak in the tone he was using, and emphasized that insults of this
kind were not usual at German universities. I stated that Professor
Hund had not exactly approved of the actions of the Governor
(Reichsstatthalter).
The Ministry asks for a detailed report.
/Signed for/Geyer
----
Leipzig, [May] 20, [19]35
The Rektor asks Herr Dekan Berve131 for an immediate report.
In Leipzig
Signed Krueger
Rektor.
----
Transcript 5.21.1935
Dear Herr Dekan!
Herr Rosenberg has just informed me that you wish to see the exact
transcript of the meeting of 5.8.1935 by tomorrow at 1 P.M.
130
Professor of Agriculture Arthur Golf (18771941), Rektor of Leipzig University (October
1933March 1935, and again October 1936March 1937), member of NSDAP (Nationalso-
zialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, known as the Nazi Party) since 1932, the author of
Nationalsozialismus und Universit at. Rektoratsrede (Leipzig, 1933).
131
Helmut Berve (18961979), classicist and historian, member of the Nazi Party
since 1933.
I assume that you do not care about the whole transcript but rather
only the account of the Discussion of the Dismissal of the four
colleagues.
From here on I write for you what I took down as a stenographer. I
noted word for word the phrases that the particular gentlemen used. In
the transcript of the Facult
at [meeting] I used these phrases only as the
basis of my formulations. The statement by Herr v.d. Waerden drew
the warning from Herr Golf, a statement which I wanted to hand you at
the time when Golf burst out (I enclose the note), and which I have
omitted from the official transcript, as something regarded as irrele-
vant and resolved by Herr Golf and because it does not accord with
conventions of the Facult at to record distractions.
-------
The Dekan said that the Governor (Reichsstatthalter) [of Saxony],
upon the request of the [Saxon] Ministry [of Science and Culture],
dismissed 4 people. They are Mr.s Wach, Landsberger, Levi, and
Weigert. (Regarding this, it is noticed in the stenographic original:
6. Teaching arrangements withdrawnput in retirement.) Profes-
sor von Weigert is kw, and his position cannot be refilled.132
(Afterwards there were other issues and finally: The issue of the
withdrawal of their titles of doctors).
132
Professor Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze advises me that kw likely means kann
wegfallen can disappear which is a note which even today is attached to positions
which the administration intends to eliminate.
Photo 22 Konstantin Reichardt, 1935. Courtesy of Leipzig University
Herr Reichardt asks: The dismissals are based on 6 of the law.

Would it be possible to learn something about legal issues related to
this question? After all, they fought at the front and were combatants in
the war. And among the students this caused a considerable uproar.
Dekan called upon the Rektor who was present.
Rektor: I cannot tell you everything I discussed in Berlin. Every-
thing is still in flux. When I returned from Berlin I called the Ministry.
The next day I was asked over the phone to submit a report. Now the
report is before me. I want to tell you the significant things in it. I have
reported to the Deputy Secretary Vahlen who directly reports to the
Reichsminister [Rust], about the current situation in Leipzig and the
recent dismissals. That happened on May 2. At that time the Dekan
only informed me that 4 Dozenten [app. associate professors] at the
Philosophical Fakult at were affected by the dismissals. Meanwhile I
have learned that Dr. of Medicine Bettmann was also affected. He has
also been dismissed. I was asked in the presence of the General
Counsel, Count Rantzau, to characterize the instructors affected by
this action, and their military service. In addition to which I suggested
to discuss their relations abroad and depict the consequences of their
dismissal. I did it as well as I could. I mentioned the reputation of the
professors. I emphasized that Mr. Landsberger was regarded as a
leader in his field, that he had relations to England. Levi had an offer
from Tehran. Wach, whom I have known since his habilitation at
Leipzig, had just received a one year leave for a visiting position in
America. Weigert had severe problems with his ears. And he had
participated in war-related scientific investigations during the war.
Regarding the consequences in Leipzig, there is a certain uproar
among the students of those affected, which I discussed in more
details. Among the instructors too. Mainly because dismissals were
based on the 6. Several instructors had asked me whether this para-
graph can be used in their own fields and whether the Fakult at that is
responsible for the completeness of the course offerings, had been
consulted. Most of the colleagues had expressed the opinion that 6
could not be applied to veterans of the war. The opinion of the lawyers
was that there was inconsistency between these actions and the pre-
rogatives of the Minister, who alone has the right to dismiss. Also in
the case of Landsberger suggestions should be made for an immediate
successor. But a position that was cancelled based on 6 cannot be
re-occupied. This is a contradiction but the people in Berlin told me
that it is not an obstacle that could not be overcome. In many other
cases a similar procedure has been followed against non-Aryan pro-
fessors. They filled the position some months later. In that case the
position must be included in the budget again. It has turned out that the
position is indispensable.
The Rektor has summarized his thoughts as follows: I am not
familiar enough with the legal situation to respond appropriately and
therefore I have asked for a full clarification of the legal situation.
Dekan: I will be in Dresden tomorrow and I feel it is my duty to

point out to the Ministry that the Facult at has not been consulted.
[I] have also received letters from foreign students.
Photo 23 Bartel L. van der Waerden, ca. 1935, Courtesy of the Archives of the
v.d. Waerden: Cant the Rektor say anything about the official
reasons?
Rektor: I cant. In Berlin they did not even know the names of these
people.
v.d. Waerden: And how about Dresden? After all, it is natural to
suspect that it is against the Jews and there are no [other] official reasons.
Dekan: The dismissals were done in the interest of the service
(im Interesse des Dienstes). It is not our responsibility to go further
into that.
Photo 24 Werner Heisenberg, giving his Inaugural Lecture, February 1, 1928; Courtesy of
Leipzig University
Heisenberg: This action has caused dismay among many of us

because they [we] felt that it did not satisfy the meaning of the law.
This is: combatants belong to the peoples community! It is our duty to
help them in every respect especially because their students have
already stood up for them. It is necessary that the Facultat says that
it is about people who have put their life at risk for us.
Photo 25 Arthur Golf, 1935, Courtesy of Leipzig University
Golf: These are concerns that are justified. But please do not
continue the discussion and do not ask questions. The report has
been now sent to Dresden. The reply will come. The Dekan travels
to Dresden tomorrow. Any further discussion today is therefore super-
fluous. We hope that we will be informed about the reply.
Photo 26 Friedrich Hund, 1920s, Gottingen, Wikipedia

Hund: I believe that I cannot refrain from expressing the sentiment

among the group of colleagues. If these actions become a fact, this
would show that a meaning of the exemption in the law, that men who
have fought on the frontlines could not be expelled, would be violated.
For us that would be a serious disappointment in the Government.
Many of us, who have not been to the frontlines, including myself,
would have to be ashamed before these men.
v.d. Waerden: It would be useful if an unambiguous decision could
be reached regarding the rights of the combatants and the meaning of
the law, which is obviously disregarded.
Dekan: I may remark that I allow this discussion only so that I can
report in Dresden about the sentiment among the Facult at committees.
Golf: I feel satisfied with what the Rektor has told us. But I want to
advise (in a louder voice) Herr v.d. Waerden to be more cautious. He
said: a paragraph of the law has been violated. He obviously did not
keep in mind that this amounts to saying that the Governor has violated
the law. We dont know his reasons and it is not up to us to make a
judgment. So, please, be more careful, be more cautious with your
comments.
v.d. Waerden: (in a loud whisper directed at Golf) Thank you!
Golf: (across the table, loudly): The matter is thus closed!
Photo 27 Bernhard Schweitzer, 1935. Courtesy of Leipzig University
Schweitzer: We have learned in part about the legal basis of the

matter, and in part we have been promised a complete clarification.
But there is also an aspect of decency to the matter. Among the
non-tenured faculty members the revocation of the teaching permits
is tantamount to an indefinite dismissal. Under the law this is only
possible in case of a disciplinary action. Maybe it is possible to inquire
in Dresden whether or not an indefinite dismissal is justified in this
case. Even the most junior assistants are protected against such a
dismissal.
Rektor: I havent restricted myself in Berlin to the legal side of the
matter, but I have also mentioned its extraordinary severity.
Dekan: We now discuss point 4 on the agenda. . .
------
These are my notes of the debate. I still have the original stenogra-
phy. I did not make any further notes but I accept responsibility for the
correctness of what I have noted.
I greet you with Heil Hitler!
Yours,
Signed Hch. Junker133
------
As we can see from this incredible stenography, the five protesting pro-
fessors use moral and legal arguments in opposing the dismissals of their
Jewish colleagues, the draconian dismissals for cause (6) without the right
to ever work in the profession. Van der Waerden makes a legal argument
based on the exemption for Jewish veterans of World War I provided in the
April 7, 1933 law. Of course, he knows that Nazi Germany lives not by the
law but by the latest word of the Nazi leaders. Yet Van der Waerden
demands from the Nazi State to live by its own laws:
It would be useful if an unambiguous decision could be reached
regarding the rights of the combatants and the meaning of the law,
which is obviously disregarded.
Van der Waerdens son, Hans van der Waerden, observes [WaH2]:
He [B.L. van der Waerden] decided, whatever happened, to stay aloof
of German politics, put a bridle on his personal anti-fascist feelings
(without denying them), and never to speak overtly neither in opposi-
tion to Nazi ideology nor in favor of it.
Yes, I agree, in general. However, during this faculty meeting, Van der
Waerden goes beyond his typical judicial approach to the Nazi regime and
attacks one of the pillars of Nazi ideology, its anti-Semitism:
It is natural to suspect that it is against the Jews and there are no [other]
official reasons.
Heisenberg and Hund too address both legal and moral aspects of the
dismissal:
133
In [Dol2] the author writes, clearly hinting at this 1935 episode, as follows: Van der
Waerdens personal file, kept in the archives of Leipzig University, shows, however, that he
spoke out in favor of young Jewish mathematicians. This young mathematicians in
reference to the World War I veterans, who were already aged by 1935, raises the question
whether Prof. Dr. Dold-Samplonius has read this document.
This action has caused dismay among many of us because they

[we] felt that it did not satisfy the meaning of the law . . . It is necessary
that the Facult at says that it is about people who have put their life at
risk for us. (Heisenberg)
If these actions become a fact, this would show that a meaning of the
exemption in the law, that men who have fought on the frontlines
could not be expelled, would be violated. For us that would be a
serious disappointment in the Government. Many of us, who have
not been to the frontlines, including myself, would have to be ashamed
before these men. (Hund)
A public protest against the firing of Jewish professors in 1935 was a rare
and brave act. As I reported in 2004 [Soi4], the stenography of the meeting
left on me an impression that Heisenberg, Hund, and Van der Waerden, the
three professors who protested the strongest, were co-conspirators, who
discussed between themselves not only physics but also politics. Having
now read Heisenbergs 1971 memoirs [Hei2], I find there a confirmation of
my conjecture. Thirty-six years later, Heisenberg claims to remember all the
details and shares them with us. Are Heisenbergs reminiscences all true or
comprise a self-serving rewriting of history? This question is for you, the
reader, to answer for yourself:
Political interference in university life became more and more intol-
erable. One of my faculty colleagues, the mathematician Levy, who,
by law, should have enjoyed immunity because of his distinguished
war record, was suddenly relieved of his post. The indignation of some
of the younger members of the staffI am thinking particularly of
Friedrich Hund, Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer and the mathematician
B. L. van der Waerdenwas so great that we thought of tendering
our resignations and of persuading other colleagues to follow suit.
In 1935, a mass resignation of some of the leading professors, including
the Nobel Laureate Heisenberg, could have shaken up even the unshakeable
Nazi stateif it were to become widely known. This was an incredibly
daring plan, which would have cost all the participants their professorships
and careers in the Third Reich, and possibly more. But the plan has not been
implemented. Heisenberg explains [ibid]:
Before taking this grave step, I decided to discuss the whole question
with an older man, who enjoyed our full confidence. I accordingly
asked Max Planck for an interview and then paid a visit to his home in
the Grunewald section of Berlin . . .
Photo 28 Max Planck, Courtesy of Max Planck Gesellschaft
I now told him about the latest developments in Leipzig and about
the plan of some of the younger staff members to resign. But Planck
was convinced that all such protests had become utterly futile.
I am glad to see that you are still optimistic enough to believe you
can stop the rot by such actions. Unfortunately, you greatly
overestimate the influence of the university or of academicians. The
public would hear next to nothing about your resignation. The papers
would either fail to report it or else treat your protests as the actions of
misguided and unpatriotic cranks . . .
In these circumstances, your resignation would have no effect at the

present time other than to ruin your careerI know you are prepared
to pay that price. But as far as Germany is concerned, your actions will
only begin to matter again after the end of the present catastrophic
phase. It is to the future that all of us must now look. If you resign,
then, at best, you may be able to get a job abroad. What might happen
at worst, I would rather not say. But abroad you will be one of
countless emigrants in need of a job, and who knows but that you
would deprive another, in much greater need than yourself? No doubt,
you would be able to work in peace, you would be out of danger, and
after the catastrophe you could always return to Germanywith a
clear conscience and the happy knowledge that you never
compromised with Germanys gravedigger . . .
If you do not resign and stay on, you will have the task of quite a
different kind. You cannot stop the catastrophe, and in order to survive
you will be forced to make compromise after compromise . . . I think
that all of us who have a job to do and who are not absolutely forced to
emigrate for racial or other reasons must try to stay on and lay the
foundation for a better life once the present nightmare is over. To do so
will certainly be extremely difficult and dangerous, and the compro-
mises you will have to make will later be held against you, and quite
rightly so. I cannot blame anyone who decides differently, who finds
life in Germany intolerable, who cannot remain while injustices are
committed that he can do nothing to prevent. But in the ghastly
situation in which Germany now finds herself, no one can act decently.
Every decision we make involves us in injustices of one kind or
another. In the final analysis, all of us are left to our own devices . . .
And that is how we left it. On the train journey back to Leipzig, the
conversation kept going round and round in my head. I almost envied
those of my friends whose life in Germany had been made so impos-
sible that they simply had to leave. They had been the victims of
injustice and would have to suffer great material hardship, but at
least they had been spared the agonizing choice of whether or not
they ought to stay on . . . And what precisely were the compromises
Planck had hinted at? At the beginning of each lecture you had to raise
your hand and give the Nazi salute. But hadnt I raised my hand to
wave at acquaintances even before the advent of Hitler? Was that
really a dishonorable compromise? And then you had to sign all
official letters with Heil Hitler. That was much less pleasant, but
luckily I, for one, didnt have to write all that many official letters, and
when I did, the new salutation invariably meant I dont want to have
close contact with you. We were expected to attend celebrations and

marches, but I felt it ought to be possible to get out of quite a few. A
compromise here, a compromise there, and where did you draw the
line? Had William Tell been right to refuse homage to Gesslers hat,
thus endangering the life of his own child? Ought he to have
compromised? And if the answer was no, ought we to compromise
with our own Gesslers?
Conversely, if one decided to emigrate . . . might you not be simply
leaving the field to those madmen, those spiritually unhinged creatures
whose demented plans were driving Germany headlong into disaster?
Observe that these are 1971 Heisenbergs recollections of his 1935
thoughts. By 1971 he knows that the Third Reich ended up killing many
millions of innocent people; some 6,000,000 millions of Jews alone. How
could he reduce his compromises with the Nazi state to merely the salutation
Heil Hitler? What about lending the prestige of one of the world leading
physicists to the Third Reich? Worse yet, what about working on an atomic
bomb and an atomic reactor under Hitler, for Hitler? Heisenberg continues
[ibid]:
Planck had said that we might be faced with alternatives that would be
equally unjust. Were such situations possible? I tried to think up an
extreme situation which, though it had not occurred in reality, was not
too far-fetched not quite obviously beyond a humane solution. This was
the example I finally hit upon: A dictatorial government has jailed ten of
its opponents and has decided to kill at least the most important of the
prisoners. At the same time, the government is terribly anxious to justify
this murder before the rest of the world. Accordingly, it makes an offer to
another of its opponents, say, a jurist who has been left at liberty because
of his high international renown: if he can produce and sign a legal
justification for the murder of the most important prisoner, then the other
nine will be released and allowed to emigrate. If he refuses, all ten
prisoners will be killed. The jurist is left in no doubt that the dictator is
in earnest. What is he to do? Is it clear conscience, a white waistcoat,
as we used to call it cynically, worth more than the lives of nine friends?
Even his suicide would be no solution; it would merely lead to the
immediate slaying of the innocent ten.
Thinking along these lines, I remembered a conversation with Niels
Bohr, during which he referred to the fact that justice and love were
complementary concepts. Although both are essential components of
our behavior toward others, they are, in fact, mutually exclusive.
Justice would force the juror to withhold his signature, the more so
as the political consequences of his signing might be such as to destroy
more innocent people than the nine friends. But would love refuse the
cry for help sent up by the desperate families of the nine friends?
After a while, I realized how extremely childish it was to go on
playing such absurd mental games. What mattered was to decide here
and now whether I ought to emigrate or to stay in Germany. Think of
the time after the catastrophe, Planck had said, and I felt he was right.
We would have to form islands, gather young people round us and help
them to live through it all, to build a new and better world after the
holocaust.134 And this was bound to involve compromises, for which
we would rightly be held to accountand perhaps even worse . . . By
the time the train pulled into Leipzig, I had made up my mind: I would
stay on in Germany, at least for a time, continue working at the
university, and, for the rest, do my bit as best as I possibly could.
I am compelled to reply to these three great physicists.
Absurd mental games, you say, Professor Heisenberg? How often does
one remember the 1935 thoughts in 1971and prominently insert them in
his book? Clearly, this train of thought mattered a great deal to you.
Moreover, between 1935 and 1971, you included a similar kill-one-save-
ten example in your unpublished 1947 document On Active and Passive
Opposition in the Third Reich [Hei1]. We will discuss this document in
Chapter 33. Here I wish to test your morality theory by my experiment:
Dr. Heisenberg, would you sign a death sentence for the most important
innocent person in order to save others? Would you sign a death sentence for
the most important protester of the May-1935 faculty meeting Bartel van
der Waerden in order to save Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker and Friedrich
Hund? I absolutely believe that you were the most loyal friend of people in
your close circle, and thus you would have never signed such a death
sentence. Thus, your clever theory, praising the morality of collaboration
with the Nazi regime in killing an innocent person, does not pass the
ultimate test by experiment.
Dr. Niels Bohr, I deeply admire you as a scholar and man. Do you really
believe, as Heisenberg reports, that justice and love were complementary
concepts? Id say that the complement of love is indifference, while justice
is synonymous with impartiality (recall the image of Lady Justice, a
blindfolded lady holding a scale). So, by your logic indifference and impar-
tiality are synonymsand I submit, they are not. The indifferent juror
would sign a death verdict for the innocent onewhat does he care
while the impartial juror will not.
134
A small h is used in Heisenbergs book.
Dr. Max Planck, I share some of your views, which I learned only on
November 12, 2010, when I read the quoted here Heisenbergs book [Hei2].
You warned Werner: If you do not resign and stay on . . . in order to survive
you will be forced to make compromise after compromise . . . and the com-
promises you will have to make will later be held against you, and quite rightly
so. I agree with you, and for this very reason, I would have advised
Heisenberg to leave Nazi Germany rather than stay on and thus support the
criminal state by his nuclear research and by his high worldwide reputation.
In the summer of 1939, just before the start of World War II, the physicist
(Nobel Prize 1938) Enrico Fermi warned his friend Heisenberg about
inevitable compromises and responsibility for them, very much like Max
Planck. However, while Planck drew a conclusion of staying in Nazi
Germany, Fermi urged his friend to leave:135
Whatever makes you stay on in Germany? You cant possibly prevent
the war, and you will have to do, and take the responsibility for, things
which you will hate to do or to be responsible for.
There was no shortage of advice. In Heisenbergs May 12, 1935 letter, he
briefs his mother that the Leipzig University Rektor pressured Heisenberg to
enter the German Army as a reserve officer in order to remedy his part in the
faculty meeting protest, and to demonstrate his loyalty to the Third Reich.136
Heisenberg did follow Rektor Kruegers advice and served as a reserve
officer in the Army of Nazi Germany.
Ever since the late 1920s, Philipp Lenard (Nobel Laureate 1905) and
Johannes Stark (Nobel Laureate 1919) had promoted the notorious notion of
Aryan Physics contrasted with Jewish Physics of Einstein and others.
On July 15, 1937, Stark called Werner Heisenberg a White Jew in the
SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps (The Black Corps). Heisenberg was
outraged, as Van der Waerden would remember even a decade later. And
so just 2 years after the heroics of the May 1935 faculty meeting and pledge
to do my bit as best as I possibly could, Heisenberg allows himself a
shocking compromise with the Nazi regime by entering in a contract with
the devil. An old proverb warns, be careful what you wish for: you just
might get it. Just six days after Starks article, in the July 21, 1937 letter,
Heisenberg asks none other than the SS Reichsf uhrer Heinrich Himmler for
a protection.
In one year to the day, the desired protection has been granted by
Himmler, who on July 21, 1938 writes about it to his Gestapo chief,
135
[Hei1], p. 169.
136
[Cas], 229.
SS-Lt. General Reinhard Heydrich, SS-Obergruppenf uhrer, Chief of the

Reich Main Security Office, including the SD, Gestapo and Kripo (Heydrich
was the one who presided over the January 20, 1942 Wannsee Conference,
dedicated to the plans for the deportation and extermination of all Jews in
German-occupied territories):137
Dear Heydrich,
I have received the good and very objective report on Professor
Werner Heisenberg, Leipzig. I enclose herewith a very proper letter of
Professor Prandtl, Gottingen, with which I agree. I also enclose a copy
of my letter to Heisenberg for your information . . .
I believe that Heisenberg is a decent person and that we cannot
afford to lose or to silence this man, who is still young and can still
produce a rising generation in science.
One would think that a decent person is a high compliment. However,
here it comes from one of the Nazis top mass murderers, someone whose
taste in morality we must question. The same day Himmler promises
protection in a letter to Heisenberg personally (see a photocopy of the letter
in this chapter):138
Only today can I answer your letter of July 21, 1937, in which you
direct yourself to me because of the article of Professor Stark in Das
Schwarze Korps.
Because you were recommended by my family I have had your case
investigated with special care and precision.
I am glad that I can now inform you that I do not approve of the
attack in Das Schwarze Korps and that I have taken measures against
any further attack against you.
I hope that I shall see you in Berlin in the fall, in November or
December, so that we may talk things over thoroughly man to man.
With friendly greetings.
Heil Hitler!
Your,
H. Himmler
P.S. However, I consider it best if in the future you make a distinc-
tion for your audience between the results of scientific research and the
personal and political attitude of the scientists involved.
137
[Gou1], pp. 116119.
138
Ibid.
Photo 29 Copy of Himmlers Letter to Heisenberg, July 21, 1938. Courtesy of Leipzig
University
And thus Heisenberg has received Himmlers high approval to speak

about the relativity theory, under the condition that he makes no mention of
its creator Albert Einstein. It is hard to believe that such a brilliant mind,
Werner Heisenberg, would ask one of the most brutal Nazi leaders, Heinrich
Himmler, for favors. However, Goudsmit leaves no doubts about it by
including facsimiles of both Himmlers letters, to Heydrich and Heisenberg,
in his book Alsos ([Gou1], pp. 116 and 119).
Photo 30 Werner and Elisabeth Heisenberg, April 1937 (They were married on April
29, 1937), Courtesy of Leipzig University
Werners stunningly beautiful wife, Elizabeth Schumacher Heisenberg,

was an incredible woman. The memoirs she has left to us show her as a
beautiful and heroic person. Her lot was not only to support a complex
brilliant husband. During long periods of time when Werner Heisenberg
worked in Berlin and Hechingen, and especially right after the war, when he
was detained for half a year in Farm Hall near Cambridge, she had to support
their six children all alone (the seventh child was born later). I admire
Elizabeths memoirs Inner Exile [HeiE] for seemingly not covering up
anything, and addressing head-on controversial questions about her hus-
band, such as his writing a letter to Himmler. She eloquently conveys her
feelings at the time:139
On July 21, 1937, one week after the publication of the article in the
Schwarze Korps, Heisenberg wrote a letter to Himmler, the supreme
leader of the SS in the Reich, and the highest authority responsible for
the Schwarze Korps, demanding effective protection from this kind of
attack, and requesting that his honor be restored. He sent a similar
letter to Rust, the Secretary of Education, his topmost employer . . .
At the time, I was very anxious and, in a certain sense, shocked by
this move. While I had been studying in Freiburg, I had encountered
several instances that had demonstrated that justice of the National
Socialists had nothing to do with right or wrong and that, once caught
up in their doings, one was easily and quickly subjugated. Heisenberg
had not discussed this move with me; probably he did not want to
burden me with his decision, and I guess that he had an inkling I would
not have agreed. Even now, with a better understanding and more
insight into his motives than I had then, I thought the stakes he was
playing for [were] too high, even if success, and there is no denying it,
did justify his actions.
There is no denying of success? Yes, success in remaining alive. Heisen-
berg risked his life to protect the integrity of physics. However, in the midst
of the Nazi regime crimes against humanity, his defense of a theorythe
relativity theory as it wereseems insignificant, while his demand for
restoring his personal honor appears petty. In my eyes, Heisenbergs
appeal to Himmler and Himmlers grant of protection fare among the
darkest stains on Werner Heisenbergs reputation. The contract that
Leipzigs Dr. Heisenberg reached with SS Reichsf uhrer Himmler eerily
reminds me Johann Wolfgang von Goethes classic book about another
scientist, Dr. Faust, entering in a contract with the Devil. In fact, Goethe
spent his early years in Leipzig, studying at Leipzig University. Leipzigs
fifteenth century Auerbachs Keller restaurant with its legend of Dr. Johann
Georg Fausts barrel ride became the only real location in Part One of
Goethes Faust.
139
[HeiE], pp. 5152.
Photos 31 and 32 The twentieth century version of Faust: Heisenberg and Himmler;
Wikipedia
Heisenberg paid a high price for his high SS protection. This protection
ended forever the days when Heisenberg could publicly criticize any actions
of the regime, even if he were so inclined, for Heisenberg has become a
highly protected asset of this criminal regime. Heisenberg had countless
opportunities to emigrate, for before the war commenced he received offers
from many leading American universities. However, Heisenberg chose to
stay in and to serve GermanyNazi Germany, as was the case.
Let us return to the Third Reich, year 1935. Shortly after the Leipzig
faculty meeting, the entire Van der Waerden family, Bartel, Camilla, and
their daughters Helga and Ilse are spending their summer vacation in Bartel
parents magnificent house in Laren, near Amsterdam. On August 10, 1935,
Bartel writes a letter to Richard Courant, who is already living in
New York:140
Personally, we are all doing very well. Our oldest daughter Helga had
her appendix removed yesterday. The operation seems to have been
successful. We are here in Holland for 2 months and rest up our souls
140
Typed hand-corrected and hand-signed letter; New York University Archives, Courant
Papers.
from the constant tensions, hostilities, orders and paperwork . . . Min-

istries examine who has not yet been completely forced into line
[of National Socialism],141 who is a friend of Jews, who has a Jewish
wife, etc., as long as they themselves are not torn apart by their fight
for power. Franzi [Rellich, Camillas brother and Courants former
doctoral student] is unable to visit you in America or take a tour in a
collapsible boat with Busemann due to his heart condition.
This paragraph has truly opened my eyes to Van der Waerdens mid-1935
perception of his situation. He is not a prisoner of the Ivory Tower: he is
acutely aware of life around him. But Van der Waerden views life in the
Nazi state not as a tragedy but as a farce, and writes about it with amuse-
ment. The entire family is abroad in Barts Homeland, Holland, yet he does
not seem to give any thought to the whole family remaining there, in
Holland. Franz Rellich is not going to America to visit Courant because of
his heart condition, not because of Nazi bureaucrats refusal. However,
Barts heart is all right, but apparently he is giving no thought to going to
America, where Courant and Princeton mathematicians would have helped
him with finding a job and starting a new life.
On September 15, 1935, new definitions of Jewishness and their rela-
tion to citizenship are approved by Hitlers willing lawmakers in the so
called Nuremberg Laws. It is surprising to me that just 13 days after the
new law has provided a blanket prohibition of Jewish civil service employ-
ment, Van der Waerden shows a certain insensitivity toward Springer firing
Jews, and in particular firing the founder and editor of the celebrated
Springer-Verlags journal Naturwissenschaften Arnold Berliner. On
September 28, 1935, Van der Waerden writes to Richard Courant as
follows:142
It does not seem that the Springer publishing house has been seriously
attacked. Due to the tense state of affairs, Springer was only [sic]
required to dismiss the Jews who were still employed there. I do not
understand why people abroad are so upset about the editorial
change in the Naturwissenschaften. After all, Berliner143 was already
73 years old.
141
Van der Waerden uses the German gleichschalten, a standard Nazi term for converting
persons or organizations to National Socialism.
142
New York University Archives, Courant Papers.
143
Arnold Berliner (18621942), the Editor and Founder of the journal Naturwissenschaften
(Natural Sciences), published by Springer-Verlag, who committed suicide in 1942.
And Courant has to explain to Van der Waerden what should have been
obvious to him:144
You do not understand the excitement abroad about the removal of
Berliner. Of course, everything would have been in order if
B. [Berliner] because of his age would have been retired observing
the proprieties corresponding to his position and merits. In fact, how-
ever, the removal appears abroad, and it seems to me the case, that the
firing was done in a hurtful way due to pressure coming from outside.
The great reputation of B. has given in this context the reason for a
heavy general criticism and for expression of doubt concerning the
possibilities of Springer to pursue an objective publishing leadership. I
have, partly from extremely influential people, received comments and
further inquiries which I cannot describe in a letter to Germany.
144
Courant, letter in German from October 15, 1935, slightly modified on October 18, 1935;
both versions survive; New York University Archives, Courant Papers.
Chapter 16
A Cloud of Suspicion
A cloud of the Third Reichs suspicion hung over Van der Waerdens head
ever since his May 1935 public comments in support of Jewish professors at
the Faculty meeting at Leipzig. The Saxon Ministry of Peoples Education
took the first shot on August 21, 1935:145
To the Rektor of Leipzig University.
In response of your report of May 27 of this year, I am informing
you that I have not yet made a further decision regarding the matters
contained in this report. With respect to the comments of Professor
Van der Waerden, this is necessary for various reasons:
At last years meeting of the DMV at Bad Pyrmont on September
13, 1934, Professor Van der Waerden had shown an attitude that
provoked complaints. This was about the rejection of an attack from
a foreign professor, who is half-Jewish [Harald Bohr, the brother of
Niels Bohr], against a German professor [Ludwig Bieberbach],
because of an article in which the latter attempted to put mathematical
scientific thinking on a National-Socialist basis. At that time, Professor
Van der Waerden took a prominent stand that must be interpreted as a
refusal to reject the attack directed against National Socialism and
hence against the basis of the State.
I would not have returned to this matter if the comments of Profes-
sor Van der Waerden at the Facult at meeting of May 8 of this year did
not again lack the restraint that must be expected of Professor Van der
Waerden as a citizen of a foreign country with respect to the internal
matters of the German Reich, especially since Professor Van der
145
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA70, p. 41.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_16
142 16 A Cloud of Suspicion
Waerden is an official of this German Reich. In these matters Professor

Van der Waerden has shown the same attitude fundamentally hostile
toward the National Socialist State that became apparent in his
recently submitted questionnaire: According to the constitution, I
do not need to answer the questions regarding [my] religion and
worldview. I do not know about any penalties for incomplete answers
on questionnaires. I have to reject such comments most strongly as
superfluous and improper; Professor Van der Waerden should know
that the Weimar Constitution, even though never formally nullified by
the National Socialist State, is completely outdated and without any
practical significance.
If Professor Van der Waerden does not change his attitude in favor
of one which is loyal toward National Socialist Germany and its
foundations, then I have serious doubts whether his further teaching
activity at a German university would have a positive influence on the
German academic youth demanded by National Socialism. For this
reason I would reserve the right to further action if Professor Van der
Waerden continues to show so little loyalty and restraint. On behalf of
the Reich Minister for Science and Education [Bernhard Rust] I ask
you to inform Professor Van der Waerden about this with appropriate
seriousness.
Acting Director of the Ministry of Peoples Education
J. A.
(signed) Studentkowski
From this moment on for many years, Van der Waerden will be criticized
for opposing Ludwig Bieberbach, the founder of the notorious racist notion
of Deutsche Mathematik,146 at the September 13, 1934 meeting of the DMV,
even though the majority of mathematicians present opposed Bieberbach.
Van der Waerden will have to defend himself against this accusation even
8 years later, in 1942, and we will see his defense later in this book.
While Van der Waerdens many requests for travel to Holland will be
approved, his requests for travel to Italy will be denied with prejudice. Here
is, for example, how Dekan Wilmanns rejects one Italian travel request on
April 18, 1939:147
I have objections against the participation of the Dutch citizen Profes-
sor van der Waerden in the IX Volta Congress during October 22
28, 1939 in Rome because, as is known to the Saxon Ministry of
146
German Mathematics as opposed to Jewish Mathematics. See [Meh1] for details.
147
16 A Cloud of Suspicion 143
Peoples Education, he had shown an attitude at previous congresses

that provoked complaints.
Heil Hitler!
(signed) Wilmanns
d. Z. Dekan
The cloud of suspicion even prompted German representatives in Holland
to check on the behavior of Bartels father, Dr. Theodorus van der
Waerdenas if the son is responsible for his fathers views! Let me tell
you how this came about.
During 19341945, Dr. Wolfgang Otto Wilmanns (18931968) served as
a professor of agriculture at Leipzig University. In 1937 he became the
Dekan of the Philosophical Facult at. Being a member of the Nazi party
since 1933, he will become the last (19431945) Nazi era Rektor of Leipzig
University. Wilmanns is critical of Bartel L. van der Waerdens behavior.
On January 25, 1939 he complains to the Saxon Minister of Peoples
Education about Van der Waerdens refusal to fill out the university forms
regarding the latters religious affiliation and worldview. On March
28, 1939 the Minister replies as follows:148
To Herr Professor Dr. Wilmanns
Leipzig 05, Johannis-Allee 23.
Dear Herr Professor!
With respect to your communication during our meeting on January
25 of this year in Leipzig about the behavior of Professor Van der
Waerden and his failure to completely fill out the questionnaires I
inform you as follows:
It is not that Van der Waerden did not completely fill out various
questionnaires; he just noted the following regarding his religion and
worldview: According to the constitution, I do not need to answer the
questions regarding religion and worldview. I do not know about any
penalties for incomplete answers to questionnaires. Van der Waerden
declared that on April 25, 1935. However in the questionnaire filled
out by him on June 18, 1933, he answered the question regarding his
religion by non-denominational (konfessionslos). As a foreigner he
does not need to answer the questions about his worldview (member-
ships and course participations) anyway.
Van der Waerdens remark of April 25, 1935 is already the subject
of an order to the Rektor of Leipzig University of August 21, 1935,
148
approved by the Reich Minister of Education [Rust] of which I sent

you a copy. As you see from this order, the Rektor has been asked to
inform Professor Van der Waerden with appropriate seriousness that
the Ministry reserves the right to further action if he continues to show
so little loyalty and restraint. Since Van der Waerdens behavior with
respect to filling out the questionnaire happened before this order and
has explicitly been taken into account in that order, the matter can be
regarded as closed after the admonishment of Professor Van der
Waerden by the Rektor.
Because of the rumor that Professor Van der Waerdens father was a
well-known Dutch Marxist Leader, I have asked the Reich Ministry to
prompt the German Embassy to investigate the matter. I will inform
you of the Reich Ministry communication.
Heil Hitler!
Yours,
(signature) Studentkowski
As you recall from Chapter 3, Bartels father, Dr. Theo van der Waerden,
was a universally beloved politician, a long-term member of the Second
Chamber of the Dutch Parliament (19181940) from the Social Democratic
Workers Party (Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij, or shortly SDAP).
The ministerial request has been granted, and on May 9, 1939, the German
Embassy in Den Haag advises the Foreign Office in Berlin as follows:149
In response to the order of 11 April of this year
Re: Dr. of Engineering Theodorus van der Waerden
Born 21 August 1876 in Eindhoven
Dr. Van der Waerden has been active in the Social Democratic
movement since his days as a student. At the moment he is a Social
Democrat representative in the Second Chamber, and he allegedly
belongs to the more moderate wing. In his attitude towards the New
Germany, he probably does not differ from his Marxist comrades.
However, he has not become apparent in this respect in public.
(Signed) Zech
Based on this not-too-damaging report about Dr. Theo van der Waerden,
the Saxon Ministry of Peoples Education advices Van de Waerdens Dekan
at Leipzig accordingly on August 23, 1939:150
149
150
Universit
atsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 50.
Confidential!
Herr Reich Minister of Education [Rust] has sent me the attached
report from the German Embassy in [Den] Haag about the father of
Professor Van der Waerden and remarked that a successful continua-
tion of his teaching activity at Leipzig University requires of Professor
van der Waerden, who has kept his Dutch citizenship, a loyal attitude
towards National Socialist Germany and its institutions and a political
restraint.
If you learn certain facts, which prove that Professor van der
Waerden does not comply with this expectation, I ask for a report.
Ordered by
(Signed) Studentkowski
Bartel and Camilla van der Waerden, of course, have never learned about
the secret inquiry into Bartels father Theo behavior. Nevertheless Camilla
is worried about Bartel losing his Leipzig professorship due to his father
Theo. She is so worried that on July 29, 1939, Bartel sends a postcard,
handwritten in Dutch, from the family vacation at his fathers home in
Laren, Holland, to his Berlin friend, by then Nobel Laureate and the Director
of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute fur Physik Peter Debye:151
Amice,
A quick greeting from Holland. Yesterday I was at a wedding in
Middelburg, a wonderful old town. For the month of August we have
rented a cottage in Wijk aan Zee (They say, Heemskerker Relweg).
My wife is utterly unhappy about Colijns fall.152 Namely, there is a
chance that my father will go into the Cabinet, and she fears, that I will
then lose my appointment at Leipzig. I think it is completely unthink-
able, according to all my experiences so far, that a foreigner will be
removed from a State position due to events that are absolutely not his
fault. Could you express your opinion about this? For the sake of my
wifes peace that would be very good. Do you know that in Munich I
was not appointed because my father was in Parliament? Where will
you and your family be spending the vacation? The weather here is
nice, something very rare in Holland. Hopefully [it will be nice] also in
August. Write soon about how you are doing and what you think of it.
With friendly greetings also from my wife to all of you
B.L. v.d. Waerden
151
Archiv der Max Planck Gesellschaft, Nachlass P. Debye, III Abt., Rep 19, Nr. 842.
152
Prime Minister of the Netherlands Hendrikus Colijn. Indeed, on August 10, 1939 he loses
his post.
Yes, I agree with Bartel that the great honor of his father is absolutely
not his fault, that the son may not be held responsible for his fathers good
deeds. But can the son and his wife be so self-centered as to prefer his father
not being promoted to the Cabinet of the Netherlands, so that there is no
danger to the sons German professorship? As to not getting the Munich job,
you will soon see in this chapter that Bartel failed because, thank goodness,
he did not subscribe to the Nazi doctrine of anti-Semitismand not because
his father was in Parliament.
What is a big deal, you may be wondering, about introducing this little
letter from a vacation for the first time in historical scholarship? I am afraid
that letting you just read it is not enough for you to appreciate the significant
insight into the Van der Waerden family it unexpectedly allows us. I ought
to let you see it with your minds eye, visualize the setting, in orderas
William Blake poetically observedTo see a world in a grain of sand.
Let me bring together a number of relevant testimonies spread out through-
out this book, add nothing fictional, and offer you a piece of cinematogra-
phy, a mise-an-scene.
Holland, summer 1939. Everyone knows that the war is inevitable. The
question is only when it will commence. Surely, it should not affect the
neutral Holland. Bartel and his family are spending a long vacation in
the house of his beloved father Theo and mother Dorothea. The huge
magnificent house proudly displays its name: Breidablik, signifying
open-mindedness of its inhabitants. The house is located in the intel-
lectual, artistic Laren, twenty short miles from Amsterdam. The entire
family is here: Bartel, Camilla, Helga, Ilse, and Hans. Camilla did have
a little precondition for coming to Holland: no bad could be spoken in
her presence about the German people. Bartel can relate to that: The
truth is that my wife could not tolerate it when bad was spoken about
the Germans. Indeed, German is her mother tongue, and she knew so
many kind people in Germany.153
The weather is surprisingly nice. Prime Minister Colijn of Holland,
the leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, loses his job, and the new
coalition government is likely to include Socialists. This must be a
great news, for Bartel is a Socialist like his father Theo. Better yet,
Theo, a man, who always gave the best he can offer to the people, a
universally beloved politician and man, is likely to become a Cabinet
Member of Holland! Bartel and Camilla can be proud of father Theos
great honor! Hurrah! Bart and his family are all together, in the neutral
153
See Chapter 26.
peaceful Holland, in a fabulous house with plenty of room for Theo

and Dorothea, Bartel and Camilla, and the children. Free at last from
the Nazi tyranny, they could simply remain here and our story would
have a happy end and a Hollywood movie based on it.
No, not really. In fact, the opposite is true. Camilla is worried,
indeed, she is utterly unhappy about Colijns fall, she is unhappy
that her father-in-law may become a Minister of Holland. She views
the impending Theos honor as her impending doom, which spoils
their idyllic Dutch vacation, and threatens their idyllic family life in
the Third Reich. Bartel admires his father, who instilled a moral
compass in Bartel and his brothers; but Bartel has got to comfort, to
appease Camilla. Surely the son is not responsible for his father. If you
do not believe me, Camilla, listen to our noble Nobel friend Peter
Debye. And so, from the very Theo and Dorotheas house (!), visiting
beloved son Bartel writes to Peter that Camilla is utterly unhappy over
his father Theos expected Cabinet post that could ruin their life in
Nazi Germany.
Does Bartel know that his father is already suffering from cancer,
and because of that would not become a Cabinet Member?154 Probably
not. And Bartel does not know that he is seeing his beloved parents
Theo and Dorothea alive for the last time in his life. Dr. Theo will pass
away in ten months. Dorothea will. . . follow two years later.
There is a danger to Van der Waerdens job, but it originates not in
Holland but in Leipzig. Dekan Wilmanns continues his crusade against
Professor Van der Waerden. On April 16, 1940, he asks Dozentenbund,
the national Nazi organization of university instructors, for an opinion about
Van der Waerdens suitability to serve as a Director of the Mathematics
Institute. To prevent a positive assessment, the scheming Dekan includes
certain hints in his inquiry:155
I ask you to provide me an appraisal of the colleague Van the Waerden.
The reasons [for the request] are his relationship with Herr Professor
Dr. Hopf [Jewish] and that Herr Professor Van the Waerden (of Dutch
citizenship) occupies the office of the Acting Director of the Mathe-
matical Institute.
Heil Hitler!
(signed) Wilmanns
d.Z. Dekan
154
[WaT1].
155
The Fuhrer of the Dozentenbund understands the hints, and just 4 days
later, on April 20, 1940, gives the desired by Dekan Wilmanns negative
assessment:156
Nationalsozialisische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
NSD-Dozentenbund
Fuhrer of Dozentenbund at Leipzig University
To the Dekan of Philosophy Facult at
Professor Dr. Wilmanns
Leipzig University
Confidential!
In response to your request from the 16th of this month, I inform you
that Professor Van der Waerden, as a Dutch citizen, can hardly be
regarded as a representative of German Science.157 Since W. is notably
philo-Semitic, he is not a type of professor we wish today. I therefore
think that his appointment as Acting Director of Mathematics Depart-
ment is not welcome.
Heil Hitler!
Signature
(Round seal with the Nazi Eagle and Swastika)
This document looks so threatening that I have got to reproduce for you
its facsimile in this chapter for you.
156
157
Again this race-based Nazi term German Science.
Photo 33 F uhrer of Dozentenbund recommends the removal of B.L. van der Waerden from
the position of the Director of the Mathematics Institute on the grounds of foreign citizenship
and sympathy toward Jews; April 20, 1940; Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 54
Who was this F uhrer of the Dozentenbund, who so unfairly attacked Van
der Waerden? The name does not appear on the document. I have been
unable to solve this puzzle until 2010, when the article [WN] by Andreas
Winkelmann and T. Noack appeared in the European Respiratory Journal.
Yes, this is a medical journal, and I do not routinely read medical literature!
However, this was a special case. Andreas Winkelmann has kindly provided
me with a copy of his article, which contained a thorough historical inves-
tigation, and answered my questions. The F uhrer of the Dozentenbund at
Leipzig University during 19361942 was the German anatomist Max Clara
(18991966), known for describing the Clara cell of the bronchiolar
epithelium in 1937. Of course, as the F uhrer of the organization of Nazi
lecturers, Clara was a member of the Nazi Party. The authors of [WN]
conclude that much of Claras histological research in Leipzig, including
his original description of the bronchial epithelium, was based on tissue
taken from prisoners executed in nearby Dresden.
It was under the same cloud of suspicion that Professor Van der Waerden
was barred from the succession of one of the leading mathematicians of
Germany Constantin Caratheodory,158 who in 1938 had to retire from his
chair at Munich University due to his age. This 6-year long tragicomedy was
first discovered and described by Freddy Littel [Lit]. Maria Georgiadou has
added some important details. She writes [Geo, pp. 357358]:
The first list, with Gustav Herglotz (Gottingen) and Bartel van der
Waerden (Leipzig) ex aequo in the first place, followed by Carl
Ludwig Siegel (Frankfurt) was proposed by the faculty and commu-
nicated to the rector by the dean, von Faber, on 15 July 1938 . . .
The reason why the list of candidates was rejected was because of a
report by Bruno Thuring159 made on 6 September, 1938 on the polit-
ical suitability of the candidates . . . Thuring doubted Van der
Waerdens honesty and believed in addition that the latter was deci-
sively philo-Semitic and held anti-Semitism to be pointless. Van der
Waerden was further a close contributor of the Zentralblatt f ur
Mathematik and the Mathematische Annalen and, in Thurings
words, these journals were run by the Jew Neugebauer160 and the
Mathematische Annalen was still publishing articles and obituaries
158
Constantin Caratheodory (18731950), a German mathematician of Greek ancestry, pro-
fessor of mathematics at Gottingen (19131918), Berlin (19181920), and Munich (1924
1938).
159
Physicist and astronomer Bruno Jacob Thuring, a Dozent at Munich University at that
time, was known for his anti-Semitism and support of the Nazis Deutsche Physik doctrine.
160
Thuring was wrong, for as far as we know, Otto Neugebauer was not Jewish.
of Jews. Thuring reported finally on Van der Waerdens attitude

toward National Socialism: the Dutch did not show the will [sic] to
understand the current political development in Germany and, there-
fore, he ought to be suspected. Thuring concluded that Van der
Waerden belonged to the type of academic teacher not desired
anymore.
Thuring was right in his suspicion of Van der Waerden not sharing the
Nazi doctrine of anti-Semitism, and about Van der Waerden publishing
Jewish authors in Mathematische Annalengood for Van der Waerden!
Let us visit, however briefly, the Annalens editorial room.
Chapter 17
Mathematische Annalen

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_17
154 17 Mathematische Annalen
Photo 34 Erich Hecke, contributed by L. Reidemeister, Courtesy of the Archives of the

17 Mathematische Annalen 155
As we know, from 1934 on, Van der Waerden has been one of the associate
editors of a major research journal Mathematische Annalen, published by
Springer-Verlag. In the late 1930s the editorial room consisted of the editor-
in-chief, Erich Hecke of Hamburg University,161 one of the best David
Hilberts students, and two associate editorsVan der Waerden and
Heinrich Behnke of the University of Munster.162 Not only have the editors
comprised a trio of fine mathematicians, but they also tried to be fair toward
all authors, Jews included. I will make here use of a wonderful description
by the late Professor Sanford Segal of the dynamics in this editorial room
during 19391941 and of the test they have gotten from the publisher,
Ferdinand Springer [Seg, pp. 234244]. I will also use the documents kindly
provided to me by Professor Dr. Holger P. Petersson from his private
treasure trove of Mathematische Annalen editorial correspondence.
Unlike Heisenberg and Van der Waerden, Erich Hecke has not used the
prescribed Hitlers Salute. Horst Tietz recalls:163
While coming from the mathematics department . . . we overtook
Professor Hecke . . . with a smart Heil Hitler, Herr Professor and
quickly raised right arm; my fellow students passed the old gentleman;
with an astonished-indulgent look Hecke glanced beside him, raised
his hat, lightly bowed, and said, Guten Morgen, Damen und Herren!
Since then I have further heard the Germanic greeting from none of
my students.
Moreover, the editorial archive of the Mathematische Annalen, provided
to me by Holger P. Petersson, depicts amusing but risky games the editors
have played. When on January 20, 1940, Behnke addresses Hecke by Ha
Ha !Hecke replies on January 23, 1940 by quoting Behnkes Ha Ha
!164 Do you understand their code? Let me help you. The Nazi salute Heil
Hitler! can be abbreviated as H.H.! which in German is pronounced as
Ha Ha !, and of course the latter conveys laughter.
Not wishing to jeopardize his journal with the Nazi authorities by pub-
lishing Jewish authors, Ferdinand Springer informs Erich Hecke accord-
ingly during their December 20, 1939 meeting. The man of the highest
161
Erich Hecke (Buk, Germany, presently Poznan, Poland 18871947, Copenhagen,
Denmark), one of the best students of David Hilbert (Ph.D. 1910), a famous number theorist,
professor at the University of Hamburg (19191947).
162
Heinrich Behnke (18981979), one of Heckes best students.
163
[Seg], pp. 440441.
164
Erich Heckes Mathematische Annalen editorial archive; Private collection of Prof.
Dr. Holger P. Petersson.
156 17 Mathematische Annalen
integrity, Hecke does not take Springers demand lightly; he threatens to

resign rather than to compromise the integrity of the editorial process. To
Heckes satisfaction, Van der Waerden threatens to resign as well, and
informs Behnke of his intention on October 5, 1940 [Wae7]:165
Dear Herr Behnke!
You are asking me to consider whether it is proper to cause this
new aggravation to Blumenthal. One has to remark that to my knowl-
edge the pension is no longer paid to Blumenthal, but to his sister, and
cannot be transferred to him. Secondly, Springer in any event has the
right to discontinue the pension after Heckes resignation, independent
of my position. Thirdly, I find it amusing that you point out the fateful
consequences of the Annalen crisis which I have foreseen from the
beginning. When the MS [manuscript of] Lachman was submitted, I
proposed a course of action that would have allowed avoiding Heckes
and my resignation but this solution failed solely due to your
resistance.
By the way, under no circumstances do I want to form an obstacle if
Springer wants to form a National Socialist editorial board for the
Annalen. It probably has to remain so that I leave him plenty of rope
regarding the formation of a new editorial board.
With best wishes,
Your,
B.L. van der Waerden
In fact, Erich Hecke does resign (his letter of resignation is dated June
24, 1940), allowing only for his name to remain on the journals cover as a
symbol of Hilberts pedigree, and only under a threat by the publisher
Ferdinand Springer to otherwise stop paying Blumenthals pension. This
pension has been the sole source of existence for the sister of the former
Mathematische Annalen editor Otto Blumenthal, who was Jewish (an early
conversion to Protestantism did not count for anything in Nazi Germany)
and thus had to leave Germany. At this time, Blumenthal lives in Holland,
which has just been invaded by Germany. In April 1943, Blumenthal and his
wife will be ordered to report to the camp in Vught in Southern Holland,
from there sent to a transition camp in Westerbork, and eventually to
Theresienstadt where Blumenthal will die on November 12, 1944 [BV].
Van der Waerden changes his mind and does not resign together with
Hecke. On September 12, 1941, he explains his non-resignation to
Hecke:166
165
Ibid.
166
Ibid.
17 Mathematische Annalen 157
What would our foreign friends say when after the war there is an
interest to restore scientific relations with Germany, and appropriate
intermediaries do not exist?
Van der Waerden is urged to stay on by Behnke who argues that their
resignation would open the door to worse people in the editorial room. In the
end, Van der Waerden stays on, and his editorship of the Mathematische
Annalen lasts 35 years, from 1934 until 1968.
I have little doubt that as a proud and freedom loving man, Van der
Waerden has not appreciated the threat communicated to him by Rektor
Krueger after the May 8, 1935 faculty meeting. However, he really-really
wants to keep his Leipzig professorship and do mathematics in Germany.
And so he heeds the threat and seemingly never again openly rocks the Nazi
boat by public criticism of the regime. Heeding Ferdinand Springers 1940
demand as well, Van der Waerden and Behnke soon after stop publishing
papers written by Jewish mathematicians.
Chapter 18
Germany Treacherously Invades Holland
German thunder . . . will come and when you hear crushing, as it has
never crashed before in all of world history, you will know, German
thunder has finally reached its goal. With this sound, eagles will fall
dead from the sky, and lions in the most distant desert in Africa will put
their tails between their legs and crawl into their royal caves . . . And
the hour will come.
Heinrich Heine167
What I should explain to the Dutch people is, however, not my

actions before 1940, but those after the Netherlands had been attacked
by Germany . . . I have never given a class or worked on things that
could be used for military purposes.
The Netherlands safely lived in neutrality through World War I. It hoped

to repeat it in World War II. However, the Dutch plan of neutrality crumbles
when on May 10, 1940 Germany treacherously attacks the Netherlands, as
well as Luxembourg, Belgium, and France (Norway and Denmark were
attacked earlier, on April 9, 1940). Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
and her government have to flee to London. Her daughter, the future Queen
Juliana, and her family go into exile in Canada.
The same day, May 10, 1940, on its front page the New York Times runs
the report submitted by the United Press. I have got to present it in its
167
1934, [H].
168
The Defense, July 20, 1945; RANH, Papers of Hans Freudenthal, mathematician, 1906
1990, inv. nr. 89.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_18
160 18 Germany Treacherously Invades Holland
entirety, for I do not know a better way to convey the response of the Dutch
people and their Queen Wilhelmina.
Hollands Queen Protests Invasion

Wilhelmina Vows She and the Government Will Do Duty
Bars Negotiation with Foe
THE HAGUE, the Netherlands, Friday, May 10. Queen Wilhelmina

said today in a statement on the German invasion of the country that I
and my government will do our duty.
The Queen, in a proclamation addressed to my people, said:
After our country, with scrupulous conscientiousness, has
observed strict neutrality during all these months, and while Holland
had no other plan than to maintain strictly this attitude, Germany last
night made a sudden attack on our territory without any warning.
This was done notwithstanding a solemn promise that the neutral-
ity of our country would be respected so long as we ourselves
maintained that neutrality.
I herewith direct a flaming protest against the unprecedented
violation of good faith and violation of all that is decent in relations
between cultured States.
I and my government now will do our duty.
Do your duty everywhere and under all circumstances. And let
everyone go to the post to which he has been appointed and, with the
utmost vigilance and with that inner calm and serenity which comes
from a clear conscience, do his work.
The Netherlands general military headquarters in a communique
said:
Never will the High Command or government enter into negotia-
tions with the enemy.
The news agency ACME reports on May 10, 1940:
A furious battle was reported in process, May 10 [1940] near these
bridges over the Maas River at Rotterdam. Dutch soldiers stubbornly
fought off German attacks on Rotterdam, with the Nazi forces unable
to advance effectively after getting a foothold on the right bank of the
river. The Germans reportedly had succeeded in seizing favorable
positions around the bridges leading across the river, but elsewhere
they were thrown back.
Holland Overrun 161
Photo 35 Destruction of Rotterdam, May 14, 1940; Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-2005-0003,

Rotterdam, Zerstorungen, Wikipedia
The Dutch fight against the overwhelming advantage of the Third Reich
Navy and Air Force. German bombers set the entire inner city of Rotterdam
ablaze. The devastation of Rotterdam, serving as a threat to do the same to
Utrecht and Helder, Amsterdam and Den Haag, forces the Netherlands to
surrender the following day, May 15, 1940. On this day, the New York
Times reports on pp. 1 and 4 a detailed story submitted by the United Press
the day before:
Holland Overrun
Commander Tells Troops Yielding Is Only Way to Save Civilians
War Stores Burned

People Urged to Accept German Occupation with Patience
AMSTERDAM, May 14All but a small part of the Netherlands

capitulated to the invading German Army tonight to prevent further
bloodshed and annihilation when General Henri Gerard Winkelman,
the Commander in Chief, called upon his troops to lay down

their arms.
The Commander in Chiefs order to cease resistance applied to the
key defense belt around Rotterdam and Utrecht. Only on the small
peninsula of Zeeland, north of the Belgian coast and only twelve miles
from Antwerp, besieged Belgian city, will the Netherlands defenders
continue to hold out, he indicated.
Thus, in only 5 days, Germanys Blitzkrieg army has overrun the
nation and seems ready to occupy the great cities of Rotterdam,
Amsterdam and The Hague.
General Winkelman, the strong man of the nation after the flight of
Queen Wilhelmina, the Royal family and the government to London,
told of the uselessness of further fighting in a proclamation to his
troops over the radio this evening.
Netherland Forces Separated
He specifically ordered troops to cease resistance against the Germans

in the Rotterdam and Utrecht areas, the chief points against which the
Nazi motorized columns were smashing in assaults from three sides.
He indicated that the Netherlands was capitulating because, with a
German barrier across the country from the German border to the
North Sea, his forces could not aid the Belgian, British and French soil.
Simultaneously with General Winkelmans proclamation, an order
from The Hague lifted the wartime blackout throughout the Nether-
lands, an indication of capitulation.
All marines, civil guards and other armed military forces had
disappeared from the central streets of Amsterdam at 7:15 oclock
tonight, further indicating an end of resistance.
General Winkelmans proclamation came at 8 P.M.
It is very likely, he said, that a large part of the Netherlands will
have to be given to the enemy.
Then, his voice choked with emotion, he added:
The Netherlands will be herself again after this war. Long live Her
Majesty the Queen! Long live the Netherlands!
In ordering the troops to cease defending Rotterdam and Utrecht,
General Winkelman said the cities were certain to be annihilated, if
fighting continued.
Holland Overrun 163
Zeeland Battle Continues
To save the inhabitants and to prevent further bloodshed I hold myself

entitled to order all troops concerned with defense of those towns to
abandon the fight and keep order until the regular German troops
arrive, he said.
The battle in Zeeland is still going on.
I order all measures that have been in force until now to be
continued in the above-named districts.
I appeal to the population to maintain calm and worthy attitude in
order to compel the respect of the enemy.
Your attitude has been above praise. You have been fighting
against heavy odds and against a very strongly equipped army but
your attitude is worthy of a Netherlander.
Maintain this attitude and never forget that you are Netherlanders
although it is very likely that a great part of the motherland will have to
be given to the enemy.
The surrender, it was explained, does not affect the Netherland Navy,
which remains in the war to defend the countrys colonies in both
hemispheres.
Before General Winkelmans radio proclamation fires blazed in
Amsterdam and in parts of Rotterdam after Netherland military author-
ities apparently destroyed valuable stores to prevent them from falling
into the hands of the German forces.
The old quarter of IJmuiden, seaport just west of Amsterdam, was
reported tonight to have been partly destroyed by repeated German
attacks . . .
Rotterdams Situation Grave
PARIS, May 14 (AP)A French military spokesman said this after-

noon the greater part of the Netherland seaport city of Rotterdam
was in flames and the situation growing increasingly grave.
Winkelman Explains
Tells People More Fighting Only Means Greater Civilian
Losses
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, May 14 (UP)General Henri

Gerard Winkelman, commander in chief of the Netherland armed
forces, told his people tonight that we had to lay down our arms
because there was no other way out.
Speaking to the nation by radio, he said:
Netherlanders, I esteem it a favor to give you personally an explana-
tion of the very grave decision I had to take today.
We had to lay down our arms because there was no other way out.
Under other circumstances we should have fought to the end.
If we had fought on not only our army would have been destroyed
but all civilians, women and children, because in such a populated
country it was impossible to avoid killing civilians when bombing was
aimed at military objects.
Today Rotterdam had her terrible share of what bombing means,
and Utrecht and Helder and their centers were threatened likewise.
I, who received all the messages, knew this was the end.
Our soldiers fought with incomparable bravery but they met a
superior power. They fell by the thousands for their Fatherland.
Our air force was too weak against the German air force and our
anti-aircraft batteries also were not up to the might of the German
power from the air.
We were left to ourselves, and so I had to make a grave decision
which was a very difficult one for melay down our arms.
Netherlanders, we shall undergo our new destiny with the same
bravery with which we fought our battles.
All I can say is, trust in the future, behold your traditions. Long live
Her Majesty the Queen! Long live the Fatherland!
Winkelman Explains 165
Photo 36 Dutch Ship being torpedoed by a German submarine October, 1945, Photo
ANEFO; Collection of Alexander Soifer
The New York Times reports the reaction of President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, who condemns the invasion, but is determined to keep Amer-
ican neutrality [sic] toward Hitler:169
WASHINGTON, May 10President Roosevelt twice today
condemned Germanys invasion of Belgium, Holland and Luxem-
bourg as an unwarranted aggression on neutral countries and as threat-
ening the cultural and scientific civilization of the world. . .
On both occasions the President impressed his determination to
keep America at peace and safeguard the nations neutrality.
Some condemnation! Roosevelt is prepared to pay for his neutrality by
throwing Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg to the hungry Nazis! As to
Hitler, if he cherished the plans to create Grogermanisches Reich
Deutscher Nation (Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation) that
169
Felix Belair, Jr., America Angered, Says Roosevelt; Citing Cruel Invasions to Science
Congress, He Warns of Danger to Americas; The New York Times; May 11, 1940,
Section A, Page 1.
would include the Netherlands, Flemish Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway,

and Denmark, the brutal invasion was a ridiculous way to go about it.
The main personage of our story, Bartel L. van der Waerden finds himself
in an awkward situation: he is a professor and civil servant of Nazi Germany
that has waged the brutal unprovoked war against his Homeland, Holland.
How is he affected by this course of events? What is his take on the matter?
These are the questions you and I ought to address.
Let us start with the issue of Dutch citizenship. As we have seen in this
book, in 1930 Van der Waerden expressed his desire to retain his Dutch
citizenship when he negotiated the Leipzig professorshipwe saw it in a
letter from Peter Debye to Van der Waerden, the letter which until now has
escaped attention of historical scholarship (Chapter 11). In 1931 Van der
Waerden lost his Dutch citizenship, as Van der Waerden will tell us in his
own words in Chapter 25. However, heand Peter Debyework on and
succeed in regaining their Dutch citizenship in 19331934. Their desire to
regain Dutch citizenship could be interpreted as a show of their distaste for
the Third Reichs citizenship, even though for a couple of years they were
stateless and did nothing about it.
In September 1939, right after the start of the war, the German Army
Ordnance takes over the control over the atomic research from the Reich
Ministry of Education. The new military overseers ask Debye to accept
German citizenship if he desires to remain director of Kaiser-Wilhelm-
Institute f
ur Physik, the positions he has occupied since 1936. Debye does
not heed this demand and leaves for the United States. Is Van der Waerden
also ready to give up his professorship at Leipzig if the price of keeping it
were the acceptance of German citizenship?
Upon Nazi Germanys invasion of the Netherlands, many Dutch citizens
inside Germany are at first treated as enemies and interned. In fact, right on
May 15, 1940, the day Holland has capitulated, Van der Waerden is
suspended by the Rektor from teaching at Leipzig University:170
I already asked you yesterday over the phone to refrain from any
teaching activity until further notice. I herewith repeat this order in
writing and ask you to discontinue your administrative activity as
Director of Mathematical Seminars and Mathematical Institute.
Meanwhile I have asked the Ministry for a decision whether in view
of you being an official and your oath to the F
uhrer my order regarding
your activity as a Professor and Director of the Institute should
continue.
170
Based on the relevant Freiburg University Archives letters, Maria

Georgiadou reports [Geo, p. 357]:
Van der Waerden, a Dutch civilian, had to report to the police where it
was explained to him that he would be considered an enemy because of
his nationality but he would enjoy a privileged position, because of the
German civil-servant oath he had sworn; he must stay in Leipzig and
report daily to the police. However, on 22 May, he was told that the
oath was not enough to diminish his status as a hostile foreigner and,
consequently, he was interned. Behnke suspected that some dear
anonymous friend had learned that Van der Waerden had expressed
some inappropriate remarks, the SS got knowledge of it and this
provoked Van der Waerdens bad treatment. Behnke asked Suss to
help the Dutch mathematician: We completely destroy mathematical
life in Germany if we do not protect such people. I am too weak for
it. But you should be able to achieve something in this case, he wrote to
Suss on 24 May 1940. Van der Waerden was released soon afterwards
and he asked for permission to lecture again. The permission was granted
to him by telephone by the senior servant Dames on 11 June 1940.
Thus, it seems that Van der Waerdens fellow associate editor in the
Mathematische Annalen Heinrich Behnke and the Nazi-collaborating pres-
ident of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV) Wilhelm Suss
have won Van der Waerdens quick release and reinstatement. However,
sometime after 1993, Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer writes to Dold-
Samplonius that he has committed a little act of heroism by asking a
chief of police, who owed him a favor, for the release of Van der Waerden
[Dol1]. Be it as it may, in his December 22, 1947, Van der Waerden himself
thanks Werner Heisenberg for his release.171 Truly, success has one hundred
fathers while failure is an orphan!
Van der Waerdens reaction to this brief suspension allows us an unex-
pected insight into Van der Waerdens views of Germany and Holland. He
understands from the beginning that the suspension is likely to be short-lived,
but that as a condition for reinstatement as a professor at Leipzig he may be
asked to accept Nazi Germany citizenship. The day following the suspension,
on May 16, 1940, Van der Waerden writes about his dilemma to a trusted
friend, Editor of the Mathematische Annalen Erich Hecke [Wae8]:172
171
Van der Waerden, letter to Heisenberg, December 22, 1947, Private Papers of Werner
Heisenberg, Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich.
172
Erich Heckes Mathematische Annalen editorial archive; Private collection of Prof.
Dr. Holger P. Petersson.
For the time being I am not allowed to teach courses. But the Rektor
has already written to Berlin and asked for an authorization to allow
me to carry on my office. The Dekan predicts that this would be
smoothly approved; maybe I would be asked to become a German
citizen. You will understand that I would be uncomfortable with that at
this time. In principle I have no objections against German citizenship,
but at this moment when Germany has occupied my homeland I really
do not want to abandon my neutrality and take the German side.
Thus, in principle Van der Waerden has no objections against German
citizenship. He merely does not want to abandon his neutrality between
the brutal invader, Nazi Germany, and his victimized Homeland. How does
one explain such insensitivity toward the Homeland? Could it be that Van
der Waerden by now believes that he belongs to Germany, to the German
culture in general, and to German science and mathematics in particular? If
so, this would explain this neutrality and also Van der Waerdens reluc-
tance to leave Germany when in the middle of World War II he will receive
a job offer from Utrecht University.
In Chapter 15 we attended the May-1935 faculty meeting at Leipzig,
where Van der Waerden bravely criticized the Saxon Governor for violating
the law and firing five Jewish professors. Consequently Van der Waerdens
conduct is scrutinized with prejudice and he is accused of anti-Nazi conduct
during the 1934 DMV meeting at Bad Pyrmont. Amazingly even for the
massive Nazi bureaucracy, 8 years later this case is still open, and Van der
Waerden still has to defend himself for his 1934 conduct! On June 13, 1942
Van der Waerden describes the 1934 meeting in a letter to
Dozentenschaftleiter Prof. Dr. M. Clara, with copies sent to the Rektor
and the Dekan. Let us listen:173
In defense against an accusation directed against me, I report about the
events at the annual meeting of the DMV in Pyrmont on Sep 13, 1934.
The Danish mathematician Harald Bohr had sharply attacked the
German mathematician Ludwig Bieberbach in a newspaper article.174
Herr Bieberbach has defended himself against this attack and has
published his reply in the Annual Report of the DMV vol. 44. In this
173
174
During 19331934 the German mathematician Ludwig Bieberbach, who later founded the
movement and the journal of the same name Deutsche Mathematik, started to spread his
racist view of mathematics. The Danish mathematician Harald Bohr published a stern
rebuttal of Bieberbach prior to the Bad Pyrmont meeting of DMV.
reply, Bohr was personally insulted and labeled parasite [schaedling]

of all international cooperation. The publication happened against the
stated will of both coeditors of the Annual Report, Hasse and Knopp.
For that reason, Mr. Bieberbach was held responsible during the
Annual Meeting. The publication was sharply criticized by me and
many others. All of us regarded it as harmful to the reputation of the
German Science [die deutsche Wissenschaft]175 abroad. A couple of
good Germans and National Socialists sided with me, among them
Herr Hasse and Herr Sperner, now treasurer of the DMV and editor of
the Annual Report. Finally, the assembly approved by a large majority
a motion critical of Mr. Bieberbachs action, and Mr. Bieberbach has
stepped down from his office of the Secretary of DMV.
Dont forget, Van der Waerden acknowledges in this letter that Herr
Hasse is a good German and National Socialist; we will revisit their
relationship in the Chapter The Dream of Gottingen. Van der Waerdens
description of the 1934 meeting is perfectly accurate. He continues with the
words the Nazi officials, Dozentenschaftleiter Prof. Dr. M. Clara, the Rektor
and the Dekan, are particularly happy to hear:
I firmly declare that I only had the interest and the reputation of the
German Science [die deutsche Wissenschaft] in mind. By no means did
I oppose [stellung nehmen] National Socialist principles or actions.
The question of race in mathematics and Mr. Bieberbachs speech
about it, which had formed the origin of Bohrs attack, had not been
discussed during the meeting in question, just the form of Bieberbachs
personal counterattack and its publication in the Annual Report
of DMV.
Yes, I believe that Van der Waerden did not oppose National Socialist
principles or actions. These words beg a question, why didnt he? Why
didnt Professor Van der Waerden oppose National Socialist principles and
actions and Bieberbachs insertion of anti-Semitism in mathematics at this
1934 meeting? This meeting took place well before May 1935, i.e., before
Van der Waerden was threatened with a loss of professorship if he were to
muddle in the Nazi politics. What would Van der Corput and Het Parool
editors have said in 1945 should they have known about this 1942 defense?
In early 1946, in a letter to Het Parool Van der Waerden will declare I was
known in Germany and outside as a strong opponent of the Nazi regime. Of
course, he had strong feelings against the Nazi regime, feelings that he has
175
The term die deutsche Wissenschaft as contrasted with Jewish Science had racist and
anti-Semitic connotation.
kept private ever since the Rektors warning in 1935. However, the editors
of Het Parool and Van der Corput reserved the term strong opponent of the
Nazi regime only for those who walked their talk.
Bartels son, Mr. Hans van der Waerden disagrees with my interpretation
of this letter. I believe that in a constructive debate we get closer to the
illusive truth, and so I am sharing with you his complete argument [WaH2]:
Being attacked by Nazi authorities, it was important for him [Bartel
van der Waerden] to dissolve a misinterpretation and to insist that in
1934 not ideology was at stake, but only the honor of a colleague
(insulted by a Nazi scientist); so he accurately declared: By no means
did I oppose National Socialist principles or actions. For you, this
statement would contradict his postwar claim of being anti-Nazi.
How can you possibly mingle up things like that? It must be possible
even for the strongest anti-fascist to say: In this discussion I did not
say anything against fascism. My fathers statement of 1942 fits
perfectly into his general line to never speak out against (not in favor
of) Nazi ideology.
Chapter 19
Barraus Succession at Utrecht
In 1943 the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Utrecht asked

me whether I would accept an appointment as a Professor there.
I asked them to postpone the matter if possible until after the war,
because I did not want to be appointed by the Van Dam176 department.
You may recall Professor Johan A. Barrau, a man with an enormous

beard, who arranged for Bartel L. van der Waerden to succeed him at
Groningen University in 1928, when Barrau moved to a chair at Utrecht
(Chapter 8). As his retirement at 70 is approaching, Barrau envisions Van
der Waerden as his successor again, this time at Utrecht. On December
16, 1942 he writes to Van der Waerden about it, and asks for certainty
twice in a span of one short letter:178
Dear Colleague,
At the end of the current semester, in Sept. 1943, it is my turn to resign
and to be replaced. The Faculteit choice of the successor is dependent on
knowing with certainty whether you would be willing to return to the
Netherlands. We are asking you politely to give us certainty. If you are
176
Prof. Dr. Jan van Dam, an Amsterdam professor of German language, was a Nazi
sympathizer, but not a Nazi party member. He was Secretary-General of the Ministry of
Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands (Opvoeding, Wetenschap en
Cultuurbescherming) during the war.
177
The Defense, July 20, 1945; RANH, Papers of Hans Freudenthal, mathematician, 1906
1990, inv. nr. 89.
178
Handwritten letter in Dutch; Utrecht University, Archive of the Faculty of Mathematics,
Correspondence, 1942.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_19
172 19 Barraus Succession at Utrecht
not at all inclined to do that, then it is easy for you to inform me as soon
as possible. However, if you want to think about it, then please tell me
that too, and we will then be waiting for your decision.
On December 28, 1942, Van der Waerden replies by a postcard, stamped
uft. Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Exam-
twice on each side with Gepr
ined. Supreme Command of the Armed Forces) in a round seal:179
Thank you very much for your letter of December 16, 1942. With the
reference to your last sentence, I want to keep this matter in mind, it is
very important to me. I will write to you in early January.
Fair enough, Van der Waerden wants to think about this job offer for a
couple of weeks. Promptly, on January 4, 1943, he elaborates, but refuses to
give the certainty Barrau sought from the beginning:180
I feel honored by your request. I am pleased with it. I am not rejecting
the idea to return to Holland, on the contrary, I have always considered
this possibility with respect to my plans for the future.
That possibility has merits. I am sorry I cannot give you the
certainty that you are asking me for. Whether I will accept a position
or not depends upon circumstances, and I can only judge them when
the appointment is actually there. A lot depends upon the circum-
stances at that moment at Leipzig University, and I cannot judge that
right now and I will not be able to judge that in two weeks either.
I would very much like you to keep me informed about this case in
the future.
On the very same day, January 4, 1943, Van der Waerden meets with his
Leipzig University bosses to inform them of the Dutch job offer, and he puts
it in writing on January 5, 1943:181
To the Rektor of the University via the Dekan [Heinz] of the Philos-
ophy Facult
at.
Magnificence!
The Facult
at of Natural Philosophy of Utrecht University (Holland)
asked me whether I would possibly be willing to accept the ordinarius
179
Handwritten postcard in Dutch; Utrecht University, Archive of the Faculty of Mathemat-
ics, Correspondence, 1942.
180
181
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 66 [the document is mistakenly dated 1942 by Van
der Waerden].
19 Barraus Succession at Utrecht 173
position in mathematics when it becomes vacant in September 1943.

As I have already told you orally yesterday, this inquiry is tantamount
to an offer since negotiations about offers are unusual in the Nether-
lands. I have informed the Utrecht Facult at that I cannot yet decide
whether or not I will accept the appointment by the [Dutch] Ministry. I
ask you to inform the Saxon Ministry of Peoples Education of this
development.
Heil Hitler!
[signed] B.L.v.d. Waerden
Three days later, Dekan Heinz adds his own text below Van der
Waerdens and forwards all to the Rektor:
Forwarded to His Magnificence Herr Rektor of the University of
Leipzig for his information.
Heil Hitler!
[signed] Heinz
d.Z. Dekan
On July 27, 1943, the Utrechts Faculteit of Mathematics and Physics
officially proposes to make Van der Waerden their first choice and informs
the latter of this decision:182
Faculteit of Mathematics and Physics is honored to let you know that
Faculteit is proposing to put you in the first place for the vacancy that
arises due to the retirement of Prof. Dr. J. A. Barrau as professor in
synthetic and analytical, descriptive and differential geometry. We
would like to know if you are willing to accept the eventual position
at Utrecht.
Chair and Secretary of the Faculteit
Even though Van der Waerden knows and has accordingly informed his
Leipzig bosses in early January 1943 that this inquiry is tantamount to an
offer since negotiations about offers are unusual in the Netherlands, he
again, even on September 19, 1943, avoids giving a clear answer to Utrecht,
once again providing no certainty:183
I am very pleased that the Faculteit has the intention to put me first on
the list for the Barrau opening. The possibility to return to my country
182
Typed document in Dutch; Utrecht University, Archive of the Faculty of Mathematics,
183
is attractive to me, but I am sorry that in current circumstances of the

war I cannot give you certainty that I will accept the appointment.
Finally, on January 18, 1944, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Edu-
cation, Culture and Science of the Netherlands (Opvoeding, Wetenschap en
Cultuurbescherming) Professor Dr. Jan van Dam himself asks Van der
Waerden for a definitive answer:184
The President Curator of Utrecht University suggested to me to
appoint you as a Professor of synthetic, analytical, descriptive and
differential geometry and to fill the position that was vacated by
Professor J. A. Barraus retirement. In fact, Professor Barrau has
recently turned 70. This nomination is in accordance with the recom-
mendation of the Faculteit of Mathematics and Physics.
Since it is very important to me to fill the vacant position as soon as
possible, I would like to ask you to let me know whether you wish to be
considered for this appointment.
Secretary General of the Ministry for Education, Science and
Administration of Culture.
[Signed] J. van Dam
Van der Waerden uses this Utrecht offer to please his Leipzig bosses by
expressing his desire not to accept the Utrecht offer any time soon, and by
promise to remain in Germany for the duration of the war. The Dekan
informs the Rektor, who in turn reports to the Ministry that Van der
Waerden does not want to become a deserter:185
25 February 1944
Dekan of the Philosophical Facult
at of Leipzig University
To His Magnificence Herr Rektor of the University
The colleague Van der Waerden informed me about an offer to him
from Utrecht University. During my discussion with him he expressed
his intention to stay in Leipzig for the duration of the war. I feel
satisfied with his attitude.
184
Typed hand-signed letter in German; Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 69.
185
I do not believe that Van der Waerden would use the exact word deserterit must have
been Rektors interpretation of Van der Waerdens decision to stay in Germany through the
end of the war. Typed hand-signed letters in German; Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, pp.
7980.
Heil Hitler!
[signed] Heinz
[BACK SIDE:]
Rektor Leipzig, 1 March 1944
of Leipzig University Beethovenstrasse 6 I. Mu
Nr. A: 73
To the Reichsstatthalter of Saxony,
Ministry for Peoples Education, Dresden
DresdenN 6
The ordinarius of mathematics Professor Dr. Van der Waerden has
informed me of an offer to him from Utrecht University and he has
expressed his desire to stay in Leipzig during the war since he does not
want to become a deserter. I welcome this decision butwithout
having addressed the official side of the matterfor general rea-
sonsI would deem it worth considering enabling Prof. Van der
Waerden to move to a different university later.
Taken into consideration Professor Van der Waerdens behavior in
connection with the terror attack on Dec 4, 1943, which I got to know
from the Dekan of the Philosophical Facult at, Math-Scientific Divi-
sion, I would be grateful if Professor Van der Waerden were invited to
the Ministry to discuss the academic call [job offer] which he has
received.
[Signature] Wilmanns
Thus, Nazi Germanys education executives are assured by Van der
Waerden of his decision to stay with them through the end of the war,
which they interpret as Van der Waerdens loyalty to the Third Reich.
Rektor Wilmanns, who as you recall from the pages of this book, was
previously Van der Waerdens adversary, is so pleased that he asks the
Ministry to discuss with Van der Waerden a transfer from Leipzig to a better
academic position. Only the Dutch faculty at Utrecht are kept in limbo.
Finally on May 22, 1944, Secretary-General J. van Dam informs the
President-Curator of Utrecht University about the German official
response:186
In agreement with your proposal concerning the filling of the vacancy
in the synthetic, analytical, descriptive and differential geometry, I
have given your proposal to the German authorities for their judgment.
186
Typed hand-signed letter in Dutch; Utrecht University, Archive of the Faculty of Math-
ematics, Correspondence, 1944.
At the same time I have written to Prof. Dr. Van der Waerden to ask
him if he would be willing to accept this position.
From the German side I received some time ago a request to
distance yourself from this idea [written in German: Abstand
nehmen zu wollen].
Prof. Van der Waerden has written to me that at this time he does
not have permission from the German Ministry of Education to leave
his position in Leipzig. From his letter, I draw a conclusion that he
would be willing to come to Utrecht.
After more discussion with the German authorities here in this
country, one has told me that they indeed would not give permission
for the departure of Prof. Van der Waerden from Leipzig. They are not
against him personally.
Under these circumstances, I ask you to think about the manner in
which we can provide education on a temporary basis and to give me a
proposal concerning this matter.
How does one interpret this document? On February 25, 1944 Van der
Waerden informed his German bosses, who in turn reported to the Ministry
of Peoples Education of Saxony, that Van der Waerden wanted to remain at
Leipzig through the end of the war. It seems reasonable that then, according
to Van der Waerdens wishes, the Saxon Ministry informed Van Dam that
they would not allow Van der Waerden to leave Leipzig. Separately, Van
der Waerden answered Van Dams January 18, 1944 letter by asserting his
interest in the Utrecht job, but claiming that he did not have the German
permission to leave Leipzig for Utrecht. It is logical to conjecture that the
latter assertion by Van der Waerden was false. Indeed, after the war, when
Van der Waerden defends himself from the suspicion of his collaboration
with the German invaders of the Netherlands, he would have looked good by
claiming that the Germans were the ones who did not allow him to accept
the Utrecht offer. However, he never mentions it in the many self-defense
statements that he makes after the war. Van der Waerden did not wish to go
to Utrecht, and blaming the German authorities for it appeared a convenient
excuse for him in 1944.
The National Archive of the Netherlands contains a telling letter Van der
Waerden sent to the Dutch authorities. Even a year and a half after the initial
Barraus offer, and 2 months after he made a decision to stay in Germany
and informed the German bosses of this decision, he continues to send
smokescreen to the Dutch:187
187
Het Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, finding aid number 2.14.17, record number 73
dossier B.L. van der Waerden (Archive of the Ministry of Education).
Leipzig, 31 May, 1944

To the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science
I am sorry but I cannot give you a definitive answer at this time to

your question whether I would be willing to accept a position of
Professor in Geometry at Utrecht University, because discussions
with authorities in Dresden and Berlin have not yet ended. But I can
tell you that I can accept the position only after the war because
Leipzig University still cannot do without me.
I would be very pleased if you would be able to let me know what
level of salary a professor with 16 years of experience could receive
according to the regulations.
Still no definitive answer [to the Dutch] at this time, 2 months after the
discussions with the authorities in Dresden and Berlin have ended! As to the
salary inquiry, it must have been used by Van der Waerden as another vehicle
of keeping the Utrecht offer open without accepting it. Half a century later, in
1993, Van der Waerden will recall the Utrecht story without mentioning the
alleged German prohibition of his Dutch employment [Dol1]:
I had an offer from Utrecht. During the war they had written asking if I
wished to come to Utrecht. I answered, Not now, but after the war I
shall come.
Written upon his arrival in Amsterdam right after the war, on July
20, 1945, Van der Waerdens explanation is more detailed, but again he
makes no mention of the German prohibition to leave his Leipzigs job:188
In 1943 the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Utrecht asked me
whether I would accept an appointment as a Professor there. I asked
them to postpone the matter if possible until after the war, because I
did not want to be appointed by the Van Dam department.
Did Van der Waerden really believe that the approval by the Secretary-
General Van Damwho did serve the German occupiersof his faculty-
initiated Utrecht appointment would stain his reputation more than being a
Civil Servant of the Third Reich for the entire period of the brutal German
occupation of Holland? Is it possible that the real issue was neutrality
again, just like in Van der Waerdens letter to Erich Hecke (Chapter 18)?
Perhaps, going to Utrecht in the middle of the war would have been
perceived as abandoning the German side and thus violating Van der
Waerdens neutrality between (Nazi) Germany and Holland?
188
The Defense; RANH, Papers of Hans Freudenthal, inv. nr. 89.
One thing appears clear to me: professorship at Utrecht has been a

fallback position for Van der Waerdenin case of Germanys defeat in
the war. This conjecture is confirmed by Constantin Caratheodorys March
25, 1944 reply189 to an apparent request by Van der Waerden for advice.
Caratheodory, very sympathetic toward his younger colleague, warns Van
der Waerden not to lose his chance of the Utrecht job:
As far as Utrecht goes, I understand very well your position. But the
matter is not over yet and it would be regrettable if you could not
arrange to keep for a time the possibility open of settling in there.
Indeed, not accepting the Utrecht position was unfortunate. Utrecht
offered Van der Waerden not just a job, and not just the return to the
Homeland, but moreover the last chance to distance himself from Nazi
Germany. Unfortunately, Van der Waerden did not understand the signifi-
cance of this opportunity, and missed this chance. Did he still not understand
what the Third Reich was all about? Did he still think, as in August 1935,
that the Nazi regime was merely a farce in poor taste? No, for in the April
6, 1943, letter from Leipzig (!), Van der Waerden describes to Erich Hecke
the tragedy of the occupied Holland and the Holocaust:
Shortly after Hilberts death I gave a lecture on Hilbert for our
students. I borrowed a lot from his truly excellent biography by
Blumenthal. How is he? During my Christmas [1942] stay in Holland,
I learned nothing about him. Maybe he is in hiding like thousands of
others. Maybe he is already in Poland like tens of thousands of Jews
from Holland.190
Van der Waerden knows about the tragic fate of the Dutch Jews. Why
then does he not leave the gangster regime, as he will call it right after its
collapse? Perhaps, the reason is his dream for another job, which we will
explore in the next chapter.
The Utrecht offer was apparently used by Van der Waerden to obtain a
salary raise as well. On July 6, 1944, he writes the following rather bitter
words to the Saxon Ministry of Educations Ministerialdirector
Dr. Schwender:191
189
Caratheodory to Van der Waerden, letter in German of March 25, 1944; ETH-Bibliothek
Zurich, Wissenschaftshistorische Sammlungen Hs 652:10611.
190
Handwritten letter in German. I thank Dekan Alexander Kreuzer for sharing with me this
and a few other important documents from Nachlass von Erich Hecke, Universitat Hamburg.
191
ETH, Hs 652: 11835.
My problem is as follows:
As it was conveyed to me with A:18bSt 5 [letter reference number?]
on May 12th, the Reich Education Minister has said that the requested
and again approved raise of my teaching salary by the Saxon Ministry
would not be addressed. A reason was not given. I assume that the
basis is in that the Reich Ministry does not appreciate my work in
Germany. Just a few months ago one of my colleagues by his own
word received a raise of his salary by 3,000 RM [Reichs marks]. In
view of the fact that my mathematical colleagues also have higher
salaries, I believe that this denial [in salary raise] is a demotion. For me
it is not only about the money but also about the recognition of
my work.
I am still [sic] dealing with the Dutch Ministry about my call to
Utrecht. I have conveyed to them that I will not come during the war,
but192 that my final decision is dependent upon success of my dealings
in Dresden and Berlin.
I would therefore request you to convey to me what the reasons are
in whatever form would be appropriate for you . . . Perhaps the reasons
will reawaken the old accusations which one had against me in Berlin.
Meanwhile Van der Waerden is apparently active in the affairs of his
university. When in the summer of 1944 Leipzig University is trying to fill a
professorship in physics, Van der Waerden offers an inclusion in the short
list of candidates to his and Werner Heisenbergs close friend, Carl-
Friedrich von Weizsacker, a professor at the University of Strasburg,
which has been annexed from France by Nazi Germany. Van der Waerden
may not know yet that together with Heisenberg, von Weizsacker has been a
key researcher in the Uranverein (Uranium Club) of the
Heereswaffenamt (The Army Weapons Bureau), a group that tried to create
a German atomic bomb and atomic reactor. On July 24, 1944, von
Weizsacker replies in the style, reminiscent of Van der Waerdens letters
to Utrecht, for he wants Leipzigs professorship to be his fallback
position:193
The decision is not very easy for me to make. I do have the wish to
have an assistant of my own; under this condition the Leipzig Univer-
sity would attract me. But even then I would stay here if the conditions
remain as they are in Strasburg. But this is difficult to foresee.
192
No but5 months earlier, in February 1944, Van der Waerden had informed the Nazi
education authorities of his staying at Leipzig to the end of the war.
193
ETH, unlabeled letter.
Chapter 20
A Dream of Gottingen
Before Hitlers ascent to power, Germany occupied the highest mathemat-

ical ground in the world, and Gottingen University was its greatest peak.
From Felix Klein to David Hilbert, the Gottingen mathematicians created an
unparalleled school. In his 1982 Oxford talk published as the essay The
School of Hilbert and Emmy Noether [Wae30], Van der Waerden reflects
upon the early twentieth century Gottingen:
In these years Gottingen became an international centre of mathe-
matics. From all over the world mathematicians and physicists came to
Gottingen to learn from Klein, Hilbert and Minkowski [the latter two
joined Gottingen in 1895 and 1902 respectively].
Hilberts most gifted pupil was Hermann Weyl, who came to
Gottingen in 1903. But also Blumenthal, Hecke, Zermelo and many
others should be mentioned . . .
The most important algebraist who came to Gottingen was Emmy
Noether.
In 1928 Richard Courant and the Rockefeller Foundation created in
Gottingen the Mathematical Institute populated by some of the finest
scholars. At this time, even young brilliant Americans, such as Saunders
Mac Lane, were attracted by Gottingen. Mac Lane recollects [Mac]:
The Mathematical Institute in Gottingen in 1931 had an outstanding
tradition: Gauss, Riemann, Dirichlet, Felix Klein, Minkowski and
Hilbert. It was located in a new and ample building (thanks to the
Rockefeller Foundation, which had also provided such a building for
mathematics at Paris).

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_20
182 20 A Dream of Gottingen
As you recall, young Bartel ended up third on the list of David Hilberts
succession at Gottingen. Then, in 1930, the Hilbert professorship was
awarded to the first person on the list, the former Hilbert student (Ph.D.
1908) Hermann Weyl. In 1933, Weyl, whose wife was Jewish, left
Nazi Germany to become one of the first professors of the newly founded
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Bartel L. van der Waerden spent
his happy young years at Gottingen University. He was the favorite student
of Emmy Noether, habilitated under Richard Courant, served at Gottingen
as Courants Assistent and Privatdozent. Fond memories of the great
Gottingen must have inspired a dream to live and work there again. It was
only natural that in late 1943early 1944, Van der Waerden tried to convert
his Dream of Gottingen into reality. The choice of people he asked for help
in obtaining a Gottingen professorship was surprising for Van der Waerden
who thought of himself as a strong opponent of the Nazi regime. There is
an Old Russian proverb, Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you
who you are.194 As all universal declarations, it does not precisely fit all
cases. And yet, there is a grain of truth in this folk wisdom. Let me introduce
to you the two Van der Waerdens helpers (more information about them
can be found in [Rem, Sie3, Seg, Geo], and other sources).
The first helper, Wilhelm Suss, a professor of mathematics and Rektor
of Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, a 19341937 member of the
SA (Storm Troopers), joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1937, and the
Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (Nazi Lecturers Confed-
eration) in 1938. During 19371945, Suss was the F uhrer of the Deutsche
Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV). He distinguished himself by enthusias-
tically initiating the expulsion of Jews from the DMV membership rolls right
after becoming its president, even before he was ordered to do so by his Nazi
patrons. Jews were not merely excluded from DMV; the Nazis attempted to
eliminate them from the history of the DMV, as if they had never
existed.195 In 1938 Suss also initiated the expulsion of Jews from editorial
boards. Consequently, he got a clout with the Nazi officials so much so
that on August 3, 1944, arguably the second most powerful man of Nazi
Germany, the founder of the Gestapo and the Commander-in-Chief of the
Nazi Airforce Hermann Goring himself approved the creation of the
Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach on the hills of the Black
Forest. Naturally, Suss served as Oberwolfachs first director. Van der
Waerden was friendly with Suss, gave a talk at Suss invitation at Freiburg
194
In 2014, a new version of this proverb was born in light of the Russian annexation of
Ukrainian Crimea: Tell me whose Crimea is, and I will tell you who you are.
195
[Geo].
20 A Dream of Gottingen 183
in 1944, and corresponded with Suss until the latters passing away in
1958.196
In August 1985, I spent a delightful week at Oberwolfach. Then I was not
a historian, and did not know that this scenic mathematical retreat was
authorized by Hermann Goring. The Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut
Oberwolfach has been providing a valuable service to the international
mathematical community. And yet, it would be hard for me now to stay
there again, for ghosts of the past would spoil the serenity of the rolling hills
and the delight of scientific exchange.197 I feel affinity to the refugee from
Nazi Germany Professor Max Dehn, who as a Jew was expelled from the
DMV in 1935. When invited to rejoin it in 1948, Dehn replied:
I cannot rejoin the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung, I have lost
confidence that such an association would act differently in the future
than in 1935 . . . I am not afraid that the new DMV will again expel
Jews, but maybe next time it will be so-called communists, anarchists
or colored people.198
196
If you wish to learn more about Wilhelm Suss, consult, for example [Rem].
197
I hear you asking me: What can Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach do
today about its past? I would recommend, for example, to shine a ray of glasnost on its past,
to show the past in a historical museum built on its grounds. Sadly, we are far away from such
a museum of truth, for even the person who knows the Nazi roots of the Oberwolfach
Institute best, Institutes Director 20022013 Gert-Martin Greuel publishes Oberwolfach
history as if it was founded in 1946, without any mention of its Nazi roots, without Suss and
without Goring (Mathematics between Research, Application, and Communication in
E. Behrends et al. (eds.), Raising Public Awareness of Mathematics, Springer, Berlin, 2012.)
198
Quoted from [Sie3], p. 393.
Photo 37 Helmut Hasse, contributed by Konrad Jacobs, Courtesy of the Archives of the
The second Van der Waerdens helper, Helmut Hasse, a good German
and National Socialist as Van der Waerden described him in his June
13, 1942 letter,199 was an excellent algebraist, a major contributor to class
field theory. He was a member of the anti-Semitic Deutschnationale
Volkpartei, led starting in 1928 by the eventual member of Hitlers first
cabinet Alfred Hugenberg. Sanford L. Segal argues [Seg] that Hasse was
no anti-Semite, and, for example [sic], remained friendly with [Hasses
1921 Ph.D. thesis advisor Kurt] Hensel until his death in 1941, although
Hensel was certainly a Jew by Nazi standardsa thoroughly assimilated
and baptized one. How can one exampleor two, Hasse was friendly with
his coauthor Emmy Noetherprove that Hasse was not an anti-Semite?
Isnt it typical for an anti-Semite to hate all Jews except for a few personal
friends?
As I am striving to present here portraits as fair as the information
available to me allows, let me introduce a document showing Hasse in a
complimentary light. In the early months of Nazi Germany, he tried to
organize letters in support of Emmy Noethers reinstatement after she was
dismissed from Gottingen University. On June 6, 1933, Hasse sent from
Marburg the following letter to Erich Hecke:200
Dear Herr Hecke!
As you know, Emmy Noether has been put on leave because of her
Jewish heritage. The intention exists to attempt through a request to the
Prussian Ministry of Culture at least to maintain her venia legendi
[Latin for permission for lecturing] and perhaps to obtain another
teaching position in her specialty. A request of this kind would be
given a substantial weight if it were supported by a number of expert
opinions by well-known German and foreign mathematicians, in
which the great significance of E. Noethers scholarly achievements
and the extent of her supportive influence on numerous students would
be listed.
I would be very pleased if I could count on your involvement in this,
and I would be very grateful if you would send me an expert opinion
on the above as soon as possible.
With friendly regards
Your
Hasse
199
200
Typed hand-signed letter in German; Erich Hecke Nachlass, Hamburg University.
However, attempting to help his Jewish colleague Noether did not pre-
vent Hasse from ridiculing all Jews. Princeton Mathematics Professor Willy
Feller told then young Gerard Washnitzer (now Professor Emeritus of
Princeton Math) that Feller was present at Hasses lecture at the Oslo
International Congress of Mathematicians (July 1317, 1936). While giving
a lecture on number theory and emphasizing great significance of class field
theory (recall, a couple of years earlier, the racist notion of the Deutsche
Mathematik as opposed to the J udische Mathematik had been invented),
Hasse mimicked a Yiddish accent while uttering Satzbeweissatz
beweis.201
J. J. OConnor and E F Robertson describe (MacTutor History of Math-
ematics Archive) a close relationship between Hasse and the leader of the
Nazi students at Gottingen Oswald Teichmuller, a member of the Nazi Party
and of SA, the notorious Nazi storm troopers:
. . . Despite Hasse being in a very different area of mathematics from
Teichmuller, it was Hasse who Teichmuller chose as his thesis super-
visor. It would have made more sense from a mathematical perspective
for Teichmuller to have asked Gustav Herglotz to be his supervisor but
Herglotz had no specific connection with the Nazi Party while Hasse
did. Unsurprisingly Teichmuller put political considerations ahead of
mathematical ones. . . After his doctoral examination in June 1935,
Hasse requested that the university authorities appoint Teichmuller as
an assistant in the Department.
Hasse viewed Hitler as a national hero and on October 29, 1937 applied
for membership in the Nazi Party.202 The fanatical Nazi Party required from
its members not to have a full-Jewish ancestor living after 1800, whereas
Hasse was a 1/16 Jew as a consequence of a baptized great-great-grand-
mother.203 Hasse appealed the rejection to Hitler himself (who did grant a
few exceptions). As Hasse was a Korvetten Kapit an (Corvette Captain,
equivalent to the USA Lieutenant-Commander) serving in Nazi Germanys
War Navy starting in 1939 (and through the end of the war in 1945), the
decision on his Nazi Party membership was postponed until after the war.204
This put Hasse in a most opportune situation, and he took a full advantage of
it: he was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party during the Nazi era, and
201
Recorded conversation with Professor Gerard Washnitzer, Commons Room, Fine Hall,
Princeton University, March 2004.
202
[Seg], pp. 124167.
203
Ibid.
204
Ibid.
he claimed not being a Nazi after Nazi Germany lost the war! Normal
heroes love to always be on top!
On March 13, 1938, Hasse expected his coauthor, the British number
theorist Harold Davenport to share in Hasses jubilation over German troops
taking over Austria [Seg]:
We are still under the overwhelming impression of yesterdays events
in Austria . . . We listened on the wireless to the enthusiastic welcome
given to Hitler in Linz . . . You will readily imagine the great admira-
tion that everybody here has for Hitlers wise policy which made this
possible in spite of France and others.
Shortly after, Hasse stopped his communication with Davenport. Segal
reports [Seg, pp. 160161]: In late 1938 . . . the Italian Jewish mathemati-
cian Tullio Levi-Civita was dismissed from the editorial board of the
reviewing journal Zentralblatt f
ur Mathematik as a result of political pres-
sure placed on the publisher Ferdinand Springer. Otto Neugebauer, who had
continued as the journals chief editor after immigrating to Copenhagen,
took the occasion to ask other editors and reviewers to join him in a protest
resignation. Davenport was one of these reviewers. The editors who
resigned were Harald Bohr, Richard Courant, G. H. Hardy, J. D. Tamarkin,
and Oswald Veblen. Because of Davenports resignation, in January
25, 1939, letter Hasse broke up with Davenport [ibid]:
Dear Harold,
As I learned in November, you have laid down your cooperative
work on the Zentralblatt. You have troubled us deeply and offended us
by this step. With it you have placed yourself formally in a front which
is directed against a German scientific undertaking. This and the
realization coming repeatedly to our view that you also besides stand
in the front which wishes ill to National Socialist Germany for ideo-
logical reasons is the reason why joy in the communication of our up
until now friendly exchange of thoughts is taken away from Clarle
[Hasses wife] and me.
Gian-Carlo Rota writes [Rota]: There is no reason why a great mathe-
matician should not also be a great bigot. These words are fully applicable
to Helmut Hasse. Hasse actively supported the Nazi regime and its complete
disregard for the most basic human rights. Hasse expressed the most hateful
attitudes towards people of other races and ethnicity. Let me share with you
several vivid examples, some of which are published for the first time here
and in [Soi9].
Jacopo Barsotti told Gerard Washnitzer that as a graduate student,

Barsotti attended Hasses talk in Pisa after the start of World War II and
before Italys collapse. During the talk L. Tonelli asked Hasse about the fate
of the Polish mathematicians, and in particular about Schauder. Hasse
replied,
Poles should not do mathematics. They should work in coal mines and
agricultural labor.205
This event was independently confirmed to Washnitzer by other Italian
mathematicians during the 1950 Cambridge (USA) International Congress
of Mathematicians.206
In March 15, 1939, letter to Harvard Professor Marshall Stone, Hasse
urged the exclusion of the German refugees to the United States from
ur Mathematik:207
serving as reviewers for the Zentralblatt f
Looking at the situation from a practical point of view, one must
submit that there is a state of war between the Germans and the Jews
...
The state of war, Herr Hasse? The state of war between armed to the
teeth army and police of the criminal regime and unarmed innocent victims?
Fortunately, there were American mathematicians (far from all) who under-
stood the nature of the real war. As C. R. Adams reported:208
Mr. Veblen insists that there is a war by the Germans against
civilization.
205
Hasse is here in a complete accord with the Nazi policies toward the Polish population.
Richard C. Lukas writes [Luka]: The German campaign against the Poles focused largely
but not exclusively upon the elimination of anyone with the least political or cultural
prominence. Years before their invasion of Poland, the Germans drew up lists of prominent
Poles slated for execution or imprisonment . . . The Nazi determination to obliterate the
Polish intelligentsia resulted in wiping out forty-five percent of Polish physicians and
dentists, forty percent of professors, fifty-seven percent of attorneys, thirty percent of
technicians, and a majority of leading journalists.
The famous French mathematician Jean Dieudonne [Die, p. 16] addresses specifically the
fate of mathematicians: In Poland the mathematical schools were physically annihilated,
since half the mathematicians were massacred by the Nazis. They did not recover their
standing until after 1970.
206
Recorded conversation with Professor Gerard Washnitzer, March 26, 2004; 3:305:30 P.M.,
Commons Room, Fine Hall, Princeton University. Confirmed by Washnitzer during Sunday,
December 3, 2006, 12:452:30 conversation, Commons Room, Fine Hall, Princeton
University.
207
[Rein], p. 331.
208
Ibid.
In Chapter 29 you will meet the Finnish Nazi supporter Rolf Nevanlinna
who was hired by the University of Zurich in neutral Switzerland in 1946,
and in whose honor the International Mathematics Union awards the
Rolf Nevanlinna Prize. I have got to quote the March 25, 1941 letter
from Nevanlinna to Hasse. Enjoy the sing-along duet of the two Nazi
supporters:209
You know, dear Herr Hasse, your remarks about the hypocritical and
stupid moral indignation of Western politicians, who try to hide their
hate against Germany under the mantle of nice phrases, correspond
completely to what we feel here and say to ourselves daily. You know
those deeply rooted sympathies which connect us Finns with Germany,
these bonds are today stronger than ever now that the easily under-
standable irritation caused by our difficult time a year ago has died
down . . .
It is absolutely clear to us that only a strong and powerful Germany,
the heart of Europe, is capable of forming the fate of European
community in the way, which the interest of all European nations of
culture demands. Personally, I am firmly convinced thereof and I
believe to see a total justification of this conviction in European
history, namely that Germany is today summoned not only to save
European culture, which already happened in 1933, but to lead it to an
undreamt-of blooming. The world-historic significance of the present
hour is immense.
It is amazing that even many years after the end of the war, during which
the world learned so much about the crimes of Nazism, Hasse did not
change his racist views. Segal, who presents much material on Hasse
[Seg], describes how in the 1960s at Ohio State University, USA, Hasse
claimed that slavery in America had been a good institution for blacks.
I must quote here a letter [Lan2] published in Germany and the USA by
the prolific mathematician, the 1951 Princeton Ph.D. under Emil Artin,
Serge Lang, which graphically portrays Hasses views and behavior during
the war and the Nazi occupation of France and Norway:
My documentation of certain aspects of mathematical history implies
nothing concerning personal relationship, one way or another. I take
this opportunity to put in the record some information concerning
Hasses behavior after Frances defeat in 1940. In the fall of 1940,
Hasse went to meet Elie Cartan at his home in Paris. Hasse was dressed
209
[Geo], p. 393.
in a German uniform. The only other person present was Elie Cartans
son, Henri Cartan, whom I heard personally report the encounter
publicly in the late fifties, as follows. Hasse acted in a very friendly
way, and proposed to Elie Cartan that French and German mathema-
ticians should cooperate, independently of the circumstances which
were otherwise occurring. Elie Cartan answered in an equally friendly
fashion that it was an excellent idea, but that the Poles should also take
part. Hasse then answered no, that the Polish people were a separate
people with whom it was not possible to collaborate. Elie Cartan then
answered that under these conditions, it was impossible to start a
FrenchGerman mathematical cooperation.
Some 40 years later, in 20002001, at the Max-Planck Institut in
Bonn, I heard for the first time an account from the Norwegian
mathematician Arnfinn Laudal, of a similar visit that Hasse made to
Thoralf Skolem in Oslo. Laudal got the story from Skolem himself,
and the story was confirmed recently by Skolems children. Hasse had
shown up at Skolems home dressed in a German Navy [Korvetten
Kapitan] uniform, but was refused entrance by Skolem, on the door-
steps. Hasse had come with a proposition like the one he had made to
Elie Cartan.
There occurred a vigorous and high-voiced exchange between
Skolem and Hasse. Thus Hasses visit to Elie Cartan was not an
isolated event. Different people react differently about recalling the
painful past of Nazism, and the role of individual mathematicians
during that period. We make ad hoc decisions about what to recall,
and when, depending on circumstances. My current decision is
represented by this letter and the accompanying article on some
mathematical history.
Thus, Helmut Hasse was not content to merely do mathematics in the
Ivory Tower, and believe in Mathematik uber alles. No, Hasse took a full
advantage of his status of distinguished mathematician to spread the racist
venom for decades, from the Congress of 1936 to the American visit in the
1960s.
Some articles written about Helmut Hasse, seem to portray a totally
different personality. Professors Peter J. Roquette (Ph.D. under Hasse,
1951) and Gunther Frei (Ph.D. under Van der Waerden, 1968) describe
Hasse as a man of the highest moral standing. How can one reconcile such a
divergence of this view from the accounts by such universally admired
scholars as Cartan, Skolem, Veblen, and Siegel? The examples of Hasses
behavior and his bigotry I introduced here have sadly been omitted by
Roquette and Frei. Moreover, I read in Frei [Fre3, p. 65]:
Fighting against politically-minded and fanatical students and striving

for the conservation of the scientific importance of the famous institute
took most of Hasses time and energy . . . In Hasses seminar with the
young and gifted students Witt and TeichmullerSiegel did partici-
pate later onimportant articles on congruence function fields were
written.
Fighting against politically-minded and fanatical students, you say?
But gifted as they may have been, Ernst Witt and Oswald Teichmuller were
storm troopers, members of the notorious Sturmabteilung (SA), the Assault
Division, Brownshirts, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
In addition Teichmuller was the organizer of the boycotts of the Jewish
Gottingen Professor Edmund Landau that forced this famed number theorist
to resign.
With no disagreement from me, Frei calls Carl Ludwig Siegel the most
eminent mathematician in Germany [Fre3, p. 65]. But then Frei omits or is
ignorant of Siegels assessment of Hasse. Let me help my colleague Frei. On
March 22, 1939, Siegel, having returned to Germany from the Institute for
Advanced Study Princeton, wrote to Oswald Veblen [Seg, p. 165]:
After the November pogrom, when I returned from a trip to Frankfurt,
full of nausea and anger at the bestialities in the name of the higher
honor of Germany, I saw Hasse for the first time wearing Nazi-party
insignia! It is incomprehensible to me how an intelligent and consci-
entious man can do such a thing. I then learned that the foreign-policy
occurrences of recent years had made Hasse into a convinced follower
of Hitler. He really believes that these acts of violence will result in a
blessing for the German people.
Frei and Roquette with the collaboration of Franz Lemmermeyer edited
in 2014 a new edition in English [FLR]210 of the correspondence between
Artin and Hasse which they first published in 2008 in German [FR]. They
did a fine job of mathematical commentary of the correspondence. How-
ever, an Old Russian proverb warns, A spoon of tar can spoil a barrel of
210
The following two pages comprise my review of [FLR], which was requested of me and
published on Zeentralblatt f
ur Mathematik web site on June 21, 2014 [Zbl 06214484]. On
July 7, 2014, the long-term employee Barbara Strazzabosco asked me to censor my own
review, and when I refused, removed it from the journal. The review was published yet again
[Zbl 1294.01004] on September 4, 2014, by the journals Editor-in-Chief Gert-Martin
Greuel. To those who work so hard to conceal the truth and fabricate history, I say: Dont
hold your breathtruth, like water, eventually finds its way out. A long version of my review
appeared in Geombinatorics [Soi14]. See further discussion of this sad Zentralblatt episode
in Whoever says the truth shall die! [Soi15].
honey, and the authors added a spoonful of tar to their commentary. Their
2014 book contains the following remark downgraded to a footnote (p. 15):
One of the referees of the German edition [FR] observed that Gunther
Frei described Hasse as a man of integrity while Hasse, without doubt,
had played some role in the Third Reich.
One is left with the impression that this serious criticism came to Frei and
Roquette from an anonymous referee. In fact, the opposite is true. This
remark about Frei and Roquette failing to address Hasses collaboration
with the Nazi regime came from the German Professor of History of
Mathematics at Hamburg University Karin Reich. Moreover, it is a part of
Reichs review published in the all-important Zentralblatt f ur Mathematik.
Surely, in the new 2014 edition [FLR] Frei and Roquette have addressed
Hasses application to the membership in the Nazi Party, his strong support
for Hitler, service as a Korvetten Kapit an in the Obercommando der
Kriegsmarine (The Supreme Command of the War Navy), instances of
Hasses racism and anti-Semitism, etc.? Nothing at all of the kind is
mentioned in the 2014 book. Moreover, Frei bunches Hasse with Van der
Waerden and Emmy Noether thus insinuating their equal moral standing
[FLR, p. 30]:
This virtue of never talking negatively or disparagingly about some-
one, which connects Emmy Noether with van der Waerden and Hasse,
has to be rated very highly in particular because it is so rare.
It is therefore astonishing that both Hasse and Van der Waerden
have again and again become a target of, it seems, ideologically
motivated articles. Among the insinuations were claims that they had
tolerated or even approved of the excesses and persecutions of these
[sic] times. To this end, sometimes letters and other documents were
quoted. But it is not sufficient to take something out of its context in
order to confirm a preconceived opinion. It would be necessary to look
at these documents in a wider context and to develop the ability to
interpret them correctly in consideration of the circumstances of these
[sic] times.
We have to be grateful to Prof. Frei for such an open display of his
ideological motives and preconceived opinions. As to accusing
unidentified others of his personal indiscretions, it is an old and well-tired
device based on the premise that offense is the best defense. We can forgive
Frei for dismissing many letters and other documents that stubbornly
refute Freis thesis, even though such a dismissal violates all standards of
acceptable historical scholarship. But dragging down Freis own beloved
teacher Bartel van der Waerden and universally beloved Emmy Noether to
Hasses Nazi collaborator level is not done, as the Dutch say in such cases.
There is no moral equivalence between Hasseand Van der Waerden with
Noether!
Frei apparently thinks that the best defense of Hasse accused of anti-
Semitism is to flash a positive quote from a Jew. And so he does precisely
that, in the quote that refers to very early pre-Nazi times [FLR, p. 29]:
Abraham Adolf Fraenkel, who like Hasse received his Ph.D. in Mar-
burg under the supervision of Hensel, who was Hasses colleague in
Kiel, and who later was rector of the Hebraic University in Jerusalem,
writes in his book [Fra67, p. 153]:
Personally, my experiences with Hasse were positive throughout,
and I always found him to have a flawless character.
This personlich in Freis quote, by all logic of style begs aber
(however) in the next sentence. And so I order Fraenkels memoirs
[Fra67] to check my conjecture, and voila: aber does open the very next
sentence, and the paragraph ends in Fraenkels dismay (!) over Hasses
Nazi period conduct:
However, some years later, after he [Hasse] had become a professor at
Gottingen, a crisis shook his life: one of his opponents found out that
he had a Jewish [great-] great-grandfather. Although the German racial
laws only reached as far as the grandparents and besides, in his
appearance and bearing he made a completely Aryan impression,
he felt he was in an unbearable situation. He appealed to Hitler, who
named him an honorary full Aryan along with some other outstanding,
not purely Aryan scholars. Then, he joined the National Socialist
Party, but after the war did not crave an alibi, in contrast to the
majority of opportunistic careerists. In June 1946, when I met the
most important British mathematician, G.H. Hardy and to my dismay
heard these details about Hasse, Hardy was busy writing a letter to the
British occupation authorities in Gottingen, demanding that he be
restored to his position in view of his scholarly importance, after he
had been dismissed from the University due to his party membership.
Frei is bashful about calling a spade a spade [FLR, pp. 3031]: he
repeatedly uses terms these times, very difficult time, this time,
this period. One may get an impression that Frei is writing about the
time of the Black Plague, or the Great Depression. Using at least once Nazi
Germany or The Third Reich would have been in order.
So, why do Frei and Roquette go to such a great extend in creating a

myth? Is it because for them and, sadly, for many mathematicians around
the world Mathematik uber alles and all moral concerns are negligible?
Or is it because there was a severe shortage of heroic mathematicians in
Nazi Germany? You want a hero, write, for example, about Erich Hecke.
There is an eternal dispute whether mathematics is discovered or invented.
There is no disputehistory ought not to be invented, gentlemen!
Now that I have introduced the helpers, whose Nazi affiliation Van der
Waerden knew very well, we are ready to return to Professor Van der
Waerden himself. In his March 14, 1944 letter, Van der Waerden asks
the DMV President Wilhelm Suss whether he should accept Utrecht
Universitys offer. The Utrecht offer is apparently used in this letter by
Van der Waerden as leverage for obtaining another position. Van der
Waerden really longs for a professorship at Gottingen:211
Dear Herr Colleague!
Please, allow me the liberty to approach you with the following
personal matter. In the last few years I have repeatedly been subjected
to difficulties that hurt me very much. I have repeatedly been invited to
give many presentations abroad, the first time already before this war,
but permission has every time been denied to me. I have been consid-
ered for an appointment in Munich, but the appointment did not come
off. Now the Facult at in Gottingen has nominated me; but the actual
appointment seems to miscarry again. I have just [sic]212 received an
offer from Utrecht. Faced with the necessity to decide for or against
accepting this call, the question arises whether the described above
opposition is not an indication of the fact that from the authorities side
my work in Germany is not wanted or at least not a great deal of worth
is placed in it.
I would certainly personally strongly regret that, because I spent my
best energies for Germany, which I applied to the German Science [die
deutsche Wissenschaft].213 I have written practically all my works and
211
Handwritten letter in German; ETH, Hs 652:12031.
212
Van der Waerden puts a smokescreen here. He first informed his Dekan and Rektor about
the Utrecht offer on January 4, 1943, i.e., over 14 months earlier. Moreover, on February
25, 1944, or 18 days prior to this letter, Van der Waerden has already informed his Dekan,
Rektor, and the Minister of his final decision not to accept the Utrecht offer and stay in Nazi
Germany until the end of the war.
213
The term The German Science (similarly to The German Mathematics, The German
Physics) may have had a different meaning in Van der Waerdens conception than would,
books in the German language, I have learned and also taught a major
portion of my mathematics in Germany; I have a German wife, and my
children were raised pure Germans.214
As a sign that I should not give in to my fear, I hope that I would
really receive a call to Gottingen, on which I personally place a great
deal of value.
If you in your position as a head of the DMV, can take a stand in my
question, I would ask you to get in contact with Herr Hasse (Blu-
Wannsee, Am Sandwerder 7), with whom I have spoken about this call
to Gottingen and to whom I am also sending a copy of this letter.
With my best greetings and thanks
Your very devoted
B.L.v.d. Waerden
Photo 38 B. L. van der Waerdens Germanness, a facsimile of a fragment of the letter to

Suss, Courtesy of ETH
This letter suggests that perhaps Van der Waerden does not perceive
himself as Dutch any more, but instead belongs to the German culture with
say, Science in Germany, as it was used at the time to refer to the particular Third Reichs
variety of race-based science.
214
See the facsimile of this passage in this chapter.
all his heart and soul, with his best energies for Germany applied to the
German Science, with writing practically all his works and books in the
German language, with teaching a major portion of his mathematics in
Germany, with a German wife, and with children raised pure Germans.
His son, Hans van der Waerden, shows a great insight in his comments
about this transformation in his September 10, 2010 letter to me [WaH2]:
Another of your key documents is my fathers declaration of his
attachment to Germany (German mathematics, German culture, Ger-
many as a whole). Indeed, by this time, it seems that my father, without
becoming a nationalist like Heisenberg, had come to feel like a
German citizen, losing much of his attachment to his Dutch origin.
Becoming something like an average non-fascist German, his feelings
in the years 1943/44, when the outcome of the war was uncertainand
he was pondering over the Utrecht offermight be summarized as
follows: Let us be patient, things will change, the war will be over
some day, maybe by some treaty acceptable to both sides, when they
are sufficiently exhausted and disgusted by mutual mass-murdering;
and probably after some serious defeats this horrible Nazi regime will
be overthrown and Germanymy Germanycan become again a
decent member of the international community. This, at least, was
what thousands of intellectuals were silently hoping [for], as can be
proved by numerous documents produced after the war. No reason to
believe that my father differed from them.
Back to the letter; Van der Waerden asks Wilhelm Suss to use his
influence with the Nazi authorities to help Van der Waerden materialize
his Gottingen dream, and in particular to contact the other helper Helmut
Hasse at Gottingen, to whom Van der Waerden has already written earlier
and sent a copy of this letter.
On March 31, 1944, Rektor Suss promises help not only in a personal,
human sense, but as F uhrer of the DMV:215
Very esteemed Colleague,
Your letter from 14 March, which I found waiting here yesterday after
two weeks absence, in the meantime is forcing me continually to reflect
a good deal and is giving me a lot to think about. At least I would like to
express this right away, so you do not believe that I have little regard for
your concerns or do not feel them myself. Fundamentally I can assure
you now that I will try to help you in the limited way that is possible for
215
Typed hand-signed letter in German; ETH, Hs 652:12032.
me to do so, not only in a personal, human sense, but as F uhrer of the

DMV. Mr. Hasse has just written to me too about the entire matter after
he spoke with you. I will need a few days to find a quiet moment I need to
think through the situation before I dare to say anything more precise.
Five weeks later, on May 19, 1944, Suss comes again:216
Very esteemed, dear colleague,
Weeks ago I gave a brief answer to your letter from the middle of
March. In the meantime I have repeatedly thought things over and,
also prompted by a letter from Mr. Hasse and other considerations,
have had a cause to reflect about that. It would likely be best if we
could speak about all the issues. This is one reason why I would like to
be permitted to invite you to a lecture in our little colloquium in
Freiburg. Then afterwards we could find time to consult with one
another, as I have in mind.
Thus, Suss leaves specifics of his help to a personal meeting with Van der
Waerden, and thus out of our historical reach. From his next letter217 we
only learn that on Monday, July 10, 1944, Van der Waerden is to give a talk
Babylonian and Greek Algebra at Suss Albert Ludwigs University of
Freiburg.
What about Helmut Hasse, who corresponded with both Van der Waerden
and Wilhelm Suss regarding the Dream of Gottingen? I have been able to find
two of his letters to Van der Waerden. In the letters, the sender is stamped
as Korv-Kap (Korvetten Kapit an) Prof. Dr. Hasse, Obercommando der
Kriegsmarine (The Supreme Command of the War Navy), Berlin-Wannsee.
During 19391945 Hasse has been the Commander of the department FEP
III of the German Navy Ordnance (Marinewaffenamt). On June 23, 1944,
Hasse writes to Van der Waerden on the Military Postcard with a round seal
of Obercommando der Kriegsmarine, in a handwritten beautiful Gothic
style, known as Sutterlin. He offers Van der Waerden to harness himself
in Nazi Germanys war research, and has already arranged such a war
research position with the people who can make it happen for Van der
Waerden:218
Dear Herr van der Waerden,
I am very happy that you have had such a tremendous success. Right
away I let Dr. Franz know by word of mouth and arranged with him that
216
217
218
utterlin; ETH, Hs652:11012.
Handwritten postcard in Gothic style, known as S
you should be given an official research commission from the office in

charge (BHF Bevollm achtigter der Hochfrequenzforschung) [The
Command of High Frequency Research].219 I hope that is all right
with you. To me it seems in other regards favorable for you to let
yourself be harnessed in this way into the current research projects.
I was also a while ago in Freiburg and spoke with Suss among others
about you. You will hear from him how things are in G. [Gottingen]. A
decisive change in the situation there has not happened since our last
conversation.
With fond regards and best wishes,
Your H. Hasse
Thus, Nazi War Navy Captain Hasse from the Supreme Command of the
War Navy has arranged a Nazi military research for Van der Waerden. In his
Defense after the war, Van der Waerden will write that he has never taken
part in a military researchand I certainly trust him. However, a Nazi
war-related job has been created for him by his Nazi helper Hasse. A
strong opponent of the Nazi regime220 ought not to ask the Nazis for favors.
Van der Waerden deserved a professorship at Gottingen, but his Dream of
Gottingen never materialized. His friend Werner Heisenberg, who did not
particularly dream of Gottingen, easily landed there after the war and the
6-month Farm Hall detention. Nobel Prize has its privileges.
219
Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze advises that BHF was organized through the
Reichsforschungsrat (Reich Research Council); and the Bevollm achtigter was the physi-
cist Abraham Esau from Jena. In early 1939 Esau initiated the first meeting of the Uranverein
(the Uranium Club) for the purpose of starting atomic research for Nazi Germany. During the
years 19451948, he was a prisoner of war in the Netherlands.
220
Van der Waerden will characterize himself this way in his 1946 letter to Het Parool
read on.
Chapter 21
Furniture and Scientific Books
On December 4, 1943, the war touched the life of the Van der Waerden
family. Their Leipzig house was damaged by the Allied bombardments, and
became uninhabitable. The family lost its furniture and Bartel lost his
scientific books. Bartel and Camilla apparently informed their friends of
their hardship. And the friends responded. Constantin Caratheodory imme-
diately offers help to Camilla van der Waerden. On December 11, 1943,
he writes from Munich:221
Very esteemed, dear Frau v. d. Waerden,
The most important thing is for your husband to return to work in
mathematics as soon as possible. After the disaster in Smyrna that was
the only thing that kept me above water. For the time being I am still in
possession of my books and reprints and I want to help him as well as
this goes. He only needs to write us what he needs.
Many regards,
Your devoted,
C. Caratheodory
On March 25, 1944, Caratheodory writes again, this time to Bartel:222
If you could and want to visit me in Munich, we could find in my house
many books that I do not need and which would be of use to you, and I
would be glad to give you. But we would have to pick them out
together, by letter it would be hard to do.
221
Handwritten letter in German; ETH, HS652: 10609.
222
Handwritten letter in German; ETH, HS652: 10611.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_21
200 21 Furniture and Scientific Books
German War Navys Korvetten Kapitan Professor Dr. Helmut Hasse also
replies right away. His letter from Berlin-Wannsee is dated December
15, 1943:223
Dear Herr v.d. Waerden,
I had already heard from one of my employees that your Leipzig
area was hit strongly and I had serious fears about you. Now this has
turned out to be true. I am terribly sorry for you. It must be terrible to
lose everything suddenly even when one is happy if at least the family
and you yourself have come away from it without harm, so certainly
one feels strongly about the lack of everything, from the things of
everyday life to the valuable academic books, reprints, notebooks, etc.
Obviously, I would like to help you as far as I can. A viewing of my
books could show that I possess some that you can use better while it
stands unused on my shelf . . .
Enclosed are the requested letter and the reprints that I happen to
have here with me. I would be very glad if your research, in spite of
everything would see the light of day.
On January 15, 1944, Uncle Jan van der Waerden, a brother and close
friend of the late Bartels father Dr. Theo, offers to help and take care of all
problems. When Hitler came to power in 1933, both Dr. Theo and Uncle Jan
urged Bartin vainto return to Holland.224 Uncle Jan seems to believe
that this time his prodigal nephew Bartel and his family will return and settle
in Holland:225
Ir. J. VAN DER WAERDEN226
Amsterdam, January 15, 1944
Olympiaplein 2
Dear Bartel,
We have received your letter of December 28 a.p. (Latin: past year)
[1943] in good order and I have passed it on to Aunt Anna.
You [Thee] or rather you [all] have been through quite something,
yet have been lucky to have saved yourselves. In either case you have
lost a lot of ballast, which in the past has made it bothersome to
relocate yourselves.
223
ETH, HS652: 11051.
224
We will learn about it in Chapter 26 from the correspondence between Van der Corput
and Van der Waerden.
225
A typed hand-signed letter in Dutch; ETH, Hs652: 12182.
226
Ir. stands for ingenieur, a university-educated engineer.
21 Furniture and Scientific Books 201
Now my observation is as follows: once you are all back in Holland,

I will help, i.e., find someone to help with the entire problem of your
settling down, so that all that material burden can be overcome and you
will again have freedom to move.
For now?
Of the Dutch situation you have the wrong impression: there is no
longer a market here for furniture. Whether there is any in second-
hand goods, I do not know, if any then far above any market [price].
Later Aunt Anna may explore, as this February 18th she will retire and
will then have plenty of time to look into it.
I will send you a small box compass.
Aunt Anna and I are sending you in turn the best wishes for 1944
and also by the way good luck [English in quotes].
Your uncle
J van der Waerden [signed]
However, Bartel must have disappointed Uncle Jan again, for he is not
going to settle in Holland. He just wants to import to Nazi Germany from the
occupied by Germany Holland furniture and scientific books. On
February 19, 1944, Professor Van der Waerden sends a letter to that effect
to the high authorities:227
To the Reichsminister for Science
via Rektor of Leipzig University
I ask for permission for a private trip to the Netherlands in March
1944 to buy furniture and scientific books. I have lost all my furniture
and scientific books during the air raid on Leipzig on December
4, 1943, and I have learned that in the Netherlands there are still
possibilities for replacements.
(signed) B.L.v.d. Waerden
On February 25, 1944, Van der Waerden wins Dekan Heinzs support:228
To Your Magnificence
Herr Rektor of the University
Colleague Van der Waerden asked for a permission of a private trip
to Holland in March 1944 to buy furniture and scientific books.
I endorse the request.
227
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, two copies survive: p. 70 (typed) and p. 77 (handwrit-
ten), both in German.
228
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, pp. 71 and 78.
Heil Hitler!
(signed) Heinz229
Dekan
On March 8, 1944 Rektor Wolfgang Otto Wilmanns, whom we have met
before as unfriendly toward Van der Waerden Dekan, adds his support to
those of the present Dekan and the local Dozentenf
uhrer (Fuhrer of the Nazi
Faculty Chapter at Leipzig University) in a letter to the Reichserziehungs-
minister (Minister of Science, Education and National Culture) Bernhard
Rust (September 30, 1883May 8, 1945):230
Registered.
The Dekan of the Philosophical Facult at, Department of Mathe-
matics and Natural Sciences, has endorsed the attached application.
With regards to the purpose of the travel, the Dozentenf uhrer of the
Leipzig University has no political concerns. I therefore also support
the approval of the application.
The Nazi chief educator Bernhard Rust is happy to oblige. On May
11, 1944, he sends his approval back to Leipzig Rektor Wilmanns.231 Rust
notes that according to the Foreign Office letter on travel to Holland, such a
travel is subject to the approval by the police authority at the residence of the
applicant.
The same day, May 11, 1944, Rektor Wilmanns informs Van der
Waerden of Rusts approval:232
Regarding your February 19, 1944 request for a trip to Holland, I
inform you that the Reich Education Minister has approved your trip
to Holland. Additionally I am to remark that you must also receive the
approval from the local police officials.
How does one interpret Van der Waerdens proposal to import furniture
and scientific books from Holland? Of course, the Dutch people, occupied
by Nazi Germany, needed food and heat more than scientific books and
furniture, and thus in the Netherlands there [are] still possibilities for
replacements, as Van der Waerden put it. There is nothing wrong with
replacing furniture and books, destroyed by the Allied bombardments. But
in my opinion, the situation begged much more tact. Did Professor Van der
229
Dekan Rudolf Heinz (19001960), Professor of Geology and Paleontology, member of
the Nazi party since 1932.
230
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 77 (verso).
231
232
21 Furniture and Scientific Books 203
Waerden view the Netherlands, suppressed and extorted as it was, a conve-

nient source of supplies for himself? Can one be more insensitive toward
ones Motherland?
Professor Nicolaas G. de Bruijn hypothesizes in his June 1, 2004 e-mail
to me [Bru8] that perhaps Van der Waerden had other motives and used
books and furniture as an excuse to go to Holland. But why would Van der
Waerden seek an opportunity to go to Holland, to defect from Nazi
Germany? This was highly unlikely, for he did not defect during his many
previous visits, including visits with his entire family. And if he went to
Holland this time at all, he quickly returned back to Germany.
Van der Waerdens behavior during the house fire was highly principled.
His son, Hans van der Waerden, recalls [WaH1]:
When our house was burning to the ground, caused by the great
bombing of Leipzig in September (?) 1943,233 my father was in a
team that tried to stop the fire and worked hard, but in vain, during the
whole night. For this work, he was offered a decoration, called some-
thing like Adolf-Hitler-Orden. He refused to accept it, explaining to
the officer: As a citizen of a country at war with Germany, my honour
does not allow me to accept such a decoration.
Note absence of political emotion of all of these explanations and
the appeal, instead, to strict moral and judicial correctness beyond
ideologies: this is very typical of my fathers way of reasoning.
The actions of Nazi bureaucracy are strikingly different in this 1944
episode from the 1935 threats and mistrust we have witnessed in
Chapter 16, The Cloud of Suspicion. The arch-enemy, Dekan Wilmanns,
who in 1935 secretly informed the Ministry of his suspicions about Bartel
and asked to investigate his father, Dr. Theo van der Waerden, now as the
Rektor approves the travel. Even the Nazi Dozentenbund is supportive, and
so is Reich Minister Rust. What has changed?
Actually, a lot. First of all, ever since the 1935 threats to not meddle in
German politics or else risk losing his German professorship, Van der
Waerden has kept his public mouth shut. Plus Rektor Wilmanns very
much appreciates Van der Waerdens decision to stick with Germany
through the end of the warso much so that he even suggests to the
Ministry to invite Van der Waerden and offer him a better job. Finally,
Wilmanns must have empathized with Van der Waerdens loss of the house
due to the enemies bombardments. And so now Wilmanns does not send
233
December 4, 1943.
negative hints to the F uhrer of Dozentenbund, and thus even this Nazi
organization of the university lecturers approves the travel.
Then the D-Day, June 6, 1944, arrives. Some 160,000 Allied troops land
in Normandy along a 50-mile stretch of the coastline, supported by more
than 5,000 ships and 13,000 airplanes. General Dwight D. Eisenhower
declares that we will accept nothing less than full victory. This Allied
resolve makes the outcome of the war clear.
Van der Waerdens dozen years in the Third Reich are very productive. In
addition to the books we have discussed, he has published quite a few
articles on abstract algebra, and in the latter years many articles on the
history of ancient mathematics. His main achievement of this period is the
19331938 series of 15 articles entitled Zur algebraischen Geometrie.
The end of the war finds the Van der Waerden familyBartel, Camilla,
and their three children Helga, Ilse and Hansin the Austrian countryside at
Tauplitz, near Graz, in the house of Camillas mother [Dol1]. Bartel does
not wish to return to Leipzig; we will discover his reason in Chapter 23. He
and his family allow the American liberators to transport them, as displaced
persons, from Austria to their Homeland, Holland, where Bartel thinks he
still has that job offer from Utrecht University. After all, in the two and a
half years of Utrechts courting him, he has never said noto them!
And so, in the next chapters, we will follow Professor B. L. van der
Waerden and his family to Holland.
Chapter 22
Breidablik
Photo 39 Breidablik. Courtesy of Dorith van der Waerden
Dr. Theo van der Waerden, The Red Theo, was a Member of the Second
Chamber of the Dutch Parliament from SDAP (Sociaal-Democratische
Arbeiderspartij) and a beloved politician. When in the mid-1920s his and
Dorotheas three sonsBart, Coen and Benleft their Amsterdam house to
live on their own, Theo built a house in the Town of Laren, some 20 miles
from Amsterdam, at Verlengde Engweg 10. The magnificent house even had

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_22
206 22 Breidablik
a name, proudly displayed right below the large bay window of the second
floor: Breidablik. Bens daughter Dorith explains [WaD5]: Breidablik
means wide view and comes from the Old Norwegian saga about the
gods Wodan and Donar. Coens son Theo adds [WaT1]:
Breidablik means with a wide view (the view was beautiful) and
figuratively: people with a broad view.
As we have already learned, Dr. Theo van der Waerden passed away in
1940 in Breidablik. His wife Dorothea took her own life in 1942. The
magnificent house stood emptyor so it seemed. In fact, Breidablik was
used to save lives during the German occupation. Theo continues [WaT1]:
When grandmamma died in 1942, the house was rented to people.
They hid people sought by the Nazis.
Now that the war was over and the 5-year long occupation ended,
Breidablik stood empty indeed, ready for its new tenants.
Chapter 23
Home, Bittersweet Home
Following the wars last three months, distant from all culture and barba-
rism234 in the Austrian Alps, the Van der Waerdens are liberated by the
American Armed Forces. Bartel van der Waerden is not thrilled about the
hardships of their liberation, as he describes it on July 1, 1945, in a letter to
Otto Neugebauer235 from the camp for displaced persons at the town of
Sittard in the southernmost Dutch province of Limburg:236
When the Americans had liberated us, we were like cows pushed
together in cattle wagons and transported to Holland, my wife, 3 chil-
dren and I. The transport lasted 16 days, it was horrible. The children
were of course sick but then recovered here in the camp.
Months later, in November 1945, Van der Waerden is still angry at the
Americans, whose friendly offer turned into a distasteful experience, as he
writes to Richard Courant of New York:237
234
Van der Waerden, July 1, 1945 letter in German to Otto Neugebauer; Library of Congress,
Manuscript Division; possibly from the Veblen Papers.
235
Otto E. Neugebauer (18991990), a historian of mathematics, an anti-Nazi, the founder of
Zentralblatt f
ur Mathematik (1931) and of Mathematical Reviews (1940).
236
Van der Waerden, July 1, 1945 letter to Otto Neugebauer; Library of Congress, Manu-
script Division; possibly from the Veblen Papers.
237
November 11, 1945 Van der Waerdens letter in German to Richard Courant; ETH, Hs
652:10649 (unfinished and unsent, two pages survive). The complete three-page letter was
sent on November 20, 1945. It is located in New York University Archives, Courant Papers.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_23
208 23 Home, Bittersweet Home
When the Americans came, and we were given a friendly offer to get a
direct trip to Holland, the misery began. Three weeks we spent in hard
freight cars [Guterwagen] and in dirty unsanitary camps with poorly
prepared and hard to digest food.238
Van der Waerden knows, however, that by comparison with many other
survivors, he has done all right, or perhaps, he does not wish to appear as a
whiner to his friend Richard Courant, and so he crosses out the above
description and replaces it with a moderated one:
The repatriation was less than attractive. Three weeks in freight
wagons and camps, but of course one can survive that.
On July 1, 1945, Bartel van der Waerden is about to become a free man.
He expects to get a ride from the camp to Laren very soon, for in writing on
that day from the Sittard camp to his American colleagues Lefschetz,
Veblen, and Neugebauer, he gives the Breidablik return address. Indeed
Breidablik is ready to provide the roof over the heads of Bartel and Camilla
van der Waerden and their children Helga, Ilse and Hans. In a few days the
Van der Waerdens make it to this magnificent house. Now they need to find
bread for their table.
The Van der Waerdens have had it much easier in Germany during the
war than the people of the occupied Netherlands. After the 5 years of
occupation and a devastating last winter, the so-called Hongerwinter
(The Hunger Winter), when some 30,000 people died of starvation and
malnutrition, life in the Netherlands immediately after the war is no bed of
roses. Bartel assesses it on July 1, 1945:239
Holland is freed from oppression, but it islike Germany and Aus-
triain a desolate state. Food supply is sufficient, but all other neces-
sities of life are lacking.
Postwar life in Holland must have been even harsher on the Van der
Waerdens, who have arrived in Holland with practically nothing. Even half
a year later, they are so short of bare necessities that Bartel has to step on his
(considerable) pride and on December 29, 1945, ask Richard Courant in
New York for help:240
238
Here and throughout the book, strikethrough text represents words carefully crossed out in
the original manuscript as if for the purpose to remain easily readable by Van der Waerden,
and consequently by us.
239
Van der Waerden, July 1, 1945 letter in English to Solomon Lefschetz; ETH, Hs
652:11346.
240
Van der Waerden, December 29, 1945, handwritten letter in English to Richard Courant;
23 Home, Bittersweet Home 209
I thank you very much for sending me the two volumes of Courant
Hilbert. Your kindness gives me courage to utter another wish. We are
so short of underwear and warm clothes for the children. Helga is
15, Ilse 11, Hans 8 years old. My fathers house is extremely cold.
Perhaps your wife has got some wool or things the children dont wear
anymore? They can be as old and ugly as they may: my wife can
change nearly anything into anything. And further: Would it be pos-
sible to send a sheet (of a bed)? We have only 4 sheets for 5 beds, and it
is quite impossible to get any here.
I hope that you and your wife will not be angry with me for asking
so much. If it is difficult for you, or if your people need the things more
than I, please dont send anything.
Bartel gets help from his large family. His numerous aunts send him
apples and things. On December 29, 1945, the younger brother of Barts
father Theo, Uncle Herman van der Waerden offers to make shoes for Barts
son Hans, who without shoes cannot even go out:241
Waalwijk, December 29, 1945
Dear Bart,
In a packet of apples, that Aunt Stien had Aunt Anna bring along, I
have included a short response with regard to the information that I
received via Aunts Anna and Annemarie that your son Hans had
absolutely no shoes and therefore had to stay at home during inclement
weather.
So I shared with Aunt Anna, that once I knew the size (calculating it
on paper from the footprint, standing normally on foot, holding a
pencil [straight up] on the surface) I would try, from the little bit of
leather I still have, to have a pair of high (or do you prefer low) shoes
made for him.
I would be happy to do that, but I could not do more. In case more is
needed, I will ask my former student to help me.
Furthermore, you may have to ask other people for favors, which
actually is a bit easier. Driek is not home at the moment. Once he is, I
will ask him about those books.
All is well here, and our best wishes for 1946. Heartfelt greetings to
all from all of us,
Uncle Herman
241
A letter in Dutch; ETH, HS652: 12186.
210 23 Home, Bittersweet Home
It was probably the 8-year old Hans who drew on this letter his self-
portrait and a portrait of his 11-year old Sister Ilse. Paper for drawings must
have been scarce in post-World War II Holland!
Photo 40 Double Portrait of Hans and Ilse van der Waerden, drawn by Hans van der
Waerden, Courtesy of ETH
Bartel must have added an approving curl (krul in Dutch) at the bottom of
his sons drawing.
23 Home, Bittersweet Home 211
Hans van der Waerden responded to my question about his childhood

years in Breidablik [WaH1]:
Concerning my life as a boy in Laren, which is within the period you
are interested in, is the only time I clearly remember. For me, far away
from the burden of political past, it was a wonderful time, that makes
me feel homesick ever since, as soon as I cross the border to the
Netherlands or hear someone talk my beloved childhood language.
Chapter 24
The New World or Old?
I do not mind his remaining a German Professor until the end

I do mind his remaining a German Professor at the beginning!
Otto Neugebauer242
After the war, Van der Waerden could have returned to Leipzig
University. There he would have been given a hero welcome, for he stayed
there to the end of the war. Why did he not return to Leipzig?
This question has occupied me for many years, until unexpectedly I found
the answer in Van der Waerdens letter to the new Princeton mathematics
chair Solomon Lefschetz. Even Lefschetz has never learned the answer, for
it was contained only in the handwritten copy Van der Waerden kept for
himself, in which the answer was written and then carefully crossed out so
that Van der Waerdenand consequently Ican read it! I learn hereand
nowhere elsethat Van der Waerden does not wish to go back to Leipzig
because Leipzig is now in the Russian zone of occupation, and he has no
desire to live under the Russian rule. As someone who has lived under the
Soviet rule and left as a refugee, I can relate to Van der Waerdensand his
friend Heisenbergsdistaste for the Russian tyranny. However, was the
Nazi tyranny, which they have both accepted, any better?
Furthermore, Van der Waerden does not wish to stay in Holland, Austria,
or Germany due to their desolate state. He believes he could get a position
in Holland, likely referring to his old never accepted Utrecht offer, but
prefers to come to America. Unlike in 1933, Van der Waerden is now
eagerly interested in Princeton, for he writes this letter to Lefschetz right
242
August 15, 1945, letter in English to Heinz Hopf; Hopf Nachlass, ETH, Hs 621:1041.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_24
214 24 The New World or Old?
upon his return to Holland, while still in the Sittard camp for displaced
persons, on July 1, 1945:243
Dear Professor Lefschetz!
Peace at last, thank God! By the help of our mighty allies, Holland is
freed from oppression, but it islike Germany and Austriain a
desolate state. Food supply is sufficient, but all other necessities of
life are lacking: not even railways are going. Scientific work and
international contact are practically impossible.
In March, my home in Leipzig being destroyed by bombs, I could
escape with my family from the bomb hell to Austria. From there we
have just been repatriated to Holland. Returning to Leipzig, which
belongs now to the Russian zone of occupation, seems impossible and,
even if possible, not advisable. I can get a position in Holland probably
but Holland is in a heavy political and economic crisis, as I said before.
For all these reasons I should like to go temporarily or definitively to
America.
In particular, Van der Waerden wishes to be invited to Princeton again:
Several years ago, you encouraged me to write to you if I wanted to be
invited to America. In the year 1939244 I was invited to come to
Princeton as a guest for half a year. Do you think that this invitation
could be repeated? I should enjoy very much getting into contact with
the American mathematicians again, especially with those of
Princeton. I shall accept with joy any invitation of this kind. . .
With best greetings to Veblen,245 [von] Neumann246 and the other
Princetonians.
Yours very sincerely
B.L.v.d. Waerden
The same day, July 1, 1945, Van der Waerden writes a nearly identical
letter to Oswald Veblen at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.247
243
Van der Waerden to Lefschetz, July 1, 1945; handwritten letter in English; ETH, Hs
652:11346.
244
True, but he was invited 6 years earlier, in 1933, see Chapter 13.
245
Oswald Veblen (18801960), a professor at Princeton University (19051932), the first
professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (19321950), instrumental in saving European
scientists from Hitler and bringing them to the U.S.
246
John von Neumann (Budapest, 1903Washington, DC, 1957), a mathematician and
physicist, one of the great scientists of the twentieth century, a professor at the Institute for
Advanced Study.
247
Handwritten letter in English; ETH, Hs 652:12193.
24 The New World or Old? 215
The only difference is in the justification for the desire to come to America:
in addition to a desolate state of Holland, Germany, and Austria, Van der
Waerden pays a high praise to mathematics in the United States:
I have been cut off from international mathematics, whose heart pulses
in America, for five years, and I want to regain contact as soon as
possible.
The third July 1, 1945 letter Van der Waerden sends to Otto
Neugebauer.248 The first reply, the August 20, 1945 letter from Lefschetz,
is not very cheerful:249
Dear Dr. Van der Waerden:
Your letter of July 1st reached me in due time. I was very sorry to
hear about your losing your home in Leipzig and can well understand
your desire to come to the United States (who does not feel the same
way in Europe just now?). However, we are in a complete state of flux
here and the time does not seem very propitious for bringing in
scientists from the outside, especially professors in former German
universities. I have transmitted copies of your letter to some mathe-
maticians that know you, in particular to the members of the Institute
for Advanced Study, for the pre-war invitation that you mention can
only have come from them. They have informed me that there is
nothing available at the present time. One of them did express the
hope that you would accept the position at Utrecht since, no doubt, you
are very badly needed there. I confess that I agree a little bit with him.
Yours sincerely,
[Signature]
S. Lefschetz
Van der Waerden could not have found Lefschetzs letter particularly
encouraging. No doubt he senses a thinly concealed irony behind
Lefschetzs rhetorical question: Who does not feel the same way in Europe
just now? Lefschetz is even blunter when he acknowledges that the time is
not very propitious for bringing in scientists from the outside, especially
professors in former German universities. Lefschetz seems to imply that
Van der Waerden has made a wrong choice by staying in Nazi Germany,
and now has to pay the price for being on the wrong side of the divide during
the war. In Lefschetzs defense one should note that he treated harshly and
248
Handwritten letter in German; Library of Congress. Manuscript Division; possibly from
the Veblen Papers.
249
Typed on Princeton stationary in English and hand-signed; ETH, Hs 652:11347.
sarcastically the vast majority of humans around him. Even in Lefschetzs

1973 eulogy [Hod] Sir William Hodge quotes the following Princeton
students song:
Heres to Lefschetz (Solomon L.)
Whos as argumentative as hell,
When hes at last beneath the sod,
Then hell start to heckle God.
I must add that in his reply Lefschetz is factually wrong: not only did the
1933 invitation come from Princeton University and not from the Institute
for Advanced Study, but Lefschetz himself attended the meeting of the
Princetons Research Committee that decided to invite Van der Waerden!
A few months later Princeton starts looking for an algebraist, but
Lefschetz does not even inform Van der Waerden, for he has someone
else in mind; he is willing to even curb his usual sarcasm and charm that
someone. On Wednesday, October 17, 1945 Lefschetz writes to the alge-
braist of his choice, who at that time is at Indiana University,
Bloomington:250
Dear Artin,
Owing to recent losses in our department,251 to which now must be
added Wedderburns252 retirement (soon to be official), I feel very
strongly that we should add a major scientist to our staff. You are the
first person of whom I thought in this connection and, if possible, I
would just as soon not go further in my search. Your achievements as a
250
Typed letter in English; Personnel File of Emil Artin, Princeton University.
251
Lefschetz likely refers here to the July 1, 1945 retirement of the long-term professor,
mathematics department chair, and dean of graduate school Luther Pfahler Eisenhart, and the
September 1945 departure of (associate) professor Henri Frederic Bohnenblust for Indiana.
252
Joseph Henry Maclagan Wedderburn (February 2, 1882, ScotlandOctober 9, 1948,
Princeton), a Scottish-born algebraist and Princeton professor. On the occasion of his
retirement, on October 29, 1945 all members of Mathematics Department of Princeton
signed the following resolution, drawn by A. W. Tucker and A. Church: RESOLVED that
the Department of Mathematics record its appreciation of the long and distinguished service
of Professor J. H. M. Wedderburn as a member of the faculty of Princeton University and its
appreciation of the signal contribution he has made to the reputation of the Department by his
outstanding mathematical research and his unstinted efforts as editor of the Annals of
Mathematics. It is the hope of his colleagues that retirement will not bring these contributions
to an end but that he will continue to add to scientific life of the Department for many years to
come.
mathematician, together with your well-known sympathetic influence

on the younger men, do indeed make you the man of the hour.253
Two days later, on October 21, 1945, Emil Artin happily responds:254
Dear Lefschetz:
It is with very great joy that I received your letter and I feel deeply
honored that you are thinking of me. I would not be a mathematician if
I would not feel greatly interested and attracted by a chance to go to
Princeton. Princeton is now after all the center of all mathematics.255
As if especially for the sake of the book you are reading, Artin then asks:
How did the case of Van der Waerden go on after his letter? I am here
so isolated that I get the news only after long detours. I[s] something
specific known of the German mathematicians?
Artins question shows that Lefschetz has widely circulated Van der
Waerdens July 1, 1945 letter asking for a Princeton job, likely together
with Lefschetzs sarcastic reply. On October 27, 1945, Lefschetz informs
Artin that Van der Waerden has not been invited to Princeton:256
Nothing has been done regarding Van der Waerdennothing, at least
from this side.
Surprisingly, Lefschetz then shows knowledge of the secret detention in
Farm Hall, England, of Heisenberg and other leading German physicists,
who during the war were involved in research on atomic bomb and reactor
(we will talk much more about this detention later in the book):
We have no information about German mathematicians whatsoever. I
did learn two days ago that Heisenberg and all the nuclear physicists
253
Having witnessed Solomon Lefschetzs sarcastic style of communication, you may think
that his admiration for Artin made him almost gentle. In fact, it was the need that must have
tempered the distempered Lefschetz. For example, his displeasure with Artins perceived
slowness in deciding to leave Germany, Lefschetz expressed as follows in his April 3, 1937
letter to Courant: I frankly confess that I do not understand what Artin is so fussy aboutor
does he like the Nazis better than most of us imagine? (New York University Archives,
Courant Papers).
254
Handwritten letter in English; Personnel File of Emil Artin, Princeton University.
255
The LefschetzArtin correspondence was kept entirely confidential, as Lefschetz put it
in his October 17, 1945 letter. The Mathematics Department of Princeton was briefed on
Artins acceptance only at the March 22, 1946 faculty meeting, 2 days after Artins formal
acceptance telegram: I GLADLY ACCEPT OFFER. AND HAPPY TO COME.
GREETINGS ARTIN; Personnel File of Emil Artin, Princeton University.
256
Typed letter in English; Personnel File of Emil Artin, Princeton University.
are being detained though well treated. Some more of maladie du

sie`cle [disease of the century].
Before replies from America could arrive, Van der Waerden writes two
letters to his good friend Heinz Hopf, a (Jewish) German mathematician,
now a Swiss citizen and a professor at the ETH in Zurich.257 I have been
unable to locate these letters, but according to Hopfs August 3, 1945
reply,258 they were written on July 19 and 21, 1945. Hopf opens his letter
with praising Switzerland and its neutrality:
Here in Switzerland one is of course less fanatical, exactly this in my
opinion, a particularly important and fortunate consequence of our
neutrality. . .
At the end of the letter Hopf adds his personal tribute to Switzerland:
My wife and I are doing fine. . . we are happy that we are Swiss.
It is plausible that this praise of the Swiss neutrality and Hopfs happiness
with Swiss citizenship planted in Van der Waerden a seed of interest in
living in Switzerland. Hopf is unhappy that the Swiss consideras they
should in my opinionHitlerism to be a part of the German culture:
I beg you, by the way, not to misunderstand the above comment about
neutrality, the open opinions here are completely unified against Ger-
many, the bitterness about the Nazis is gigantic, but the boundaries
between Hitlerism and the German culture are not always observed
here either.
As the author of this narrative, I am compelled to ask: Professor Hopf,
and what are the alleged boundaries? Wasnt Nazism (to a great regret of so
many) a product and part of the German culture every bit as Marxism or the
music of J.S. Bach and Beethoven were? Of course, there is high culture and
low culture, but both of them are parts of culture in a broader sense of the
word, and who canor shouldcleanly split them apart?
Nevertheless, Hopf is optimistic that these uncertain boundaries would
not affect the Swiss mathematicians perception of Van der Waerden:
I believe that I can answer the question How would Swiss mathema-
ticians today personally view you?this way: Probably almost all,
perhaps, actually all, would see in you only an eminent intellectual; for
257
Heinz Hopf (18941971), one of the worlds leading topologists, professor at ETH since
1931, from a Jewish German family.
258
those with real interest in the matter, it has become evident during the
last few years across the borders, that you have been no Nazi, and
indeed that the Nazis could not stand you. Caratheodorys situation
over the last few years has been exactly the same as yours; and
numerous Swiss mathematicians have dedicated their papers to his
70th birthday.
Hopf understands the liability of Van der Waerdens spending the entire
Nazi era in Germany, including 5 years of the German occupation of
Holland, and offers Van der Waerden a line of defense:
One would perhaps argue this way: he has worked as a professor in
Germany even during a period of abuse of his homeland by Germany
because he believed that he could thus contribute somewhat to the
saving of the culture in Europe; we respect that; but he must be
consistent and extend this attempt to salvaging culture in Germany. I
believe it would be very difficult to argue against this argument.
It is unclear whether Hopf sincerely believes that one could save the
German culture by serving and thus empowering the Nazi state. Van der
Waerden will indeed use this line of defense in Holland, as we will soon see,
but not altogether successfully. Hopf meanwhile admits poor prospects for
finding a job in Switzerland:
The prospects of finding a job in Switzerland are at the moment
very slim.
And so Hopf suggests Van der Waerden to consider a job in Germany,
advice Van der Waerden probably does not appreciate:
I believe that for someone who believes himself to be youthful, has a
strong ability to work and has energy, it could really be satisfying to
work right now in Germany in pure science. Perhaps, because the
situation in Germany is now so miserable and possibly without hope
that the younger powers could more intensively work on pure intel-
lectual and cultural ideas, which they have not been able to do before,
or even anywhere else.
Hopf also advises exploring employment opportunities in the U.S.:
I would in this situation also write to America, perhaps to Weyl.259
(By the way, I wrote to Neugebauer, a few days ago, right after
Kloostermans visit, I wrote to him briefly about you.)
259
Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl (18851955), professor at ETH (19131930), Gottingen
(19301933) and the Institute for Advanced Study (19331952).
Finally, Hopf scolds the Dutch for not immediately jumping on the
opportunity to hire Van der Waerden:
When the Dutch, whom you can approach with clean conscience and
offer them your services, do not want you, then in my opinion they hurt
themselves, and that is their business. I consider it certain that in a few
years, when the waves calm down a bit, somewhere in the world you
will work again in the professionassuming naturally that you with
your family can economically survive until then, which I am not sure
about.
Van der Waerden will quote these lines to the Dutch almost immediately,
within 2 weeks. Four and a half months later, in his next letter of December
18, 1945, Heinz Hopf explains his extremely long silence by his inability to
invite Van der Waerden even for a short visit. What has been the reason for
not writing to the friend in need? In 1945 the Swiss valued their neutrality
more than Van der Waerdens expertise:260
All my attempts to invite you here for a few presentations ended up
without success. It was very strictly suggested to avoid right from the
beginning any kind of conflicts with friendly governments. I am not
the only one here who regrets this.
So, there was, after all, a price for Swiss neutrality: in 1945 Switzerland
did not allow even a brief visit to the former Nazi Germany Professor Van
der Waerden. As we will see later in this book, the Swiss will drop their
caution the very next year.
Sometime in JulyAugust 1945, Hopf writes about Van der Waerdens
plight to his friend and famous German historian of mathematics Otto
Neugebauer, who now lives in the U.S. and edits Mathematical Reviews
that he created in 1940 after Springer-Verlag put pressure on Neugebauer to
Nazify Zentralblatt f ur Mathematik. On August 15, 1945 Neugebauer
replies to Heinz Hopf in English as follows:261
I have heard directly from Van der Waerden. I do not mind his
remaining a German Professor until the endI do mind his remaining
a German Professor at the beginning! However, I feel very differently
than the Lord and [thus] I do not intend to do anything positive or
negative.
260
ETH, Hs 652:11130.
261
Heinz Hopf Nachlass, ETH, Hs 621:1041.
Meanwhile, Van der Waerden has heard neither from Hopf (since early
August) or from Neugebauer. Thus, on November 11, 1945, Van der
Waerden writes to his early mentor and friend Richard Courant in
New York about the bombings of the late months of the war, his tough
repatriation, and his new job at Royal Dutch Oil, also known as Royal Dutch
Shell, or simply Shell.262 On December 13, 1945, Courant sends a guarded
reply in English. Before deciding whether to renew their old friendship,
Courant desires to know why Van der Waerden has chosen to stay in Nazi
Germany:263
I wish very much that there were an opportunity of talking to you
personally and for that matter to other old friends who have been in
Germany during the war. Of course, so much has happened in the
meantime that in many cases much will have to be explained before
one can resume where one left off. Your friends in America, for
example, could not understand why you as a Dutchman chose to stay
with the Nazis.
Moreover, Courant makes his request for an explanation public: at the top
of the letter, I see a handwritten inscription:
cc. sent to: Reinhold Baer,264 U. of Ill. Urbana
Herman WeylInst. for Advanced Study Princeton
Veblen
Courants papers include both, Van der Waerdens November 20, 1945,
handwritten letter and its typewritten copy, which suggests that Courant had
it typed and copies sent to the same addressees as his reply. As Lefschetz
before him, Courant too apparently believes that Van der Waerden made the
wrong choice. On December 20, 2004 I had an opportunity to ask over the
phone Ernest Courant,265 the elder son of Richard Courant and a prominent
nuclear physicist in his own rights, a natural question: What did your father
think about Van der Waerden? He replied as follows, as I jotted down his
words:
262
Handwritten letter in German; ETH, Hs 652:10649.
263
264
Reinhold Baer (1902, Berlin1979, Zurich), a famous group theorist, who was a professor
at University of Illinois (19381956), and then at Frankfurt.
265
Ernest David Courant, born in 1920 in Germany, came to the U.S. in 1934 with his family;
a nuclear physicist, member of the National Academy of Sciences, distinguished scientist
emeritus of Brookhaven National Laboratory.
He [Richard Courant] considered him [Van der Waerden] a great

mathematician, and was a bit critical of him for being perhaps too
comfortable in Nazi Germany.
Thus, America and Switzerland have to wait. Beggars could not be
choosers, and so Dr. Van der Waerden is nowfinallywilling to seriously
entertain a professorship in his desolate (his word) Homeland. Van der
Waerden is up for big surprises, as we will see in the next few chapters. He
has returned to his homeland as if an alien, not understanding the psyche and
the mood of the Dutch people, who experienced horrific 5 years of occupa-
tion. As the historian Louis de Jong sums up [Jon],
The Germans succeeded by and large in exploiting the economic
potential of the Netherlands, and they succeeded in deporting most
of the countrys Jews.
I should add, some 80 % of the Dutch Jews did not survive the war and
the Holocaust. De Jong continues,
Their [Germans] attempt at Nazification, however, failed misera-
bly,266 and they were totally unable to prevent the growth of a
flourishing underground movement, whose three main achievements
were to keep up peoples morale (principally through the underground
press); to care for some hundreds of thousands [!] of people who were
living in hiding; and to provide the Allies with vital military informa-
tion . . .
Nations of heroes do not exist. But there were among the Dutch tens
of thousands of ordinary human beings, men and women, who did save
the countrys soul.
266
De Jong specifies elsewhere in his book (p. 33), The Dutch Nazi movement never won
the support of more than 112 % of the Dutch population.
Chapter 25
The Defense
Some of the stories are difficult to believe. Part of all this is the way
people always talk about their past. The reasons they give for their
behaviour in the past may be just inventions, colored by how history
took its course.
Van der Waerden expects that the Utrecht chair, first offered to him in
December of 1942, is still waiting for him. He also does not mind a chair at
Amsterdam. However, following the liberation, the Militair Gezag (Military
Authority) installed Commissie van Herstel at each of the five Dutch
universities, which gradually became known as College van Herstel (Recov-
ery Board, or Restoration Board), formed to advise the Military Authority
on how to act against collaborators and other pro-German professors and
staff members, and when the university could be reopened. It was expected
that all suspect staff would be removed in a few months time. In fact, the
removal took much longer. I am grateful to Dr. Peter Jan Knegtmans, the
University Historian at the University of Amsterdam, for the information on
College van Herstel and the workings of the City of Amsterdam, contained
in his e-mails [Kne4] and [Kne5] to me. The Dutch post-war educational and
governmental systems were a jungle, and it has been invaluable to have
such a uniquely qualified jungle guide!
267
June 1, 2004 [Bru8].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_25
224 25 The Defense
Utrecht Universitys College van Herstel en Zuivering (Board of Recov-

ery and Purification), as it was called there, was installed on 18 June
1945,268 while the University of Amsterdams College van Herstel (Board
of Recovery) was installed on June 8th, 1945.269 At the time the University
of Amsterdam belonged to the City. Yet B. en W., the Executive, consisting
of the Burgemeester en Wethouders (mayor and at the time 6 aldermen),
could not appoint professors; only the city council that numbered 45 could
appoint them. Moreover, an appointment of a professor needed a Royal
assent. The Queen could not give her assent if the government did not
submit to her a request for assent. On the other hand, the government
would not submit a request for assent if there was even a slight chance
that the Queen would refuse it, as she had a few times during those postwar
years.
Originally Dutch, Professor of History of Mathematics at the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology Dirk J. Struik (18942000) maintained close
ties with the leading Dutch colleagues, and based the following 1995
statement to me [Str] on a letter he had received from Jan A. Schouten in
19451946:
Though he [Van der Waerden] stayed at Leipzig University during the
Hitler days, he was able to protect Jewish and left wing students.270
This was brought out after the war when his behavior in Leipzig was
scrutinized by a commission of his peers in the Netherlands. He was
entirely exonerated.
268
It consisted of Jonkheer Mr. Dr L.H.N. Bosch ridder van Rosenthal, president (and also
former president, 19301940, until he was dismissed during the war by the German author-
ities); Dr. H.W. Stenvers; Dr. A.J. Boekelman; and Miss Marie-Anne Tellegen as an extra
member, who must have combined this appointment with her job as director of the Queens
Cabinet. The Utrecht College van Herstel en Zuivering was converted into the (normal)
College van Curatoren in June 1946.
269
It consisted of the neurologist Prof. C. T. van Valkenburg, who during the German
occupation initiated the resistance of general doctors and medical specialists; the architect
Wieger Bruin who had been an active member of the resistance movement among artists; and
Gijs van Hall, a fundraiser and banker for the resistance, who later became mayor of
Amsterdam. It was to investigate staff against whom suspicion had risen, but in fact it did
so only in cases of doubt and then very superficially due to its acting at the same time as the
College van Curatoren. It was converted and extended into the College van Curatoren on
May 19, 1947.
270
As we have seen in Chapters 15 and 16, Van der Waerden spoke against firing of
Leipzigs Jewish professors in May 1935, and published papers of Jewish authors in the
Annalen until 1940. I have found no evidence of him protecting Jewish and left wing
students and no statement by Van der Waerden himself to this effect.
25 The Defense 225
On April 12, 1995, I quoted this statement in my letter to Professor Van

der Waerden and asked him to describe for me in detail this commission of
his peers, its membership and charge. On April 24, 1995, Van der Waerden
mailed his reply [Wae26] (see the facsimile of his letter in this chapter):
Before your letter came, I did not know that a commission was formed
to investigate my behaviour during the Nazi times.
Photo 41 B.L. van der Waerden, April 24, 1995 letter to Alexander Soifer
Many years later I have discovered that the University of Amsterdams

College van Herstel (CvH) did investigate Van der Waerden, and the City
executive board, B.&W., wrote about Van der Waerden to CvH, a
de-Nazification board.271 Van der Waerden knew about the investigations,
for on July 20, 1945, just a few weeks after he returned to Holland, he wrote
271
Dr Knegtmans [Kne2] refers to the April 17, 1946 letter from B. en W. of Amsterdam to
CvH, Archief Curatoren nr 369, which says that the [Van der Waerdens] appointment did
not go through also because the Minister had told the City Council beforehand that he would
not ratify it.
226 25 The Defense
in his own hand his Defense and forwarded it to the Amsterdams College
van Herstel, and also to the Utrechts College van Herstel en Zuivering.272
This Van der Waerdens defense of his reasons for staying in Nazi Germany,
and his activities in the Third Reich is a most important testimony, never
discussed before 2004 [Soi6]. I feel compelled to include the translation of
this Dutch handwritten document in its entirety, with my commentaries, and
also reproduce its facsimile in this chapter:273
Defense
Since 1931 I have been a Professor at Leipzig University. The
following serves as an explanation as to why I stayed there until 1945:
1) From 1933 till 1940 I considered it to be my most important duty
to help defend the European culture, and most especially science,
against the culture-destroying National Socialism. That is why in
1933 I traveled to Berlin and Gottingen to protest the boycott of
Landaus classes by Gottingen Nazi students. In 1934274 Heisenberg
and I strongly protested against the dismissal of 4 Jews in a faculty
meeting at Leipzig. Because of that I got a reprimand by the Saxon
Government (Untschmann275) and an admonition that as a foreigner I
should not interfere in German politics. What my wife and I have
personally done to help Jewish friends with their emigration is not
relevant here, but what is, is that as [an] editor of the Math. Annalen I
accepted until 1942 articles of Jews and J udische Mischlinge,276
furthermore that in the Gelbe Sammlung [Yellow Series] of Springer
which I was partially responsible for, an important work by a Jewish
author appeared in 1937 (Courant-Hilbert, Methoden der
Mathematischen Physik II), and that in 1941 I was the Ph.D. advisor
272
On August 14, 1945, the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Utrecht University
forwarded this document to de Commissie tot Herstel en Zuivering, when they recommended
van der Waerden as their first choice for J. A. Barraus position. Utrecht University, Archive
of the Faculty of Mathematics, Correspondence, 1945.
273
Handwritten two-page document in Dutch; Utrecht University, Archive of the Faculty of
Mathematics, Correspondence, 1945. This was an important document for Dr. Van der
Waerden: even half a year later, on January 22, 1946, he included a copy of The Defense
in a letter to his friend Hans Freudenthal. Another copy of this document is held at RANH,
Papers of Hans Freudenthal, mathematician, 19061990, inv. nr. 89.
274
True, but it took place in May 1935, see Chapter 15.
275
This must be the last name of an official in the Saxon Government.
276
In this Dutch document, this Nazi term for people of Jewish and Aryan mixed blood,
appears in German in quotation marks.
25 The Defense 227
of a non-Aryan. In 1936,277 when my esteemed teacher Emmy Noether

died, I pointed out the great merits of this Jewish woman.
I could not have known in advance that all this would be like
punching a brick wall [vechten tegen de bierkaai] and that the
Nazis would drag the entire German culture with them into their
destruction. I still hoped that the German people would finally see
reason and would put an end to the gangster regime. Meanwhile my
work was not altogether for nothing because my students, such as
[Herbert] Seifert, Hans Richter, Wei-Liang Chow, Li En-Po, Wintgen,
etc., whose dissertations were accepted in the Math. Annalen, have
done an excellent work at Leipzig. If I had not been in Germany, these
[students] would likely not have encountered the problems that I have
given them.
Van der Waerden is meticulous in adhering to the facts of his activities
under the Third Reich. The record of his noble and courageous behavior
towards the Jews during the early Nazi years can withstand the most
prejudiced scrutiny. However, Van der Waerden is not disclosing the
whole truth. For example, he does not mention his statement about being a
full-blooded Aryan (1933), his oath of allegiance to Hitler (1934), use of
the recommended Heil Hitler! salute in his letters and lectures, and the
fact that his public criticism of the regime ended in 1935.
As Heinz Hopf has advised, Van der Waerden justifies his staying in Nazi
Germany by stating that it was his most important duty to help defend the
European culture, and most especially science, against the culture
destroying National Socialism. However, as is evident from Hopfs reflec-
tion on the public opinion in Switzerland, many of Van der Waerdens
contemporaries found it difficult to separate German culture from Hit-
lerism. Given Van der Waerdens scruples regarding the gangster-
regime (his words), his fellow scientiststhen and nowconsidered his
willingness to serve that regime nave at best and hypocritical at worst. Van
der Waerden continues his Defense with part 2, dedicated to the 5 years of
the German occupation of Holland:
This all may serve for closer understanding of my attitude towards the
Nazis. What I should explain to the Dutch people is, however, not my
actions before 1940, but those after the Netherlands had been attacked
by Germany.
277
True, but this brave publication in Mathematische Annalen took place in 1935: Vol.
111, pp. 469474.
228 25 The Defense
2) From 1940 to 1945. After the breakout of the war with the
Netherlands, I was first locked up and then released on the condition
that I do not leave Germany. So I was practically in the same position
as those who were forced laborers in Germany.
If I had given up my position, then I would have probably been
forced to work in an ammunitions factory.
To say that a university full professor was in the same position as those
who were forced laborers in Germany, was to make a dramatic exaggera-
tion, and it likely appeared as such to the Dutch who read the Defense.
I have never worked for the Wehrmacht [the German Army], I have
never given a class or worked on things that could be used for military
purposes.
While we have already learned from the June 23, 1944, postcard, that
German War Navy Korvetten Kapit an Prof. Dr. Helmut Hasse had arranged
a war related job for Van der Waerden in the Command of High Frequency
Research, I have no reason to think that Van der Waerden accepted that war
related job.
However, Van der Waerden has taught students, many of whom may
have served the Wehrmacht and some definitely worked on things that
could be used for military purposes. For example, Professor of History of
Mathematics at Frankfurt University Moritz Epple informs us in his report
on this manuscript that Herbert Seifert, Ph.D. 1932 under Van der Waerden,
volunteered for war work at the Institut fur Gasdynamik, which was a part
of Luftfahrtforschungsanstalt Hermann Goring at Braunschweig, one of the
major facilities of aviation research in Nazi Germany, built between 1936
and 1938 . . . It was one of the most important places in Nazi Germany for
developing knowledge about supersonic aircraft.
Besides, by working in Nazi Germanys Civil Service, Van der Waerden
contributed to the gangster regime, and lent his credibility and acclaim as
a distinguished scientist to that of the Third Reich.
In 1943278 the Faculteit of Physics and Mathematics at Utrecht asked
me whether I would accept an appointment as a Professor there. I
asked them to postpone the matter if possible until after the war,
because I did not want to be appointed by the Van Dam department.
We have already discussed the Utrecht offer in Chapter 19. It suffices to
say here that coming home at the Utrecht Faculty request, even with the
278
Actually, he was first asked in December 1942.
25 The Defense 229
approval by the Nazi-collaborating Minister Jan van Dam, would have been
much better for Van der Waerdens reputation in his Homeland and the rest
of the world than continuing to serve the Third Reich to the end.
I do not need to add to this that I have never been a member of any NS
[National Socialist] organization or have sympathized with them,
because that is self-evident for a decent thinking human being. It
was commonly known in Germany that I was not a Nazi and because
of that the government distrusted me and did not give me permission to
go to the Volta Congress in Rome in 1939, and to give lectures in
Hungary or to French prisoners of war, or to partake in the congress of
mathematicians in Rome.
This is true, however, the Nazi government did allow Professor Van der
Waerden to travel inside and outside Germany: for example, to travel to
Holland in 1933, 1935, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1942, and possibly in 1944.
Moreover, on some of these trips, for example in 1935 and 1939, he was
accompanied by his whole family.
230 25 The Defense
Photo 42 B.L. van der Waerden, Defense, p. 1; Courtesy of RANH

25 The Defense 231
Photo 43 B.L. van der Waerden, Defense, p. 2; Courtesy of RANH

232 25 The Defense
The Faculty at Munich suggested me as a successor to Caratheodory,

but the party authorities declared me untragbar [intolerable], and the
appointment did not happen.
Also my wife, who is Austrian,279 has been strongly opposed to the
Nazi regime from the very beginning.
Laren, N-H [North-Holland], 20 July 1945 B.L.v.d. Waerden
Indeed, in the Munich deliberations Van der Waerden was perceived as a
philo-Semite, not subscribing to the Nazi ideology of anti-Semitism, and
this must have cost him the Munich job as we have seen in Chapter 16. We
will attempt to gain some insight into Mrs. Camilla van der Waerdens
views in the next chapter.
With the Defense submitted, Bartel van der Waerden hoped to get a
professorship at Utrecht or Amsterdam. Van der Corput was the key man to
this end.
279
As we have seen, Mrs. Camilla Van der Waerden is identified by her husband sometimes
as Austrian, other times as German. Let us clarify these attributions. She was born in Austria.
When Austria was annexed into the Third Reich on 12 March 1938, under the so-called

Anschluss Osterreichs, Mrs. Van der Waerden became a citizen of the Third Reich, and in
that sense, a German.
Chapter 26
Van der Waerden and Van der Corput:
Dialog in Letters
Why would I go to Holland where the oppression became so intoler-

able and where every fruitful scientific research was impossible?
It was not at all fitting for a Dutchman to make mathematics in

Germany flourish in those years when Germany was preparing for war
and was kicking Jews from every position and place.
Johannes G. van der Corput281
Be assured that it is my sincere desire to keep you for the Father-

land and for higher education.
Johannes G. van der Corput282
280
July 31, 1945 letter to Van der Corput; ETH, Hs 652: 12160.
281
August 20, 1945 letter to Van der Waerden; ETH, Hs 652: 12161.
282
August 28, 1945 letter to Van der Waerden; ETH, Hs 652: 12162.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_26
234 26 Van der Waerden and Van der Corput: Dialog in Letters
Photo 44 Johannes Gualtherus van der Corput, Courtesy of Prof. Sibrand Poppema, Pres-
ident of Groningen University
Johannes Gualtherus van der Corput (18901975) was a professor of

mathematics at Groningen (19231946) and Amsterdam (19461954). Dur-
ing the war and the German occupation of Holland he took an active part in
the Dutch underground, and in 1945 spent a week in a Nazi jail for hiding
people from the occupiers in his house. According to Dr. Knegtmans (June
26 Van der Waerden and Van der Corput: Dialog in Letters 235
10, 2004 e-mail to me [Kne7]), Van der Corput belonged to a small group
of Groningen professors that had developed some ideas about the post-war
university in the sense that it had to become a moral community that would
be able to withstand any authoritarian threat or defiance. Van der Leeuw, the
first post-war Minister of Education, had belonged to the same group.
Prof. Dr. Gerardus J. van der Leeuw, Minister (19451946) of Education,
Culture and Sciences (Onderwijs, Kunsten en Wetenschappen) appointed
J. G. van der Corput to be the chair of the Committee for the Coordination
and Reorganization of Higher Education in Mathematics in The Netherlands
(De Commissie tot Coordinatie van het Hooger Onderwijs in de Wiskunde in
Nederland). Members of the committee were J. G. van der Corput, D. van
Dantzig, J. A. Schouten, J. F. Koksma, H. A. Kramers, and M. G. J. Minnaert.
The Committee became known as The Van der Corput Committee. In 1946
Van der Corput will become one of the founders and the first director of the
Mathematisch Centrum (Mathematics Center) in Amsterdam.283
Van der Corput knew Van der Waerden from their 19281931 years
working together at Groningen, where young Bartel learned quite a bit of
mathematics from him [Dol1]. Van der Corput hosted Van der Waerdens
October 1014, 1938 visit for giving talks at Groningen University.284 The
colleagues corresponded even during the war and the German occupation of
Holland. In early 1944, Van der Corput recommended the book about the
history of sciences in antiquity, which Van der Waerden had been writing, to
the Dutch publisher J. Noorduijn en Zoon N.V.Gorinchem.285 Eventually,
in 1954, this book was published in Dutch, and in 1961 in English in an
expanded beautiful edition as Science Awakening [Wae15].
Right after the war, the friends lived in an absolute sense not far from
each other, Van der Corput in Groningen and Van der Waerden in Laren
near Amsterdam, but on the Dutch scale the trip from Laren (Amsterdam) to
Groningen was a major journey. And so, to our good historical fortune, their
preferred means of communication were letters. Van der Waerden saved
handwritten copies of his own letters (the first plain paper copier, Xerox
914, was invented only in 1959!) and Van der Corputs original letters; they
are now preserved at the ETH Archive in Zurich.
A voluminous file of their 1945 correspondence, lying in front of me as I
am writing these lines, is an invaluable resource for understanding their
283
The Center still functions today, but under a new name CWI, Centrum voor Wiskunde en
Informatica (Center for Mathematics and Computer Science).
284
Universitatsarchiv Leipzig, PA 70, p. 42 (Van der Waerdens report to the Rektor of
Leipzig University about this trip).
285
ETH, Hs 652: 12156.
views on scholars moral standards during the Nazi era and the occupation
of Holland, and, more generally, the moral dilemmas posed by the war and
its aftermath. I will let the correspondents do most of the talking. A number
of different handwritten versions of some of these letters exist. Some copies
were sent to third parties, such as Van der Waerdens close friend and fellow
mathematician Hans Freudenthal (19051990). All this indicates that Van
der Waerden took this exchange extremely seriously, as did Van der Corput.
On July 29, 1945 Van der Corput sends Van der Waerden a letter in which
he briefs his friend on his new leading role in the mathematical higher
education of the Netherlands:286
I have been appointed chairman of a commission to reorganize higher
education in mathematics in the Netherlands, which will have as its
primary duty to offer advice for the filling of vacancies in mathematics.
Van der Corput realizes that his new authority to advise Minister Van der
Leeuw, calls for a new responsibility, and so he continues with probing
questions:
Your letter made me do a lot of thinking. I never understood why you
stayed in Germany between 1933 and 1940,287 and also why after
10 May 1940 [the day Nazi Germany attacked the Netherlands] you
did not return to the Netherlands as so many succeeded in doing, if
need be to go into hiding here [some hundreds of thousands of people
. . . were living in hiding288]. Rumors went around about you that you
were not on our side any more, at least not entirely. That could have
been slander. I would find it important if you could explain to me the
situation completely and in all honesty.
Van der Corput concludes by sharing his own resistance activities:
People were in hiding in my house throughout the entire war, 23 in
total, of which 5 were Jews; I was a representative at Groningen of the
Professors Resistance Group. When I was arrested in February 1945,
they found two people in hiding in my house, of which one was Jewish.
I was suffering from angina and was released from prison after a
week. My house and all my furniture were impounded [by the author-
ities] but we moved back on the day of liberation . . . I was on the
286
Typed hand-signed letter in Dutch; ETH, Hs 652: 12159.
287
Indeed, even some Germans went into exile: Between 1933 and 1941, an estimated
35,000 non-Jewish Germans, not all of them Socialists, went into exile [Scho, p. xiii].
288
[Jon].
Board of Vrij-Nederland [Free Netherlands]289 and was arrested for

disseminating illegal literature.
Van der Waerden replies on July 31, 1945.290 He expresses delight with his
friend being in charge of all Dutch university appointments in mathematics,
including Van der Waerdens own appointmentperhaps, too much of a
delightbut then, understandably, carefully crosses most of the delight out:291
I am very happy to be able to direct my defense to the right address
against the things that have been blamed on me completely unexpect-
edly from all sides. So you are chairman of the commission which will
decide on the future occupation of the professorships of mathematics,
perfect! An illegal work of the highest order and what is more,
benefitting me. Delightful!
From the following lines we discover how the writing of the Defense
has come about. We also learn that Van der Waerden has attached a copy of
the Defense to this letter:
I have heard from Pannekoek292 and Clay293 that people were thinking
about suggesting me for the Weitzenbock294 vacancy at Amsterdam.
When I spoke with Freudenthal about it and told him that I was looking
forward to possible collaboration with him, he firstly pointed out the
difficulties, especially from students circles, that could be expected,
and for the aspersions that would be cast upon me because of my stay
in Germany after 1933. He advised me to write down my defense,
which I had presented to him verbally. I have done it, and after
conversations with others, I have added a few more things . . . In this
situation you now come forward and ask for my justification. Voila! I
hereby include a copy of the piece.295
289
Vrij Nederland, an underground newspaper.
290
Handwritten in Dutch letter; ETH, Hs 652: 12160.
291
Ibid.
292
Antonie (Anton) Pannekoek (18731960), Professor of Astronomy at the University of
Amsterdam and a well-known Marxist theorist.
293
Born Jacob Claij (18821955), a major supporter of Van der Waerdens appointment,
Professor of Physics at the University of Amsterdam, 19291953, who played a major role in
the reconstruction of applied scientific research in the Netherlands after W.W.II.
294
Roland W. Weitzenbock (18851950), Professor of Mathematics at the University of
Amsterdam, whose pro-German views cost him his job after the war.
295
Actually, ETH Archive, the holder of this letter, does not have a copy of The Defense.
Fortunately for us, Hans Freudenthal preserved a copy in his papers. You have seen the
complete text and the analysis of the The Defense in the previous Chapter 25.
Van der Waerden then explains why he did not return to the Netherlands
when Nazi Germany waged an unprovoked war against his Homeland:
I truly did not come to the idea of returning to the Netherlands after
1940 and going into hiding here. At the end of 1942 I had come to
Holland296 and spoke with all sorts of people (honestly no NSB-ers297
because those do not belong to my circle of friends) but there was
nobody who gave me [such] advice; the concept of going into hiding,
furthermore, did not exist at that time.
Van der Waerden is not open when he alleges that he truly did not come
to the idea to return to the Netherlands. Starting in December 1942 he has
discussed the idea of coming back to a professorship at Utrecht with the
Dutch and Caratheodory (Chapter 19). However, most troubling is the next
statement: the concept of going into hiding, furthermore, did not exist at
that time [end of 1942]. Not only had hiding commenced immediately after
the invasion of Holland in May 1940, and hundreds of thousands of wanted
by the Nazis Dutch people went into hiding. Van der Waerden knew about it
very well at least since his late 1942 visit of Holland, and wrote about it:
Maybe he [Blumenthal] is in hiding like thousands of others.298 Van der
Waerden then spells out what could be the real reason why he did not wish
to come home to Holland during the war:
Why would I go to Holland where the oppression became so intoler-
able and where every fruitful scientific research was impossible?
These words make me think that Van der Waerden has never seriously
considered moving to Holland during the German occupation of his Home-
land. It seems to me that Van der Waerden feels no responsibility for the
intolerable oppression that his new country, Nazi Germany, imposed on
his Homeland. In a statement that Van der Corput must have found partic-
ularly disingenuous Van der Waerden claims that his struggle for the
German culture and science has been as noble as Van der Corputs under-
ground activities in Holland, and that it is the people in Holland who are
guilty of not understanding his struggle against the Nazis:
For your struggle of which I have heard with great delay and only in
part, I had great admiration and undivided sympathy, but I could not
296
In connection to the passing of his mother.
297
Het Nationaal Socialistische Beweging (National Socialist Movement, a Nazi party in the
Netherlands).
298
Van der Waerden to Hecke, April 6, 1943. Handwritten letter in German; Nachlass von
Erich Hecke, Universit at Hamburg.
partake in it from that distance, because I did not have enough contact
with you. Since 1933 I waged another struggle, together with other
reasonable people such as Hecke, Cara[theodory], and Perron against
the Nazis and for the defense of culture and sciences. That I was on the
good side of that struggle was, as I thought, universally known. I did
not expect that people here in Holland would have so little understand-
ing of it.
Van der Corput is unhappy with some of the answers, He shows Van der
Waerdens letter to some of his trusted colleagues, Marcel Gilles Jozef
Minnaert299 (18931970), Professor of Astronomy at Utrecht University,
and Balthasar van der Pol (18891959), Professor of Theoretical Electricity
at the Technical University of Delft. Finally on August 20, 1945, Van der
Corput makes his displeasure known to Van der Waerden and asks him a
key question, whether Van der Waerden is demanding a full and uncondi-
tional exoneration or is pleading difficult circumstances:300
Your letter has not completely satisfied me. You complain that we here
in Holland lack sufficient understanding of your troubles, but after
reading your letter I wonder whether you have a sufficient understand-
ing of troubles which we had to deal with here and of what was to be
expected of a Dutchman in these years. It is not clear to me from your
letter whether you consider your attitude in the past faultless or
whether you plead mitigating circumstances.
Van der Corput refuses to condone Van der Waerdens actions during the
war, comparing them unfavorably to his own unambiguous rejection of
Nazism from the beginning of Hitlers rein:
Concerning me personally, in January 1939 I turned down [Erich]
Heckes invitation, passed on to me by [Harald] Bohr, to give one or
more lectures, because I refused to come to Germany as long as Hitler
was in power. Consequently I have not been in Germany after 1932. In
connection with this position of mine that was shared by many of us, I
do not understand how you can so easily gloss over those years
between 1933 and 1939. Indeed it was not at all fitting for a Dutchman
to make mathematics in Germany flourish in those years when Ger-
many was preparing for war and was kicking Jews from every position
and place.
299
See footnote 296 for more information about Minnaert.
300
These are powerful words, let us read them again: It was not at all fitting
for a Dutchman to make mathematics in Germany flourish in those years
when Germany was preparing for war and was kicking Jews from every
position and place. Van der Corput contrasts his and Van der Waerdens
positions with regard to the German and the American mathematical
reviewing journals:
Speaking of Jews, when Levi-Civita was thrown out of Zentralblatt
ur Mathematik], I withdrew as an associate (while giving my rea-
[f
sons) and suggested all Dutch associates to do the same and to become
associates for the Mathematical Reviews. Contrary to that, you
suggested to a couple of associates to stay on and, if I am not mistaken,
you invited new associates.
Van der Corput cites the 1939 incident that, apparently, still bothers him,
and directly asks whether Van der Waerden and his wife were Nazi
sympathizers:
Furthermore I remember that after a lecture at Groningen, in the
Doelenkelder you spoke with appreciation of the regime in Germany,
and more especially of Goring,301 upon which I advised you better to
stop this because this was not well received by the students of Gro-
ningen. I have to add that I do not know whether or not you were being
serious at that time, but it made a strange impression on us, who
considered Hitler a grave danger to humanity. Furthermore I was
informed from various sides that your wife was pro-Hitler, and that
when she was supposed to come to stay in Holland, she even stated as a
condition that no bad could be spoken about Adolf. I say this, because
you write that your wife was always against the regime. It is better that
these things are discussed in the open, because then you can defend
yourself.
By the way, the steakhouse De Doelenkelder still exists in Groningen:
call 050-3189586 for reservations! Back to the letter, in spite of his serious
reservations, Van der Corput clearly wants to help Van der Waerden and by
employing him help Dutch mathematics:
I myself think that the Netherlands should care for its intellect and
especially one like yours. I have always regretted that you went to
Germany and I will look forward to it if you can be won back
completely for the Netherlands . . .
301
Hermann Goring, Commander-in-Chief of Luftwaffe (German Air Force), President of the
Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia and Hitlers designated successor.
I would want nothing better than for everything to be all right.

Because there is no Dutch mathematician with whom I would like
working more than with you. I would find it fantastic if we could work
on mathematics at the same university again. Then, I think, we could
found a mathematical center.302
Van der Corput holds significant power and appropriately assumes a
commensurate responsibility, and this is the reason for his asking these
tough questions:
I hope that you will not just excuse me for these questions but
understand them. Before the government can appoint someone, it
will conduct a very detailed investigation, and it is to be expected
that it will also ask for my advice. It is therefore necessary for me to be
well informed.
Perhaps to Van der Corputs surprise, Van der Waerden remains noncha-
lant in his immediate four-page reply.303 He proudly asserts his complete
innocence and demands a complete exoneration. Van der Waerden then
quotes the letter he received from Heinz Hopf just about 2 weeks prior, in
which Hopf blames the Dutch for conducting the de-Nazification of the
Netherlands:
You ask whether I want to plead mitigating circumstances. Absolutely
not! I demand a complete exoneration because I do not think that I can
be blamed for anything. And I am also convinced that when my case
now or after a few years when the understandable commotion and
confusion caused by the German terror has calmed down is looked at
objectively, that this exoneration will be given me. This conviction I
shared with Hopf at Zurich who (following a conversation with
Kloosterman about me) writes: When the Dutch, whom you can
approach with clean conscience and offer them your services, do not
want you, then in my opinion they hurt themselves, and that is their
business. I consider it certain that in a few years, when the waves have
calmed down a bit, somewhere in the world you will work again in the
profession.304
302
Indeed, Van der Corput will soon create a mathematical center and invite Van der
Waerden to work theresee Chapter 28.
303
Handwritten letter in Dutch ETH, Hs 652: 12153. The letter is undated; I am certain,
however, that it was written between August 21 and August 27, 1945. It is numbered in the
ETH archive out of the chronological order.
304
The text in quotation marks is in German, see the discussion of this H. Hopfs letter in an
earlier chapter.
Also the English and the Americans, and above all the Russians,
make a distinction between the Nazis, whom they want to destroy, and
the German culture, which they want to help resuscitate. Should we not
try to make this objective way of judgment acceptable also in the
Netherlands again?305
Van der Waerden continues by presenting, again, his (and Hopfs) opin-
ion that one must differentiate between the Hitler regime and the German
culture:
Your most important accusation, I assume, is the words It was not at
all fitting for a Dutchman to make mathematics in Germany flourish in
those years when Germany was preparing for war and was kicking
Jews from every position and place.
In this sentence two things are identified with each other that I see as
the strongest opposites: the Hitler regime and the German culture.306
What was preparing for the war and was throwing out the Jews was the
Hitler regime; what I was trying to make flourish or rather to protect
against annihilation was the German culture. I considered and still
consider this culture to be a thing of value, something that must be
protected against destruction as much as possible, and Hitler to be the
worst enemy of that culture. Science is international, but there are such
things as nerve cells and cell nuclei in science from which impulses are
emitted, that cannot be cut out without damage to the whole. And I
mean that this standpoint is principally defensible even for a Dutch-
man, and I should not be in the least ashamed for having taken this
position.
Of course, it is understandable that people here in Holland today do
not want to know, to see a difference between the Nazis and Germany
or the German culture. Germany attacked the Netherlands and shame-
fully abused it, and the whole German people are also responsible for
that. For the duration of the war this position is completely true, but
one must not use this as measure to assess events that happened before
the war.
By the way, nobody at the time thought to condemn my actions. In
1934 or 1935 the Dutch Government itself officially allowed me to
305
This paragraph is thinly crossed out in this version, but was not crossed out in another,
unfinished version in my possession.
306
Cf. H. Hopfs letter to Van der Waerden of August 3, 1945 earlier in the book, from which
this idea must have come from and developed by Van der Waerden. Could these two brilliant
minds, Hopf and Van der Waerden, not see that the German culture gave birth to the
Hitler regime?
continue my activities in Leipzig. The student organization invited me

in 1938 for a series of talks, among other places at Groningen, a certain
Van der Corput asked me in 1943 to write a book for his
Wetenschappelijke Reeks [Scientific Series], and I could name a
lot of other things like that.
As you recall, in 1930 Leipzig Professor Peter Debye advised Van der
Waerden on how to preserve his Dutch citizenship while entering a German
professorship, which is what Van der Waerden did. Both of them lost Dutch
citizenship by not requesting the Crown in advance to preserve it. Years
later, they worked diligently and successfully to regain their Dutch citizen-
ship. Van der Waerden explains it to Van der Corput in great detail. We are
lucky to have this explanation, for to the best of my archival knowledge, this
letter is the only source:307
The result of this case was like this: when I was supposed to go to
Germany in 1931 a friend with legal training pointed out to me that I
had neglected to ask for permission of the Queen to become a servant
of a foreign state, and because of that I would automatically lose my
Dutch citizenship. This, of course, had never been my intention, on the
contrary, I had the Saxon Government confirm to me in writing that by
accepting the position of a professor I would not get German citizen-
ship. That is why two days before the beginning of my appointment in
Germany I submitted a request to the Queen. A half a year later I was
told that the intended approval could not be given after the fact. So
now I was stateless, and Debye, who also did not know of this legal
clause, found himself in the same position. So in 1933 we both
submitted a request for renaturalization, demonstrating by that that
we valued our Dutchness (and we both were willing to spend 300 guil-
ders for it). My father had no other part in it except that he insisted on a
speedy treatment of the Act of Parliament. Together with the natural-
ization Debye and I got the Royal permission to continue working for
the German state. I therefore think that the Government cannot blame
me after the fact for something that it allowed explicitly at the time.
As we know, the lives and fates of the two friends have diverged. In
January 1940 Debye left Germany for the United States, while Van der
Waerden stayed in Germany to the end of the Nazi era. Van der Waerden
explains to Van der Corput:308
307
Ibid.
308
Ibid.
Debye too stayed in Germany until the end of 1939, when the Germans
gave him a choice: either leave or assume the leadership of war
research (Kriegsforschungen). Had they given me this choice I
would have left.
Van der Waerden alleges that had they given me this choice I would
have left. Would he have left? Why would a Nazi ultimatum be necessary
for a Dutch citizen, Van der Waerden, to leave the Third Reich? Couldnt he
have simply accepted the Utrecht job when it was first offered, or not
returned back to Nazi Germany from one of his many visits of Holland,
including 1935 and 1939 visits with his whole family? Van der Waerden
then explains his complimentary statement about Herman Goring made
during his 1939 visit of the Netherlands:
This is what concerns the official part of the affair. Now the personal
part. You seem to remember that I spoke appreciatively in the
Doelenkelder about the regime in Germany and more specifically
about Goring. You must therefore consider me as somebody without
an elementary sense of right and wrong; because Goring is, as every-
body knows, a clever crook, whose henchmen burned the Reichstag
and who used that to abolish socialist parties. An unprecedented
deception of the people that was used to destroy the democracy and
the parties to which I, because of tradition, friendship, and because of
my own father, was connected. And I would have defended that
criminal? And moreover the Hitler regime? And now I would twist
around like a weathervane and contend that I was always against
Hitler? In other words, that makes me a deceiver, a cunning liar!
Nevertheless you always willingly offer me your mediation, not only
with words but also with deeds, with Noordhoff, present my defense to
Minnaert, and write that you do not like to work with anybody more
than with me. I do not understand that attitude. Or rather I can only
give one explanation to it, namely that deep in your innermost a voice
tells you: no, I know that man from before as decent and truth-loving,
let me give him an opportunity to defend himself.
Well, I can guarantee you that what you write about the
Doelenkelder must be a misunderstanding. I have never uttered a
word of defense of the Nazi regime to anybody. The question which
we spoke about in the Doelenkelder was, if I am not mistaken, not
whether this regime was defensible, but how can people cope in
Germany in spite of this regime. How is science under these circum-
stances possible? Then I may have mentioned a few facts from which it
was apparent that at Leipzig especially and more importantly in
mathematics, the pressure from above was not as claustrophobic as

people imagined it here. I may have mentioned in connection with
something or other that Goring was not an anti-Semite and even
appointed Jews in his ministry, or I have told how popular he was
with the people and with his subordinates or something like that. But to
defend Hitler or Goring? Impossible!
I take Van der Waerden at his word; he himself was not an anti-Semite,
and not a Nazi sympathizer. However, he is now asserting that the Nazi
pressure at Leipzig was not too bad, no big deal, only all Jewish professors
fired, the Jewish professors he had unsuccessfully tried to defend in 1935.
He then declares that the second man of Nazi Germany, Herman Goring,
was not an anti-Semite. Really? Van der Waerden then goes on to explain
his wife Camillas demand that no criticism of Germans be made in her
presence should she visit the Netherlands:
Now about my wife supposedly being a Nazi. Would you believe that
this is the third time that I hear this spiteful slander? I cannot figure out
where this slander is coming from. We, my wife and I, have avoided
any contact with the Nazis in Leipzig like the black plague. Our
acquaintances were only people who shared our horror for the Nazi
regime. And then, when she stayed in Holland, she asked that nothing
bad be said about Adolf? Do you honestly believe that my father, when
we stayed with him in 1939, would have accepted such a condition, or
whether my brothers would have been content with it? The truth is that
my wife could not tolerate it when bad was spoken about the Germans.
Indeed, German is her mother tongue, and she knew so many kind
people in Germany. If you do not want to believe all of this on my
word, then please write a letter to Frau Lotte Schoenheim, Hotel Stadt
Elberfeld, Amsterdam. From 1932 up until her emigration to the
Netherlands in 1938, she has been frequently in conversation with
my wife and me, and after that in Holland has stayed in contact with
my family. She knows our opinion not only from words but also from
deeds.
Again, I take Van der Waerden at his word. According to him, Camilla
could not tolerate it when bad was spoken about the Germans. Were all
the Germans in Nazi Germany above criticism in 1939? Did not Van der
Waerden himself write above in this very letter that Germany attacked the
Netherlands and shamefully abused it, and the whole [!] German people are
also responsible for that?
And one more question is begging for an answer: doesnt Van der
Waerden feel some personal responsibility for German crimes against
humanity? Does he really imagine that being off the German citizenship
rolls frees him from any responsibility for the horrific actions of the country
he has lived in and worked in Civil Service for 14 long years?
This handwritten letter is particularly important to Van der Waerden: he
encloses a large handwritten part of it, entitled From a letter to Prof. J. G.
van der Corput, in his January 22, 1946 letter to Hans Freudenthal309
together with The Defense, which has earlier been submitted to the
Amsterdams College van Herstel and Utrechts College van Herstel en
Zuivering.
In his immediate, Aug 28, 1945 reply, Van der Corput soft pedals on his
probing questions and assures Van der Waerden of his support:310
Am I mistaken if I have an impression that you wrote your letter in a
somewhat irritated state? I believe that I have consistently acted in
your interest; also during a conversation with the Minister I pointed out
that the Netherlands should be very careful not to lose a man like you. I
even said that the Netherlands should rejoice if we get you back for
good. But there are general rules and it needs to be determined how
much those apply to you.
I have always considered it impossible that you are a weathervane,
a hypocrite, and a cunning liar, and I still consider it impossible. With
my remark I wanted to show that you in my opinion did not sufficiently
realize how we thought of the Hitler regime even then. It was all
joking, and I never attached much significance to it, but when after-
wards remarks were made indicating doubt, I thought it was important
for you that I mention this in my letter. I would be very sorry if I hurt
you by it, but it is still better to bring these things out in the open and to
give you an opportunity to rebut them. To my great pleasure I found
out today that it was said that at the Mathematical Congress in Oslo
[1936] you were known as a strong anti-National Socialist.
Immediately after receiving your letter I made sure that this week
Friday night or Saturday morning there will be a meeting between me
and the Minister of Education about this matter. The Minister has
already told me in the first conversation that the cabinet has spoken
about general rules concerning the persons who were in German
service during the war. Those rules were to be finalized then. Whether
or not this has happened since then I will find out this week.
309
RANH, Papers of Hans Freudenthal, inv. nr. 89.
310
Van der Corput leaves the last two points of Van der Waerdens letter
(presumably Bartels praise of Herman Goring and Camillas defense of all
Germans in the Third Reich) to a confidential in-person conversation, and
thus, to my regret, out of reach of historical scholarship. These points are so
important that Van der Corput is willing to travel early in the morning from
Groningen to Laren for a person-to-person discussion:
About the various other points of your letter, I would like to speak with
you in person next week. Tuesday September 4 I hope to get to Laren
for this before 9 oclock in the morning.
But not to worry anyway:
Be assured that it is my sincere desire to keep you for the Fatherland
and for higher education.
Soon success seems to be around the corner. Van der Corput communi-
cates the first hopeful signs on Sept 11, 1945:311
I have discussed your case with Oranje312 and Borst,313 leaders of the
Professors Resistance. After my explanation neither one of them saw
any problem with your appointment at one of the Dutch universities.
They of course cannot decide anything, but as is evident to me, it is
much easier for the minister and his department if they know that there
is no opposition from that particular side. I have the impression that
things will be all right and that after a few months we will be able to
collaborate again . . .
P.S.: . . . During my absence Van der Leeuw has called to tell me
that both parts of my most recent letter were good. One of the parts
concerned my statement that we do not need to fear any opposition
from Borst and Oranje . . . It will all work out, that is my opinion.
Five days later Van der Corput is ready to celebrate mission accom-
plished (the phrase made famous by the U.S. President George
W. Bush):314
311
Handwritten letter in Dutch; ETH, Hs652: 12163.
312
Prof. J. Oranje, Professor of Law, Free University (Vrije Universiteit, a Calvinist univer-
sity). During the occupation Prof. Oranje was chair of Hooglerarencontact. According to
Dr. Knegtmans, the Illegal during the German occupation Hooglerarencontact (Contact
Group of Professors) tried to persuade professors and university boards to close their
universities in 1944.
313
Prof. Dr. J. G. G. Borst, Professor of Medicine, University of Amsterdam, one of the
leaders of Hooglerarencontact.
314
September 16, 1945 handwritten letter in Dutch; ETH, Hs652: 12164.
I have just received a written confirmation from Van der Leeuw . . . He

writes: As far as van der Waerden is concerned, we will just count on
it that it is all right.
This means that he is prepared to appoint you.
I am very much pleased with this, both personally and in the interest
of the country . . .
P.S.: I am passing the message on to Utrecht right now.
On September 22, 1945, Van der Waerden optimistically describes the
state of his job hunting to his confidant Hans Freudenthal:315
Minister Van der Leeuw told Van der Corput that now that Van der
Corput and Borst and Oranje of the Professors Resistance Group
consider me as sufficiently pure, he also considers the affair OK.
My appointment at Utrecht is therefore very close.
On September 29, 1945, Van der Corput informs Van der Waerden by a
telegram that College van Herstel en Zuivering of Utrecht University got on
Van der Waerdens board as well:316
Minnaert317 signals College van Herstel considers Van der Waerden
sufficiently politically reliable and desires appointment at Utrecht
Van der Corput
However, about a month later, unexpectedly, skies over the two friends
become cloudy. Van der Corput informs Van der Waerden about it in his
October 24, 1945 letter:318
Indeed difficulties concerning your appointments arise now again. As
there is someone in higher education, who works against you and
among other things maintains that you had to useand did regularly
usethe Hitler salute at the inception of your classes in Germany. Be
so kind to give very clear answer to this question, so that I can
contradict it if this slander comes about again.
315
Handwritten letter in Dutch; RANH, Papers of Hans Freudenthal, inv. nr. 89.
316
Handwritten telegram in Dutch; ETH, Hs 652: 12158.
317
Marcel Gilles Jozef Minnaert, a member of the Van der Corput Committee. Documents
in the archive of Utrecht University show that Minnaertin a senserepresented Van der
Waerden to the Utrechts College van Herstel en Zuivering, which most likely had never met
with Van der Waerden in person. This was a very beneficial representation for Van der
Waerden, because as an outspoken critic of Nazism Minnaert spent nearly 2 years in a Nazi
prison, from May 1942 until April 1944 [Min].
318
Typed hand-signed letter in Dutch; Hs652 12166.
. . . This week I received an invitation from the Faculty of Natural

Sciences at Amsterdam to become Weitzenbocks replacement. This
shows that the opposition against your nomination in Amsterdam is too
strong. I do not know what I am going to do. Personally, I like Utrecht
better, but maybe I can do more for mathematics in Amsterdam . . .
I am not happy about the turn that the problems in mathematics
[appointments] have taken. I would be particularly sorry if certain
illegal circles [illegale kringenhe probably means former under-
ground circles] will successfully delay your appointment at a Dutch
university.
Van der Waerden answers right away, on October 26, 1945. He does not
give a very clear answer to this question of the Hitler salute, or any answer
for that matter. He shares Van der Corputs pessimism about his academic
prospects in the immediate future, and blames the students and Minister of
Education Van der Leeuw for it:319
After what I have read in the Vrij Katholiek320 about the radical
demands of the students and the willingness of Van der Leeuw to
listen [to them], I think it will take some time before I can get a
position at Utrecht. I have something else now, as of October
1, 1945 I am working for Bataafsche.321
Van der Corputs reply comes a full month later, on November 26, 1945.
He opens his letter with the good news:322
I very much want you to have a position in higher education. The
Committee for Mathematics [Wiskundecommissie] intends to create
the Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics, most likely in Adam
[Amsterdam], and if the Center comes into being, I want you to work
there.
Then there come the bad news:
But there are problems, and I hate time and again asking you these
questions and asking you for clarifications but I have to do this. In
order to support you I need the answers to these questions.
319
320
De Vrij Katholiek (The Free Catholic) monthly of the Free Catholic Church in the
Netherlands, was published 19261992.
321
Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij (B.P.M.), today known as the Royal Dutch Shell, a
major oil company.
322
Typed hand-signed letter in Dutch; ETH, Hs652: 12168.
It now centers around three clearly indicated points.

The first. Your father and your uncle repeatedly and with a lot of
emphasis insisted before [!] the war that you should leave Germany.
They felt it was your duty to leave but you refused, and they consid-
ered it as neglect of your duties.
The second: some people are certain that your wife is an anti-
Semite, others believe that this is too strong a statement, but she did
not want to have anything to do with Jews.
The third. During the war there was an opportunity for you to go to
America, but you refused, for you [argued that you] needed to stay
because you could do a good work for your students, some of whom
were Jews. If this is true that even during the war, when you had a
chance to go to the United States, you still did not want to leave, this
will create definite difficulties for you.
Apparently, without receiving a reply for 12 days, Van der Corput writes
again on December 8, 1945, this time quite apologetically:323
I am not asking you these things for myself . . . I want to collaborate
[with you] as much as I can . . . It would be very unpleasant if these
questions would somehow cause the deterioration of my relations with
you or your wife. Please, understand I only need it for the government.
Now Van der Waerden replies immediately, on December 10, 1945. He
first reassures Van der Corput of their friendship:324
It would be a pity if our cordial relationship should become the victim
of our correspondence. But I see no risk of that.
When there was now and then a ring of annoyance, this was in fact
directed against the people who disseminate such gossip against me,
but not against you, of whom I know that you are tirelessly active in
my interest and that of the Dutch science!
Van der Waerden then spells out his fundamental democratic principles:
On the other hand, I also cannot imagine that you are incensed by the
fundamental democratic anti-Fascist position that I have adopted in
my letter. My viewpoint is that where appointments are concerned,
only capacities of the appointee should be taken into account, and
notas is usual with Fascist regimesthe persons character, past,
and political trustworthiness.
323
324
Only capacities? As the author of this narration, I am compelled to ask:

Bartel, dont you agree that mathematicians do not live in a vacuum, and
thus their character, their past, and their moral fabric matter? Would
you, for example, hire Bieberbach, a decent mathematician and indecent
man, an anti-Semite and a leader of the notorious race-based Deutsche
Mathematik? Havent you seen enough examples of the Nazis using capac-
ities of their scientists, and the power of German engineering (as todays
VW commercials delight in stating) to evil ends? How about the uses of
U-boat submarines, Messerschmitt aircraft, Wernher von Braun rockets, gas
chambers and crematoria for an efficient extermination of human beings,
medical experiments on prisoners in the camps? Mathematik uber alles?
Mathematics above all? Mathematics above morality?
Van der Waerden then invokes his father Dr. Theo as the influence of his
life:
I have been raised under the apprenticeship of my father who was a
man of democratic principles; subsequently I have been under Hitlers
control and I have seen to which terrible consequences the opposite
view leads.
You too [sic] have actively opposed Nazism, and fought for democ-
racy and freedom of our nation. Therefore I cannot imagine that you
would hold my viewpoint against me, even though you do not share it
in every respect.
This dialog in letters is so vivid and so passionate that once again, as the
author of this book, I feel drawn to enter into it and say: Bartel, you invoke
a man of democratic principles, your father as your important influence.
However, you have not listened to your father in the most important matter
of your life, when he repeatedly and with a lot of emphasis insisted before
the war that you should leave Germany. I agree with your father Theo and
Uncle Jan: the gangster-regime (your words) occupying and terrorizing
your Dutch people and other peoples of Europe was not the right place for a
decent person like you. Some members of your family felt that it was not
done by a good Dutchman like you to remain in Nazi Germany.325
Van der Waerden ends the letter with the major good news, promising an
Amsterdam professorship to him very soon:
325
Bartels first cousin Annemarie van der Waerden recalls the extended Van der Waerden
family reaction to his decision to stay in Nazi Germany: Definitely it was considered not
done that Bart stayed in Germany. Though he was excused probably by this committeethis
must be the case considering the fact that he got a respectable job in Holland againhe
stayed a disputed man. In the family some forgave him, some not. The ones that forgave him,
that was also because he was such a sweet, innocent man [WaD2].
Revesz326 informed me yesterday that the Amsterdam sic has

recommended me for the appointment as a full professor to B. en W.
Thus things start moving now!
On December 22, 1945, Van der Waerden writes again.327 This four-page
letter is full of technical negotiations. One alderman prefers Van der
Waerdens appointment to be at an extra-ordinary (bijzonder) professor
level (at an associate professor rather than a full professor). Van der
Waerden does not mind that, but then he wants to keep his oil industry
position as well. Jacob Clay thinks that this solution is very good. Van der
Waerden further asks for a lectureship at Amsterdam for his friend Hans
Freudenthal. And he desires a clear definition of the boundaries between the
duties of Van der Corput, Freudenthal, Brouwer and himself. Van der
Waerden discusses these details because in his mind his appointment at
Amsterdam is a done deal.
In the end, Van der Corput is not completely satisfied with some positions
of Van der Waerden the man. But Van der Corput has a great respect for Van
der Waerden the mathematician, and he believes that he ought to help Van
der Waerden get a position at Amsterdam. Van der Waerden would then
spend his career there, and thus would greatly benefit their Homeland.
It is worthwhile to note here that Van der Waerden is much more open
and harsh in his criticism of the Dutch people in his November 20, 1945
letter to Richard Courantwho is far away in New Yorkthan in his entire
correspondence with Van der Corput:328
The Dutch are completely crazy. They have no concept in their heads
except cleansing (Sauberung): they punish all those who had
worked together with the Germans. There are managers, bosses who
would not employ any workers who were forced to work in Ger-
many.329 There are more political prisoners in Holland than in all of
France, even though the Dutch showed much more character in the war
than the French did. So is my appointment to Utrecht, which ran into
great difficulties, even though it was a done deal with the faculty for
years. I am very happy that I currently have a pleasant job in industry
and can await the return to normal circumstances.
326
Hungarian born (fled in 1920) Geza Reve`sz (18781955) was the first and founding
professor in psychology at the University of Amsterdam; a close friend of L. E. J. Brouwer.
327
328
Handwritten letter in German; New York University Archives, Courant Papers.
329
Van der Waerden refers here to Arbeitseinsatz, the Nazi forced labor program.
And while Van der Waerden demands a complete exoneration from

Van der Corput, he sounds much more conciliatory in his December 29th,
1945 letter (in English) to Courant:330
I am much pleased that you have the intention to resume the old
friendship with me and other old friends as far as possible, and that
old Gottingen will keep a warm place in a corner of your heart. And
just for that reason, I am convinced that you at least will understand a
little bit what my other friends in America could not grasp, namely
why I as a Dutchman chose to stay with the Nazis.
Look here, I considered myself in some sense as your representative
in Germany. You had brought me into the redaction [editorial board]
of the Yellow Series and the Math. Annalen, I thought, in order to
watch that these publications were not Nazified and that they might
maintain their international character and niveau [standard] as far as
possible. This I considered to be my task, and together with Hecke and
Cara[theodory] I have done my best to fulfill it, which I could do only
by staying in Germany. [It] is not that plain and easy to understand,
apart from other sentimental and familiar [familial] links attaching me
to Germany. I have made some mistakes perhaps, but I have never
pacified the Nazis.
Indeed, in the mid-1933 and 1934 Courant envisaged Van der Waerden as
his representative in the Mathematische Annalen and the Yellow Series.
However, on August 20, 1935, Courant hinted to Van der Waerden to
leave Germany:331
I wish everybody could get out of this stuffy atmosphere. I must admit
I cannot understand those who remain in Germany, unless they do it
out of conviction or strong patriotism or from a willingness to fight. It
seems to me more and more that remaining there as a civil servant is
impossible without compromises.
With other sentimental and familiar [Van der Waerden means familial]
links to Germany, Van der Waerden no doubt refers to his German wife
and raising his children pure German,332 and possibly to his sense of
belonging to the German culture in general, and the German mathematics in
particular. For the firstand to the best of my documented knowledge the
onlytime Van der Waerden admits making some mistakes. In the next
330
Handwritten letter in English; New York University Archives, Courant Papers.
331
[Sie3], pp. 160161.
332
Van der Waerden, Letter to Wilhelm Suss, March 14, 1944; ETH, Hs 652: 12031.
chapter, Van der Waerden will also express to a friend a sense of guilt for
teaching German students during Nazi Germanys occupation of his
Netherlands.
The Dialog in Letters, presented here is undoubtedly an important col-
lection of documents for the history of the de-Nazification, and for the
reflection of the post-World War II search for moral standards. Furthermore,
I hope it will prompt you, my reader, to define your positions on a number of
fundamental moral issues, such as the relationship between the scholar and
the state, in particular the place of a scientist in tyranny, duty to profession,
patriotism vs. nationalism, etc. We will come back to these contemporary
issues at the end of this book.
Chapter 27
One Heartfelt Letter to a Friend
There still remains this one complaint, that I have assisted the
Germans through my lectures. I know in the depth of my heart that
this complaint is just.
Bartel L. van der Waerden
Dr. Martina R. Schneider found at ETH Archive an important letter,

which prompted me to order and read it. Unfortunately, the beginning and
the end of the letter were removed by Schneider in her German language
publication333unfortunately because the removed parts carry a psycho-
logical explanation for this rare moment of Van der Waerdens openness.
Schneider also excluded thinly crossed out, well readable passages, which
carry a valuable information.
It is time to address the question whether crossed out readable passages
may be used in a historical research. In fact, a close relative of B.L. van der
Waerden questioned my use of thinly crossed out passagesafter all, they
were crossed out, was the argument. I respectfully disagree. Not only were
these phrases left readable by Van der Waerden, so that he can read and
possibly use them. Sometimes they deliver information to us, to history, to
the posterity, which is otherwise unavailable. I weighed this question with
all the seriousness it deserved, and have come to the conclusion that my first
allegiance as a historian is to those who will come in our place on this earth,
and who will have no way of knowing, unless we do our best to preserve all
the knowledge that we can. We historians inevitably work like restorers of
old masters paintings. We must be diligent in collecting and preserving
333
Schneider, M.R., Zwischen zwei Disziplinen: B.L. van der Waerden und die
Entwicklungen der Quantenmechanik, Springer, Heidelberg, 2011.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_27
256 27 One Heartfelt Letter to a Friend
information. For example, the only passage where Van der Waerden
explains why he did not return to Leipzig after the war was in a crossed-
out text. Dont we want to know why he did not return to the place that
would have received him with open arms!
And so, let me present this revealing letter334 for the first time in its
entirety and for the first time in English. Van der Waerden addresses it to his
friend Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (28 October 1892, Tilburg18 May 1965, De
Bilt), who was a Dutch mathematician and historian of science. The letter is
undated, but Van der Waerdens mention of spending the past 7 months in
Holland, suggests to me that it was written in February of 1946 or so.
In the letter, Van der Waerden enumerates and rejects all accusations
against him except one: There still remains this one complaint, that I have
assisted the Germans through my lectures. I know in the depth of my heart
that this complaint is just. Elsewhere in the book I discuss other accusa-
tions, for which Van der Corput (Chapter 26) and editors of Net Parool (next
Chapter 28) did not accept Van der Waerdens defense. Let me not repeat
those arguments here.
Van der Waerden exclaims, he, who has presented himself from the
beginning as my best friend without naming him. I am almost certain that
he refers to J.G. van der Corput. As you recall from Chapter 26, devoted to
their correspondence, Van der Waerden refused to plead special circum-
stances and demanded a complete exoneration from Van der Corput. In
this letter, Van der Waerden reverses himself: Eventually my dark side
presented itself: I have nothing to regret. Mine was quite a behavior! . . . The
appropriate answer would have been: Yes, you are right in principle, but I
appeal on grounds of circumstances.
Van der Waerden is absolutely correct when he writes, Had I remained in
Germany, all would have been well, and I would have been functioning by
now! Moreover, in postwar Germany he would have been given a heros
welcome, for he remained in Germanywith Germanyto the end of the war.
Having shared with you my observations first, I can now offer you an
uninterrupted reading of this letter in its entirety:
Amice,
I want to ask you to take what I recently said on the way to the
station not too seriously. It was not my intent to minimize the resis-
tance movement, when I said that Holland would have benefited little
if I had also taken part and had ended up in prison. It was also not my
deepest conscience that spoke, when I said that I, given the chance to
decide again, would have done the same thing. The psychological
334
Handwritten letter in Dutch; Hs 652: 10690.
27 One Heartfelt Letter to a Friend 257
situation, in which I said these poorly considered things, was as

follows: for the past seven months here in Holland I have had to
fight against rumors, distrust and for 90% unjustified accusations.
Now comes he, who has presented himself from the beginning as my
best friend, who wanted me by his side in Utrecht and who has helped
me all through my troubles, and expresses in the softest and friendliest
manner, carefully, that there still remains this one complaint, that I
have assisted the Germans through my lectures. I know in the bottom
of my heart (de grond van mijn hart) that this complaint is just. All
other things, that I should have fled before the war, that I should have
gone into hiding, especially the complaints regarding my position
before the war, are unreasonable, but this one remains, and you
know that justified complaints sometimes aggravate the most. My
first impulse was to respond forcefully: why then have you requested
my return to Holland? Had I remained in Germany, all would have
been well, and I would have been functioning by now! You could have
said you wanted nothing to do with me. But no, I thought, that is not
what that man deserves from me, that I should complain to him, who
has done everything that he could for me. Eventually my dark side
presented itself: I have nothing to regret. Mine was quite a behavior!
And that is how I arrived at my answer: Yes, I would have handled
things the same, but I would not have returned to Holland, had I known
how I would have been received here.
The appropriate answer would have been: Yes, you are right in
principle, but I appeal on grounds of circumstances. First: prior to the
war I have never had an opportunity to return to Holland: in
Amsterdam, where two vacancies were open, I have not been accepted.
Second: even in 1942 no one considered holding it against me that I
returned to D[eutschland]. Third: had I gone into hiding, my family
would have been sitting in Leipzig unprotected. Fourth: the Nazis have
from the science to the resistance movement resistance only makes
sense as an effective action; an absent man, far from all his country-
men who could help him, cannot begin anything. Fifth: the scientific
work prior to the war was done in special laboratories, not at the univ
[ersity]; I taught college to girls, soldiers on leave, badly injured,
foreigners, and nothing that could be used in combat.
I hope with all my heart that your views regarding me have not
changed due to my emotional reaction.
Friendly greetings,
B.L.v.d. Waerden
Chapter 28
A Rebellion in Brouwers Amsterdam
My coming to Amsterdam only makes sense when you and I can set the
tone there, and not when you stay in a subservient position and both of
us have to fight Brouwer and his creatures all the time.
B.L. van der Waerden to H. Freudenthal

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_28
260 28 A Rebellion in Brouwers Amsterdam
Photo 45 Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, Wikipedia
For decades mathematics at the University of Amsterdam had been run

by the most famous Dutch mathematician of the twentieth century, Luitzen
Egbertus Jan Brouwer (February 27, 1881December 2, 1966), an
ordinarius at Amsterdam ever since 1913. Brouwer had a famous feud
with the leading German mathematician David Hilbert. Possibly due to
Van der Waerdens closeness to Hilbert, Brouwer did not wish Van der
Waerden to get a chair at Amsterdam. But following the liberation, Brouwer
was suspended from office for a few months while Amsterdams College
van Herstel investigated his behavior during the occupation. This suspen-
sion and Brouwers advanced age allowed younger charismatic mathemati-
cians to wage a power struggle with him. J. G. van der Corput was the leader
of this new generation. He and Jacob Clay, a professor of physics at the
28 A Rebellion in Brouwers Amsterdam 261
University of Amsterdam, undertook what one might call The Battle for Van
der Waerden.
Professor Dirk van Dalen has kindly shared with me the relevant chapters
of his then not yet submitted Volume 2 manuscript of the brilliant compre-
hensive biography of L. E. J. Brouwer [Dal2]. Van Dalen believes that Van
der Waerden did not get an Amsterdam job in 19451946 because of
Brouwers opposition. I agree that Brouwer opposed Van der Waerdens
hiring. However, I believe that Brouwers opposition to Van der Waerdens
chair at Amsterdam only strengthened Clays and Van der Corputs resolve,
and thus increased Van der Waerdens chances. The late Professor Nicolaas
G. de Bruijn (9 July 191817 February 2012), who succeeded Van der
Waerden at the University of Amsterdam in 1952, seems to agree with my
vision of this complicated affair. Following are my questions and his
answers [Bru9]:
A. Soifer: Was Brouwer against hiring Van der Waerden at Amster-
dam in 194546? If yes why was Brouwer against? How influential
was Brouwer in such matters in 194546?
N.G. de Bruijn: Brouwer did not have much influence. He had a fight
with the rest of the world, in particular with his Amsterdam colleagues
and with the Amsterdam mathematical centre.
A. Soifer: As I understand, Van der Waerdens strongest supporters
were Clay and Van der Corput, am I right?
N.G. de Bruijn: You may be right. Along with Schouten they were the
older people, and in those days the older people dominated the net-
works. But the support of the younger generation, like Koksma, Van
Dantzig and Freudenthal, must have been very essential. In particular
the fact that Van Dantzig and Freudenthal were Jewish may have
impressed the authorities.
In fact, on September 22, 1945 Van der Waerden assures Van der Corput
of being ready to join in the war against Brouwer if necessary:335
Dear Colleague!
I would of course have preferred if the whole Faculteit, including
Brouwer, approved my appointment. If you are prepared together with
me to make something good of mathematics in Amsterdam even
against Brouwer, if that is necessary, I will be collaborating in that
effort.
335
Handwritten letter in Dutch; ETH; Hs652: 12165.
262 28 A Rebellion in Brouwers Amsterdam
On the same day Van der Waerden summarizes for his friend Freudenthal
the state of Brouwers Amsterdam:336
Van Danzig saw the future of math in Amsterdam as rather bleak.
Unless a counterweight to the influence of Brouwer could be formed
by filling the second professorship with somebody who can stand up to
Brouwer, he feared that Brouwer would want to rule with 4 lecturers
dependent on him.
Clay told me that Brouwer had answered evasively his question
whether he supports my candidacy, and he obviously did not want to
work with me (something I have already known). Clay, however,
wanted to nominate me against Brouwers will if I can guarantee
him that I would accept the appointment. I answered him today:
I would have of course preferred if the entire faculty including
Brouwer were to approve my appointment. But if you are prepared to
literally go to war with me and to try to make something good out of
mathematics in Amsterdam, even against Brouwer if that is necessary,
then I would like to offer my help. However, if the appointment at
Utrecht comes first, then I would take it as you understand. I desire to
take my part in the reconstruction of the Dutch science as soon as
possible, be it at Utrecht or at Amsterdam.
Clay did not seem to want to conclude the matter soon, so I think
nothing will come of it. If something were to come of it, I would also
try to find a beneficent solution to the conflict between Freudenthal and
Bruins.337 Because my coming to Amsterdam only makes sense when
you and I can set the tone there, and not when you stay in a subservient
position and both of us have to fight Brouwer and his creatures all
the time.
Three months later Van der Corput manages to talk Brouwer out of
opposing Van der Waerdens appointment at Amsterdam. On December
30, 1945 Van der Corput reports this development to Van der Waerden:338
With Brouwer I have come to an agreement that he will only cover
the courses about intuitionism, that he will give exams only to the
students that have an interest in that particular discipline. And he liked
my willingness in this. He agrees with your appointment to extra-
ordinary also with an appointment of Freudenthal as a lecturer. . .
336
337
Evert Marie Bruins (19091990), a mathematics faculty member at the University of
Amsterdam.
338
28 A Rebellion in Brouwers Amsterdam 263
He [Brouwer] has 5 years left before his retirement, while I have

about 15 years left. I can count on his help, and we can work
together. . .
Indeed, Brouwer, apparently, agrees to even pass on to Van der Corput
and Freudenthal his baby, the journal Compositio Mathematica that he
founded in 1934, in spite of his long falling out with Freudenthal:339
He [Brouwer] asked if I was willing to take over the Secretariat of
the Compositio, together with Freudenthal. I wrote about it to
Fr. [Freudenthal]. If he is willing then I would be too. The result of
this is that the Br.s [Brouwers] name would remain but that
Freudenthal and I would publish Compositio, while Fr. [Freudenthal]
and Br. [Brouwer] would not have anything to do with each other.
With Minister Van der Leeuws support and Brouwers blessing, Van der
Waerden was on course to a professorship at Amsterdam, when his ship ran
into an explosion in the sea of public discourse.
339
Ibid.
Chapter 29
The Het Parool Affair
Mathematics has no Fatherland, you say? Yes, sir, but in the Nether-
lands in the year 1946 it should be desired of a professor of mathe-
matics to have one.
Het Parool, January 16, 1946
I find it surprising that the early media records have been completely
overlooked and never mentioned by earlier biographers Van der Waerden.
Did they view the news reports to be too much off the cuff and not carrying
lasting truths? Yes, the shelf life of a newspaper is one day, but it captures
and preservesthe zeitgeist, the spirit of the day, better than anything else
available to a historian. Moreover, in our Drama of Van der Waerden, a
newspaper was also an important player. I will therefore use newspapers
liberally and unapologetically.
After the war both East and West Germanies were quite soft even on Nazi
collaborators, which Van der Waerden certainly had not been. In addition,
Van der Waerdens loyalty to Germany and German mathematics had been
unquestionably great. Holland was another matter. Its standards of good
behavior during the Nazi occupation of Holland were much higher, espe-
cially when judged by the editors of a publication like Het Parool, a
newspaper that had been heroically published underground ever since July
1940,340 and had paid for it by lives and freedom of many of its workers.
After the war and the occupation, at the circulation of 50,000 to 100,000 in
340
It was started by Frans Johannes Goedhart under the title Nieuwsbrief van Pieter t Hoen
on July 25, 1940 and became Het Parool on February 10, 1941 [Kei].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_29
266 29 The Het Parool Affair
Amsterdam alone and local editions appearing in more than ten cities [Kei],
Het Parool had an enormous moral authority.
In early January 1946 everything was in place for appointing Dr. Van der
Waerden to a professorship at the University of Amsterdam. The City
Councils meeting with his appointment on the agenda was about to begin
the afternoon of January 16, 1946, when just hours earlier a bomb
exploded on page 3 of Het Parool [Het1]:341
Him??
No, not him!
The proposal to appoint Dr B C [sic] van der Waerden as professor
in the faculty of mathematics and physics at the University of
Amsterdam should surprise all those who know that Mr. Van der
Waerden served the enemy throughout the entire war. His collabora-
tion is not todays or yesterdays news. When the war broke out in
September 1939, and the Netherlands, fearing invasion, mobilized,
Mr. Van der Waerden was standing behind his lectern at Leipzig
University. He had stood there for years. And he continued to stand
there. He saw the storm coming as well, but he did not think about
coming back to his Fatherland. When in May 1940 the Germans
conquered our country Mr. Van der Waerden was still standing behind
his lectern at . . . Leipzig. And he continued to stand there. For five
years the Netherlands fought Germany and for all those five years
Mr. Van der Waerden kept the light of science shining in . . . Leipzig.
He raised Hitler followers. His total abilitya very great oneand all
his talenta very great onewere at the service of the enemy. Not
because Mr. Van der Waerden had been gang-pressed (geronseld) to
the forced Arbeitseinsatz [labor service], not because it was impossible
for Mr. Van der Waerden to go into hiding; no, Mr. Van der Waerden
served the enemy, because he liked it at Leipzig; he was completely
voluntary a helper of the enemy, whichand this could not have
remained unknown to Mr. Van der Waerdenmade all of higher
education plus all results of all scientific work serve the enemys
totale Krieg [total war].
When asked, Mr. Van der Waerden cannot answer what an average
German answers when he hears of the boundless horrors done in the
country: Ich habe es nicht gewusst [I did not know]. In the middle of
341
In search for greater expressiveness, the editors included in this Dutch article some
passages in German. I am leaving them in German, and add translation in brackets. I also
include in parentheses some Dutch expressions that are particularly hard to adequately
translate into the English.
29 The Het Parool Affair 267
the war years Mr. Van der Waerden came back to the forgotten land
of his birth and he heard and saw how disgracefully his patrons
(broodheeren) were acting here. Did he not care at all? (Liet het hem
Siberisch koud?) A few weeks later Mr. Van der Waerden was stand-
ing behind his lectern at . . . Leipzig again. In the Netherlands, firing
squads shot hundreds. In the concentration camps, erected as signs of
Kultur [culture] by the Germans in Mr. Van der Waerdens second
Fatherland, many of the best of us died; as did a few Dutch colleagues
of Mr. Van der Waerden. Did that do anything to him? The story is
becoming monotonous: Mr. Van der Waerden raised the German
youth from behind his lectern at . . . Leipzig.
However, that is where the house of cards collapsed. Germany,
including Leipzig, surrendered. The Third Reich, which Mr. Van der
Waerden had hoped would last, if not a thousand years, then at least for
the duration of his life, became one great ruin. And at that very
moment Mr. Van der Waerden remembered that there existed some-
thing like the Netherlands and that he had a personal connection to
it. He looked at his passport: yes, it was a Dutch passport. He packed
his bags. He traveled to the Fatherland. Now Leipzig was not that
nice anymore. All those ruins and all those occupying forcesyuk
(bah). After five years of diligent service to the mortal enemy of his
people, Mr. Van der Waerden was now prepared for the other camp.
There are more like him. But what is worse, the University of
Amsterdam seems willing to give this Mr. Van der Waerden another
lectern immediately. Mathematics has no Fatherland, you say? Yes, sir
(tot uw dienst), but in the Netherlands in the year 1946 it should be
desired of a professor of mathematics to have one, and to remember it
more timely than on the day on which his lectern in the land of the
enemy became too hot under his shoes.
This passionate article, circulated throughout the whole country, with
Mr. Van der Waerden was standing behind his lectern at Leipzig repeating
over and over like a refrain in a song, must have made the Amsterdam City
Council concerned, if not embarrassed. While people who served in the
German labor service (Arbeitseinsatz) among the faculty, staff and students
were to be removed from the university, the City Council was planning to
approve the appointment of a professor who voluntarily served Germany the
entire Nazi period, including the 5 terrible years of the German occupation
of Holland. The approval of Van der Waerdens appointment was post-
poned. The following day, on January 17, 1946, Het Parool reports the
outcome [Het2]:
Prof. Van der Waerden Not Yet Appointed
Appointment Halted
After the Amsterdam City Council convened yesterday afternoon in

the Committee General (Comite Generaal), Mayor de Boer announced
that the nomination to appoint Professor Dr. B. L. van der Waerden,
Professor of Mathematics at Leipzig, as Extra-Ordinarius
(Buitengewoon Hoogleeraar) at the University of Amsterdam has
been put on hold.
Because of the publication in Het Parool about Professor Van der
Waerden, the Council suggested that there should not be a rush action.
Further information was demanded.
On behalf of B. en W., City Alderman (Wethouder) Mr. De Roos
responded that Professor Van der Waerden had good papers. Leipzig
was a mathematical center. Beforehand many authorities were asked
for information; among others also the Commission of Learned People
(Gestudeerden) in Germany. The College van Herstel (College for
Restoration) of the university and also the faculty supported the
appointment. For now, however, the appointment has been halted;
B. en W. will consult later with the College van Herstel.
Van der Waerden is outraged not only by the City Councils refusal to
approve his appointment, but also by such heavy and public accusations by
the newspaper that was read and respected practically by everyone in the
postwar Netherlands. On January 22, 1946 he briefs his friend Freudenthal
on the state of events:342
Amice,
Thank you for your kind letter. It did us a lot of good to have at least
one loyal friend in the midst of this enemy world.
I have sent the enclosed rebuttal to Het Parool and to Propria
Cures. Already before that I supplied Clay with the necessary data
for the Aldermans343 defense of [Van der Waerden]. I have the
impression from the report of the council meeting in Het Parool that
the Alderman is fighting for me like a lion.
342
Handwritten letter in Dutch; RANH, Papers of Hans Freudenthal, mathematician, 1906
1990, inv. nr. 89.
343
Here Van der Waerden refers to one particular Alderman (there were six): Mr. Albertus de
Roos (19001978), the Alderman (19451962) for Education and Arts.
Prof. Van der Waerden Not Yet Appointed 269
The attitude of the students gives me a great joy. As soon as I am

there I will win them for me completely. I am convinced of that.
I am not sure why Van der Waerden has gotten a great joy from the
students attitude. As we will soon see, students have presented a vocal
opposition to his appointment. Please also notice Van der Waerdens line I
supplied Clay with the necessary data for the Aldermans defense: we will
soon learn the contents of this data from a Het Parools article.
With this letter to Freudenthal, Van der Waerden encloses two docu-
mentsthe Defense and From a letter to Prof. J. G. van der Corput that
we have discussed in great detail in Chapters 25 and 26 respectively, as well
as the following handwritten letter to the editor,344 which he sent to both
papers, Het Parool345 and Propria Cures, even though the latter paper did
not run any commentary on Dr. Van der Waerdens impending appointment:
Correction [Rechtzetting]
In the Het Parool dated Jan 16, my person was sharply attacked. I
do not wish to go into this at great length. The question of whether or
not I acted wrongly is being carefully researched by the concerned
services.346 But I have to correct two untruths. It is said that I hoped
that the Third Reich would last for as long as I would. This is slander. I
was known in Germany and outside as a strong opponent of the Nazi
regime; I can prove this with witnesses.
It furthermore says that I returned because my lectern became too
hot under my feet. This is also not true. I returned because the Faculteit
of Mathematics and Physics of the State University of Utrecht asked
me to take up a professorship in mathematics.
B. L. van der Waerden
There existed wordswords about patriotism, love of the Fatherland,
contributions of the Van der Waerden family to Holland, desire to return
home, raise a new generation of scholars in the Netherlands, etc.which
could have touched the readers and editors hearts and made a strong case
for Van der Waerdens acceptance. Van der Waerdens dry and proud prose
about returning because of a job offer could not have possibly made things
better for him.
344
345
Van der Waerdens letter to Het Parool was dated January 21, 1945, as seen from Het
Parools January 23, 1945 acknowledgement sent to Van der Waerden and signed by
Secretary Hoofdredactie: see ETH, Hs 652: 11631.
346
Van der Waerden likely refers to the de-Nazification boards, College van Herstel of
Amsterdam and Utrecht.
The self-assessment as a strong opponent of the Nazi regime in Van der

Waerdens letter to Het Parool also did not help, for it was certainly viewed
as an exaggeration by the editors of an underground newspaper, who daily
risked their lives. Understandably, Van der Waerdens letter backfired.
Both Het Parool (Prof. Van der Waerden defends himself [Wae9]) and
Propria Cures347 (Correction [Wae10]) publish the complete text of the
above Van der Waerdens Correction on February 1, 1946. Het Parool
adds the following editorial response [Het4]:
We are pleased to give Mr. Van der Waerden the opportunity to defend
himself. Has he made his case stronger with this? No, not quite. Unless
there are Dutchmen who truly believe that the Germans from 1940 to
1945 allowed strong (!) opponents to occupy professorships. Which
acts show this strong anti-Nazism of Mr. Van der Waerden? And the
timing of his return to the Fatherland in 1945 is then one of those rare
coincidences that one should believe as such. . . or not. Mr. Van der
Waerdenand this is the heart of the matterfrom the first until the
last day of the war served science in the land of the enemy and this was
compensated by the enemys money. He who has voluntarily served
the enemy from May 40 to May 45 is a bad Dutchman. Those who
unleash him afterwards on the Dutch youth do not understand the
demands of this time. And if the appointment of Van der Waerden is
approved, then one should immediately stop objecting to workers and
students who volunteered for De Arbeitseinsatz [the German Labor
Service],348 etc., for the De Arbeitseinsatz of Van der Waerden was
more complete than that of any other Dutchman. Rewarding
347
University of Amsterdam students weekly.
348
Under the Arbeitseinsatz program, the Dutch (and other) peoples were sent to work in
Germany (or Greater Germany). Those who went were punished after the war. In a 2004
e-mail to me, Dr. Knegtmans comments as follows [Kne8]: As far as I know, only very few
people actually volunteered for the Arbeitseinsatz. Most (several hundreds of thousands) did
so under pressure and among them were three thousand students of all Dutch universities and
a few staff members. After the war, however, there was some criticism of these men. Could
they not have evaded conscription, some asked publicly. I think they could not, because their
names and addresses were known and most needed the income for their families. This was of
course not the case with the students, but in fact most students fled from the Arbeitseinsatz in
Germany back to Holland, while others did not return to Germany from their holidays. I think
that none of the students, staff members or professors of the University of Amsterdam was
punished for voluntarily joining the Arbeitseinsatz. Probably no one did join voluntarily. But
some of the Nazis among the students and staff joined the German army (or the Dutch
Volunteer Corps) or para-military German organizations. The staff members among them
were removed from the university, the students simply did not return to the universities.
Concerning Van der Waerden 271
(Belooning) that with a professorship would mean that all the others
who worked for the enemy voluntarily deserve a feather and a bonus.
Red (Editors) Het Parool
Earlier, on January 25, 1946, Het Parool has already reported the post-
ponement of the approval of Van der Waerdens appointment [Het3]:
Prof. Dr. B. L. van der Waerden
The nomination of B. en W. to appoint Prof. Dr. B. L. van der Waerden,

which was put on hold at the previous session of the city council,
because of the article in Het Parool, does not appear on the agenda
for January 30th. It was put there initially, but it has been scrapped off
by B. en W., from which it can be deduced that further consultation has
not yet ended.
On February 13, 1946, Het Parool publishes its last commentary on the
Van der Waerden affair [Het5]. From it we can understand what data Van
der Waerden supplied to Professor Clay for Alderman Albertus de Roos
(recall Van der Waerden mentioned passing along this data in his January
22, 1946 letter to Freudenthal):
Concerning Van der Waerden
The city council has circulated a little piece of advertising for the
benefit of Prof. Van der Waerden, of which the main points are that he
protested against the firing of the Jews in 1934 (even though he himself
continued teaching classes) and that during the war, with the exception
of a family visit in November 1942, he was not allowed to leave
Leipzig, while, the little piece says, at that moment going into hiding
was out of the question, so that it could not be expected of Van der
Waerden to go under, even less so because he would have had to
leave [his] wife and children in Germany.
This writing makes us slightly nauseous. November 1942! Pieter t

Hoen349 has been in prison for eleven months, Wiardi Beckman350 is
in prison, Koos Vorrink351 is in hiding, indeed all Parool people are in
hiding; the O.D.352 trial is over [resulting in] 70 people shot. The entire
O.D. leadership is in hiding. All Vrij-Nederland people and those of
De Geus, and Je Maintiendrai, and Trouw, and De Waarheid are in
hiding.353 In hiding, leaving behind wives and children! No, the little
piece of advertising says going into hiding was out of the question.
And then the explosion comes: . . . and there was also no clear
resistance yet!!! See above, reader! November 1942. Hundreds have
been shot for the resistance. Thousands are in camps. Other thousands
have gone under. The illegal press flourishes (Parool 15,000 copies!).
No, there was no clear resistance yet, the writer of the little piece of
advertising says.
There was such a clear resistance that Van der Waerden was advised
by his immediate environs not to return [to Germany]. He went
anyway. For three more years he taught in the enemys country for
the enemys money. Who could stomach to suspend an art student
from the university for a few years while at the same time make Van
der Waerden a professor?
349
Pieter t Hoen was the pseudonym of the Amsterdam journalist Frans Johannes Goedhart
(19041990), the founder of Het Parool, who was arrested in January 1942. Madelon de
Keizer [Kei] reports that Goedhart was one of the twenty-three suspects to be brought to trial
before the German magistrate in the first Parool trial in December 1942. Seventeen death
sentences were pronounced and thirteen Parool workers were executed by firing squad in
February 1943. Goedhart managed to obtain a reprieve. He escaped in September 1943 and
resumed his position on the editorial board.
350
Herman Bernard Wiardi Beckman (1904Dachau, March 15, 1945), a member of the
Editorial Board of Het Parool, one of the intellectuals of the SDAP (De Sociaal-
Democratische Arbeiders Partij), arrested in January 1942, he ended his life in the Nazi
concentration camp Dachau.
351
Jacobus Jan (Koos) Vorrink (18911955), a member of the Editorial Board of Het Parool,
chairman of SDAP (De Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiders Partij) and later of PvdA (De
Partij van de Arbeid, labor party), was arrested on April 1, 1943, and later sent to the Nazi
Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen, from which he was liberated by the Soviet Army
in 1945.
352
O.D. stands for Orde Dienst, a national resistance organization.
353
Vrij-Nederland, De Geus, Je Maintiendrai, Trouw, and De Waarheid were Dutch under-
ground publications of the occupation period. Recall, Van der Corput served on the Board of
Vrij-Nederland.
To Mr. Editor 273
Clearly, Van der Waerdens statement conveyed to the Dutch people via
Alderman Albertus de Roos that in November 1942 there was also no clear
resistance yet, was untruth. Moreover, it must have been received in
postwar Holland as the worst kind of slander of the Fatherland, which
prompted such a powerful rebuttal from Het Parool editors.
Now that Van der Waerden has also initiated a discussion on the pages of
the students weekly Propria Cures, he receives a reply from P. Peters,
apparently a student, in the next, February 8, 1946 issue of this weekly
[Pete]:
To Mr. Editor
During the last weeks there has been repeated mention in the press of
the appointment of Prof. B. L. van der Waerden to a professor in group
theory of algebra at our University. Still cloaked in the clouds of dust
blown up by the return of other professors one should be surprised by
the fact that no attention has been devoted by P. C. (Propria Cures) to
the discussion of Prof. Van der Waerden.
Prof. Van der Waerden, as is well known, taught during the entire
war at Leipzig University.
In Het Parool he recently declared having been anti-Nazi. Be it as
it may, it is not entirely clear how to square this with his collaborative
attitude, most tellingly illustrated by the fact that after the defeat of the
Netherlands, he grew used to what he had been doing before that time,
every single day he gave Heil Hitler salute (Heil Hitlergroet) in public
at the start of his lectures to the enemy. Given the circumstances, it is
hard to accept that he continued to fulfill his function in Germany
under duress; even more so because, as was said, he was offered a
professorship in the Netherlands. Subsequently, in his defense he does
not discuss the voluntariness of his collaboration.
How tedious the subject of the purification might have become, let
there be no double standard.
Would it be therefore more tactful if the [City] Council, which is
still contemplating his appointment, avoids the provocation here, and
that Prof. Van der Waerden remains content with his present job [with
B.P.M.] for now?
P. Peters
I do not know how reliable P. Peters allegation was of Van der
Waerdens daily use of the Heil Hitler salute at the start of his lectures.
Van der Waerden did not send his rebuttal to Propria Cures as he did to Het
Parool to refute its accusations he thought were false. He did not respond to
the same allegation of using the Heil Hitler salute at the start of his lectures
passed on to him by Van der Corput (Chapter 26). I know for a fact that Van
der Waerden did use the Heil Hitler salute at the close of his official letters.
Perhaps, Van der Waerden did not think it was a serious enough accusation
to merit a response? Van der Waerdens famous friend Werner Heisenberg
did not think much of using the Heil Hitler salute. We have already read his
nonchalant view [Hei2, pp. 152153]: At the beginning of each lecture you
had to raise your hand and give the Nazi salute. But hadnt I raised my hand
to wave at acquaintances even before the advent of Hitler? Was that really a
dishonorable compromise?
P. Peters is correct in observing that it is hard to accept that he [Van der
Waerden] continued to fulfill his function in Germany under duress. And
this is not an opinion of just one student: Peter J. Knegtmans in his
monograph [Kne2] reports about the protest of the major students organi-
zation Algemene Studenten Vereniging Amsterdam (ASVA):
The ASVA354 protested heavily against the coming of the mathemati-
cian Professor Van der Waerden to the University of Amsterdam
because he had taught throughout the entire war at a German
university.
Moreover, Knegtmans writes in an e-mail to me [Kne3] that on February
5, 1946, ASVA wrote a letter to B. en W, the Executive Committee of the
City of Amsterdam. According to Dr. Knegtmans notes (translated by him
from the Dutch), the letter said:
Word has reached the ASVA that Burgemeester & Wethouders have
proposed Prof. Dr. B. L. van der Waerden as professor at the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam. This proposal has surprised the ASVA, considering
the fact that during the war Prof. Van der Waerden has been professor
at a German university.
The ASVA is under the impression that the College van Herstel also
had had some doubts, before it eventually advised Burgemeester &
Wethouders to go ahead with this proposal. However, the facts that
have surfaced about Van der Waerdens behaviour during the war are
so serious, that his appointment would be unacceptable for the
354
According to Dr. Knegtmans [Kne3], ASVA, a new general student union that had
emerged from the circles in the Amsterdam student resistance. During the first postwar
years it was very keen on matters involving the behavior of old and new professors during
the war.
To Mr. Editor 275
students, as long as the results of the investigations by the College van

Herstel remain unknown.
Therefore, the ASVA requests to reveal the grounds on which
Burgemeester & Wethouders think Van der Waerden is qualified for
a position of professor at a Dutch university.355
On February 15, 1946, Netherlands Minister of Education, Culture and
Science Van der Leeuw telephones Mayor of Amsterdam Feike de Boer and
asks for information about Van der Waerden. The very same day, Mayor de
Boer sends Minister Van de Leeuw a two-page glowing report, prepared by
Van der Corput based on Van der Waerden draft, and signed by the Mayor.
Mayor De Boer also sends the same report to Netherlands Prime Minister
Schermerhorn:356
15 February 1946.
Report on the actions of Prof. Van der Waerden.
Confidential.
With respect to the request by telephone by your Excellency for
information related to a possible position for Professor Dr. B. L. v/d
Waerden as Professor at the University of Amsterdam, we have the
honor to give you the following abstract of the results of our investi-
gation by Professor Van der Corput and the Chair of the Mathematics
and Physics Faculty of the University, who investigated the actions of
Professor Van der Waerden from the beginning of the Nazi Govern-
ment of Germany. The statements of Professor Van der Waerden are
also partially included in this abstract.
In 1934 Professor Van der Waerden spoke against dismissal of
Jewish people openly during a faculty meeting in Leipzig. For this
he received a reprimand from the Government of Saxony, and he was
told that as a foreigner he should not meddle in the politics of
Germany.
In 1935 or 1936 Van der Waerden wrote a very nicely formulated
eulogy for the Jewish professor Emmy Noether who left for the USA.
The German Government considered Van der Waerden as not
trustworthy and in 1939 did not allow him to visit Volta Congress,
and give lectures for prisoners of war, and to participate in the Math-
ematical Congress in Rome. An invitation to the faculty at Munich
355
Archives of the ASVA in the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam.
356
University had not occurred because the party leaders found Van der
Waerden untrustworthy.
When in 1940 the occupation of the Netherlands began, Van der
Waerden was first interned and after that Germany banned him from
leaving until the end of the war. Only after the death of his mother in
November 1942 he was given permission to visit Netherlands for
6 days.
In 1941, Van der Waerden was still graduating non-Aryan [stu-
dents]. Until 1942 he was accepting articles of Jewish people and
people of mixed race to the Mathematische Annalen in his position
as an editor.
Before the war Van der Waerden did not leave Germany because he
believed that in his position of a scientist he would be able to defend
culture against the culture destroying National Socialism;357 and only
much later he came to an opinion that he was not able to do it.
During the short stay in the Netherlands [November 1942], he did
not use this stay to go underground because not many people at that
time did that, and also because his wife and children were in Germany
and would not know what would happen to him.
In 1943 he did not accept the invitation by the faculty at Utrecht
University because he did not want to accept a position from the
government of the time.
Mrs. Van der Waerden is from Austria, and right from the beginning
was very much against the Nazi regime.
Professor [Samuel] Goudsmit, who is chair of the American Bureau
in Paris, had a task of investigating political activities of professors in
Germany, has told Professor Clay and Professor Michels that his
investigation did not show anything against Professor Van der
Waerden. And a telegram was received by Clay from Goudsmit that
said Preliminary information favorable.
We would like to know based on the above what the Government
position is with respect to granting professorship to Mr. Van der
Waerden.
Mayor and Aldermen of Amsterdam
De Boer (stamped)
Secretary
Van Lier (stamped)
357
We see here again HopfVan der Waerden rationale.
To Mr. Editor 277
This two-page document was accompanied by a cover letter, which is of

great interest to us, due to several consequent handwritten comments written
on it. Let us start with the typed text:
To his Excellency the Minister of Education, Culture and Science.
15 February 1946
Result of the inquiry into the behavior of Prof. van der Waerden.
Confidential.
We have the honor to hereby forward Your Excellency a copy of a
letter with information on Professor Van der Waerden, which our City
Council sent to the Prime Minister in response to todays request for
information.
Mayor and the Aldermen of Amsterdam
(signed) De Boer [Feike de Boer, the Mayor]
Secretary
(signed)
Five days later, on February 20, 1946, Mayor De Boer adds a note
handwritten in pencil in the lower right corner of this letter (I am grateful
to Dr. Peter Knegtmans for its translation). Mayor De Boer is concerned but
still optimistic about approving Van der Waerdens professorship:
Considering the report, it seems to me that objection against the
appointment in Amsterdam cannot be maintained, albeit that the
sentiment regarding v.d.W. [Van der Waerden] will at first not be
favorable. If needed, a further reinforcing report by [Samuel]
Goudsmit can be requested. (signed) De Boer 20.2
In the upper right corner, I see a short handwritten note in ink added on
February 26, 1946:
Register as received (signed) De Boer 26.2
Why would one register on February 26, 1946, a letter written 11 days
earlier? The answer comes from another document from the Nationaal
Archief. This document, also dated February 26, 1946, arranged in land-
scape (horizontally), consists of two critically important letters written by
the Netherlands Prime Minister, Professor Willem Schermerhorn (1894
1977), who was also the Minister of War:358
358
[Left Side]
To the Minister of Education, Culture and Science
February 26, 1946
SECRET (stamp)
Very Confidential
With this I am sending you a copy of my letter that I have sent
to the Mayor and the Aldermen of the City of Amsterdam with respect
to a possible position for Mr. Van der Waerden as professor at the
University of Amsterdam.
Prime Minister
(signature) W. Schermerhorn
______________________________________________________
[Right Side]
To the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Amsterdam
February 26, 1946
Very Confidential
In answer to your letter of 15 February [1946] regarding Case
0 nr. 13/I with respect to a possible position of Mr. Van der Waerden as
professor at the University of Amsterdam, I can let you know that this
kind of position will not be signed off.
Prime Minister
(signature) W. Schermerhorn
I am convinced that Van der Waerdens professorship was on the January
16, 1946 agenda of the City Council only because Mayor de Boer received
an approval from Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences Van der
Leeuw. The fact that the Prime-Minister overruled Minister Van der
Leeuws decision shows how powerful the newspaper Het Parool has
been right after it emerged from the underground to the above-ground in
the liberated Netherlands. Amsterdams professorship for Van der Waerden
has thus been closed for the foreseeable future.
Accordingly, on April 17, 1946 the Burgemeester & Wethouders advise
the College van Herstel of Amsterdam, which served a dual duty of a
de-Nazification Committee and the Board of Curators, of the withdrawal
of Van der Waerdens nomination [Kne3]:
Burgemeester & Wethouders inform the College van Herstel that they
felt obliged to withdraw the nomination to appoint Dr. B. L. van der
Waerden as extra-ordinary professor in group theory and algebra that
To Mr. Editor 279
they submitted to the city council on 4-January-1946, as it turned out

that the government would withhold its assent in the event of an
appointment of Dr. Van der Waerden.
This document demonstrates that Royal Assent was required for a pro-
fessorial appointment at any Dutch university, including the municipal
University of Amsterdam. Professor Van der Waerden, as well as, appar-
ently, his colleagues Van der Corput and Clay, never understood this point,
for even in 1993 Van der Waerden tells his interviewer Dold-Samplonius
[Dol1] that Amsterdam is a city university, and there the queen was unable
to interfere. In fact, The University Historian of the University of
Amsterdam Dr. Knegtmans, who knows best, advises me as follows [Kne5]:
If Clay and Van der Corput really thought that an appointment as
professor at the University of Amsterdam by the city council did not
need approval by the queen, they were mistaken. It did so by law of
1876 and this procedure was not changed until sometime around 1980.
However, approval by the queen did and does in fact mean approval of
the minister (of Education, in this case). The queen was and is not
supposed to have an opinion of her own. This [is] the ministers
responsibility. It is the minister who advises the queen what to do: to
give or not to give her approval. In Van der Waerdens case this meant
that the then Minister of Education, Professor Gerardus van der
Leeuw, Professor of Theology [as well as Religions and Egyptology]
at the Groningen University, who was minister in the first postwar
year, withheld his approval of Van der Waerdens appointment as
professor in Utrecht as well as in Amsterdam. Van der Waerden was
probably not appointed in Utrecht at all, because it was Van der Leeuw
who had to appoint him. He was probably only proposed as professor
by the College van Herstel in Utrecht.
Years later, I received documents of College van Herstel en Zuivering,
the de-Nazification Committee of Utrecht, which specifically dealt with Van
der Waerdens case among other matters. Thus both de-Nazification Boards,
those of Amsterdam and Utrecht, have investigated Professor Van der
Waerdens behavior during the Nazi era. In the end, we see that the media
and students held the feet of the academics and the governments to such a
hot fire that the latter, convinced or not of the validity of the arguments, were
so scared to err in the public eye on the serious issues raised by the press and
students, that they gave up on trying to place Dr. Van der Waerden in a
Dutch university.
On March 13, 1946 this was formalized in a letter from Dr. Gerardus
J. van der Leeuw, Minister of Education, Culture, and Sciences to College
van Herstel en Zuivering of Utrecht University:359
I am notifying you that the Council of Ministers has decided that
persons, who during the occupation years have continuously worked
in Germany out of their free will, cannot now be considered for
government appointments.
The reason for the decision was the discussion of a possible appoint-
ment of Dr. B. L. van der Waerden to professor in Amsterdam.
It will be clear to you that the appointment of Dr. Van der Waerden
either in Amsterdam or in Utrecht cannot take place.
The Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences
Signed for the Minister by Secretary-General H. J. Reinink
Astonishingly, Van der Waerdens individual case prompted the Govern-
ment of the Netherlands to pass a new law, banning all persons, who during
the occupation years have continuously worked in Germany out of their free
will from all government jobs!
I have been unable to find Van der Corputs reaction to the Het Parool
Affair, but I have found the next best thing: the opinion of the second major
supporter of Van der Waerden at Amsterdam, Professor Jacob Clay. On
March 19, 1946, just 6 days after the Ministers decision, Clay writes to Van
der Waerden as follows:360
Dear v d Waerden,
To my great regret our plan has not materialized at the last moment.
The City government had already been convinced that the appointment
was appropriate when the decision from the Minister came that nobody
who has worked in Germany during the war, without any exceptions,
for the time being would receive an appointment in public service. The
response that I had prepared was not looked at, and in retrospect I am
sorry that I have allowed the Alderman361 to keep me from responding
to Het Parool. When so much time has passed, it seems better not to
bring these things up again. I now hope very strongly that we will
receive a better collaboration for the Mathematical Centre and that in
359
This letter is a part of the documents provided to me by the Utrecht University Archives.
These documents show that the Utrechts College van Herstel en Zuivering was impressed by
Van der Waerden retaining his Dutch citizenship while in Germany, and thus favored
Dr. Van der Waerden for the Utrecht job until this letter arrived.
360
Letter in Dutch; ETH Hs 652: 10646.
361
Clay here clearly refers to Albertus de Roos, the Alderman for Education and Arts.
To Mr. Editor 281
time this matter will still work out OK, and I do not doubt that this is
going to happen in time.
Nicolaas de Bruijn and my dear friend and coauthor Paul Erdos allow us
an additional glimpse of Holland, year 1948. De Bruijn recalls [e-mail to me
of February 3, 2004]:
You wanted to know more about my early contacts with Paul Erdos . . .
We met in person at several occasions, for the first time in 1948. I first
saw him at his arrival in the harbor of Rotterdam, and took him to
Delft, where he stayed a few days at our house.
Paul Erdos conveys a relevant detail of this 1948 visit. Once at the dinner
table, when the conversation turned to Van der Waerden, Nicolaas wife,
Elizabeth Bep de Groot said,
If Van der Waerden were not such a fine mathematician, things would
have been much worse for him [in the postwar Netherlands].
Chapter 30
Job History 19451947
Upon his return to Holland in late June 1945, Dr. Van der Waerden needed a
job as soon as possible. His friend Hans Freudenthal came through.
He introduced Van der Waerden to Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij
(B.P.M.), today known as Royal Dutch Shell, and on October 1, 1945 Van
der Waerden got his first post-World War II job as an analyst for B.P.M. In
1993 Van der Waerden recalls [Dol1]:
One day Freudenthal called me and wanted me to come to Amsterdam
to talk. I went to Amsterdam, and Freudenthal told me that he was able
to find a position for me at Shell. Would you accept it? Yes, of
course; I accepted it most willingly.
Yet, Mrs. Camilla Van der Waerden was clearly bitter. We see it even
half a century later in this 1993 interview that continues with her words:
So we were saved. I have always said that they can take everything
away from us but our intellect.
Who they? Who was taking everything away from the Van der
Waerdens? The Dutch people? Queen Wilhelmina, who, having returned
herself from a 5-year long exile to London, refused to sign off on a
university professorship for Van der Waerden?
On July 30, 1946, Van der Waerden sends a letter362 to Leipzig Professor
of Physical Chemistry Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer, whose younger brother,
the famous theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was hung days before the end of
World War II for his part in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Van der
Waerden expresses his condolences, criticism of the Nazi regime, criticism
362
Archiv, Max Planck Gesellschaft, Nachlass K. F. Bonhoeffer, III Abt, Rep 23, Nr. 5712.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_30
284 30 Job History 19451947
of the post-Nazi regime, difficulty of retrieving his bicycle from Leipzig,

and difficulty convincing the world, a year after the horrific German brutal-
ities, that there are still some decent Germans:
Dear Mr. Bonhoeffer,
We were very pleased to hear from you. But we were devastated by
the fate of your four brothers and brothers-in-law murdered by the
Nazis. That is terrible! The entire hopeless time that speaks from your
letter and some other letters from Germany is very painful for us. How
differently we imagined it when this hated gang would have gone
away. And we would all work joyfully for the reconstruction of
Germany of scholarship and of a better world. Now one year later I
cannot even get permission to go to Leipzig in order to retrieve my
bicycle and some papers and everyday things and to settle my rela-
tionship with the university. Everywhere there are walls of division,
mistrust, and hate, and not much constructive work. Indeed, as you
write, it is very difficult to make it clear to people everywhere that
there are still decent Germans. Every individual half-way reasonable
person admits it, but the general population does not want to see it.
From this letter we also learn that Van der Waerden is happy with his
industrial job, and is offered an academic job in Graz, Austria (which did not
work out):
Materially we are doing excellently here: a true paradise. My work in
industry is very pleasant; only too bad that I have little time for
scholarly work in addition to it. I do not have any secretary. But
when the Mathematics Center in Amsterdam is established, perhaps,
that would be better.
I have the prospects of a position in Graz, but I want to go there
before I decide.
Indeed, in 1946 a group of mathematicians led by Professor J. G. van der
Corput establishes the Mathematisch Centrum (Mathematics Center), MC
for short, in Amsterdam. As MCs first director, Van der Corput hires
Dr. Van der Waerden to a part-time (1-day a week) position as the applied
mathematics director of the MC.
At this point Zurich enters the stage in our narrative. The life-long
ETH363 Professor Beno Eckmann (March 31, 1917, BernNovember
25, 2008, Zurich) kindly recollects for us [Eck1]:
363
ETH is short for the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich, often called Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology, one of worlds premier universities and research centers.
30 Job History 19451947 285
In 1944 Speiser364 left Zurich for Basel. Finsler365 was promoted and
became his successor in Zurich; Finsler had been associate professor of
applied mathematics. So in 1944 the chair of applied mathematics
became vacant. Lars Ahlfors366 was appointed in 1945, but he left
after 3 semesters.
Olli Lehto writes [Leh1]: Ahlfors did not stay long in Zurich; later he
confessed that he did not have a good time there. Ahlfors explains (ibid.):
I cannot honestly say that I was happy in Zurich. The post-war era was
not a good time for a stranger to take root in Switzerland . . . My wife
and I did not feel welcome outside the circle of our immediate
colleagues.367
Consequently Ahlfors gladly accepts an offer to return to Harvard Uni-
versitywhere he worked 19351938and remains there for decades
(19461977, plus afterwards as an active Professor Emeritus). The Univer-
sity of Zurich upgrades Ahlfors position (who was an extra-ordinary pro-
fessor) to a full ordinarius and starts the search.
In a fateful coincidence, the search starts on March 13, 1946, the same
day when the Dutch Minister Van der Leeuw announces to Utrecht the
prohibition of all governmental appointments for persons with backgrounds
similar to that of Van der Waerden.
Dr. Heinzpeter Stucki, Universit atsarchivar at Zurich, has found for me
only one document directly related to this search, which, however, proved to
be of great significance: the 6-page July 15, 1946 report by Dekan Hans
Steiner to Executive Authority (Regierungsrat) Dr. R. Briner of the Educa-
tion Directorate (Erziehungsdirection) of the Zurich Canton.368 Steiner
chooses two foreign mathematicians and recommends grabbing them as
soon as possible, never minding the controversies surrounding these
candidates:
364
Andreas Speiser (18851970), a professor of mathematics at the University of Zurich
(19171944) and then at the University of Basel.
365
Paul Finsler (18941970), a professor of mathematics at the University of Zurich (1927
1959) and Honorary Professor thereafter.
366
Lars Valerian Ahlfors (Finland, 1907USA, 1996), a professor of mathematics at Harvard
University (19461977), one of two first Fields Medal winners (1936).
367
Earlier, on September 18, 1938, Albert Einstein expressed his distaste for the Swiss
government: I havent forgotten that the Swiss authorities didnt stand by me in any way
when Hitler stole all of my savings, even those designated for my children. (Letter to
Heinrich Zangger. Quoted from [Ein1], p. 128.) In recent years, the carefully cultivated for
decades belief in Swiss neutrality during the war has been questioned.
368
Universitat Z
urich, Universit
atsarchiv, ALF Mathematik 19441946.
286 30 Job History 19451947
Prominent mathematicians are available today for a short time, and the
two world-famous mathematicians in question are: Rolf Nevanlinna369
(Finland) and Prof. Van der Waerden (Holland).
Dekan Steiner assesses the candidacy of Professor Nevanlinna first. After
praising his mathematical achievements, Dekan addresses the personality of
the candidate:
He was born on October 22, 1895 in Joenuu (Finland) and for many
years was Rektor of the University of Helsinki. He had to leave this
position as a consequence of the political circumstances after the end
of the war. Consequently, as he has briefly communicated, he is ready
for an appointment at Zurich.
This is a rather short assessment: born-rektored-forced to resign. Looking
at the 15-page summary [Ste] of the 317-page biography of Rolf
Nevanlinna, written by his student (Ph.D., 1949) and advocate Olli Lehto,
one is compelled to quote at least some information, which should have been
relevant to the neutral Switzerland just one year after World War II:
In 1933 Hitler became the German Reichskanzler. Up to the year 1943
Nevanlinna was of the opinion that Hitler [!] in German history could
be compared to Friedrich the Great and Bismarck . . . He and other
members of his family regarded the cause of Nazi Germany as their
own cause. Germany was Nevanlinnas motherland (his mother was
German) . . . This contributed to . . . his Nazi-friendly convictions in
particular, which he expressed in a series of speeches and publications.
Nevanlinna, however, has never been a member of a National Socialist
party and did not hold anti-Semitic positions.
When in Finland as well as in Germany the thought arose to
establish a Finnish Volunteers Battalion, Nevanlinna welcomed this
idea and agreed to the deployment of volunteers unreservedly. On the
demand of [Reichsf uhrer SS] Himmler there was developed the SS
Battalion, and in the summer of 1942 Nevanlinna became the Chair-
man of the SS Volunteers Committee of this [Waffen-SS] Battalion!
Elsewhere [Leh2] Olli Lehto addresses the Nazi leadership role of his
teacher Rolf Nevanlinna again:
369
Rolf Herman Nevanlinna (18951980), a professor of mathematics (19261946) and
Rektor (19411944) at Helsinki University; professor of applied mathematics at the Univer-
sity of Zurich (19461963, Honorary Professor starting in 1949).
30 Job History 19451947 287
In 1942, at the request of the Foreign Minister, Nevanlinna made

himself available as chairman of the SS Volunteer Committee, which
handled the recruitment of Finnish SS troops. After the war,
Nevanlinna came in for especial condemnation [!] for his involvement
in these activities.
Young readers may benefit from a very brief information about the SS.370
The Schutzstaffel (translated Protection Squadron), abbreviated SS was a
major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party . . .
Under Himmlers leadership (19291945), it grew from a small paramilitary
formation to one of the largest and most powerful organizations in the Third
Reich. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Himmlers command was
responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War
II. The SS, along with the Nazi Party, was banned in Germany as a criminal
organization after 1945 . . . According to the Nuremberg Trials, as well as
many war crimes investigations and trials conducted since then, the SS was
responsible for the vast majority of Nazi war crimes. In particular, SS was
the primary organization which carried out the Holocaust.
I cringe while reading the Internet home pages of the International

Mathematics Union, the highest organization of my profession:371
The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in mathematical aspects of information
science was established by the Executive Committee of the Interna-
tional Mathematical Union (IMU) in April 1981. It was decided that
the prize should consist of a gold medal and a cash prize similar to the
ones associated with the Fields Medal and that one prize should be
given at each International Congress of Mathematicians. The prize was
named the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in honor of Rolf Nevanlinna (1895
1980), who had been Rector of the University of Helsinki and Presi-
dent of the IMU and who in the 1950s had taken the initiative to the
computer organization at Finnish universities.
I am compelled to ask the IMU executives: How can you ignore or
minimize Nevanlinnas willing and eager service as the Chairman of the
Finnish SS Troops Committee, his giving a number of speeches in support of
Nazi Germany, and as we have seen earlier in this book, on March 25, 1941
still claiming that Hitler saved European culture? Yes, Professor Nevanlinna
was a world-class mathematician, once IMU President (19591962), and the
370
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel.
371
http://www.mathunion.org/general/prizes/nevanlinna/details/.
288 30 Job History 19451947
Finns offered to pay for the prize (negligible amount really), but mustnt we
take into account the public deeds and moral bearings of the person whose
profile we etch on our medals, let me repeat, etch on our medals? Or for the
IMU executives, mathematics is above all moral concerns, Mathematik uber
alles? As far as the medal for the mathematical aspects of information
science is concerned, were there not worthier candidates, professionally
and personally, for example, such great pioneers as John von Neumann,
Claude Shannon, and Norbert Wiener?
Let us go back to the Swiss search, year 1946. Professor Nevanlinna is the
first choice. Dekan Hans Steiner then moves on to the second choice,
Dr. Van der Waerden. Steiner admits that
since he [Van der Waerden] became politically strongly disputed in
Holland, the real state of affairs had to be clarified.
Dekan Steiner then quotes a clarification supplied by the Dutch mathema-
tician Jan A. Schouten,372 who at that time lives in seclusion in Epe, Holland:
Herr van der Waerden [. . .] remained during the war in Germany, to
which he was, being exempt from [the Dutch] military service, fully
entitled, and he always behaved there as an enemy of Nazism and in
particular did much good for the Jews. The State Commission for
Coordination of Higher Education,373 which has been established
here after the war, and of which I have the honor to be a member,
would have liked to have Herr van der Waerden in Amsterdam or
Utrecht. The Purging Commission that was installed after the liber-
ation, with the task to test the heart and kidneys374 of all Dutchmen,
had declared him clean, and the Minister of Education was ready to
appoint him. Then a Jewish brother-in-law of Herr v. d. Waerden, who
had already for years made enemies of him and particularly his
(German) wife, unleashed a terribly dirty (hundsgemeine) agitation
in the press. The Minister, who is no strong personality and who
already had grave unpleasantness with other similar agitations, has
thereupon given in to intimidation. You cannot at all imagine what sick
conditions prevail here, dirty malicious agitation with self-interest and
372
Jan Arnoldus Schouten (18831971), from a well-known wealthy family of shipbuilders,
a professor of mathematics and mechanics at the Delft Technical University (19141943),
extra-ordinary professor (without teaching) of mathematics at the University of Amsterdam
(19481953). Schouten was President of the 1954 International Congress of Mathematicians
in Amsterdam.
373
Known as the Van der Corput Committee.
374
A biblical expression.
30 Job History 19451947 289
political purposes, often born from desire of revenge are the order of
the day. [. . .]
Our main purpose was to keep Herr v. d. Waerden for Holland for
the time being, and as soon as the wave of hatred and suspicion has
subsided, he will get the Ordinarius Professor position, which he
deserves as a great mathematician.
These harsh words of Schouten, directed at his recently liberated Moth-
erland, were intended to make Dr. Van der Waerden appear as a victim of
extremism. It must be said that Dr. Schouten peddled gossip to the Swiss:
Van der Waerden had no sisters, and thus could not have had any brother-in-
law, Jewish or otherwise. Regardless, so many Jews so recently had been
killed, including circa 80% of the Dutch Jews, that it was in poor taste to
blame a Jew for Van der Waerdens employment difficulties. But to claim
that one ordinary person, Jewish or not, was able to unleash a terribly dirty
agitation in the press meant to take Zurich Faculty for fools. Unbelievably,
Dekan Steiner takes Dr. Schoutens gossip for truth, and concludes Van der
Waerdens political evaluation with
No reason is thus present to refrain from a possible appointment of
Herr v. d. Waerden in Zurich.
Thus, two top choices, two world-class mathematicians, two individuals,
whose political and moral choices have been questioned during the imme-
diate post-World War II period, end up at the top of the Swiss wish list.
Nevanlinna is chosen for the position, approved by the Government of the
Canton Zurich, and still in 1946 begins his Zurich professorship. However,
on December 23, 1946, a member of Z uricher Kantonsrat (Zurich Cantonal
Council, a legislative body) Alfred White, submits the following interpel-
lation375 to Regierungsrat (Executive Authority):
According to newspaper reports and letters from Finnish journalists,
the newly-elected professor of mathematics at the University of Zurich
Rolf Nevanlinna has operated as a recruiter for the sworn to Hitler
Finnish Waffen-SS.
These promotional activities must have been carried out prior to the
entry of Finland into the war.
375
The Wikipedia advises: Interpellation is the formal right of a parliament to submit
formal questions to the government. In many parliaments, each individual member of
parliament has the right to formally submit questions (possibly a limited amount during a
certain period) to a member of government. The respective minister or secretary is then
required to respond and to justify government policy. Interpellation thus allows the parlia-
ment to supervise the governments activity. In this sense, it is closer to a motion of censure.
290 30 Job History 19451947
Is the Government prepared to give information as to whether it had

knowledge of this fact when choosing Nevanlinna for professorship?
Is the Government prepared to provide information, on whose
recommendation this professor was elected?
Does the Government not believe that if these reports are correct,
this professor is unacceptable for our university?
The Canton Government takes its time. Eventually, on March 14, 1947,
the Directorate of Education (Erziehungsdirection) sends an inquiry to
Dekan Hans Steiner of Zurich University. Now they desire to receive the
defense of Nevanlinnaand themselvesas soon as possible:376
March 14, 1947 To Herr Prof. Dr. Hans Steiner, Dekan of Phil.
Facultat II Zoological Institute
In the appendix we will send the text of the interpellation by Alfred
Weiss Zurich according to todays telephone conference. We ask you
to consider the matter together with Prof. Fueter and report to us as
soon as possible about it.
And so the race of double stakes begins: not only the reputation of Rolf
Nevanlinna is on the card there, but also the reputation of the Zurich
Cantonal Government. Professor Fueter writes a 3-page letter to Dekan
Steiner. Steiner quotes nearly the entire Fueters letter in his 4-page letter
addressed to Dr. R. Briner.377 We learn, for the first time, the names of the
faculty, who made these hiring recommendations that could be viewed as
inconsistent with Swiss neutrality:
To the Education Administration
of the Canton of Zurich
Government Councilor Dr. R. Briner
Zurich, Walchetor
Regarding: Interpellation Alfred Weiss
. . .The July 15, 1946 decision of the Philosophical Facult

at II, in
which Prof. Nevanlinna was suggested as the first candidate for the
professorship in Applied Mathematics, came about based on evalua-
tions that the Facultat received from the Mathematics Commission,
which was entrusted with the matter and which the department
endorsed. The Commission, to which Professors Fueter, Finsler,
376
Universit
at Z
urich Archiv, Rektoratsarchiv.
377
Both letters are undated, likely from MarchApril 1947. Universit at Zurich Archiv,
Rektoratsarchiv. Emphasis shown by underlines appears in Fueters and Steiners letters.
30 Job History 19451947 291
Karrer, Waldmeier, Wentzel and the undersigned as Dekan ex officio

belonged, depended primarily on the judgment of the mathematicians
involved, Professors Fueter and Finsler.
Dekan Hans Steiner then quotes Professor Fueter who assumes full
responsibility (whatever this means) for Professor Nevanlinnas character,
alleges that Nevanlinnas acceptance of Zurich job is a proof of the latters
interest in scholarship [sic], and minimizes Nevanlinnas sympathies toward
and support of Nazi Germany. Fueter does not seem to understand the
difference between patriotism and Aryan-kind of nationalism:
Prof. Fueter writes to me the following about his relationship with
Prof. Nevanlinna, in his own words:
With Prof. Rolf Nevanlinna, both Prof. Speiser (former Ordinarius
in Zurich, now Basel) and I have been friends for many years. We
know him well and can assume full responsibility regarding his impor-
tance and his character . . .
He has dedicated his entire life to scholarship; his acceptance of the
Zurich offer confirms this once again, because he believes himself
better able at this point to pursue his scholarly work here . . .
The current Rektor [in Helsinki] was appointed to this position
under the current government, which is strongly influenced by
communists378. . .
That Prof. Nevanlinna is in addition a great Finnish patriot will not
be held against him in Switzerland. As such of course he tried to
support his people with all [sic] available means in their struggle for
existence. Obviously that was his duty. From the communist side in
Finland, that is being held against him today. Any sympathies for
National Socialist Germany played no role and were non-existent.379
As for the precise accusations in the interpellation, we have no exact
information about these things. It is certain that the selected Finnish
soldiers were brought to Germany for further training (certainly not
before the war, but mostly between the wars). Among them there
were students. These soldiers were later integrated into the army and
are supposed to have proven themselves as good soldiers. It seems
doubtful [that we should] make use of the fact that they swore an oath
378
Repeatedly blaming communists could hardly fly. Wikipedia informs: Parliamentary
elections were held in Finland on 17 and 18 March 1945. The broad-based centre-left
government of Prime Minister Juho Kusti Paasikivi (National Coalition/Independent)
remained in office after the elections.
379
This plainly contradicts Olli Lehtos writings that we have read earlier in this chapter.
292 30 Job History 19451947
to Hitler. There would need to be a proof of that. These soldiers were

thus non-German SS, but were possibly only trained by such [German
SS]. According to statements by Prof. Nevanlinna, he had simply
nothing to do with this whole thing except that he was obligated as
Rektor of the university to place his name under a call to provide food
for these people under orders to leave . . .
That today, after a lost war, political suspicions and pretensions are
the order of the day is not surprising. It is clear that we in Switzerland
should put an end to it. Above all we should steer clear of this foreign
loose talk.
Thus, Rektor Nevanlinna only lent his name to recruitment of non-
German SS troops, presided over SS recruitment committee, gave speeches
in support Nazi Germany, and praised Hitler as Friedrich the Great of his
time. After a lost war as SteinerFueter put it, there were great mathema-
ticians to be picked up by Switzerland, who were not wanted by the USA,
Great Britain, etc. due to their questioned conduct. And so we see in this
letter facts bent to fit the desired goal of recruiting top mathematicians.
On May 14, 1947, based on the SteinerFueter letter, the Canton Govern-
ment issues a self-serving, self-clearing response to the Alfred Weiss Inter-
pellation (Protokoll des Regierungsrates 1947; 1631 Interpellation. Am 23.
Dezember 1946 reichte Kantonsrat A. Weiss-Z urich).380 Thus, nearly a year
after his hiring, the case of Professor Nevanlinna is finally closed in Zurich.
In one of his e-mails [Eck3], Professor Beno Eckmann volunteers a view
of Zurich postwar hiring from his present standpoint:
If I may make a remark as I see it today [in 2004]: Politically
Nevanlinna and vdW [Van der Waerden] were not easy cases for
Switzerland one year after the war. But Universities tried to forget
the past and look into the future. The decision for Nevanlinna must
have been mathematical: he was absolutely world famous and at that
time many mathematicians still considered analysis to be the most
important part of mathematics this has changed soon, algebra and
topology became more and more important.
Indeed, this affair shows that the famed Swiss neutrality was a pragmatic
rather than a moral choice, facade rather than substance. Four years later, the
new Dekan Boesch will write about this search as follows:381
380
Recorded and signed by Der Staatsschreiber Dr. Aeppli. Universit at Z
urich Archiv,
Rektoratsarchiv.
381
Dekan Hans Boesch to Education Directorate [Erziehungedirection] of the Canton of
Zurich, June 9, 1950; Universit
at Z
urich, Universit
atsarchiv, Lehrstuhlakten Mathematik.
30 Job History 19451947 293
It is explicit from the Faculty proposal for filling a new position of

Professor of Applied Mathematics dated July 15, 1946, that Prof. Van
der Waerden was thoroughly considered.
Indeed, Prof. Van der Waerden was thoroughly considered, and the
interest in hiring him was very high. In four years this 1946 consideration
would bear fruit. Meanwhile, Van der Waerden continues his full-time work
at Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij and part-time work at the
Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam.
Chapter 31
America! America! God Shed His Grace
on Thee382
After the war, Van der Waerden surely desired a university professorshiphe
had held one ever since the tender age of 25. As we know from his letters to
Lefschetz, Veblen, Neugebauer and Courant, his first choice was an academic
job in the United States. In early 1947 Dr. Van der Waerden received a letter
from Baltimore, Maryland that offered him both: a university professorship
and an opportunity to live in America. Frank Murnaghan,383 Johns Hopkins
Universitys chair of mathematics, offered Van der Waerden the position of
Visiting Professor. In his May 5, 1947 letter, Van der Waerden informed
Johns Hopkins President Isaiah Bowman of his acceptance with much
pleasure.384 Coincidentally, on the same day, May 5, 1947, the Board of
Trustees of Johns Hopkins University approved the appointment. From their
minutes we learn that the appointment was effective July 1, 1947 to June
30, 1948.385 On May 13, 1947 Provost Stewart Macaulay specified Professor
Van der Waerdens salary as $6,500 for the year.386 The Van der Waerdens
Bartel, Camilla, Helga, Ilse, and Hansboarded the ship called Veendam,
which arrived in the Port of New York on September 29 or 30, 1947.387
At Johns Hopkins University, Professor Van der Waerden was well
respected, and was offered a permanent professorship. This offer was made
382
From America the Beautiful, a song by Katharine Lee Bates.
383
Francis Dominic Murnaghan (18931976), mathematics chair at Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity (19281948).
384
Johns Hopkins University (JHU), The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Record Group
01.001 Board of Trustees, Series 2, Minutes, May 5, 1947.
385
Ibid.
386
Ibid.
387
Ibid.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_31
296 31 America! America! God Shed His Grace on Thee
suddenly, and was the result of an unspecified emergency, as it was called

in a number of documents,388 which happened at Johns Hopkins University in
the early February 1948. Naturally, I have tried to find out what the emer-
gency was, and came up with a conjecture. J. J. OConnor and E. F. Robertson
write as follows in The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive:389
He [Murnaghan] held this post until 1948 when he retired after a
disagreement with the President of Johns Hopkins University [Bow-
man], and went to Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The sudden departure of the chair of mathematics (chair did depart) was a
serious loss for Johns Hopkins University. It created a senior level vacancy
and could have been the emergency that prompted President Bowman, a
party to the disagreement, to rush and remedy the loss by making Professor
Van der Waerden an offer of a permanent position. Let us take part in the
emergency proceedings.
On February 6, 1948 President Bowman swiftly forms a special commit-
tee and writes to its members the following letter:
An emergency has arisen in the Department of Mathematics that calls
for early action on an appointment recommended by both
Dr. Murnaghan and Dr. Wintner.390 The candidate is Dr. Van der
Waerden . . . You have received telephone notice of an Academic
Council meeting at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, February 9, in Room
315 Gilman Hall. You will want to study the enclosed material on
Professor van der Waerden before the meeting.
This was a short notice indeed. The next day, on February 7, 1948, the
special committee, chaired by the chemist Alsoph H. Corwin, unanimously
approves the mathematics departments recommendation without the usual
in academia external letters of reference. The following morning the Aca-
demic Council, also chaired by Professor Corwin, at its special 20-min
meeting (8:308:50 A.M.) Voted to suspend its hold-over rule and unan-
imously recommend the appointment of Dr. Van der Waerden to the
president. The same day (!) the Board of Trustees approves the appointment
of Professor Van der Waerden to a Full Professorship that pays $8,000 first
year; $9,000 second year; and $10,000 third year.391
388
JHU, Record Group 01.001 Board of Trustees, Series 2, Minutes, 2/9/1948.
389
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Murnaghan.html
390
Aurel Friedrich Wintner (Budapest, 1903Baltimore, 1958), one of the leading mathe-
matics professors at Johns Hopkins University (19301958).
391
JHU, Record Group 01.001 Board of Trustees, Series 2, Minutes, February 9, 1948.
31 America! America! God Shed His Grace on Thee 297
Surprisingly, Van der Waerden turns this offer down and chooses to return
to Holland. Instead of himself he recommends for the position Wei-Liang
Chow, his former Leipzig doctoral student (Ph.D., 1936) and coauthor of
several of his algebraic geometry papers. Chow will indeed be hired the
following year, and will serve as a professor at Johns Hopkins University for
nearly three decades (19491977), including over 10 years as the chair.
In 1945, Van der Waerden wanted badly to come to America. He has
gotten his wish in 1947. Why then in 1948 does he decide to reject a
prestigious, well-paying professorship at Johns Hopkins and leave America?
He chooses to return to Amsterdam, where, rightly or wrongly, he has not
been treated particularly warmly during 19451947. Has his treatment in the
United States been worse? I triedand failedto find answers in the
Archives of Johns Hopkins University. My investigative thread seems to
have run into a dead end.
Time passed. One day in my University of Colorado office I glanced at
the many books on the shelves, and picked one to read at home. It happened
to be Heisenbergs War: The Secret History of the German Bomb by the
Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Powers [Pow].392 It was a great read; more-
over, Van der Waerden made a cameo appearance on the pages of the book.
So far there were no surprises, for we already knew that Van der Waerden
was a close friend of Heisenberg at Leipzig. However, in this book Van der
Waerden appeared as Heisenbergs American pen pal in 19471948! The
letters were quoted from the 1987 Princeton History Ph.D. thesis of Mark
Walker, defended under the supervision of my dear friend and the founder of
the Princetons History of Science program Charles Coulson Gillispie. I was
intrigued, and so I googled and then telephoned Thomas Powers at his rural
Vermont home. Powers led me to Walker; Walker sent me copies of the
HeisenbergVan der Waerden correspondence. The answers to my ques-
tions were hidden in these letters!
Yes, the surprising answers were hidden in the Werner Heisenberg
Archive in Munich, in the unpublished December 22, 1947 letter from
Van der Waerden, who was in Baltimore, to his friend Heisenberg at
Gottingen. I read in excitement and disbelief:393
392
Later I received from the author an inscribed copy of the book.
393
Van der Waerden, letter to Heisenberg, December 22, 1947, Private Papers of Werner
Heisenberg, Max Planck Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem. I am grateful to Prof. Mark Walker for
sharing with me the 19471948 correspondence between Van der Waerden and Heisenberg,
and Van der Waerden and Goudsmit. I also thank Dr. Helmut Rechenberg, Heisenbergs last
Ph.D. student and former Director of the Werner Heisenberg Archive, for the permission to
reproduce these materials.
298 31 America! America! God Shed His Grace on Thee

On the 9th of October I sent you a care package, write to me please
if it has arrived and how you are doing with groceries. I would be very
glad to send you more next year. I am still in your debt: in the past
when I was arrested, you helped me to something much greater, and
that is freedom.
I need your advice: you are a reasonable man and at the beginning of
this war, you predicted who in the end would be the victor. I think I
will receive an offer to be a professor in Baltimore, and then I must
decide either in favor of Baltimore Johns Hopkins or Holland. In
Holland, I would do for the most part applied mathematics and I
would train applied mathematicians at the newly founded Math Cen-
trum and at my oil company. I like this work very well and my work at
Johns Hopkins I like too, so this [aspect] is equal. The people here are
unbelievably nice and helpful: you know that. Nevertheless, I would
rather stay in Europe: I love Old Europe and so does my wife.
Thus, Van der Waerden likes his job at Johns Hopkins and considers
American people to be unbelievably nice and helpful. Yet, Bartel and
Camilla van der Waerden prefer good Old Europe. Fair enough, one can
relate to that. However, his surprising main concern about living in Balti-
more pops up in the next paragraph:
Now my question: how do you judge the prospects for war, and how do
you judge the question whether one could better safeguard ones
family in America or Holland if the insanity would break out? The
people here and in Europe are telling us that it is crazy, that it is
insanity, and that if you have a possibility to stay in America, it is
insanity to go back to Holland. Personally I do not believe there will be
a war, but if it nonetheless should come, then a big American city does
not seem to me to be the most secure place in the world, but in the past
I have been very mistaken in similar cases and do not want to have a
responsibility on my shoulders for leading my wife and children to
ruin. You understand more about nuclear physics than I do; what do
you think about this?
Here I have spoken with different people, and gotten a definite
impression that America would never start a war on its own, which
has set me to rest.
Van der Waerden is afraid that in a large American cityBaltimorehis
wife and children could be in a real danger of a Russian atomic attack! This
may sound irrational to us looking from today at the year 1947. However, I
recall similar fears experienced by Van der Waerdens successor at the
31 America! America! God Shed His Grace on Thee 299
University of Amsterdam N.G. de Bruijn, who wrote to me about it in his

June 1, 2004 e-mail [Bru8]:
In 1952 I got a professorship in Amsterdam and . . . I preferred not to
live in town but in a village 20 km to the east of it. Nobody would
believe now that one reason I had at that time was that in a Russian
atomic attack my family would be pretty safe at that distance. A few
years later atomic bombs would be hundred times as strong as the
Hiroshima type, so the whole argument became utterly silly.
Van der Waerden concludes his Dec 22, 1947 letter to Heisenberg with
the hope that Germany will be rebuilt and they will once again work there
together:
They [Americans] even see in all seriousness a desire to support the
reconstruction of Germany, which I am very happy about. Courant
thinks that because of the Marshall plan, in some years Germany
would once again reach the heights. Maybe we will get together again!
Van der Waerdens wish to work together with Werner Heisenberg in
Germany will be eventually fulfilled, as we will see in Chapter 40. In the
March 18, 1948 letter, Van der Waerden informs Heisenberg of his employ-
ment choice:
In principle, I have accepted the job offer from [the University of]
Amsterdam.
Before we follow Professor Van der Waerden to Amsterdam, we will
discover a new kind of a triangle that I named a Letteral Triangle, which
could be the subject of a whole separate book.
Chapter 32
Van der Waerden, Goudsmit,
and Heisenberg: A Letteral Triangle
During the last two years of the World War II, Dr. Samuel Abraham
Goudsmit,394 an American nuclear physicist born in Holland, had served
as the Chief of Scientific Intelligence of the U.S. Department of War Alsos
Missions, dedicated to gathering information about the German nuclear
program, capturing its materials, equipment and records, and capturing
and interrogating its leading scientists.
In his articles and the 1947 book, entitled Alsos [Gou1] Goudsmit attrib-
uted the German fiasco in building the atomic bomb to the treatment of
science in the totalitarian Nazi state and scientific blunders of Werner
Heisenberg and other German scientists (as we will see, Goudsmit would
later retract a few exaggerations he made in Alsos), rather than to
Heisenbergs alleged concerns for the fate of the humanity and sabotage
of the German program of creating an atomic bomb. The book prompted
private and public debates between the two old friends, Goudsmit and
Heisenberg, so close friends that as early as in 1925 Heisenberg visited
Goudsmit in Holland, and before the war Heisenberg spent time at
Goudsmits Michigan house during his visits to the United States, including
the one in the summer 1939, right before the start of the war.
The discussions commenced in private letters and then spilled over into a
public and published debate. From the captured documents and secret
recordings, Goudsmit has known much about Heisenberg and his fellow
German physicists war work. In his December 1, 1947 reply, Goudsmit
speaks the inconvenient truth about Heisenbergs compromises with the
394
Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (July 11, 1902, Den HaagDecember 4, 1978, Reno, Nevada,
USA); creator jointly with George Eugene Uhlenbeck of the concept of electron spin, 1925;
Max Planck Medal, 1964.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_32
302 32 Van der Waerden, Goudsmit, and Heisenberg: A Letteral Triangle
Nazis, and Heisenbergs caring about the integrity of physics more than
about the crimes of Nazism:
I must admit that I was deeply disappointed when I found out about
these attempts at a compromise. What surprised me the most was that
you yourself did not see that a compromise with the Nazis was
impossible. Your attempts to convince them of soundness of relativity
and quantum theory seem so out of place. How could you ever hope to
be successful, how could you ever think that these were important
issues.395
These are dense lines; let us elaborate. Heisenberg courageously
defended and practiced Albert Einsteins relativity theory in Nazi Germany.
However, once publicly attacked for it by the Nazi-leaning physicist
Johannes Stark, he soughtand receivedthe high protection of the mass
murderer, Heinrich Himmler. This act was not just dishonorableit made
Heisenberg a property of the regime and denied him any opportunity to ever
again publicly criticize the Third Reich as he did at a faculty meeting in
1935. Once called upon by the regime, Heisenberg became a scientific
leader of a group of high powered scientists, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker
included, the so-called Uranverein, Uranium Club, in their work on creating
an atomic bomb and atomic reactor for the Nazi war machine. Above all,
Goudsmit is right in stressing that by comparison to the murder of millions
of innocent people by Nazi Germany, Heisenbergs defense of a theory was
of little importance.
Much more about the Alsos Missions and the debate can be found in
[Pow] and [Wal1] respectively. Of course, we have rich eyewitness accounts
written by Alsos major players, Samuel A. Goudsmit [Gou1], Colonel
Boris T. Pash [Pash], and General Leslie R. Groves [Gro]. Meanwhile, we
are duty bound to return to Van der Waerden.
Upon reading Alsos, on March 17, 1948, Bartel L. van der Waerden
writes a letter in Dutch to Samuel A. Goudsmit that opens with high praise
of books character development, including the somewhat mysterious
character of Werner Heisenberg:396
With great interest I have read Alsos. It has kept me in tension during
half of the night. Your picture of characters is excellent: by a few
395
Quoted from [Wal1].
396
Private Papers of Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem. I am
keeping unedited the Dutch-to-English translations of this letter and of the following
Goudsmits reply, because these translations were made and written in longhand by B. L.
van der Waerden himself for Prof. Mark Walker, who has kindly shared them with me.
32 Van der Waerden, Goudsmit, and Heisenberg: A Letteral Triangle 303
strokes men like Bothe, Weizsacker, Mentzel, Osenberg are drawn

down to their feet. Also the main actor has been well approached: the
somewhat mysterious character of W. H. [Werner Heisenberg] has
now become clearer to me in several respects. What you write about
the causes of the German failure [to produce the atomic bomb and
reactor], about self-overestimation and clique-mentality is well moti-
vated and certainly correct.
Van der Waerden then poses a number of important questions:
But there is one point which I dont understand well as yet. You write,
The bomb is what they were after. How do you know that, or rather
what do you mean exactly? Do you mean that these people, knowing
who Hitler is, planned the horrible crime to give into his hands an
atomic bomb? If this is what you mean, what proofs do you have for
this horrible accusation? As far as I can see it is only the document on
page 178,397 but this (document) is quoted by you only later to prove
something else.
The question whether these people planned a crime is, I feel, more
important than the accusation of self-overestimation, hero-worship,
etc. Why do you slide over this main question so hastily?
Goudsmit replies to Van der Waerden in March (undated), 1948:398
The problem of the German atomic bomb is very complicated. I dont
agree with you that it is a crime that they worked on it. Its a thing you
cannot stop. It is a kind of scientific triumph, of which you realize the
consequences only when it is too late. If they really had succeeded, I
am firmly convinced that e.g. von Laue would have done his very best
to prevent its use. But it would have been in vain. The same thing
happened here [in the U.S.]. Before the bomb was used, several
colleagues have issued a petition not to use the bomb.
Goudsmit then shows that the German physicists intended to make an
atomic bomb. He cites a number of documents from his book Alsos and
outside sources that show that the German scientists worked in the direction
that led to an atomic bomb, and advised the Nazi authorities accordingly:
Now to prove that the German colleagues really had the intention to
make a bomb becomes easier if you see that it is a natural logical result
397
A secret Gestapo summary, dated May 1943, enumerating two applications of uranium
fission: the uranium engine, and the uranium bomb.
398
Private Papers of Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem.
of the investigations in this direction. The only difference is that the

German colleagues thought that it was much more difficult than it
really was, and that thus the question of conscience was not so urgent.
Thus, Heisenberg wrote to me recently (Sept. 47) Nur haben wir mit
der Moglichkeit, dass man bei Ihnen dieses Problem gar nicht angrift,
weil uns die Aussicht dass es noch in diesem Kriege viel bedeuten
konnte recht klein erschien. [We have [considered] the possibility
that your side failed to attack this problem at all, since the prospect that
it would matter a lot in this war was deemed very small.]
It is certain that the German physicists were aware that their work
might eventually lead to a bomb. Besides the documents in Alsos
(p. 169 Kernphysik as Waffe. P. 178, p. 180, and p. 4), I can present
the following evidence:
Secret von Weizsacker 1940: . . . This EkaRe ([English:] wrong,

399
this is element 93) can then be used in three ways 1. for the
construction of very small machines 2. as an explosive,
3. through mixture in the transformation of other elements in
large amounts.
Secret P.O. Mueller, Berlin-Dahlem 1940. In order to come into the
possession of an extraordinarily effective explosive and in
order to obtain as much as possible of the available
U235. . .. . ..
Secret Heisenberg 1940: Further it is the only method to produce
explosives that surpass the explosive force of the previously
strongest explosives by several factors of magnitude.
400
Secret Command Matter Heisenberg 1942: In operation the
machine can also lead to the attainment of a tremendously
strong explosive. . .
399
Glenn T. Seaborg explains how an old mistake came about [Sea]: Some 5 years before
the discovery of nuclear fission, as a 1st-year graduate student at Berkeley in 1934, I began to
read the papers coming out of Italy and Germany describing the synthesis and identification
of several elements thought to be transuranium elements. In their original work in 1934,
E. Fermi. E. Amaldi. O. DAgostino, F. Rasetti, and E. Serge` bombarded uranium with
neutrons and obtained a series of beta-particle-emitting radioactivities. On the basis of the
periodic table of that day they were led to believe that the first transuranium element, with
atomic number 93 should be chemically like rhenium (i.e., be eka-rhenium, Eka-Re), element
94 like osmium (Eka-Os), and so forth. Therefore they assigned a 13-min activity to element
93. The name eka-rhenium was used for the element bohrium (Bh, atomic number 107)
before its discovery and official naming in honor of Niels Bohr.
400
Goudsmit uses GKdos, which is an abbreviation for geheime Kommandosache
[Secret Command Matter].
Finally there is also a Gobbels diary, of which I have only an

English translation, namely:
March 21, 1942, . . . I received a report about the latest develop-
ments in German science. Research in the realm of atomic destruction
has now proceeded to a point where its results may possibly be made
use of in the conduct of this war. Tremendous destruction, it is claimed,
can be wrought with a minimum of effort so that the prospects for a
longer duration of the war and for a later war are terrifying . . .
The main reasons for the Third Reichs failure to produce an atomic
bomb, in Goudsmits opinion, were scientific errors of the German scien-
tists, and first of all:
The reason why all this is still rather vague, is that they did not
understand that it was possible to make a small bomb. They did not
know that a relatively small fissionable element without the slowing
down of neutrons might constitute a bomb.401
The secret August 6, 1945 recording of Heisenbergs conversation with
another soon-to-become Nobel Laureate Otto Hahn (the prize was
announced in 1945 during their captivity in England) showed that Heisenberg
had indeed expected a bomb to be in excess of a metric ton, whereas one
kilogram of 235U was used in the first American bomb.402
On March 18, 1948, Van der Waerden writes to Heisenberg, quoting and
correcting Heisenbergs misconceptions about Goudsmit, and praising the
latters insightful portraits:403
Finally, I have succeeded in getting the Alsos-novel in my hands
that you have obviously did not get. The thing is not as you believe that
Gt [Goudsmit] only saw a part of the German reports and got a wrong
idea and regarded all Germans as Nazis, with occasional exceptions.
He has e.g. seen the entire Gestapo archive that Osenbergs spies (from
physicists to cleaning ladies) put together: reports on all conferences,
401
Heisenberg was especially upset over Goudsmits accusation that the German atomic
bomb was not created because Heisenberg miscalculated its size. In his book [Hei2, p. 180],
Heisenberg blames someone else, as if he could not have recalculated himself: A measure-
ment of the absorptive power of carbon had erroneously led to too high a value. Since this
measurement had been made in another well-known institute, we had not bothered to repeat it
and so had abandoned the whole idea prematurely.
402
[Ber, pp. 139143]. Read more about these secret recordings later in this book.
403
conflicts, progress, and delays in the laboratory work, about political

reliability of the researchers, etc. From the bunch of documents he
printed off: Himmlers letter to you, Himmlers letter to Heydrich
about you, Keitels decline of the second conference on nuclear phys-
ics, a letter from Gerlach to Mentzel about the ideas of Matzka, etc. For
several months he bit into the thing fanatically. He draws with a few
brushstrokes very precise depictions of scholars and charlatans, Nazis
and non-Nazis. For example, as was usual for these Nazis, Osenberg
considered surrendering with all his papers and offered us his services.
The normal German scientists always refused to reveal their war work.
Not so the Nazis [text in quote in English]. The picture of Osenberg
that he puts together, is something to scream about. But more basically
he dealt into your character.
And since Van der Waerden likes so much the portrayal of his friend
Heisenberg, and enthusiastically writes about it to both Goudsmit and
Heisenberg, I just have to quote it here from this letter and the book Alsos
(which are nearly identical):
He is still the greatest German theoretical physicist and among the
greatest in the world. His contributions to modern physics rank with
those of Einstein.
Heisenberg had openly fought the Nazis excesses. He had even
succeeded, in 1937, in getting an article published in Hitlers newspa-
per Das Schwarze Korps, in which he defended Einsteins theory of
relativity . . . In the same paper Stark denounced Heisenberg and
others, calling them White Jews . . .
His extreme nationalism led him astray, however, during the war.
He was so convinced of the greatness of Germany, that he considered
the Nazis efforts to make Germany powerful of more importance than
their excesses. He still was stupidly optimistic in his belief that these
excesses would eventually stop after Germany had won world domi-
nation. Near the end of the war, when visiting Switzerland and every-
thing seemed definitely lost, he said, How fine would it have been if
we had won this war.
It appears to me that Heisenbergs views on the war evolved. During his
prewar 1939 visit of the United States, he believed that Germany would
quickly lose the war, and he would be needed to then restore physics in
Germany. During the early war years and German successes in the war,
Heisenberg viewed this to be the contest for the domination of Europe
between Germany and Russia, and much preferred Germany to win the
war. He shared a popular in some circles sentiment that Russia and Poland
cannot govern themselves, and regretted Germany starting to lose the war
and with it a chance to govern Europe. How could Heisenberg, a great
physicist and classical pianist, a man of brilliance and high culture, regret
the Third Reichs defeat in the war? Cant fine education and high culture
guarantee humanity? Perhaps not. Van der Waerden continues quoting
Goudsmits portrait of Heisenberg:
Although he fought courageously against the Nazi excesses and espe-
cially Nazi stupidities, his motives were not as noble as one might have
hoped from such a great man. He fought the Nazis not because they
were bad, but because they were bad for Germany, or at least for
German science. His principal concern was that Germany might lose
its lead in science, especially physics. That is why he strenuously
objected to the exile of German Jewish physicists.
His defense of the Theory of Relativity in Hitlers newspaper and
the subsequent vile attack on him by Stark, caused him deep concern.
This was not because of danger to his own person, but to the future of
German physics. Progress in physics is impossible without the under-
standing and teaching of the Einstein theory, which is not a philosoph-
ical doctrine but an experimentally verified set of laws, like those of
Newton, for example.
A family friendship with Himmler, together with the attack in Das
Schwarze Korps, gave Heisenberg an excuse to try to get in contact
with the Gestapo chief. Himmler thought that Heisenberg merely
wanted a better job, whereas what he wanted was to convince him of
the necessity of having Einsteins theory taught to science students.
Van der Waerden continues: The portrayal of your most clever student
[Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker], the diplomat and compromiser, as he calls
him, is particularly acute. Here is this acute portrayal from Alsos:
Von Weizsacker, the son, was not a real Nazi, but like his father he was
a real diplomat. He knew how to strike a compromise with the Nazis
whenever it was expedient. He had the confidence of the Nazis, even of
the Gestapo, and they came to him for information on physics and
physicists.
Van der Waerden reproduces for Heisenberg the words he has written to
Goudsmit, and asks Heisenberg for ammunition against Goudsmit for his
forthcoming meeting with Goudsmit:
In April or May I will go to Chicago. In the meantime I ask you to
provide me with the facts in case you know something that Goudsmit
perhaps does not know. In particular I request a report of your
conversation with Niels Bohr in 1943 [actually in 1941]. About it I

have something from [Fritz] Houtermans and I have heard something
from Houtermans and Courant, but I would like to have it exactly.
This line provide me with the facts in case you know something that
Goudsmit does not know, shows that Van der Waerden is not planning to
be a fair and impartial arbiter, but rather a defense attorney for Heisenberg.
And so, our Letteral Triangle is not equilateral. Finally, Van der Waerden
assures his friend of the Leipzig years, Heisenberg, of his support:
Since coming here I have tried in a cautious way to defend you.
Following 2-day long April 1718, 1948, conversations with Goudsmit,
on April 19, 1948, Van der Waerden shares with Heisenberg a most positive
impression Goudsmit left on him:404
Yesterday and the day before yesterday I have had long conversations
with Goudsmit. I found him very nice and, as was expected, really
reasonable. He does not belong to those who regard you and your
friends as complicit in the horrible events of the Nazi time.
Van der Waerden seems to value the character of a person (himself
included) more than the persons professional deeds, in spite of writing to
the contrary to Van der Corput on December 19, 1945 (Chapter 26). He
advises Heisenberg accordingly in the April 19, 1948 letter:405
Questions like the one about the complacency [English word used] of
the German physicists and about things you and your friends failed to
seequestions like these lose importance in my eyes, compared to the
much more important ones, whether your character [sic] is to be
criticized, and whether one can and should work with you together.
The following day, Van der Waerden, like a good defense attorney,
decides to teach his friend Heisenberg how to defend himself by asking
him a series of leading questions that contain answers favored by Van der
Waerden:406
Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, 20 April, 1948
Dear Heisenberg,407
404
Ibid.
405
Ibid.
406
Ibid.
407
No Herr in the salutation this time, just Heisenberg.
Yesterday in my letter I reported about my conversation with

Goudsmit. Now I want to go into one issue somewhat more. I had
grasped this issue in this way: did the German physicists plan and
prepare the terrible crime of giving Hitler an atomic bomb?
G. [Goudsmit] thinks not, that this is not a crime. Something like
what you cannot prevent: it is a scientific triumph whose results one
only sees in retrospect. I answered to him that that must be valid in
regards to Allied researchers: they were conscious of fighting for what
is right and humanity, and had trust in Roosevelt, but the Germans
were in a completely different situation. They knew that they were
dealing with mass murderers who lacked any conscience. I told him
many things from which it follows that we in Germany in fact knew of
the murders and that wein other words the people with whom I came
in contact with in Leipzigwe were all in agreement about our
judgment about Hitler, you for example were always a human being
who thought and acted consciously. For you it would have been a
crime. Such excuses may be valid for others who were blinded but not
for you.
But you have a much better justification: you regarded the produc-
tion of an atomic bomb in the available time and with the available
means as impossible. So, as you once said yourself very pointedly, you
were not put in front of a difficult choice of continuing with the bomb
or stopping. Your conscience is clear: to show that was, in my opinion,
the main purpose of your report in Naturw. [Naturwissenschaften]. Not
a story of success [English]; this tone I did not find in your report.
Bothes conscience was clear too when he approached Goudsmit in
Heidelberg; that follows from everything he did, as Alsos has
portrayed it.
G. [Goudsmit] thought that if you and your group had found pluto-
nium, you would have decided to make the bomb. Afterwards many
of you would have tried to prevent the use but it would have been in
vain. I have held on to the possibility that you would have stopped this
thing. For support I have pointed to your sentence: We always
thought to keep this thing in our hands.
Then we have agreed on the legal question based on mere assump-
tions. One cannot condemn a person based on what he would have
done in an imaginary case. In dubio pro reo [Latin: the presumption of
innocence].
But personally I would like to know how you regard this question.
Surely you have considered it when you wrote to higher authorities
about possible explosives. Was all that only pretense in order to get
money for physics? Were you firmly resolved not to let it get so far in
any case? Then everything would have been in order, for in regards to
these people every deceit would be permitted. Or?
You understand what I mean. As your attorney, I have enough facts
to defend you. But as your friend I would so terribly like to believe that
under all circumstances your decency would have been stronger than
your nationalism plus ambition. Can you give this belief a support?
Have you had any conversations with trusted persons that could give
me a place to begin? And what does Hahn think about this question?
Best regards,
Your devoted B.L.v.d. Waerden
Indeed, has Heisenbergs decency under all circumstances, including
the Nazi regime, been stronger than Heisenbergs enormous nationalism
plus ambition? Or? In his heart of hearts, Van der Waerden probably
knows the answer but does not wish to believe it. He is determined to
continue defending Heisenberg in a cautious way. However, some doubt
can be seen in Van der Waerdens next letter to Heisenberg (even though he
continues to always publicly defend Heisenberg). Apparently, in the
non-surviving April 1, 1948 letter, Heisenberg accepts Van der Waerden
as his (unofficial, of course) defense attorney, and suggests Van der
Waerden to start his defense by the invocation of the Nazi atmosphere.
Van der Waerden replies (April 28, 1948):408
Unfortunately, I cannot begin with atmosphere. It is so impalpable,
everyone feels the atmosphere differently! What I need is concrete
statements, decisions, conversations, and so on, which you have had.
Also even the mere denial This statement has naturally never been
made in this way, would be useful for me. You are supposed to have
said How nice it would have been if we had won. That is allegedly
the literal statement. Can you remember what you said, if not this? Or,
did you mean something different by that?
Of course, you are right, that in the questions of German Physics
you have achieved a real success and of course it is inconsequential to
hold it against you. Nevertheless, the reaction of the others is not
impalpable. It is not logical I admit. However, emotionally it is
conceivable. Do you still remember what I said to you when you
gave me to read an article in Das Schwarze Corps? That is a nice
title: White Jew, you can be proud of that. Instead of being proud, you
were angry about the article. Of course, you were right that you have
408
Ibid.
acted in the interests of physics as you did in the connection with

[Niels] Bohr. However, on the other side, could you have contact with
these people, exercise influence over them without compromising
yourself? I assume yes, but I can understand if others do not believe it.
Only one, April 23, 1948 Heisenbergs reply, apparently, survives. How-
ever, it is of great value to us as we try to understand this enigmatic man:409
Dear Herr v. d. Waerden!
Many thanks for both of your letters about the conversation with
Goudsmit. I would like to answer your questions, so that you know
exactly what we thought and did. But because every letter from
Germany is read by the censor, and therefore particularly when it has
to do with the matter of atomic bomb, and finally somehow made
public, I must write to you more briefly and more officially than I
would like to. I hope that in not too distant time we could speak with
each other about this.
Heisenberg then repeats his, now well-known and well-contested, expla-
nations of the German failure to produce an atomic bomb. He then insinu-
ates his belief in the moral superiority of the German physicists over the
Allied ones:
You want to know basically my human position on this question. At
the beginning of the war when I was drafted to work on uranium, at
first I found out, and that it was good to know, what was possible in this
area. When I (end of 1941) knew that the uranium pile would work and
that one would probably be able to make atomic bombs (compared to
plutonium, the separation of U235 [uranium] seemed to me more
fantasticin both cases I thought the effort would be still larger than
it in fact was) I was deeply horrified by the possibility that one could
give such weapons to any person in power (not only Hitler).
When in the fall of 1941 I spoke with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, I
directed to him the question whether a physicist had the moral right to
work on atomic problems during war. Bohr asked back whether I
believed that the military application of atomic energy was possible,
and I answered: yes, for I knew that. I then repeated my question and
Bohr answered, to my surprise, that the military involvement of
physicists was inevitable in all countries, and therefore it was also
justified. Bohr obviously thought that it was impossible for the phys-
icists of all countries to form so to speak an alliance against their
governments. He also told me the past summer that he did not want to
409
Ibid.
really deal with this point and therefore he regarded my question more
as indirect information about the state of our knowledge (see the
Smyth Report).
When in the beginning of 1942 the official discussions about the
uranium problems began in Germany, I was very happy about it, that the
decision had been taken from us: The F uhrers orders that had been
issued, prevented large efforts for atomic bombs. Besides irrespective of
that, it was clear that atomic bombs in Germany would never be
completed during the war. I would have regarded it in any case a
crime to make atomic bombs for Hitler. But I do not find it good that
the atomic bomb was given to others in power, and was used by them.
On the other hand, I have also learned something from the past years
what my friends in the West do not really want to see: that in times like
these almost no one could avoid committing crimes or supporting
crimes by inaction, whether it is the Germans, the Russians or the
Anglo-Saxons side.1)
But I hope to be able to speak with you about this soon.
With many wishes,
Your W. Heisenberg
1)
P.S. Reading through this letter I see that the last sentence could
be misunderstood in two ways. First, one could think that I wanted to
designate Oppenheimer or Fermi as criminals, or one can assume that
under certain circumstances I would have been ready to commit
various crimes for Hitler. I hope you know me well enough to
know that both of these were not intended. What I mean is that the
destruction of all systems of laws in large masses of people on this
earth, destruction that also forces the one who is struggling for his
preservation to be similarly brutal toward the opponent, which then
accelerates the entire process of destruction in a remarkable way. But I
do not want to write too much about these things.
And so, Heisenberg would have regarded it in any case a crime to make
atomic bombs for Hitler but he kept trying to make one. Trying to make a
bomb for Hitler is not a crime, or is it? The honorably sounding paragraph
about the September 1941 meeting with Niels Bohr, in fact, prompted Bohr
to explode and terminate his two-decade long close friendship with
Heisenberg. Did Bohr overreact or there was more to their meeting, which
Heisenberg did not tell us here? As a leading scientist in the German atomic
research, Heisenberg was a treasured commodity of the Third Reich, and so
his whole trip to the occupied by the Nazis Copenhagen was suspect. Bohr
immediately reported the very different content of their conversations to the
Allies. Later he wrote down his recollections in a form of a letter to
Heisenberg, where he asserted remembering every word of their conversa-

tion. The writing was done in 1957, and so it is a better fit in Chapter 34. Be
a little patient, as I will share with you every word Niels Bohr wrote about
this historic meeting. Heisenberg never read that letter, for Bohr never sent
it, and never made it public during his life. The letter was found after Bohrs
passing, and released on February 6, 2002.
Heisenberg seems more sincere in the following passage of his 1948
New York Times interview (in English):410
German sciences sank to a low ebb. I think I am safe in saying that,
because of their sense of decency most leading scientists [in Nazi
Germany] disliked the totalitarian system. Yet as patriots who loved
their country they could not refuse to work for the Government when
called upon.
These words explain the rationale of Heisenberg lifes choices. When his
governmenteven the criminal Nazi government!calls upon him,
Heisenberg and most leading scientists, out of their sense of
decencydecencycould not refuse to work for the Government! He
subscribes to the widely shared but false notion of patriotism, according to
which in times of war a true patriot has to rally behind his government, even
if this government engages in ostensibly criminal activities.
This interview refutes Heisenbergs alleged goal of his Copenhagen-1941
meeting with Bohr. Indeed, if Heisenberg and Co. could not refuse to work
for the Government when called upon, how could he propose to Bohr (as he
states in the letter above) for the physicists of all countries to form so to
speak an alliance against their governments?
As a civilized writer from a civilized country, I am expected to spare you
discomfort, my reader. Yet, I have got to give youand Werner
Heisenbergthe taste of what blind love for the country and patriotic
obedience can produce, an opportunity to touch the evil, to quote however
briefly from the 1946 voluminous ca. 500-page document, The Black Book:
The Nazi Crime against the Jewish People [BB]. The following quote is
short but extremely disturbing, and so I will let you decide whether to read or
skip it. It describes some of the German atrocities in the Majdanek Concen-
tration Camp, which became known as Vernichtungslager (extermination
camp), where people were murdered on an industrial scale [BB, p. 384]:411
410
Kaempffert, W., Nazis Spurned Idea of an Atomic Bomb, New York Times, December
28, 1948, p. 10.
411
The quoted material was included in The Black Book [BB] from the statement of the
Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Committed by the
Germans in the Extermination Camp of Majdanek in the Town of Lublin.
Heinz Stalbe, of the German Kampfpolizei, stated at a plenary session

of the Commission412 that he himself saw the director of the cremato-
rium, Oberscharf urer Mussfeld, tie a Polish woman hand and foot and
throw her alive into the furnace. Witnesses Jelinski and Oleh, who
worked in the camp, also tell of the burning of living people in the
crematorium furnaces.
They took a baby from its mothers breast and killed it before her
eyes by smashing it against the barrack wall, said witness Atrokhov.
I myself, said witness Edward Baran, saw babies taken from
their mothers and killed before their eyes: they would take a baby by
one foot and step on the other, and so tear the baby apart.
Dr. Heisenberg, in the waning hours of 1948, when the German crimes
against humanity have been thoroughly established at Nuremberg trials and
other courts and documented in many books and reports, you are telling the
New York Times that as a decent and loving patriot you could not refuse to
work for the Government. Could you refuse your share of responsibility for
what your Government has done on behalf of all Germans, on your behalf,
Dr. Heisenberg?
412
See the previous footnote for the description of the Commission.
Chapter 33
On Active and Passive Opposition
in the Third Reich
We have already discussed in Chapter 15 Werner Heisenbergs morality

theory of Kill-One-Save-Ten, which he included in his 1971 book [Hei2]. In
fact, that was not the first time he had written about it. Mark Walker was the
first to discover in Heisenbergs Munich archive and discuss [Wal1,
pp. 335338] November 12, 1947, Heisenbergs unpublished 4-page paper
Die aktive und die passive Opposition im Dritten Reich, with the subtitle
Written in the context of newspaper reports on the war crime trials in
Nuremberg [Hei1].413 The paper is attached to the November 11, 1947
cover letter addressed to Fr aulein Dr. H. [Hildegard] Brucher, a science
editor of Neuen Zeitung in Munich. To the best of my knowledge, this cover
letter has not appeared in print. I wish to present it here in its entirety:
Dear Fr aulein Dr. Brucher,
Since you are taking the trouble in such a friendly manner to
produce a fair report on the physicists, and since you so readily gave
me information on the telephone regarding colleague Dolger, I would
like once again to convey to you a wish that this time concerns a
political problem.
As you know, a war crimes trial is taking place at this time in
Nuremberg against members of the Foreign Office. One of the main
defendants is former Secretary of State Baron von Weizsacker. Since I
know Herr von Weizsacker personally and believe I know his exact
political views and know with what intensity he worked over many
years to preserve the peace, I am completely convinced that the
413
Private Papers of Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem. I thank
Prof. Walker for sharing with me this document, and Dr. Helmut Rechenberg and the Werner
Heisenberg Archive he used to direct, for the permission to reproduce it here.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_33
316 33 On Active and Passive Opposition in the Third Reich
Nuremberg trial will end with his acquittal after even von Papen and
Schacht have been acquitted. (I would like to mention here that back in
1937, when I had been rudely abused by the SS newspaper Das
Schwarze Korps, I received all the possible support from Herr von
Weizsacker.) For this reason I regret when the press is given one-sided
information by the prosecution, and when reports about atrocities
committed by the defendants, which have not been verified by any
court, are already being published, before the defense has had a chance
to say a word. I would be very grateful if in your newspaper you could
bring about some moderation. Perhaps it would be more pleasant for
the paper not to have published all the charges of the prosecution and
then afterwards have to report the news of acquittal. Of course I cannot
foresee the result of the trial with certainty more than anyone else, but
for that exact reason I would find it more correct if the newspaper
reports were as neutral as possible. If you share this view, I would be
very grateful for your support.
Best regards, also to our common Munich acquaintances,
Your,
[signed] H
In the attached to this letter four-page essay, Heisenberg defends the
Third Reich Secretary of State Ernst Baron von Weizsacker, who was facing
a Nuremberg Trial. As you recall, the physicist Carl Friedrich von
Weizsacker was Heisenbergs closest friend and fellow researcher in
Uranverein. While on the surface Heisenberg refers to active opposition
of Ernst von Weizsacker, he seems to count himself among the active
oppositionists to the Third Reich too. In his commentary Professor Walker
uses a few quotes from this essay. This is an established practice of scholars
in history. However, I wish to share with you this entire document, so that
you can digest it thoroughly and gain your own insight into essential moral
positions of mysterious Heisenberg. Of course, I will share my view as well.
Let us listen to Werner Heisenberg, one of the great minds of the twentieth
century. To begin with, he defines his terms of active and passive
opposition.
If the overwhelming majority of the German people had turned away
from the National Socialism immediately in 1933 and had refused
every compliance, then a good deal of misfortune would have been
prevented. In fact this reaction did not take place. Rather, the system
that in the most clever form knew how to blame its opponents for all of
the misfortunes of past years, the system did not find it difficult to win
the masses who for the most part lacked judgment. After this happened
33 On Active and Passive Opposition in the Third Reich 317
and after the power lay in Hitlers hands, there was a relatively thin
stratum of people, to whom their sure instinct spoke, informing them
that the new system was basically bad.
This relatively thin stratum of people only had an opportunity of
passive or active opposition. In other words, these people could either
say that Hitlers system is basically bad and will lead to a huge
catastrophe for Germany and Europe, but I see no way to change
anything from inside Germany. So, I am going to exile or in any
case I withdraw from all responsibility in Germany and wait until by
means of war the system is overcome from outside (overcome by
means of war and by means of unheard of war related sacrifices of
goods and blood). I would like to designate this way as the attitude of
passive opposition.414 The most extreme part of this group later
decided to take part in the war on the side of the allies. Many were
simply satisfied to enjoy safety from prosecution in a foreign country.
Another group of people viewed things in the following way. A war,
even when its subject is to overcome National Socialism, is such a
terrible catastrophe and would cost so many millions of people their
life, that I myself must do absolutely everything that is in my power to
hinder this catastrophe, or if it has already taken place, to shorten it and
to restrict it and to help the people who are suffering as a result of
it. Many people who thought this way but did not know the stability of
a modern dictatorship, tried in the early years the way of open imme-
diate resistance and ended up in a concentration camp.415 For others,
who recognized the hopelessness of a direct attack on the dictatorship,
to help suffering people, many of the people who thought this way but
did not know the stability of a modern dictatorship, tried in the early
years the way of open immediate resistance, and ended up in a
concentration camp. For others who recognized the hopelessness of
this way, there remained another way, the attainment of a certain
degree of influence, i.e., the attitude that had to appear on the outside
like collaboration. It is important to be clear that this was in fact the
only way to really change anything. This attitude that alone had
contained the prospect of replacing National Socialism with something
better but without enormous sacrifices, I would like to designate as the
attitude of active opposition.
414
Throughout this letter, the emphasis in bold is added by me for better clarity.
415
In the next sentence Heisenberg repeats himself, but I am not here to copy edit his text,
and thus am keeping his repetition.
On the outside the position of these people was much more difficult
than that of the others. Remember, the active opposition had to repeat-
edly make concessions to the system on unimportant points in order to
possess the influence to improve things on important points. In a
certain sense he had to play a double game.
Dr. Heisenberg, you must have needed all your brilliant ingenuity to
present collaboration with the Nazis as active resistance against the Nazis.
Those who were forced out of Nazi Germany, you label as being in passive
[read: worthless] opposition. You even insinuate that they chose the exile.
By 1947 you surely knew, if you did not know much earlier, that the Third
Reich threw Jews and socialists out of their jobs, denied them basic human
rights, condoned pogroms, and let them leave without almost any property.
Many of these exiles would have chosen to stay in Germany and fight the
regime, but why would they risk their lives and freedom for the German
masses who viewed these eventual exiles not as fellow-Germans but as
alien-Jews or enemies-socialists? And you call this forced emigration a
choice? Do you believe that Germany was any less theirs than yours? Do
you believe the refugees from Germany chose to give up their country, their
language, culture, friends, relatives and go to foreign lands that owed them
nothing at all, and a professional job least of all? As once a refugee myself, I
understand how unfair your view really is. And later there was no choice, for
Germany closed the emigration and opened concentration camps. Even the
lucky ones were scarred for a lifetime. Ralph Phillips recalls a faculty fired
from your Leipzig University, who was lucky to survive and be accepted as
a professor of mathematics at Princeton [Phi]:
I remember [Salomon] Bochner as a kind and friendly man, still
[19391940] troubled by scars inflicted by Nazi anti-Semitism.
Those, who actively fought the regime, in your opinion did not under-
stand the stability of a modern dictatorship, tried the path of open immediate
resistance during the first years and ended up in a concentration camp [read:
worthless]. The President of West Germany Richard von Weizsacker, a
brother of your closest friend Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, disagrees with
you. In his moving May 8, 1985 speech in the Bundestag during the
Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the End of the War in
Europe and of National Socialist tyranny, he said:
As Germans, we pay homage to the victims of the German resistance
among the public, the military, the churches, the workers and trade
unions, and the Communists. We commemorate those who did not
actively resist, but preferred to die instead of violating their

consciences.
Dr. Heisenberg, you praise active opposition as the behavior of the
highest morality, and ascribe to it collaboration with the Nazi regime,
participation in the Nazi capital crimes in order to gain the Nazi trust, and
then use it for replacing National Socialism with something better but
without enormous sacrifices. How unbelievably hypocritical it is to term
a collaboration with the criminal regime as active resistance and put it on
a pedestal of high morality. Yours must have been active opposition when
you collaborated with the Nazi regime on creating an atomic bomb and
atomic reactor, in order to achieve, may I ask, exactly what? Create the
bomb and thus win trust of and influence on the Nazi government? How-
ever, let us return to your essay. You continue:
One can understand the unavoidable difficult moral problem that was
put before the member of the active opposition by means of the
following constructed case, to which the reality may well have come
close some times.
Let us assume that a man wishing to save human life comes into a
position where he can really decide about the life and death of other
people. And further let us assumeand this is thoroughly conceivable
in a really evil system such as National Socialismthat he can prevent
the execution of ten innocent people only by means of signing a death
sentence for another innocent person. He knows that the ten others will
be executed through the action of someone else who will be put in his
place if he does not sign the death sentence. The fate of the one is in
any case sealed, no matter whether he signs or not, nothing is changed.
So how should he act? Personally I believe upon a conscientious
reflection that in such a case signing a death sentence is demanded of
us [sic], which entails of course our readiness to bear the conse-
quences of that personally. Measuring this by the ultimate moral
standards, it seems to me that a person who acts and thinks in this
manner stands higher than the one who simply says, I do not want
anything to do with all of this. Similar problems have occurred in the
Third Reich if not always with this intensity.
All right, Dr. Heisenberg, you illustrate your idea of a high moral position
by a hypothetical example. You find it acceptablemoreover, highly
moralto prove loyalty to the Nazi criminal regime by signing a death
sentence to an innocent person, if this allows saving other lives. It seems as
if you are a theoretical physicist, Dr. Heisenberg, for you justify collabora-
tion with the Nazi regime and complicity in a murder of an innocent person
by a simple arithmetic calculation 10 1 9. Human life, in my opinion,

carries infinite value, and if you were to understand that, your arithmetic
would have given an uncertain result: 10 1 1 1.
How could such a brilliant intellectual as you not understand that mur-
dering one innocent man constitutes a capital crime and the ultimate col-
laboration with the Nazis in committing it? How could such a devout
Christian man like you play God, even hypothetically, and decide which
innocent man is to die and which to live? Indeed, Dr. Heisenberg, you seem
to compete with God for employment! How can a conscientious man like
you ignore the teaching of the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a):
For this reason was man created alone, to teach thee that whosoever
destroys a single soul . . . scripture imputes to him as if he had
destroyed an entire world; and whosoever preserves a single soul . . .,
scripture ascribes to him as if he had preserved a whole world.
Re-reading recently Time within Time: The Diaries by the great Russian
film director Andrei Tarkovsky, I discovered that he completely agrees with
me. Pondering on the life and fate of Shakespeares Hamlet, Tarkovsky
addresses this very issue, as if he has heard your argument, Dr. Heisenberg,
and replies to you [Tar]:
Can a man judge another, can one man shed anothers blood? I do not
consider that he can, that he has the right . . . One drop of blood shed is
equal to an ocean. I do not consider that a man has the right to kill
another for the sake of the welfare of ten [!] people. If I am toldKill
that man, and lots of people will be better off!I do not consider that
I have the right to do so, and I would do better to kill myself, as one of
our writers did at a particular moment of his life, after being obliged to
sign death warrants. In the end he killed himself. Why . . . ? No one
knows, but it seems to me that it was his inevitable end. The only pity
is that he didnt come to that same decision at the moment when he had
to sign the first death warrant.
In 1937 you, Dr. Heisenberg, soughtand in 1938 receivedprotection
personally from the SS Reichsf uhrer Himmler. Having attracted the high
personal attention and patronage of Himmler, you could have hardly
allowed yourself as much as a whisper of an opposition during the Nazi
rein. But here, after the war, you insinuate in the following paragraph that
youand Ernst Baron von Weizsackerwere heroes of active resistance:
In Germany there was a small stratum of people in high positions who
from the beginning belonged to the active opposition and who for a
certain amount of time really thought that they could turn the steering
wheel of Hitlers policy of war. One of the best known of them is

former Secretary of State Ernest von Weizsacker who already in 1938
used his entire influence to prevent war, but also after the collapse of
his political effort in the year 1939, it was self-evident for the small
circle of people who belonged to it that one could turn to
v. Weizsacker with any good cause and he would listen and that he
would help if there was a possibility of success. In many cases he
actually became involved and successfully saved and helped people.
For this reason it seems to me that it is based on a deep misunder-
standing that now v. Weizsacker as one of the accused for war crimes,
stands in front of the Nuremberg Court, while there are so few people
on earth who undertook as much as he did to prevent the war.
To make the difficulty of the problem that I am describing clear, it
may be permitted to recall a real issue of current politics. Everyone
knows that there is a certain danger that the conflicts that have arisen
between the East and the West will not be cleared up peacefully and
that they could lead to armed confrontation. Everyone knows too that
this would mean a terrible catastrophe for humanity. Are people in
Russia now doing anything to prevent this catastrophe? Some of those
who have openly acknowledged themselves as opponents of the Soviet
system and who are now in Russian concentration camps, are
completely disengaged, no matter how great our respect for their
attitude and our concern for their suffering may be. They dont have
the slightest influence on the policies of Russia.
The only ones who can help are people who officially are regarded
as Communists and make some concessions to the party line, but in
their hearts possess moral standings of the Christian world and secretly
do everything to hinder armed confrontation and to make possible a
moderation of Soviet policy. We dont know if there are such people
on the Russian side. In fact, it is part of the essence of what they are
trying to do is not to let anyone know anything certain about them, and
they apparently are playing a double game. Nothing would be more
damaging to their intention than to have it openly acknowledged that
they possess such moral principles.
In Germany we now know in retrospect that there were such people.
If there are such people in Russia and if they are successful in their
efforts, paradoxically one day they would be regarded as the real
Communists as the representatives of policy of international coopera-
tion that was always demanded of Communism. In reality they helped
the good to victory and successfully protected the world from a huge
catastrophe. But when they fail in their political initiative, should they
then be put in front of a court as war criminals because they could

maintain their influence on Soviet policy only by means of conces-
sions? I have written these thoughts because the way that the problem
of war crimes is being diverted in Nuremberg from the moral plane
onto the political plane, fills me with a great deal of worry. One should
not discourage the people who perhaps are now conducting in Russia
the same desperate battle that in the past von Weizsacker, von Hassell,
Beck and others conducted in Germany.
Gottingen, 12 November, 1947
W. Heisenberg
At the end of your essay, Dr. Heisenberg, you applaud smart hatchet men
of the Stalin tyranny. Collaborators and accomplices of the regime are
heroes, active resisters; dissidents, although merit respect, are stupid and
worthless for they do not understand the stability of the regime; and the
emigrants and refugees (like I) are worthless passive resisters. These views
are not new; I have heard that before from the loyalists of the Soviet
totalitarian regime.
I have got to quote here a passionate letter that the codiscoverer of nuclear
fission, unfairly non-Nobeled Lise Meitner wrote in late June 1945 to her
coauthor Nobel Laureate Otto Hahn. She addresses here Hahn, Heisenberg,
and others scientists who collaborated with the Third Reich, and without
even reading this Heisenbergs Opposition manuscript (as Heisenberg
would write it 2 years later) she powerfully rebuts Heisenbergs pretense
of any resistance, even a passive one [LS, p. 310]:
You all worked for Nazi Germany and you did not even try passive [!]
resistance. Granted, to absolve your consciences you helped some
oppressed person here and there, but millions of innocent people
were murdered and there was no protest. I must write this to you, as
so much depends upon your understanding of what you have permitted
to take place. Here in neutral Sweden, long before the end of the war,
there was discussion of what should be done with German scholars
when the war was over. What then must the English and the Americans
be thinking? I and many others are of the opinion that one path for you
would be to deliver an open statement that you are aware that through
your passivity you share responsibility for what has happened, and that
you have the need to work for whatever can be done to make amends.
But many think it is too late for that. These people say that you first
betrayed your friends, then your men and your children in that you let
them give their lives in a criminal war, and finally you betrayed
Germany itself, because even when the war was completely hopeless,
you never once spoke out against the meaningless destruction of

Germany. That sounds pitiless, but nevertheless I believe that the
reason that I write this to you is true friendship. You cannot really
expect that the rest of the world feels sympathy for Germany. In the
last few days one has heard of the unbelievably gruesome things in the
concentration camps; it overwhelms everything one previously feared.
When I heard on English radio a very detailed report by the English
and Americans about Belsen and Buchenwald, I began to cry out loud
and lay awake all night. And if you had seen all those people who were
brought here from the camps. One should take a man like Heisenberg
and millions like him, and force them to look at these camps and the
martyred people.
Indeed, how could these brilliant scholars, by their silence and their work
support the Nazi brutes gloating with cynicism, erecting Arbeit macht frei
above the gates of Auschwitz and Dachau, Gross-Rosen and Sachsenhausen,
Fort Breendonk and Theresienstadt? Works makes one free? Free in the
slave labor of the Nazi concentration camps? Did these great minds approve
of Buchenwalds Jedem das Seine? Everyone gets what one deserves? Do
the innocents deserve torture and death, Professor Heisenberg?
I wish to note here, that, to my regret, the high moral authority of the Nazi
years Germany, Nobel Laureate Max von Laue, added his insult of exclu-
sion and mistrust to the Nazi injury of Samuel Goudsmit when in 1948 he
wrote with respect of Goudsmits Alsos and its December 1947 review
[Mor1] by Professor Philip Morrison of Cornell University [Lau]:
We do know that Goudsmit lost not only father and mother, but many
near relatives as well, in Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
We realize fully what unutterable pain the mere word Auschwitz must
always evoke in him. But for that very reason one can recognize
neither him, nor his reviewer Morrison, as capable of an unbiased
judgment of the particular circumstances of the present case.
Earlier Heisenberg expressed the same opinion as von Laue that victims
of Nazism, such as Goudsmit, have no right to be arbiters of the Nazi
regime:416
Goudsmits position can be explained only by the fact that he lost his
two parents in Auschwitz and naturally is embittered toward Germany.
It is at least understandable and pardonable that he finds it difficult in
416
Quoted from [Wal1, p. 340].
his bitterness to make a distinction between the different people of our

country.
In my opinion, Morrison is absolutely correct in his powerful rebuttal of
von Laue [Mor2]:417
I am of the opinion that it is not Professor Goudsmit who cannot be
unbiased, not he, who most surely should feel an unutterable pain
when the word Auschwitz is mentioned, but many a famous German
physicist in Gottingen today [i.e., Heisenberg], many a man of insight
and responsibility, who could live for a decade in the Third Reich, and
never once risk his position of comfort and authority in real opposition
to the men who could build that infamous place of death.
As to Heisenbergs concept of moral superiority of the German physicists
over the Allied scientists, it is best refuted by Philip Morrison in his
December 1947 review [Mor1] of Goudsmits Alsos:
The documents cited in Alsos prove amply that, no different from their
Allied counterparts, the German scientists worked for the military as
best their circumstances allowed. But the difference, which it will
never be possible to forgive, it that they worked for the cause of
Himmler and Auschwitz, for the burners of books, and the takers of
hostages. The community of science will be long delayed in welcom-
ing the armorers of the Nazis, even if their work was not successful.
Regretfully, Morrisons prediction had not materialized. Very soon, in
1950and again in 1954Werner Heisenberg was invited for V.I.P.418
lecture tours of the United States. On May 14, 1958, he was made a Foreign
Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hei-
senberg was offered a number of jobs in the U.S., as were many Third Reich
scientists and engineers. America was acquiring ammunition for the Cold
War and paying for it a high moral price.
The clearest example of this hypocrisy was secretly bringing in the
U.S. the leading German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (1912
1977), a member of the Nazi party and an officer in the SS, and his
associates. They were brought in not for trial but for building American
rockets. Von Braun titled his autobiography I Aim for the Stars, but he
should have added But Sometimes I Hit London, as was suggested by the
American mathematician, pianist and songwriter Tom Lehrer, who wrote a
417
Rebuttal, which was not published in Germany [Wal1, p. 360].
418
Abbreviation for Very Important Person.
satirical song Wernher von Braun (I wish I can insert here the video or at
least audio of this song performed by the author):
Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he wont even frown,
Ha, Nazi schmazi, says Wernher von Braun.
Dont say that he is hypocritical,
Say rather that hes apolitical.
Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down,
Thats not my department, says Wernher von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown.
But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town,
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.
You too may be a big hero
Once youve learned to count backwards to zero
In German oder English I know how to count down
Und Im learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun.
During the prewar visits of the United States, Heisenberg stayed at
Goudsmits home; they were old friends, and shared many common friends
in the world of leading physicists. Yet, the friendship between Heisenberg
and Goudsmit was never quite renewed after the war. Was Heisenberg hurt
by Goudsmits articles and the book Alsos? Of course, he did not like public
criticism of his abilities as a physicist, and disagreed with some of
Goudsmits assertions. Then too Goudsmit exaggerated how poor the Ger-
man war science had been. He corrected the record in his 1976 audio
interview [Gou2]:
GOUDSMIT: The main mistake they made, and which has not been
brought out, is that they did not think of controlling the reaction. They
built a reactor and Heisenberg had computed that it would control
itself, that if the temperature got hotter, the reactor would go down by
itselfsomething we still do not know and which is a terrific risk.
They had no control rods. They could not stop the reaction if it ever
had started. And indeed the model they built, or the reactor they built,
in that cave in southern Germany might have just been a going reactor
if they had had enough heavy water. We had destroyed the heavy water
plant in Norway twice, and so they did not have enough heavy water. If
they had had enough heavy water, that reactor might have been a
successful reactor. It might have killed the physicists, because they

would not have been able to stop it. We noticed that there was not a
trace of cadmium or anything around that place. There wasntthe
design did not allow any control rods or also any control mechanism
whatsoever.
So it was in the hands of these academic theorists instead of the people
who knew large-scale instrumentation and large-scale technology.
And that is the reason why they failed.
GOUDSMIT: They were convinced it couldnt be done. We didnt do
it, therefore, they. By the way, there is
BELL: Does this include Heisenberg at first?
GOUDSMIT: Yes.
BELL: He thought we hadnt.
GOUDSMIT: No, no. [Meaning he agrees with Bell]
DOUGLASS: What about Johns [Rae] question on the German view,
that Heisenberg said later that
GOUDSMIT: Well, when they finally found outthey were interned
in England when they finally found out that we had done itand von
Weizsacker said, We can at least tell the world that we didnt want to
develop a bomb. They invented that excuse during the internment,
when they were allowed to listen to the BBC about the American
atomic bomb. But Heisenberg denies that and I have in my office
statements by Heisenberg in the press that that was not so. He will
say this, Our project never came far enough that we had to make a
decision. And thats quite true. They did not see far enough. They
didnt see how near it was. So they never really had to make a decision.
But it was not deliberate.
DOUGLASS: So you mean Heisenberg denied that they had made a
studied selection not to make a bomb?
GOUDSMIT: He denies that. And also the diaries, which were found.
Absolutely not true. Especially the diary published by Erich Bagge.
DOUGLASS: So, in other words, he was being honest.
GOUDSMIT: Absolutely honest. There is only oneand I cant find it
backI think once I must have trapped him into it, his honesty, where
he claims in one paper, and I cant find it back, and so I hate to quote
it. But where he says this tube which was used to pour water in could
be used for a control rod. But there was no control rod. There was no
cadmium in the whole place. That is the only time I think Heisenberg
was a little bit upset that he had overlooked that possibility. Told a
little white lie. But otherwise he was absolutely honest about it. He is
mad at me because I exaggerated in my book. That book came out of
my heart and I hadnt read all the papers and all the documents yet.
And I claimed that they were more stupid than they really were. And
that Heisenberg didnt want to forgive me about. We have been good
friends. But to make German physics seem worse than it really was,
that he was involved with. It was very upsetting where I said they
didnt know the difference between a bomb and a reactor, that they
wanted to explode a whole reactor. That was an exaggeration. Some of
them knew about the possibility of plutonium. And some of them knew
about the bomb. But they didnt know the size. They thought a bomb
would still need several tons of uranium and it wasnt until after he had
studied the Smyth Report that he understoodand thats in printthat
after studying the Smyth Report he understood that one only needed a
few kilograms of separated uranium to have a bomb.
DOUGLASS: But your book was written in 47, which was very
quickly after war. And also it seemed the point of writing your book
was, to punch a needle into the balloon of the myth that German
science was always decades ahead
GOUDSMIT: Ya.
DOUGLASS: of what we were doing and that, in fact, the basic. . .
GOUDSMIT: And that had really nothing to do with Hitler. What I
now say about German science one can say about all continental
European science. That the attitude was too academic and that for the
development of modern physics one needed that marriage with industry.
Yes, Heisenberg was upset over Goudsmits criticism, especially unfair
criticism of his war time physics efforts. But after giving it much thought, I
see elsewhere the major reason for Heisenbergs displeasure. Goudsmit
unearthed Heisenbergs pleas for help to Heinrich Himmler. The two of
the most notorious Nazi murderers, Himmler and Heydrich, granted their
cover to Heisenberg, and this had to be extremely embarrassing for
Heisenberg.
Elisabeth Heisenberg in her memoirs [HeiE, p. 112] states that
Goudsmit later regretted having written the book, and apologized to Hei-
senberg for it; nevertheless, the book is one of the reasons for Heisenbergs
character falling into such ill repute. Goudsmit had regrets but not due to
writing the book. Werner Heisenbergs son, Physics Professor Emeritus at
the University of New Hampshire, Jochen Heisenberg writes to me on
February 4, 2011:
Dear Alexander Soifer,
During the time my mother wrote her book I was already living and
teaching here in the US. Thus I do not know the details of that apology.
However, at a meeting of the APS [American Physical Society] in

Washington D.C. that I attended, Goudsmit had asked to meet me. At
that meeting he apologized to me for the difficulties he had caused to
my father, his family, and also to me. This, however, had been a
different incident, and in this conversation the book Alsos was not
mentioned in a particular way.
As the scientific head of Alsos Missions, Goudsmit was instrumental in
identifying the ten German scientists, who were held in the Farm Hall
(a manor) near Cambridge, England, for exactly 6 months, and then released
to live anywhere in Germany, except the Russian and French zones of
occupation. Goudsmit must have felt responsibility for denying
Heisenbergs and other families their bread providers and causing them
separation and hardship, and for that he apologized.
Photo 46 Three Recently Released Detainees, all Nobel Prize Laureates: Werner Heisen-
berg, Max von Laue, and Otto Hahn, Gottingen, 1946; Courtesy of Leipzig University
The ten distinguished scientists, including Werner Heisenberg, Carl

Friedrich von Weizsacker, Max von Laue, and Otto Hahn were kept in
captivity, in fine conditions, without being charged with any crime. The
captives could have demanded to be charged or else released, but they
probably realized that they just might get what they would ask for, and be
charged and tried at Nuremberg trials for their contribution to the German
war efforts. And so they did not object (except Heisenberg appropriately
demanding that his wife and six children be taken care of). The British
wanted to prevent these leading German scientists and their atomic bomb
and reactor research from falling into the Russianthe cold war had
begunor even the French hands. And this is how, in my opinion, this
strange compromise of detention came about. The Director of the Manhattan
Project General Leslie R. Groves, recalls [Gro]:
We were now in a dilemma about what to do with these men. We did
not want them to come to America or to remain in England for they
would inevitably learn a great deal about our work and would not for
some time make any contribution in return. We did not want them to
come under Soviet control, as with their background they would be of
great value to the Russians. The only satisfactory solution was to
return them to West Germany and make certain that conditions for
them there would be such that they could not be tempted by Russian
offers.
The transcripts of the secretly recorded conversations of the ten scientists,
had been kept a top secret for nearly 50 (!) years, until 1992, and were
published in 1996 with most helpful commentaries of Jeremy Bernstein
[Ber]. It is a fascinating reading, showing unequivocally that the German
scientists, at least in the early years of the program, did work on the atomic
bomb and not only on the atomic reactor. They succeeded in neither, but
when on August 6, 1945, the first news of the American bomb came over the
radio to the detained German scientists, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker was
quick to accuse the American scientists of madness. Heisenberg did not
share the assessment of his young friend:419
WEISZA KER: I think it is dreadful of the Americans to have done it. I
think it is madness on their part.
HEISENBERG: One cant say that. One could equally well say Thats
the quickest way of ending the war.
419
[Ber, p. 123].
Heisenberg then introduces a moral dilemma:420

We wouldnt have had the moral courage to recommend to the gov-
ernment in the spring 1942 that they should employ 120,000 men just
for building the thing [bomb] up.
What exactly is Heisenberg talking about, moral courage or mortal
fear? Fear of facing the brutal Nazi consequences of promising and not
delivering the atomic bomb? Precisely that is stated by one of the detained
physicists Erich Bagge: If the Germans had spent 10 billion marks on it and
had not succeeded, all physicists would have had their heads cut off.421 In
reply, von Weizsacker immediately invents a high moral ground for the
German physicists:
WEIZSA CKER: I believe the reason we didnt do it because all the
physicists didnt want to do it, on principle. If we had all wanted
Germany to win the war we would have succeeded.
HAHN: I dont believe that, but I am thankful we didnt succeed.
Really, Carl Friedrich? You did not want to create an atomic bomb? You
did not want Germany to win the war, on principle? Even your Farm Hall
fellow detainee Erich Bagge does not agree with you:422
I think it is absurd for von Weizsacker to say he did not want the thing
to succeed. That may be so in his case, but not for all of us. Von
Weizsacker was not the right man to have done it.
The same day, Heisenberg somewhat confirms his young friends
fabrication:423
We were not 100% anxious to do it [the bomb].
So, what were you, Werner, 99% anxious to create an atomic bomb for
the Third Reich? Mrs. Elisabeth Heisenberg wrote that throughout the war
her husband constantly tortured himself with the thought that the better
supplied Allies might develop the bomb and use it against Germany.424
Under these circumstances, why wouldnt be the German patriot Werner
Heisenberg 100% anxious to work his hardest on creating the German
bomb?
420
[Ber, p. 129].
421
[Ber, p. 145].
422
[Ber, p. 150].
423
[Ber, p. 131].
424
[Cas, p. 314].
How many times should a fiction be told to pass for the truth? The
following day von Weizsacker will repeat his fabrication in an expanded
form, contrasting, imagine, low American and high Third Reich moral
standards. We will read it together at the end of the next chapter. But first
I wish to come back to Bartel L. van der Waerden and his Aide for Werner
Heisenberg.
Chapter 34
Van der Waerden in Defense of Heisenberg
The year 2011 brought to me an enjoyable e-mail exchange with Professor

of Environmental Sciences Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, a son of Carl
Friedrich von Weizsacker, whom you have met. He introduced me to
Dr. Marion Kazemi, the researcher at the archives of the Max Planck
Gesellschaft, who, with the kind permission of Professor Walter Blum,
shared with me a good number of letters in German exchanged between
Werner Heisenberg and Bartel L. van der Waerden. Let us follow the thread
together, and see where it leads us.
On February 28, 1949, Van der Waerden writes in long-hand from his
Laren home Breidablik:
In December [1948] I had a long conversation with Kramers. What I
stated you can see from the enclosed Aide-memoire. In all the main
points he was of the same opinion and agreed to speak with [Niels]
Bohr about it. With this in mind he asked me for an Aide-memoire
which I then wrote directly in English so that Bohr can understand.
Since that time Ive heard nothing more about it.
With fond regards,
Your,
B.L.v.d. Waerden
On March 7, 1949, Heisenberg replies with a typed letter:
Dear Herr Van der Waerden,
Heartfelt thanks for your letter. It is really very nice of you that you
take so much trouble with this difficult matter concerning Goudsmit. If
you should hear more about this from Kramers or Bohr, of course I

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_34
334 34 Van der Waerden in Defense of Heisenberg
would be thankful if you let me know about it. I am just now departing
for Italy where I am supposed to lecture for some weeks in Rome. For
that reason I am in a hurry, many fond regards from house to house.
Your,
H [hand signed with an H]
Clearly these letters refer to a document, Aide-Memoire, so important
that Van der Waerden sends it to Bohr, Kramers, and Heisenberg and
recruits Kramers support in trying to persuade Bohr! We know two of
these names well, but the third name has not yet appeared in this story.
The Dutch physicist Henrik Anthony Hans Kramers (18941952), did
his Ph.D. research under Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, where he became an
associate professor at the University of Copenhagen before returning home
to become a professor at Utrecht. He then succeeded Paul Ehrenfest at
Leiden. Kramers served as chairman of the technical subcommittee of the
United Nations Official International Atomic Energy Commission.
Now that I have whetted your appetite, we need the Aide-Memoire
itself. My gratitude goes to the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen for
providing it. I am offering to you a complete text, every word, for this
document allows for a rare insight into Van der Waerdens view of physi-
cists in Nazi Germany, or at least the view he has chosen to present to one of
the highest arbiters of scholarly morality, Niels Bohr. To the best of my
archival knowledge, Bohr has never replied, and so in this sense Van der
Waerdens defense of Heisenberg had not been successful. Clearly Bohr
would not have agreed with many of Van der Waerdens arguments.
Aide-Memoire
1. I could notice several times that Goudsmits Alsos has seriously

influenced the opinions of scientists about Heisenberg and his
friends.
2. In 2 technical details Goudsmits story deviates from Heisenbergs
report. G. [Goudsmit] says that the German physicists did not think
of Plutonium, and that they imagined the pile to be used as a bomb.
In both cases, Heisenberg was right (of course, for he knew the facts
and could not risk a misstatement). One of the points has been
admitted by G. in a letter. Both can be proved by documents and
witnesses.
3. It would not be good to stress this point as long as the moral
situation is not completely cleared up. For many people would
conclude from it that the German physicists really planned to enable
Hitler to destroy the world by atomic bomb.
34 Van der Waerden in Defense of Heisenberg 335
4. The moral situation of German physicists was quite different from

that of atomic scientists in America. If the German scientists had
made an atomic bomb, they would have made it for the most
unscrupulous tyrant, and they knew it, whereas in America people
worked for the liberation of the world from that tyranny. The
Germans knew that Hitler would certainly use the bomb for the
destruction of the civilized world. The allied scientists worked for
Roosevelt, whom they trusted, whereas the Germans would have
worked for Hitler and Himmler, whom they did not trust.
5. I do not pretend that the German physicists were better or worse than
their American colleagues, or that they had a clearer view of their
responsibility. I only state that they were in a quite different moral
situation. Both parties behaved as decent, intelligent, active people
would behave in their situation, but the situation was entirely different.
6. Therefore it is only natural that the Germans were constantly
thinking of the danger of their investigations for mankind and
made far-reaching plans to avoid this danger.
7. This is proved by the two talks of Heisenberg and Jensen with Bohr
in Copenhagen. They had complete confidence in Bohr and consid-
ered him as their ally in the struggle for science and humanity.
Heisenberg asked Bohr whether he thought physicists were justified
in continuing their investigations. A year later, Jensen told Bohr
exactly how far the German physicists had got and what measures
they had taken in order to keep all essential things in their own
control and to prevent the Nazis to get any influence. He assured
Bohr that the intention of his friends were only to save physics, to
get money for their investigations and to keep physicists out of the
army, and that they would under no conditions make a bomb for
Hitler. He asked for absolution. This is what [Fritz] Houtermans
in 1944 and Heisenberg told me about this discussion. Of course,
Bohr himself knows more exactly which words were used.
This is what [Fritz] Houtermans in 1944 and Heisenberg told me
about this discussion. Of course, Bohr himself knows more exactly
which words were used.
8. What Goudsmit calls complacency and hero-worship, the elimina-
tion of all people not belonging to Heisenbergs group, is
completely explained by their tendency to eliminate everybody
they did not trust politically and morally.
9. The German physicists made the Nazi-leaders believe that their
work would lead to the invention of a terrible explosive. They
were justified to do so, because they were quite convinced that it
would be technically impossible to make an atomic bomb in Ger-

many under war conditions. There was no danger in it, and it helped
physics.
B.L.v.d. Waerden [hand signed]
And it helped physics, as if physics were the most important concern of
human kind in the brutal World War II.
It is surprising for me to see the phrase This is what Houtermans in 1944
and Heisenberg told me about this discussion, for it shows that Van der
Waerden actually learned about Nazi Germanys atomic research still dur-
ing the war, in 1944, years before he read Alsos.
The Aide-Memoire is designed to aid in a rehabilitation of Heisenbergs
and other German scientists reputation in the world in general, and the
scientific world in particular. Van der Waerden is keeping his lawyerly
promise to his client, and overcomes his own doubts we witnessed in
Chapter 32. Heisenberg is grateful: It is really very nice of you that you
take so much trouble with this difficult matter concerning Goudsmit; and
he naturally desires to learn about the outcome: If you should hear more
about this from Kramers or Bohr, of course I would be thankful if you let me
know about it.425
In the Memoire, Van der Waerden is expanding on von Weizsackers
postwar 1945 idea of converting the German failure in creating an atomic
bomb into a high moral ground of not wanting to create it for Hitler and
Himmler. Van der Waerden claims moral equivalence between scientists of
the United States and Nazi Germany:
I do not pretend that the German physicists were better or worse than
their American colleagues. . . Both parties behaved as decent, intelli-
gent, active people would behave in their situation.
This claim of moral equivalence required gigantic assumptions that
Heisenberg and other Nazi regime scientists were not patriots of the Third
Reich (in Heisenberg understanding of patriotism), cheated Germany, and
simply milked the regimes money for their worthless for the war research
and protection against being sent to the frontwhich would have been a
very dangerous game, punishable by death. Additionally, this Van der
Waerdens claim required Heisenberg and others to give up their scientific
pride, sense of scientific superiority, and give up the race for being first to
create atomic weapon.
Van der Waerden writes, and I repeat:
425
Heisenberg, letter to Van der Waerden, dated March 7, 1949.
The allied scientists worked for Roosevelt, whom they trusted,

whereas the Germans would have worked for Hitler and Himmler,
whom they did not trust.
How ironic! Heisenberg did not trust Himmler? Didnt Heisenberg place
himself at a mercy of this very Himmler in 1937 by asking for Himmlers
protection against a pair of old physicists? Himmler too trusted Heisenberg,
for he granted Heisenberg protection. Ever since the 1947 publication of
Alsos everyone, including Van der Waerden, knew about this contract
between Faust and Mephistopheles. Moreover, we know how important
was the work Heisenberg did for the Third Reichs war research and
development:426
Heisenberg produced the first of two secret comprehensive technical
reports to the Army Weapons Bureau outlining the prospects and
methods for the practical exploitation of fission. The conclusion of
his first report, dated 6 December 1939,427 stated that a controlled
fission reactor was technically feasible and that uranium vastly
enriched in the rare isotope 235U would constitute a powerful new
explosive, which surpasses the explosive power of the strongest
explosive material by several orders of magnitude. These survey
reports established Heisenberg as Germanys leading authority on
nuclear fission, and his reports became the fundamental blueprint for
German research throughout the war.
When in 1992 the secret 1945 Farm Hall recordings were finally released,
we learned more of the truth. On August 6, 1945, Heisenberg himself
recollects:428
One can say that the first time large funds were made available in
Germany was in the spring of 1942 after that meeting with Rust
[Reichserziehungsminister; Minister of Science, Education and
National Culture], when we convinced him that we had absolutely
definite proof that it [atomic bomb] could be done.
In his February 26, 1942 lecture at the House of German Research,
Heisenberg explains how to obtain an explosive material of unimaginable
force:429
426
[Ber, p. xix].
427
Second report was dated February 29, 1940.
428
[Ber, p. 128].
429
[Ber, pp. 373377].
The pure isotope 235U undoubtedly represents, then, an explosive

material of unimaginable force. Granted, this explosive is very hard
to obtain . . .
As soon as such a machine [atomic reactor] is in operation, the
question of how to obtain explosive material, according to von
Weizsacker, takes a new turn. In the transmutation of the uranium in
the machine, a new substance comes into existence, element 94, which
very probably just like 235
92 U is an explosive of equally unimagin-
able force. This substance is much easier to obtain from uranium than
235
92 U, however, since it can be separated from uranium by chemical
means . . .
Obtaining energy from uranium fission is undoubtedly possible if
enrichment in the 235 235
92 U isotope is successful. Production of pure 92 U
would lead to an explosive of unimaginable force.
As for von Weizsacker, on July 17, 1940, he informs the German
Weapons Bureau that neptunium bred in an atomic reactor can be used as
the explosive material in a fission bomb. But as we saw in the previous
chapter, on August 6, 1945, in British captivity he declares that he and other
German physicists did not work on developing an atomic bomb on princi-
ple, out of the goodness of the heart. The following day, on August 7, 1945,
he goes further by contrasting the noble Third Reich physicists with the
American thugs. Moreover, he dictates to History what and how to
record:430
History will record that the Americans and the English made a bomb,
and that at the same time the Germans, under the Hitler regime,
produced a workable engine [reactor]. In other words, the peaceful
development of the uranium engine was made in Germany under the
Hitler regime, whereas the Americans and the English developed this
ghastly weapon of war.
This myth of moral superiority of the Third Reichs physicists almost
succeeded when it was repeated in the bestselling 1956 book Brighter than a
Thousand Suns by Robert Jungk, English translation 1958 [Jun1]:431
In addition to Heisenberg and Weizsacker, a third physicist, working
in Germany during the years 1940 and 1941, had discovered that a
uranium bomb could probably be manufactured very soon after a
previous production in a uranium pile of a new explosive element. It
430
[Ber, p. 154].
431
[Jun1, pp. 93 and 97].
was the man who had participated in the discovery of thermonuclear

processes in the sun, Fritz Houtermans . . .
In addition to these three men [Heisenberg, von Weizsacker, and
Houtermans] there were at that time at least ten other prominent
German physicists who had agreed that they must try to avoid working
with Hitlers war machine or to make only pretense of doing it.
Thus, von Weizsackers quick wit and clever fabrication of a myth,
almost verbatim repeated by Robert Jungk, became quite popular and stayed
popular for a long timeperhaps, until 1992when the transcripts of the
ten prisoners conversations were declassified and consequently published.
In addition, statements by other detainees were published, which did not
support the myth. On August 10, 1945, Bagge writes in his diary that our
older men pursued the idea of writing a memorandum from which the
view arose that we in Germany did not work on an atomic bomb but rather
on a stabilized engine. The story found widespread but not generated
agreement.432 On April 4, 1959, Max von Laue sends his recollections to
the well-known editor and publisher Paul Rosbaud:433
After that day we talked much about the condition of an atomic
explosion. Heisenberg gave a lecture on the subject in one of the
colloquia which we prisoners had arranged for ourselves. Later, during
the table conversation, the version was developed that the German
atomic physicists had not wanted the atomic bomb, either because it
was impossible to achieve it during the expected duration of the war or
because they simply did not want to have it at all. The leader in these
discussions was Weizsacker. I did not hear the mention of any ethical
point of view. Heisenberg was mostly silent.
It is time to share with you Niels Bohrs report on his Copenhagen
September 1941 meetings with Werner Heisenberg. Bohr submits: I
remember every word of our conversations, and so I will present to you
every word, as they say on television, without commercial interruptions. I
thank Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen for the right to share it with you
here.
432
[Ber, p. 157].
433
[Ber, p. 369].
Photo 47 Niels Bohr, Courtesy of Max Planck Gesellschaft
Dear Heisenberg,
I have seen a book, Strkere end tusind sole [Brighter than a
Thousand Suns] by Robert Jungk, recently published in Danish, and I
think that I owe it to you to tell you that I am greatly amazed to see how
much your memory has deceived you in your letter to the author of the
book, excerpts of which are printed in the Danish edition.
Personally, I remember every word of our conversations, which

took place on a background of extreme sorrow and tension for us
here in Denmark. In particular, it made a strong impression both on
Margrethe and me, and on everyone at the Institute that the two of you
spoke to, that you and Weizsacker expressed your definite conviction
that Germany would win and that it was therefore quite foolish for us
to maintain the hope of a different outcome of the war and to be
reticent as regards all German offers of cooperation. I also remember
quite clearly our conversation in my room at the Institute, where in
vague terms you spoke in a manner that could only give me the firm
impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in
Germany to develop atomic weapons and that you said that there was
no need to talk about details since you were completely familiar with
them and had spent the past two years working more or less exclu-
sively on such preparations. I listened to this without speaking since
great matter for mankind was at issue in which, despite our personal
friendship, we had to be regarded as representatives of two sides
engaged in mortal combat. That my silence and gravity, as you write
in the letter, could be taken as an expression of shock at your reports
that it was possible to make an atomic bomb is a quite peculiar
misunderstanding, which must be due to the great tension in your
own mind. From the day three years earlier when I realized that slow
neutrons could only cause fission in Uranium 235 and not 238, it was
of course obvious to me that a bomb with certain effect could be
produced by separating the uraniums. In June 1939 I had even given
a public lecture in Birmingham about uranium fission, where I talked
about the effects of such a bomb but of course added that the technical
preparations would be so large that one did not know how soon they
could be overcome. If anything in my behaviour could be interpreted
as shock, it did not derive from such reports but rather from the news,
as I had to understand it, that Germany was participating vigorously in
a race to be the first with atomic weapons.
Besides, at the time I knew nothing about how far one had already
come in England and America, which I learned only the following year
when I was able to go to England after being informed that the German
occupation force in Denmark had made preparations for my arrest.
All this is of course just a rendition of what I remember clearly from
our conversations, which subsequently were naturally the subject of
thorough discussions at the Institute and with other trusted friends in
Denmark. It is quite another matter that, at that time and ever since, I
have always had the definite impression that you and Weizsacker had
arranged the symposium at the German Institute, in which I did not

take part myself as a matter of principle, and the visit to us in order to
assure yourselves that we suffered no harm and to try in every way to
help us in our dangerous situation.
This letter is essentially just between the two of us, but because of
the stir the book has already caused in Danish newspapers, I have
thought it appropriate to relate the contents of the letter in confidence
to the head of the Danish Foreign Office and to Ambassador Duckwitz.
On August 5, 1990, in a letter to the American historian of Nazi science
Mark Walker, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker backpedals from his claim:
There was no conspiracy, not even in our small three-men-circle
[Heisenberg, von Weizsacker, Karl Wirtz], with certainty not to
make the bomb. Just as little, there was no passion to make the bomb.
Since we talk about the Farm Hall transcripts, I have got to register my
surprise and disappointment in the Nazi way of describing people first of all
by their ethnic origin. Very frequently Heisenberg refers to the Americans
and the British as Anglo-Saxons. He identifies the great Russian physicist,
Nobel Prize winner for 1952 Lev Landau as Hes a very clever Russian
Jew.434 Heisenberg was not an anti-Semite, and when asked he tried to help
some Jewish scientists.435 However, in spite of his distaste for vulgar and
brutal Nazis, in certain ways Heisenberg seems to have been a product of the
Third Reich.
The transcripts show that the distinguished detainees did not live the Nazi
era in the ivory tower. They knew about the crimes of the regime they
served. For example, on July 18, 1945, the young Farm Hall detainee Karl
Wirtz shares his knowledge of the German atrocities and his remorse:436
We have done things which are unique in the world. We went to
Poland and not only murdered the Jews in Poland, but for instance,
the SS drove up to a girls school, fetched out the top class and shot
them simply because the girls were high school girls and the intelli-
gentsia were to be wiped out. Just imagine if they arrived in
Hechingen, drove up to the girls school and shot all the girls! Thats
what we did.
434
[Ber, p. 94].
435
[Ber, p. 101].
436
[Ber, p. 102].
The news about Allies creating and using an atomic bomb, has caught
Werner Heisenberg off guard, and left naked his arrogance:437
All I can suggest is that some dilettante in America who knows very
little about it has bluffed them in saying: If you drop this it has the
equivalent of 20,000 tons of high explosive and in reality doesnt
work at all.
Heisenberg used to know personally these dilettantes. Let me refresh
his memory: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi (Nobel Prize, 1938),
Hans Bethe (Nobel Prize, 1967), Edward Teller, his own former assistant
Felix Bloch (Nobel Prize, 1952), and others. These dilettantes succeeded
where Herr Professional failed.
If you are an action movie buff and do not have time or attention span to
follow me through the maze of details about the German atomic bomb
project, I can summarize for you in one paragraph the myth created by the
brilliant minds of von Weizsacker and Heisenberg, and promoted by Van
der Waerden and Jungk:
When the German Government asked its scientists to work on atomic
research, as patriots and decent people they obliged. As magnif-
icent scientists, they certainly knew how to make an atomic bomb, but
as conscientious moral beings, they did not wish to give the bomb to
Hitler for wiping London and Moscow off the face of the earth. And
so, as patriots and decent people they patriotically cheated their
German Government, intentionally slowed down their work and gave
up a chance of scientific success. Yes, they knew that it was impos-
sible to create the bomb during the war, so it was not very hard to not
produce it, and thus slowing down the bomb creation was a piece
of cake.
Some of the creators of weapons of mass destruction had a great deal
of soul searching afterwards. One of the key creators of the Soviet hydrogen
bomb Andrei Sakharov became the leading human rights activist, the
conscience of the country. Some personages of this book were affected
by their war experiences too. In 1957, Heisenberg and von Weizsacker,
among 18 prominent Gottingen physicists, protested Chancellor Konrad
Adenauers plan to arm West Germany with tactical nuclear arms. More-
over, von Weizsacker moved from physics to philosophy, and in his later
years became a Christian pacifist.
437
[Ber, p. 121].
As for Robert Jungk, he later realized being used. He shows his distaste
for von Weizsacker in his next, 1978 book The Nuclear State, English
edition 1979 [Jun2]:438
Professor Hafele has specifically committed himself to applying war
games methods, and the wide-ranging planning techniques derived
from them, to civilian matters. The influence of his teacher, Carl
Friedrich von Weizsacker, may be at work here. I well remember
that when I met Weizsacker at Gottingen in the mid-fifties, he started
talking to me immediately about his hobby, which was playing war
games. In his living room he spread out in front of me a number of big
general staff maps marked with red, blue and green symbols on which
he fought imaginary battles and won imaginary victories.
In his foreword to the German edition of Mark Walkers book Die
Uranmaschine (Siedler, Berlin, 1990), Jungk directly admits being used
by von Weizsacker and Heisenberg:439
That I have contributed to the spreading of the myth of passive
resistance by the most important German physicists is due above all
to my esteem for these impressive personalities, which I have since
realized to be out of place.
Yes, the myth of passive resistance indeed. You must have noticed the
difference in style between von Weizsacker and Heisenberg. Heisenberg is
more cautious; he does not declare but rather insinuates. Here is another
example of his prose:440
He [Einstein] wrote three letters to President Roosevelt and thereby
contributed decisively to setting in motion the atom bomb project in
the United States. And he also collaborated actively, on occasion, in
the work of this project. He had thus arrived at the conviction, that with
Hitler a power so evil had erupted into world history, that it was right
and proper to oppose this power, even by the most fearsome means.
This was his decision. A French writer once said: In critical times, the
hardest thing is, not to do the right thing, but to know what the right
thing is. But at this point I should like once more to drop the question
of Einsteins political attitudes . . .
438
[Jun2, p. 34].
439
[Ber, p. 368].
440
[Hei4, p. 120].
Not so fast, Dr. Heisenberg. Would you characterize it as ironic or

hypocritical when the scientific leader of Uranverein that worked on creat-
ing atomic bomb and atomic reactor insinuates that Einstein made a wrong
decision by advising Roosevelt about the dangers of being unprepared for
Heisenberg & Co. creating an atomic bomb for Hitler? What was Einstein to
do, take a chance that you and your Uranverein would fail to create a bomb?
Do nothing and accept with resignation the fate like the Jews who were
undressed in the middle of the cold winter and waited for hours for their turn
to enter gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz?
In this chapter we have read Aide-Memoire written by Bartel van der
Waerden in support of Werner Heisenberg and other physicists of Nazi
Germany. During the postwar years Bartel diligently served as his friend
Werners advocate to the world in general and to some of the leading
physicists, Niels Bohr and Hans Kramers in particular. A true friendship,
such as the one between Bartel L. van der Waerden and Werner Heisenberg,
is a rare and great blessing in life. However, should one step on the throat of
his own doubts and make a deal with his conscience for the sake of
friendship? This is the open question I wish to leave you with at the end
of this chapter.
Chapter 35
Professorship at Amsterdam
By 1948 the de-Nazification of the Netherlands was over, and the

institutions College van Herstel were gone. In addition, the American
acceptance improved Dr. Van der Waerdens standing in Europe. However,
L. E. J. Brouwer eloquently objected to Van der Waerdens appointment in
his April 15, 1948 letter to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science
Jos Gielen; moreover, Dirk van Dalen observes that the feelings expressed
in this passage perfectly reflected the general opinion of the Dutch, and in
particular the students, in the matter:441
From a researcher like Professor Van der Waerden, who is only
theoretically, but not experimentally active, the scientific influence is
almost independent of personal presence. Thus, as soon as a materially
and scientifically favorable position has been secured, the question of
his presence here in the country loses all scientific and national
importance, and it becomes almost exclusively a matter of national
prestige. From a viewpoint of national prestige the motivation of his
appointment here in the country seems however extremely weak to the
undersigned. For if it is claimed that by the presence of Professor Van
der Waerden in Amsterdam the strength of our nation is enhanced,
the reply is forced upon us that in that case the national strength of
the German empire has been enhanced during the whole period of the
Hitler regime by the presence of Professor Van der Waerden in
Leipzig. And if it is argued that if Professor Van der Waerden is not
offered a suitable position in the Netherlands, this will be done by
America, the reply is forced upon us that if at the moment there are
441
[Dal2, pp. 829830].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_35
348 35 Professorship at Amsterdam
positions open to Professor Van der Waerden in America, this should

not have been less the case between 1933 and 1940, when many
prominent and right-minded German scholars and artists were wel-
comed with open arms in America, and that therefore one has to
assume that Professor Van der Waerden had not felt the desire to
turn his back on the Hitler regime.
Intuitionist Brouwer demonstrates here amazing intuition: he does not
know, as we do, that the Americans, Princeton, did indeed welcome Van der
Waerden with open arms in 1933, and Van der Waerden had not felt the
desire to turn his back on the Hitler regime. One can make an argument that
the Nazi regime was young and did not yet show its brutal nature. However,
already in April 1933 Van der Waerden witnessed unceremonious firing of
Jewish professors, his mentors Noether and Courant included, and boycotts
of other Jews, such as Landau, boycotts opposed by Van der Waerden.
While I agree with Brouwers impeccable logic, I cannot help but
wonder: why was he so much against Van der Waerden? You may recall,
Brouwer took great care of young Van der Waerden. In 1924 he wrote letters
on Van der Waerdens behalf to Hellmuth Kneser, Emmy Noether, and the
Rockefeller Foundation. In his February 16, 1928, letter to Herman Weyl,
Brouwer shows his appreciation of Van der Waerden in the matter of an
academic appointment:442
In Utrecht there is an important mathematical list of candidates of
the faculty: Barrau, Beth, Schaake (all three insignificant).
My (alphabetic) list: Heyting, Hurewicz, Van der Waerden.
So what happened after 1928? I think I found the answer in the text of the
Van der Waerden interview that Professor Dirk van Dalen conducted on
March 15, 1977, and kindly shared with me. In the interview, this part of
which is unpublished, Van der Waerden recollects:
My wife and I were invited by Weitzenbock and Brouwer was also
present. That must have been 1930, because I went in 1931 to Leipzig.
I am no longer sure when it exactly was. And then the conversation
came to Courant and Hilbert. And then Brouwer said very unpleasant
things about Courant and Hilbert, they were scoundrels. And then I
said, these scoundrels are my friends, I owe them a great deal, and
there was nothing to be said against them. So then Brouwer got up and
left. Weitzenbock said later to me, you have hurt Brouwer very much.
442
[Dal3, p. 329].
35 Professorship at Amsterdam 349
The fact that I considered these people not as scoundrels was an insult
for Brouwer.
In the 1920s Brouwer and Hilbert had a famous falling out over their
views on the foundations of mathematics and over the attendance by the
Germans of the 1928 International Congress of Mathematicians. Hilbert
unceremoniously dismissed Brouwer from the Editorial Board of the
Mathematische Annalen,443 and involved in that loud affair Caratheodory,
Courant, Blumenthal, Einstein, and many others. Brouwer was extremely
hurt and humiliated by that dismissal, and certainly remembered even
20 years later this Van der Waerdens honest but careless 1930 remark.
Professor Herman Johan Arie Duparc (19182002) wrote down for me
the following recollections of the year 1948 during our September 1996
meetings in his apartment in Delft [Dup]:
Van der Corput and others feared again difficulties. He said to me:
Tomorrow vd Waerden gives his first lecture; interesting; let us go
there. So we went there. There were no difficulties . . .
Then Van der Corput and vd Waerden had a common room in
Amsterdam University. When vd Corput went to the US in September
1950, I had to take over his work and met vd Waerden regularly there.
According to Duparc, in 1948 Van der Waerden was appointed a
bijzonder (special) professor of applied mathematics at the University of
Amsterdam. This part-time (one day a week, according to Duparc) posi-
tion was paid by the Foundation, which was just a derivative of the
Mathematical Centre, with Clay and Van der Corput in the drivers
seat,444 and thus did not require an approval by the Queen. This was a far
cry from a tenured full professorship at Johns Hopkins University that Van
der Waerden turned down, but this was a start. Plus, this time Van der
Corput hired Van der Waerden as a full-time director of applied mathemat-
ics at Amsterdams Mathematisch Centrum, where Van der Waerden
worked part-time in 19461947.
How good a professor was Bartel L. van der Waerden at the University of
Amsterdam? This is a hard question for us to answer in 2014, except by
good luck or providence. Dirk van Dalen, my good luck, was Van der
Waerdens student at Amsterdam during the fall 1950 semester, and so he
could answer this question for you and me. In his January 14, 2011 e-mail,
Dirk recollects:
443
More precisely, Hilbert dismissed everyone from the Editorial Board, and then invited
everyone except Brouwer back. Einstein chose not to come back, but that is another matter.
444
[Dal2, p. 827].
My own memories of Van der Waerden are rather limited. I took his
analysis course as a freshman, and the next year he was in Zurich. He
was a gifted teacher, if you heard his lecture the material became quite
clear. His style was, if I may compare it, like that of the [analysis] book
of Courant. I guess that this was the general continental style. One
thing was rather unusual: when a new edition of his Modern Algebra
came out, he offered students a copy for a reduced price. Later he told
me that he had made this a condition with the publisher. So that is
when I got my copy.
Yes, we can all relate to the gift of clarity in Van der Waerdens
expositions from reading his many books. We also learn here that Van der
Waerden cared about his students, and even arranged for a student discount
with Springer!
Then there came the prestigious membership in the Royal Dutch Acad-
emy of Arts and Sciences, which had to beand wasapproved by the
Queen. This, however, was not the same Queen Wilhelmina, who in 1946
rejected appointments for Van der Waerden and others who voluntarily
worked for the German occupiers. Her daughter Queen Juliana, who took
over in 1948, presided over less principled and less emotional times.
On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1949, Johannes G. van der Corput
inquired whether the Minister of Education, Culture and Science Frans
Jozef Theo (Theo) Rutten would approve a full professorship for Van der
Waerden if the faculty were to start a new process (he also sent an inquiry to
the Chief of Higher Education in the Ministry of Education, Culture and
Science, Dr. Mr. H. J. Woltjer):445
To the Minister of Education, Science and Culture
Excellence,
Because of the move of Mr. F. Loonstra to [become] professor at the
Technical University at Delft, there is now a vacancy at the University
of Amsterdam. It is the plan of the Faculty of mathematics and physics
at this University to ask for a change of this position to a professor.
It is the opinion of the section for math., phys. and astronomy that
Prof. Dr. v.d. Waerden would be first in line for this position. But we
believe that we would not be allowed to take any steps in this direction
because we are very familiar with the Ministers position.
In 1946 the Curators of the University of Amsterdam, on advice of
the faculty of mathematics and physics, suggested Mr. v.d. Waerden as
445
Het Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Finding aid 2.14.17, record number 73dossier
B.L. van der Waerden. Department of Education, Arts and Sciences.
a candidate for this position. But the government told them that it
would not sign off on this appointment.
In 1948, this time with the approval of the Minister of Education,
Culture and Sciences, there has started OKW, a foundation for higher
education and applied mathematics. The Minister had been told in
advance that Mr. v.d. Waerden will get that [foundation funded]
position. And that took place on August 19, 1948.
In 1949 Mr. v.d. Waerden became a member of the Royal Dutch
Academy of Sciences. This was signed off by the Minister, and that
was contrary to what happened a few years earlier. . .
If it is still the opinion of your Excellency that you would not sign
off on the position, then it is recommended to make no steps in this
direction.
In the opinion of the Faculty of mathematics, physics and astron-
omy, Mr. v.d. Waerdens receiving this position is of a great impor-
tance to the Netherlands. He has received several invitations from
foreign universities, and if the Minister refuses to sign off on the
position at Amsterdam, then it is likely that Mr. v.d. Waerden will
be lost for the Netherlands. And the Netherlands would do a serious
damage to itself if this world famous mathematician is not retained.
But if we learn that His Excellency has no objections, then we will
begin the proceedings to put the position in place. If your Excellency
needs further information, then I request that representatives of the
faculty be allowed to get this information.
On January 31, 1950, Minister Rutten informed Van der Corput that he
would have no objections.446 Nearly 4 months later, on May 16, 1950, the
Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Amsterdam appointed Van der Waerden
to a professorship, contingent, of course, on the Royal assent,447 which came
on June 19, 1950:448
We Juliana, by the grace of God,
Queen of the Netherlands
Princess of Oranje-Nassau, etc. etc., etc.
June 19, 1950
No. 24
Finalizing assent to the appointment
of Prof. Dr. B.L. van der Waerden to the position of
446
Ibid.
447
Ibid.
448
Ibid.
Ordinary professor at the City University of Amsterdam

Upon the advice of our Minister of Education, Arts, and Sciences of
June 12, 1950, No. 148137, Dept. of Higher Education and Sciences;
In observance of article 71 of the Higher Education statute;
The appointment of Prof. Dr. B. L. van der Waerden to ordinary
professorship in pure and applied mathematics at the City University
of Amsterdam.
Our Minister of Education, Culture and Science is hereby ordered to
implement this decision.
Soestdijk, 19 June, 1950
(signed) JULIANA
The Minister of Education,
Culture and Sciences
(signed) Th. Rutten
Authenticated and notarized,
The Acting Chief of the Cabinet
And so, 5 years after the wars end, Van der Waerden is finally appointed
to a full professorship at the University of Amsterdam, effective October
1, 1950. It appears that the relationship between Holland and her prodigal
son Bartel has been restored and would likely grow closer with time. Van
der Waerden now has a fine job, talented and very supportive colleagues.
Yet, he chooses to leave his Homeland and accept a chair at the University
of Zurich. Why did he make such a choice? In the 1993 interview, Camilla
van der Waerden nonchalantly explains [Dol1]:
They [Dutch colleagues] had made such efforts for him [Bartel]. He
left because he got an offer from Zurich.
Van der Waerden de-facto includes his notice of resignation in his
inaugural [sic] speech Concerning the Space [Wae12], given on Monday,
December 4, 1950, at 4 oclock in the afternoon at the University
Auditorium:
Eminent Clay and Van der Corput,
With undaunted energy you both have organizationally prepared my
appointment to a Professor regardless of all difficulties and you have
finally reached your goal. I appreciate this very much and will remain
grateful to you forever for it. Even though now I will soon be going to
Zurich, I trust that someone else would take over my job on this
faculty, which was organized by your ideas.
On March 21, 1951 Professor Van der Waerden formally asks for his
resignation from the University of Amsterdam, which is granted effective
May 1, 1951.
Van der Corput has been proven wrong: he did all that he could to support
Van der Waerden in academia and in government; he closed his eyes on his
disagreements with some of Van der Waerdens moral positions and lifes
choices; and yet, in the end he has not won Van der Waerden for Holland for
the rest of the latters career. Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn, who in 1952
became that someone else [to] take over [Van der Waerdens] job on this
faculty, writes to me about the understandable disappointment of Van der
Waerdens mathematical colleagues in the Netherlands [Bru7]:
I had regular contact with some mathematicians who knew him [Van
der Waerden] better than I did, like Kloosterman, Koksma, Van
Dantzig, Freudenthal, Van der Corput, who were disappointed by his
leave after they had gone into so much trouble to help him with jobs in
the Netherlands.
Photo 48 Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn, 1960s, contributed by Konrad Jacobs, Courtesy of the
Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach
De Bruijn continues [Bru8]:

Actually I do not remember anything from my own experience. I only
remember that people like Koksma, Van Dantzig, Schouten449 confi-
dentially complained that Van der Waerden disappointed them after all
the trouble they had taken. I suppose they had to fight unwilling
authorities in order to let them forget the objections from the past.
Step-by-step they got him a position with the Shell Company, a part-
time professorship at the University of Amsterdam, the membership of
the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (which had to be
signed by the queen) and finally the full professorship. The people who
all went through this trouble of course felt they lost their face with
respect to all those authorities when Van der Waerden unexpectedly
left them in the lurch . . .
As a part-time professor Van der Waerden taught applied mathe-
matics, maybe mainly from a pure mathematicians perspective. As a
full professor he had not even started; around that time he decided to
leave for Zurich. So there was hardly a Van der Waerden tradition of
courses in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam appears to have been used by Professor Van der Waerden
merely as a stepping stone in his career.
During the Dutch years of Bartel L. van der Waerden, 19451947 and
19481951, the brothers Bart, Coen, and Ben and their families were close.
Bartels family was given the gorgeous parents house Breidablik to live
inuntil the time came to sell it. Ben as a brother and a lawyer stepped in to
help Bart when the latter had difficulties with obtaining a visa from the
United States Consulate due to Barts attempt to conceal his years of living
in Nazi Germany. I am grateful to Bens daughter Dorith van der Waerden
who kindly provided me with the copy of the Dutch original letter and her
translation of it into English:
18 May 1949
Consulate of the United Sates of North [sic] America
Attention of Miss Olmsted
Museumplein 19
Amsterdam
449
In view of Prof. Schoutens 1946 and 1950 letters of reference for Prof. Van der
Waerdens Swiss appointment, it is hard to understand his disappointment.
Dear Sir,
On request of Professor B.L. van der Waerden in Laren, Noord-
Holland, I am sending you herebyin relation to his request for a
visitor visa for a guest professor in Seattle (Washington) from June till
September 1949the notarized act which states that he has a right to
one third of the inheritance of our parents, of which among others the
houses Verlengde Engweg 10 and 8a are a part. I add to this that the
inheritance is not yet divided. So please return the act to me after use.
My brother told me also that he filled a form for your consulate in
which he stated that he had lived until 1947 all the time at the address
Verlengde Engweg 10 in Laren. This statement is incorrect insofar that
Professor Van der Waerden in 1931 became professor in Leipzig and
lived there until 1945 at the address Fockestrasze 8a. The reason for
not stating this is the fact that he was blamed by Dutch friends and
authorities for his staying and teaching in Germany during the war
which resulted in an unpleasant period for him after his repatriation.
Though after ample research it became clear that his political trust-
worthiness and purity are without doubtthis can be proven by the
testimonial of the P.R.A. [de Politieke Recherche Afdeling; the Polit-
ical Research Department] in Hilversummy brother doesnt wish to
hear anything more about this issue or to discuss it. So to prevent
questions he didnt tell you that he lived during the war in Leipzig.
After talking this over, Professor Van der Waerden and I agree that
this was wrong and has to be corrected, which I am doing now. If you
wish more information, I am willing to provide it, but my brother
insists that he does not want to be bothered anymore with this issue.
Though there is no reason whatsoever to doubt his loyalty as visitor,
he would in that case prefer not at all to go to Seattle.
Bringing this to your attention,
Yours faithfully,
Mr. B. van der Waerden
We witness a noble, brotherly defense, and Bens desire to explain away
Bartels incorrect information given to the American Consulate. We also see
how bitter Bartel van der Waerden still is in 1949, 4 years after his return
home, and 3 years after a very public debate of his lifes choices on the
pages of Het Parool. My brother doesnt wish to hear anything more about
this issue or to discuss it, writes Benno van der Waerden. Bartel would
rather not go to Seattle than discuss his life in Nazi Germany.
Another Beno, Professor Beno Eckmann of ETH and Bartels Zurich
friend for nearly half a century, 19511996, writes to me that Bartel and
Camilla van der Waerden always avoided any mention of their time in the
Third Reich [Eck0]:
We never really talked about his time in Leipzig, in any case not about
politics. He and his wife seemed to avoid these themes.
Bartels persistent decades-long silence about his Nazi years seems to me
to convey his regrets or embarrassment louder than any words could. As to
Seattle, Bartel and Camilla were granted American visas; we see their happy
faces on the photo taken in Seattle in 1949 in [Dol1].
Their son, Hans van der Waerden, kindly contributes his view of his
fathers Dutch postwar years [WaH1]:
It would have been impossible for a Nazi collaborator to get a profes-
sorship in Amsterdam at any time after 1945.
Of course, this could not be done without doubts and hesitations.
The resistance against my fathers appointment was a very natural and
logical one: my father could not expect Dutch authorities to act as if
nothing at all happened! The mere fact that he had served, though
indirectly, a government that suppressed his compatriots, could not but
arouse a wave of suspicion. But the fact thatafter not more than five
yearshe was again trusted [with] a responsible public position,
shows that the suspicions obviously could not be verified in any detail.
Chapter 36
Escape to Neutrality
Leaving the Motherland of Suffering for the Land of Neutrality.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_36
360 36 Escape to Neutrality
Photo 49 Beno Eckmann, 1988, by Konrad Jacobs, Courtesy of the Archives of the
On my request, Professor Beno Eckmann recollects the Universit

at
Z
urich 1950 succession [Eck1]:
In 1950 Fueter450 retired. Shortly before I was offered that position
(and to be director). Then the position was offered to vdW [Van der
Waerden] who accepted but his appointment was finalized only in
1951 (I vaguely remember that there were discussions among Zurich
authorities whether it would be appropriate to appoint a man who had
remained in Nazi Germany during the war).
In fact, Eckmann is the early first choice [Eck2]:
I was asked either in 1949 or early in 1950 whether I would accept
(I really cannot remember when this happenedRolf Nevanlinna
450
Karl Rudolf Fueter (June 30, 1880August 9, 1950), a professor of mathematics (1916
1950) and Rektor (19201922) of the University of Zurich.
36 Escape to Neutrality 361
talked to me personally, had I said yes I would have received that

position).
I am holding in my hands a voluminous file of Rudolf Fueters succes-
sion. It opens with Dekan of Philosophical Facult
at II Hans Boeschs May
5, 1950 letter451 calling the meeting of the Mathematics Commission for
Monday, May 8, 1950 at 1400 h in Dekanat room 13. Next there comes a
mysterious page containing only names and numbers, the handwritten in
pencil super-concise stenography452 of this meeting that would delight any
professional or amateur paleographerlet me try my hand on it. The Com-
mission considers young Swiss mathematicians, such as Nef, Hafeli, and
others, but only three candidates are numbered, clearly in the order of
ranking:
1. Van der Waerden (03), Ord. Leipzig, Hollander
2. Polya (62),453 Stanford University
3. Eckmann (17), ETH
References, which are to be asked to evaluate the above candidates, are
also listed on this page:
Fueter, Speiser, Hopf, Ahlfors, Erhard Schmidt, Schouten
At the bottom of the page the final list appears again, without the stricken
Erhard Schmidt of Germany. Schoutens name is separated by a line from
the other four names, with an arrow going from Finsler to Schouten, for the
latter is to be asked by Finsler only about the current political opinion about
Van der Waerden in Holland.
The following day Dekan Boesch sends identical letters454 to Professors
Van der Waerden and Polya, inquiring whether they would like to be
considered for professor and director of the mathematics institute in suc-
cession to the retiring Professor Fueter. What the file is missing, is telling as
well: it does not contain a similar letter to Professor Eckmann of ETH: he
has already turned down this position, for he has been quite happy at the
ETH, where he will later found Forschungsinstitut f ur Mathematik.
451
Universit
at Z
urich, Universitatsarchiv, Lehrstuhlakten Mathematik.
452
Ibid.
453
The apparent date of birth in parentheses should have been (87), for 1887. George P
olya
(18871985), a professor of mathematics at ETH (19201940) and Stanford University
(19421978, including active Emeritus Professor since 1953), a brilliant mathematician
and pedagogue.
454
Universit
at Z
On the same day Dekan Boesch also sends letters455 to the four official
references. The long-term Van der Waerden pen pal on matters of algebraic
geometry (at least since 1936), Professor Paul Finsler, and not the Dekan,
writes to the fifth, personal reference, Jan A. Schouten of the Netherlands.
Shortly, letters of reference pour in. ETH Professor Heinz Hopf recom-
mends considering only the top three candidates:456
G. Polya is without a doubt one of the most interesting personalities
among the living mathematicians . . . Professors and students at a
university where Polya works, work with him, receive his instruction,
and just by dealing with his personality get education, intelligence,
humor and goodness in such an unusual amount. We, colleagues at the
ETH, where he has been working for so long, miss him very much . . .
B. L. van der Waerden is one of those mathematicians who in the
last 25 years have been instrumental in creating a significant change in
the appearance of mathematics. His modernization is in the first
place in the area of algebra, in which very clear conceptual, qual-
itative thinking is placed in the foreground as opposed to numeri-
cal, quantitative operations . . . Certainly there would be nobody
better than Van der Waerden to found a new algebraic school at the
University of Zurich . . .
B. Eckmannabout 30 years younger than Polya and
15 (or something less) years younger than Van der Waerdencannot
of course have as many successes and cannot yet be called in the same
sense a famous mathematician as the other two I have named. But I
believe that he is on his best way to secure his place among the leading
mathematicians. . . Many colleagues at the ETH are happy to have
Eckmann amongst us, especially I personally am very happy with the
fact that he was my own student. . . If he did get a call from another
university, naturally we will attempt, with great energy, to keep him
with us. And I also believe that he himself does not see any joy in
leaving the ETH.
Lars V. Ahlfors, Chairman of Mathematics Department at Harvard Uni-
versity, expresses an opinion similar to Hopfs:457
455
Ibid.
456
Heinz Hopf, a 5-page long letter to Hans Boesch of May 14, 1950; typed and hand-signed
in German; Universit at Z
457
Lars V. Ahlforss letter to Hans Boesch of May 21, 1950; typed and hand-signed in
German; Universit at Z
Among the Swiss mathematicians there remains certainly Prof.

Eckmann, the single one whom I would consider seriously . . .
From the foreign mathematicians I agree with you that certainly
Van der Waerden and Polya should be named on the first list. One must
thank Van der Waerden for having strengthened algebraic geometry,
even though I know that his work has been surpassed by other people.
Nevertheless, Van der Waerden is a first class mathematician, but it
would be important to find out whether he is still on top in his
knowledge. Prof. Polya in his own individual way stands in the zenith
of knowledge. He has depth and originality. He is, and I believe most
mathematicians would agree with me, not a leading mathematician but
instead an extraordinarily skillful (Geschickter) one.
Professor R. Fueter, whose seat is the object of this search and whose
influence as the past Rektor is very strong, shockingly, has nothing positive
to say about George Polya. Reading his letter, I wonder why on earth they
invited Polya to apply:458
Prof. Dr. Polya, during his first years in a Zurich position [at the ETH]
attempted to work together with us, but then in many situations worked
against Speiser and myself and fought with our students. In this
situation I would also like to point out some of Prof. Speisers views
regarding this.
Fueter much prefers Van der Waerden or else one of his own many
former doctoral students, such as W. Nef, H. Hafeli, Erwin Bareiss, or
Kriszten:
I do not need to say anything new about Herr Prof. Van der Waerden
because in the large materials related to the call of Herr Prof.
Nevanlinna [1946] I have spoken about him at length and all of that
is still in effect today. Naturally he is much weightier than the above
mentioned young Swiss. But I would still like to mention how extraor-
dinarily desirable a Swiss would be as my successor because for so
many years there was no position open for young Swiss
mathematicians.
Fueter of course knows that Eckmann has already refused the position,
and so he writes nothing about Eckmann in his letter, not a word.
458
Rudolf Fueters letter to Hans Boesch of June 1, 1950; typed and hand-signed in German;
Universit
at Z
urich, Universit
Andreas Speiser praises Van der Waerden and the young Swiss candi-
dates and, shockingly, puts down Polya as a mathematician:459
Of the foreigners Polya does not even come into view. He has dealt
with an enormous amount of small problems but has never seriously
worked in a serious area and would rapidly sink the level of mathe-
matics at the University. Opposite to this, Van der Waerden is an apt
(trefflicher) mathematician, whom one would have to recommend.
Evaluating P olya unfairly is not the only deplorable aspect of the
Speisers letter. Following praise for the (Jewish) mathematician Richard
Brauer, Speiser usesin the year 1950!the Nazi Deutsch to describe
Brauer as not Aryan (nicht arisch). Truly, old habits die hard!
Summing up, Professor Van der Waerden is the unanimous choice of the
four references. Only one question remains: has Van der Waerden been
sufficiently purified? It is to be answered by Professor Schouten. The
latter sends his handwritten reply to Professor Finsler on May 12, 1950. It
deals exclusively with Van der Waerden the person, and not at all with his
mathematical work. The following is its complete text:460
Dear Herr Colleague!
I have received your friendly letter of May 9. A few weeks ago Herr
Van der Waerden has been named Ordinarius in Amsterdam. Political
reservations do not apply here [in the Netherlands] against him. I
should actually say that they do not apply anymore, because certain
circles had earlier tried completely without justification to raise their
voice against him. But that has all now passed and he is also now a
Member of the Royal Amsterdam Academy.
Even though I hope that you will not snap this man away from us, I
must absolutely tell you my opinion that he is completely politically
harmless (unbedenklich).
With friendly greeting to the entire Zurich circle,
Yours most respectfully
J. Schouten
Thus, Professor Van der Waerden is cleared for the Swiss employment
again. The Mathematics Commission consists of Professors Paul Karrer,
Paul Niggli, Paul Finsler, Rolf Nevanlinna, and Walter Heitler. They meet
459
Andreas Speisers letter to Hans Boesch of May 10, 1950; typed and hand-signed; in
German; Universit at Z
urich, Universit
460
Jan Schoutens letter to Hans Boesch of May 12, 1950; hand-written in German with an
additional typed copy; Universitat Z
urich, Universit
on June 3, 1950 and end up with exactly the same slate and order of the three
candidates they started with.461 On June 9, 1950 Dekan Boesch reports the
faculty findings to the Education Directorate (Erziehungedirection) of the
Canton of Zurich in a 5-page letter.462 He lists, with high compliments, a
large number of young Swiss mathematicians (no doubt to impress the
government with the fine job Zurich University has been doing), but
reserves the highest compliments for Herren Van der Waerden, Polya
and Eckmann [who] would be the candidates for this Mathematics Professor
position, whereby Herr Van der Waerden would be in first place, (Herr
Polya in second place).463
Compliments for Professor Polya are outweighed by the following res-
ervations (ibid):
One cannot ignore his advanced age, especially since Herr Polya let us
know that in the case of the call he would have to give up his pension.
However, there is an advantage [to Polyas age of 63] that in the
foreseeable future there would possibly develop again a position for
a Swiss mathematician [i.e., Polya would soon die or retire at the
mandatory age of 70].464 One has to also mention the rejecting posi-
tions of Herren Fueter and Speiser against Herr Polya.
Professor Van der Waerden, on the other hand, gets a clean bill of
political health from Dekan Boesch (ibid):
Certain problems found in Herr Van der Waerdens working at Leipzig
University during the war which were focused on by Holland are no
longer applicable according to the communication that Prof. Schouten
has forwarded. On the contrary, it is explicit from the [Zurich Univer-
sity] Faculty proposal for filling a new position of Professor of Applied
Mathematics dated July 15, 1946, that Prof. Van der Waerden was
thoroughly considered.
As we know, Professor Eckmann had turned down the offer before the
search began; Professor Polya is rejected by Fueter and Speiser, who
certainly knew in advance that they did not wish Polya back in Zurich.
From day one of the search, Professor Van der Waerden has been listed as
number one candidate. Thus, the elaborate smokescreen of a search seems to
461
Typed in German; Universit at Z
urich, Universit
462
Ibid.
463
Text in parentheses about Polya is added in pencil, as if an afterthought.
464
Time proved Dekan Boesch to be wrong: George P olya would live to the age of 98, and
give inspiring lectures at Stanford University and elsewhere at a very advanced age.
have been invented to satisfy the rules of decorum, but has had only one goal
from the beginningto hire Van der Waerden. He is offered the job on
September 20, and accepts it with heartfelt gratitude on September
24, 1950.465
One document in the Fueter succession dossier deserves another look: the
July 14, 1950 letter from Dekan Boesch to the Education Directorate of the
Canton of Zurich,466 in which Boesch asks the government to not only
swiftly approve Van der Waerdens appointment, but also to find out
from Herr Van der Waerden if it would be possible to begin his work in
Zurich already in the forthcoming winter semester 1950/51. Thus, Van der
Waerden has an opportunity to realize his Swiss dream right away, without
spending another year at the University Amsterdam. Apparently he does not
agree to an early Zurich start. I can venture a conjecture to explain this
refusal: perhaps, Van der Waerden desires a vindication for the Het
Paroolean humiliation, and the Amsterdam full professorship with its Inau-
gural Lecture ceremonies in December 1950 provides such an opportunity.
Van der Waerden wants to leave his Homeland, but leave it as a winner, by
willingly giving up Hollands highest academic credentials he has finally
earned.
For a decade I have been absorbed with the following question: why did
Professor Van der Waerden leave Holland for good in 1951? Was the
University of Zurich (which, in my opinion, was no match to its famed
neighbor, ETH) a better place than the University of Amsterdam? This was
not at all obvious to me, and so I asked Professor de Bruijn, who replied as
follows [Bru8]:
We were looking at the U.S. and Switzerland as a kind of paradise.
Whether in the long run Zurich would be much better than Amsterdam
may be open to discussion. In 1950 Amsterdam had lost the glory of
Brouwers days of the 1920s . . .
By the way, I really do not know the order of the events. The offer
from Zurich may have come at a time when the procedures for getting
him the full professorship at Amsterdam had hardly started. He may
have kept the Zurich offer secret for a time, in order to keep both
possibilities open. If it had happened to me, I would have felt a moral
pressure against letting Amsterdam down.
465
Hand-written letter in German; Universit
at Z
urich, Universit
atsarchiv, Lehrstuhlakten
Mathematik.
466
Typed letter in German; Universit at Z urich, Universitatsarchiv, Lehrstuhlakten
Mathematik.
Yes, Nicolaas de Bruijn would not have let Amsterdam down. Why didnt
Van der Waerden feel a moral pressure against letting Amsterdam down?
H. J. A. Duparc recalls and writes it down for me [Dup]:
Van der Waerdens wife, Rellich, was German and had many difficul-
ties in normal life in Holland because of her speaking the German
language (Holland was occupied 5 years by the Germans).467
N. G. de Bruijn [Bru9] adds:
Justified or not justified, those anti-German feelings were very strong
indeed. I can understand that Camilla was treated as an outcast, and
that she therefore disliked living in Holland.468
Hans van der Waerden, the son of Bartel and Camilla, gives us a most
thoughtful, psychological, and convincing explanation [WaH1]:
Why did my parents leave Holland for Switzerland? The reason my
mother told me was that she could not stand the rainy, windy Dutch
weather. I dont think that was all. I imagine, my mother did not feel at
home for language reasons as well: she had to learn to speak Dutch,
and by her accent everyone could instantly recognize her German
(or Austrian) origin, which after 1945 was compromising and made
her feel uneasy.
Furthermore, Switzerland at that time had a reputation as almost a
paradise: sound landscape, sound towns, a sound politics (so it seemed
to be), sound economy. . . This, I suppose, was extremely tempting. I
imagineplease take this as my imagination, not morethat my
parents longed to live in a new society, where they were no longer
confronted with this perpetually underlying question: Have you been
or have you not been a Nazi collaborator?
This most probably applies to my mother, but also, in some deeper
sense, to my father, who was extremely vulnerable to accusations of
this kind. For him, living life in honor and moral integrity was the most
important thing on earth, more important than material comfort, rela-
tions, or even scientific research. He was a dogmatic about that. That is
why suspicions of the kind mentioned abovethat he could ever have
467
Mrs. Van der Waerden learned and spoke Dutch, but apparently with a German accent.
468
Children, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy their life in Laren. Their first cousin Theo
van der Waerden recalls [WaT2]: In 1949 we moved to Amsterdam . . . We met the family
more and more, we went to Laren, where Bart and his family lived (19451951). I had the
impression that they loved the house, the children were happy there with the schools, the
nature, etc.
collaborated or at least contributed to such a horrible thing as the

Third Reichnot only saddened or infuriated him: they shook him to
the roots of his personality.
This very vulnerability, besides, probably made him react in a
somewhat nave or helpless way to the feelings of his countrymen
after 1945. He could not allow himself to admit that perhaps there were
good reasons for negative feelings against him because of his behavior,
because of moral.
Bartel van der Waerdens niece, Dorith van der Waerden, conveys family
memories and impressions, so intangible and yet so helpful for our psycho-
logical insight [WaD1]:
After the war Bart wanted to come back to Holland when this was
possible again. He moved into the house of his parents in Laren.
During these few years that they lived here we stayed there during
the holidays and were in good relations with them as far as I remember.
But he and his family must have had a very hard time. In the first
place he was suspected because of coming from Germany. I never
heard about it that he was scrutinized by a committee but this is very
likely because that is what happened to everybody about whom there
were doubts about their behaviour during the war. The ones that had
actually helped the Germans went to prison and camps and so on, and
suffered for many years because they and their families were not
accepted.
I believe that they found that absolutely nothing was wrong. I know
my father [Benno] was convinced of that, and he did everything he
could to help him [Bartel] and clear him of accusations. I have one
letter proving that. And I happen to know my father, he was so very
honest, he would never have helped Bart if he had any doubts.
But still Bart had a German wife, and children that came here and
went to school but spoke with a German accent. In the years after the
German occupation this was not accepted in Holland and they all
suffered a great deal. And probably the period of doubts about him
took a long time too.
So the whole family must have been very hurt. Finally they could
escape from Nazi Germany and now people here thought about them
as Nazis. Though his brothers supported him, there were other family
members, cousins, who did not forgive him for staying there.
In this marriage of Bart and Camilla she was the practical one, she
took care of everything, so he could do his work. She protected him
also against the outside world I think.
So I believe that they were so unhappy in Holland that they looked

for another country again, not Germany of course, and found Switzer-
land where the spoken language was also German. This of course was
easy for Camilla and the children, and there no one would think they
were not okay for speaking German.
I believe that for Camilla the period in Holland must have been so
painful that she never wanted to have anything to do with Holland and
even with Barts family. She wanted it to be over and forget about what
to her seemed utterly unfair toward her husband, herself and her
children.
So there was little contact between the families from the moment
they left for Switzerland. I never heard any accusation in my home,
only my mother was hurt because they didnt seem to want contact
with us. She blamed this on the family characteristics of the Van der
Waerden family. She herself from a Jewish family was close to her
family, the ones that were left [alive after the Holocaust].
Still my parents have visited Bart and Camilla occasionally, maybe
once or twice. And I remember once my mother got a letter from Bart,
but it was only mathematical jokes! This to her was very curious, and
typical for the professor.
Helga [Bartel and Camillas eldest daughter] told me that her
mother felt that the family in Holland had not supported Bart enough.
But the last years of her life Camilla phoned once or twice a year to ask
about my mothers well-being after my father had died.
While the role of Camilla van der Waerden in the decision to leave
Holland must have been very significant, such an important step was
ultimately Professor Van der Waerdens to makehe was the one who
almost simultaneously accepted two job offers, from Amsterdam and from
Zurich.
At all times he desired to be at the best place for doing mathematics,
which according to him has now moved to Switzerland and the United
States. Which one should he claim for himself? He aspired to belong to
the German culture; it was importantperhaps too importantto him. The
decision to move to Switzerland was the last key decision of Van der
Waerdens life and career. He chose to leave the Motherland of Suffering
for the Land of Neutrality, the Land of the German Language but not
Germany.
Chapter 37
The Theorem Becomes Classic
What amazes us today is, of course, that no one in Hamburg (including

Schreier and Artin) had known about Schurs work [1916]. In that
connection we must realize that the kind of mathematics involved in
the [BaudetSchur] conjecture was not mainstream, and that combi-
natorics was not a recognized field of mathematics at all.
We discussed this theorem in Chapter 7, and so by this chapter, it should

be old news. In fact, it has taken 20 years and a Russian aid for this
theorem to become classic!
As you recall, B. L. van der Waerden proved this pioneering result in
1926 while at Hamburg University, but its 1927 publication [Wae1] in a
little known Dutch journal hardly helped its popularity. Only Issai Schur and
his two students Alfred Brauer and Richard Rado learned about and
improved upon Van der Waerdens result almost immediately; and later,
in 1936, Paul Erdos and Paul Turan commenced density considerations
related to Van der Waerdens result [ET].
In 1928 a Russian visitor to Gottingen and a fine analyst Alexander
Yakovlevich Khinchin470 (18941959) had heard about Van der Waerdens
proof and was very impressed by it. All right, so one Russian liked this result,
you may be wondering, what is a big deal? A very long time had passed, but
Khinchin remembered his Gottingen excitement and after World War II, in
1947, included Van der Waerdens proof in his little book Three Pearls of
469
E-mail to A. Soifer, January 5, 2004.
470
My high school mathematics teacher Tatiana Nikolaevna Fideli was Khinchins student at
Moscow State University. Isnt it a small world!

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_37
372 37 The Theorem Becomes Classic
Number Theory as one of the pearls [Khi1]. The booklet was an instant
success, and the second edition came out in Russian in 1948 [Khi2]. It
included a new much simpler and transparent proof in the opinion of
Khinchin, found by the Russian mathematician M. A. Lukomskaya. Do you
know who Lukomskaya was? No? You are not alone: I knew nothing about
her and did not expect to ever find out, when Google informed me that the
biography of Van der Waerden in my The Mathematical Coloring Book
[Soi9] inspired a discussion on the Russian Scientific Forum http://dxdy.ru/
topic19166.html. On January 14, 2009, someone nicknamed Geomath wrote
(in Russian):
In this translated into Russian [Soi10] biography of Van der Waerden,
which is a part of the [English language] book [Soi9], its author, a
mathematician-Jew, our former compatriot, researches in a most
meticulous way and gives a moral assessment of the fact that Van
der Waerden, while remaining a Dutch citizen, taught mathematics in
the Nazi Leipzig, even during the five years when Germany occupied
the Netherlands.
The following day, Geomath continued:
This new and much simpler and transparent proof of Van der
Waerdens theorem was found by M. A. Lukomskaya and published
in UMN in 1948 [Luk]. Who is Lukomskaya? What has happened with
her? If she was young then, with time she had a good chance to develop
into a famous mathematician . . . However, I was unable to find anything
about her on the Internet. Perhaps, she changed her last name?
By the way, the mentioned by me book The Mathematical Coloring
Book: Mathematics of Coloring and the Colorful Life of Its Creators
by Alexander Soifer (together with a biography of Van der Waerden in
it) can be downloaded free, I have already done so.
I inquired from Geomath why he chose to characterize me as a mathe-
matician-Jew, but did not get an answer. A year later (!), on January
12, 2010, a surprising reply was posted by someone nicknamed Elena31.
It was her first and only appearance on the Forum:
Lukomskaya Mira Abramovna (my mother) was born on May 1, 1900,
and passed away on October 30, 1976. She graduated from Leningrad
University, phys-math [faculty], and for many years worked as a
docent471 at the Belarus State University. Her works were primarily
471
A Russian equivalent to an associate professor.
37 The Theorem Becomes Classic 373
on differential equations. I remember well how she solved the men-

tioned by you problem.
Sincerely, E. N. Lambina
Sherlock Holmes was reawakened in me. The same day, I sent a private
e-mail to Elena:
Dear Lena,
Tell me please in detail about your mother and even in greater detail
about when and how she worked on a solution of the problem.
Among other things, I am a biographer of Van der Waerden and the
author of The Mathematical Coloring Book, mentioned in the
discussion.
All the best,
Alexander
On January 14, 2010, I learned from Elena about her mother, the author of
the second proof of this BaudetSchurVan der Waerden Theorem (I am
translating for you from her Russian original):
Dear Alexander!
Thank you for your interest. I will try to answer your questions. My
parents, Mira Abramovna Lukomskaya and Nikolay Venediktovich
Lambin were both mathematicians. Mama was born in Bykhov of the
Mogilev472 region, in 1917 graduated from Mogilev Gymnasium for
Women, and during 19201925 studied at the Petrograd University,
renamed into Leningrad University. There she met my papa, a native
of Petersburg. Upon graduation from the university, they both worked
at Pulkovo Observatory and in the Meteorological Institute. In 1930
they both moved to Minsk, where they worked at Belarus State
University at phys-math [faculty] (renamed into math-fac, and then
mech-math). During the war they worked in Kazan, at the Defense
Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. (First war winter, mama
and I lived in a village Kulaevo, 35 km from Kazan; Mama taught
there almost all disciplinesfrom Minsk we were able to walk away
on our feet [Minsk was severely bombed on day one of the German
invasion of Russia, June 22, 1941, and occupied 4 days later]). In the
fall 1944, we returned to Minsk together with the university, where
mama worked as a docent through mid-1960s, and papa until the early
1970s.
472
What a coincidence: Issai Schur was born in Mogilev!
Now about the theorem. When mama was solving it, my brother and
I were 16 years old each (the end of 1947) and therefore I can share
with you only the following. In the first edition of Khinchins book,
mama read a proof of this theorem and right away said that one can
prove it simpler . . . (Mama was interested in number theory, and in her
youth even spent a week trying to prove Fermats Last Theorem ),
but her publications, except the one of your interest, belong to differ-
ential equations . . . Mama used to say that the essence of the theorem
is this: Any chaos contains its own order.473 She jokingly applied it
to some chaos in our apartment (although, our apartment consisted
then of only one room in the former kindergarten, where the returning
to Minsk university employees were housed). Having proved the
theorem fairly quickly (in 10 days or so, as I recall), mama wrote to
Khinchin at his MGU [Moscow State University] address; and got a
reply where Khinchin approved her solution and offered some
improvements. He asked for a permission to publish it in the new
edition of his book (which is what he did), and also offered to publish it
in [the journal] UMN (Uspekhi Matematicheskih Nauk), which is what
mama did . . .
Respectfully, Elena Nikolaevna Lambina (I graduated from MGU
in 1954, and several decades worked as a docent in the department of
theoretical mechanics of Belarus Polytechnic Institute).
I asked Elena for copies of her mothers publication and her correspon-
dence with Khinchin. On May 24, 2010, Elena kindly sent me the journal
publication [Luk] of her mothers proof of the BaudetSchurVan der
Waerden Theorem, and copies of the letters her mother exchanged with
Khinchin. Now I can convey the rest of the story. As you already know, in
late 1947early 1948, Lukomskaya sent her proof to Moscow State Univer-
sity Professor Alexander Khinchin, who replied on February 9, 1948 (I am
translating from the Russian):
Much Honored Mira Abramovna,
Your proof of Van der Waerdens Theorem, which was forwarded
to me, is incredibly interesting. Based on the same idea as the original
authors proof, it uses a much simpler and more transparent construc-
tion, whereby the proof is reduced to at most half the length and is
much more accessible. I only think that your resorting to infinite
fractions is unnecessary and only complicates the matter and even
473
What a wonderful description of Ramsey Theory! Clearly independent, it reminds the
famous description attributed to Theodore Motzkin: Complete disorder is impossible.
raises some doubts (which probably are easily resolvable). I think that
it is much more convenient to realize your construction directly on a
finite segment and, so to speak, in reverse order (i.e., from large
segments to small ones). I am mailing to you the corresponding
presentation in its complete form on two pages. Of course, you will
see right away that in spite of a different setup, it is not a new but
exactly your construction. I am interested in knowing your opinion
about my editing.
Are you going to publish your proof? At the moment I have a favor
to ask you. My Three Pearls will soon be published in the second
edition, and I ask for your permission to allow me to include your
proof in the first chapter, your proof instead of the old one (of course,
with clear indication of your authorship).
With sincere respect,
A. Khinchin
On June 30, 1948, Mira Abramovna replied to Khinchin:
Much respected Alexander Yakovlevich,
In accordance with your advice, I am sending you my work on the
Theorem of Van der Waerden. I chose your method of presentation, as
it is preferred over mine in its conciseness and clarity. If this work can
be published in Uspekhi [Matematicheskih Nauk] [Successes in the
Mathematical Sciences] or another journal, would you be so kind to
forward it for publication. For this case, I am sending you two copies
...
I am reading this short 3-page article [Luk]. It actually contains a
generalization of Van der Waerdens result, which I would call a
one-dimensional version of Gallais Theorem (see Gallais theorem in
[Soi9]):
Given an infinite sequence of positive integers t1, t2, . . ., tq, . . . Then
for any pair of positive integers k,l there is a positive integer n(k,l) such
that if any array of consecutive positive integers of length n(k,l) is
partitioned into k classes, there are in at least one class l numbers c1, c2,
. . ., cl, satisfying the condition
c2 c1 : c3 c2 : . . . : cl cl1 t1 : t2 : . . . : tl1
As you can readily see, Van der Waerdens result is a particular case of
Lukomskayas Theorem for t1 t2 tl 1.
In the second 1948 edition of his Three Pearls of Number Theory,
Khinchin chose to include Lukomskayas proof just for this particular Van
der Waerdens case. The success of this little booklet is hard to

overestimate. In 1951 this second Russian edition of the book was translated
into German [Khi3] and in 1952 into English [Khi4]. The English edition
became so popular that in 1956 the publisher issued the second printing.
These translations proved instrumental in creating excitement about
Ramseyan ideas all around the world. It even prompted the emergence of
two more independent proofs of Gallais theorem, i.e., generalizations of
Van der Waerdens result. The 1951 German translation inspired Ernst Witt,
a former Emmy Noether student, to discover his proof in 1951 ([Wit],
submitted on September 21, 1951, and published in 1952), while the 1952
English translation stimulated Adriano Garsia in finding his proof [Gar] in
1958. Khinchin writes [Khi2]:
It is not out of the question that Van der Waerdens theorem allows an
even simpler proof, and all efforts in this direction can only be
applauded.
Witt [Wit] quotes this Khinchins call to arms in his paper, and happily
reports:
This was the occasion to strive for a new order of proof that then led
directly to a more general grasp of the problem.
The great success of this booklet not only made the BaudetSchurVan
der Waerden Theorem famousit heralded to the mathematical world the
arrival of the new Ramseyan ideas.
As you recall, Van der Waerden did not originally think much of his 1927
theorem and published it in an obscure little read Dutch journal. Now
Khinchins book and its popularity prompted Bartel L. van der Waerden
to reassess the value of his old theorem. He reconstructs the whole process
of finding the proof in How the proof of a Baudets conjecture was found
by him with Emil Artin and Otto Schreier. Van der Waerden also speaks
about the process of discovery at his inaugural lecture at Zurich University.
He then publishes this fascinating story several times in two languages
[Wae13, Wae14, Wae16, Wae18]. I too love this story, and with Professor
Van der Waerdens and Academic Press Londons permissions, included the
complete story in The Mathematical Coloring Book [Soi9].
On November 10, 1953, Van der Waerden sends the proofs of the series
of three articles tracing the processes of mathematical discoveries to a
witness and coauthor of one discovery Emil Artin at Princeton University,
accompanied by the following letter:474
474
ETH: Hs 652:309.
Dear Herr Artin,

My three articles Einfall und Ueberlegung in der Mathematik
[Sudden Insight and Reflection] will be published in the Swiss
journal Elemente der Mathematik. The first one was my inaugural
speech [at Zurich University]; I am sending you its proof. The second
and third articles give two more examples, for which I give short
descriptions, in particular, the second one is measuring a ball by
Archimedes; the third is the Baudet Conjecture, for which the three
of us found a solution. From the proof that I published in Nieuw
Archief, no one can see how I came to it, and what role you and
Schreier had in finding the solution. For the psychology of mathemat-
ical thought this case is particularly promising because all of our
thoughts were immediately communicated to both of the others and
thereby were held better in memory, as usual.
I hope you will read it and tell me if everything is exactly in
agreement with your memory.
Heartfelt regards and to your wife as well,
Your
B.L. van der Waerden
Artin replies with an undated handwritten letter on the Princeton Univer-
sity stationary:475
Dear Herr van der Waerden,
You have a better memory than I. I could have never reconstructed
our conversation. Now that I have read your analysis, I remember it
again. I have the impression that it is by and large correct. But you
certainly know it best.
With many greetings,
Your
Artin
At this point in time, Van der Waerden has realized that in his young
years he proved a beautiful theorem that has now become a classic, a pearl
of number theory. By now he has also become a historian of mathematics.
So, of all people, he was in the best position to research and present the
history of mathematics of coloring, now known as Ramsey Theory. He has
not done that. In fact, as he writes to me, he did not even know about Issai
Schurs 1916 theorem, the first influential coloring result in history. And so
475
ETH: Hs 652:310.
the job of researching and presenting the history of mathematics of coloring

fell on me and materialized in 2009 after 18 years of work [Soi9].
On May 27, 2009, during the international workshop Ramsey Theory
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow that I organized on the request of Fred
Roberts and DIMACS,476 I got an additional confirmation of the influence of
Khinchins book. Leaders of Ramsey Theory Ronald L. Graham and Joel
H. Spencer told me that this Khinchin book introduced both of them, for the
first time, to the name of Van der Waerden, his theorem, and Ramseyan
ideas!
476
Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, a joint project of
several research institutions, including Princeton and Rutgers Universities. See [Soi13] for
the texts of the plenary talks of this workshop.
Chapter 38
Whose Conjecture Did Van der Waerden
Prove?
I am afraid you will never disclose the full truth of what happened
before Van der Waerden proved that theorem in 1926.
Now that the 1927 theorem has become classic, it merits an investigation
into the authorship of its conjecture. The complete results of my investiga-
tion comprise Chapter 34 of The Mathematical Coloring Book [Soi9]. Here I
will be more concise but will add a few new ideas and links between the
personages of this book. This Story of One Conjecture belongs in this book
also because its action takes place in Holland and Germany!
Bartel L. van der Waerden credited Baudet [sic], no initials or other
details, just Dutch origin, with conjecturing this result. Biographers of Van
der Waerden faithfully copied the attribution (e.g., see [Fre1, FTW, Per,
Bru3]). On the other hand, Ronald L. Graham, Bruce L. Rothschild and Joel
H. Spencer in their definitive monograph [GRS1, GRS2] cited Alfred Brauer
[Bra2, Bra3] in crediting Issai Schur. Consequently, many authors copied
credit from [GRS1, GRS2].
False attributions are never pleasant. But the authorship of this conjecture
is especially important because without it and its consequent proof by Van
der Waerden, we would not have had Ramsey Theory as we know it today. It
was a major achievement to envision such a result. But whose achievement
was it, Baudets or Schurs? And who was Baudet anyway? These ques-
tions were addressed for the first time in my investigative reports of
mid-1990s [Soi1, Soi2, Soi3].
477
E-mail to A. Soifer, dated June 21, 1995.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_38
380 38 Whose Conjecture Did Van der Waerden Prove?
Issai Schur was born on January 10, 1875 into a Jewish family in the
Russian city of Mogilev (presently Belarus). In his 1916 personnel form, on
the line Aryan (this question had already existed in Germany in 1916!) he
promptly put nicht for himself and nicht for his wife Regina. Schur gave
most of his life to the University of Berlin, as a student (18941901, Ph.D. in
Mathematics and Physics summa cum laude, November 27, 1901), Privat-
dozent (19031909), ausserordentlischer Professor (19091913 and again
19161919), and Ordinarius (1919September 30, 1935).478 He was the
pride and joy of the University and Germany, one of the worlds leading
algebraists, legendary lecturer attracting classes as large as 400500 stu-
dents. Yet no achievement was high enough for a Jew in Nazi Germany.
Hitlers assent to Reichskanzler changed this idyllic life. Schurs former
student Walter Ledermann (Berlin 1911London 2009), Professor at the
University of Sussex, UK, sent me his 1983 reprint [Led1], where he
described reasons for Schurs unfortunate decision to remain in Germany:
When the storm broke in 1933, Schur was 58 years of age and, like
many German Jews of his generation, he did not grasp the brutal
character of the Nazi leaders and their followers. It is an ironic twist
of fate that, until it was too late, many middle-aged Jews clung to the
belief that Germany was the land of Beethoven, Goethe and Gauss
rather than the country that was now being governed by Hitler, Himm-
ler and Goebbels. Thus Schur declined the cordial invitations to
continue his life and work in America or Britain. There was another
reason for his reluctance to emigrate: he had already once before
changed his language, and he could not see his way to undergoing
this transformation a second time.
So he endured six years of persecution and humiliation under the
Nazis.
478
Archive of Humboldt University at Berlin, documents UK-Sch 342, Bd. I, Bl. 4.
38 Whose Conjecture Did Van der Waerden Prove? 381
Photo 50 Issai Schur, Courtesy of his daughter, Hilde Abelin-Schur

As a faculty prior to World War I, Schur was allowed to continue his

work at the university after April 7, 1933, but not teaching. Following
2 years of pressure and humiliation, Schur, faced with imminent expulsion,
voluntarily asked for resignation on August 29, 1935. On September
28, 1935, Minister of Science, Education and National Culture Bernhard
Rust, replied on behalf of Der Fuhrer und Reichskanzler, i.e., Adolf Hitler
himself (see facsimile in this chapter):479
Fuhrer and Reichskanzler has relieved you from your official duties in
the Philosophical Facult
at of the University of Berlin effective at the
end of September 1935, in accordance with your August 29 of this year
request.
Schur was the last Jewish professor to lose his job at the University of
Berlin. On February 2, 1939, in the midst of the Gestapos personal
interest in him,480 depressed and sick, Schur had to leave, better said, run
away from Nazi Germany to Switzerland. Schur and his wife of 33 years,
Med. Dr. Regina Frumkin-Schur stayed in Bern for a few weeks with their
daughter Hilde Abelin-Schur and her family. They were not allowed to stay
permanently in so-called neutral Switzerland. Broken mentally, physically,
and financially, the Schurs moved on to Palestine. While in Palestine,
without means, Schur had to sell his only valuables, scientific books and
journals, to the Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, where his former
student and friend Alfred Brauer was Herman Weyls assistant, and was
charged with library acquisitions. This book transfer must have been painful
for both Schur and Brauer.
Issai Schur made major contributions to various areas of mathematics,
and first of all to algebra and number theory. Here our interest lies in the
result he obtained during 19131916 when he worked at the University of
Bonn as the successor to the celebrated topologist Felix Hausdorff, who
later, during the Nazi period ended his life in a suicide. There Schur wrote
his pioneering paper [Sch] containing, as he put it, a very simple lemma,
which belongs more to combinatorics than to number theory.
Schurs 1916 Theorem [Sch] Let m be a positive integer and N > m!e. If
integers 1, 2, . . ., N are colored in m colors, then there are integers a, b, and
c of the same color such that a + b c.
479
Archive of Humboldt University at Berlin, document UK-Sch 342, Bd.I, Bl.25.
480
[Bra2].
Photo 51 Letter relieving Issai Schur from his duties at the University of Berlin, Courtesy of
the Archive of Humboldt University at Berlin
Schurs Theorem gave birth to a novel way of thinking (while David

Hilberts 1892 lemma [Soi9] preceded Schur, likely nobody by 1916
remembered it), a new direction in mathematics, later named Ramsey
Theory. Leon Mirsky writes [Mir] on the occasion of the centenary of Issai
Schurs birth:
We have here a statement of the type: if a system is partitioned
arbitrarily into a finite number of subsystems, then at least one
subsystem possesses a certain specified property. To the best of my
knowledge, there is no earlier result which bears even a remote
resemblance to Schurs Theorem.
The new Ramseyan mathematics, discovered by Issai Schur, remained
dear to his heart for years to come. He thought about it himself, and passed
his interest on to his Berlin Ph.D. students Hildegard Ille, Alfred Brauer, and
Richard Rado.
In Chapter 7, we already met the next classic result of Ramsey Theory. It
was published by B. L. van der Waerden in 1927 under the title Beweis einer
Baudetschen Vermutung (Proof of a Baudets Conjecture) [Wae2]. The
credit to Baudet for the conjecture remained unchallenged and
unsubstantiated until 1960 when Alfred Brauer (18941985) made his
sensational revelations. An Assistent, a doctoral student (Ph.D. in 1928), a
colleague (Privatdozent at the University of Berlin), coauthor and a friend
through the torturous years of the Nazi rule, Alfred Brauer had unique
knowledge of Issai Schur and his work. Away from Germany for over
20 years, he returned to Berlin in 1960 to pay tribute to his late teacher.
Brauers moving talk about Schur given at the Humboldt University of
Berlin on November 8, 1960, appeared in print in 1973 as a foreword
[Bra3] to the Springer-Verlag three-volume set of Schurs collected
works. This talk offered a wealth of information about Schur. In particular,
it revealed that Issai Schur conjectured a helpful lemma:
Schurs Helpful Lemma Conjecture For any positive integer k there is
N N(k) such that the set of positive integers 1, 2, . . . , N colored in two
colors, contains a monochromatic arithmetic progression of k terms.
As you can see, Schur conjectured a particular two-color case of Van der
Waerdens result. In his talk, Alfred Brauer describes circumstances of
Schurs learning that his conjecture has been proven:
Many years passed, but neither Schur nor many other mathematicians,
who were familiar with this conjecture, were able to prove it. One day
in September of 1927 my brother [i.e., Richard Brauer, Ph.D. in 1925
under Schur] and I were visiting Schur, when [John] von Neumann
came unexpectedly. He was participating in the meeting of the
DMV481 and came to tell Schur that at the meeting Van der Waerden,
using a suggestion by Artin, gave a proof of the combinatorial conjec-
ture and was going to publish it under the title Beweis einer
Baudetschen Vermutung. Schur was very pleased with the news. . .
It would have made sense if Schur were to propose a change in the title
of Van der Waerdens publication or an addition of a footnote in order
to indicate that this was an old conjecture of Schur. However, Schur
was too modest for that.
Paul Erdos (March 26, 1913September 20, 1996), a man of an incredible
memory for events, told me that in everything concerned Schur, Alfred
Brauer was by far the most reliable source of information. Paul also pro-
vided me with an additional confirmation of Schurs authorship of the
conjecture. During our long conversation,482 that commenced at 7:30 P.M.
on Tuesday March 7, 1995 in Boca Raton, Florida, during the traditional
combinatorics conferences Jungle Party, Paul told me that he had heard
about Schurs authorship of this conjecture from Alfred Brauer. Indepen-
dently he had heard about it from Richard Brauer. Finally, Schurs author-
ship had been confirmed to Erdos by Erich Rothe, who obtained the
information from his wife and Schurs former student Hildegard Rothe
(born Hildegard Ille; Ph.D. 1924 under Schur). As I am writing these
lines, I am looking at a yellow lined sheet that Paul tore out of his legendary
notebook and next to his mathematical texts wrote for me Hildegard Ille,
so that I would remember her name when I get to write about it. Thank you,
Paul!
I believe you will agree that I have produced as rigorous a proof as the
historical endeavor allows that following his long interest in new Ramseyan
ideas, Issai Schur created the conjecture independently from anyone else.
I thought that in all likelihood someone, sometime must have mentioned
to Van der Waerden that he may have proved Schurs conjecture. Nobody,
apparently, did before me, as you can see from Van der Waerdens March
9, 1995, reply [Wae23] to my inquiry:483
Dear Professor Soifer: Thank you for informing me that Baudets
conjecture is in reality a conjecture of Schur. I did not know this.
481
The Annual September 1824, 1927 meeting of DMV took place in Bad Kissingen in
Bavaria.
482
Audio recorded by me.
483
See the facsimile of [Wae23] in this section.
Photo 52 Facsimile of B. L. van der Waerdens March 9, 1995 letter to Alexander Soifer
It took a long time for this letter to reach me (must be slow planes), and so
on April 4, 1995, Professor Van der Waerden sent me another letter
[Wae24],484 this time registered. In it, he repeated his previous text about
proving, in fact, Schurs conjecture, and hearing from me about it for the
first time. He added:
I give you my permission to reproduce my article How the proof of
Baudets Conjecture was found.
I was delighted to receive this permission, and reproduced his magnifi-
cent article in The Mathematical Coloring Book [Soi9].
484
See the facsimile of [Wae24] in this section.
Photo 53 Facsimile of B. L. van der Waerdens April 4, 1995 letter to Alexander Soifer
While Van der Waerdens acceptance of my arguments for Schurs credit

was important, it did not resolve the questions of whether Baudet had
created the conjecture and whether he had done so independently of
Schur. When in 1995 I presented the above argument for Issai Schurs credit
in an essay [Soi1] written on the occasion of his 120th birthday, I specifi-
cally included a historically significant disclaimer:
Nothing presented here excludes the possibility that Baudet created the
conjecture independently from Schur . . . Perhaps, in the future histo-
rians would shed light on the question whether Baudet was an inde-
pendent from Schur author of the second conjecture in the history of
Ramsey Theory. Until then the conjecture ought to be rightfully called
Schurs.
When my essay [Soi1] appeared, I learned from Nicolaas G. de Bruijn
about the existence of P. J. H. Baudets son, Henry Baudet, or as the latter
sometimes called himself Henry Baudet II, and sent him a copy of my paper.
I sowed an essay and harvested a fury! The young Henry Baudet (his full
name Ernest Henri Philippe Baudet born on January 29, 1919 in Scheve-
ningen; he was 76 at the time) replied in a style all his own:
I write to you in my own English, which is far from good but it might
be better than your own French or Dutch.
Henry was clearly upset with my putting in doubt his fathers credit. In
my August 30, 1995 letter, I admitted that indeed my French and Dutch are
far inferior to his fine English and offered Henry to write for
Geombinatorics, the quarterly I published, his essay challenging my proof
of Schurs authorship of the conjecture. I also offered Henry to join me in
the investigation of whether his father had created the conjecture indepen-
dently from Schur. Henry accepted the latter offer. In addition to being a
history professor, Henry was The Historian of the Delft Technical Univer-
sity, and the last Ph.D. student of the legendary Johan Huizinga of The
Waning of the Middle Ages fame. From letter to letter I was promoted from
Professor Soifer to Alexander, to Sasha. Our correspondence was
very intense: we exchanged some 30 letters in a years time. My family and I
then paid a 5-day visit to Henry and his wife Senta Govers Baudet in their
centuries-old stone house in the medieval village Corpoyer-la Chapelle
(population 26) in Bourgogne, France. Later that year we also visited
them in their Oegstgeest house in the outskirts of Delft.
I learned much about Henry and Senta helping Jews in Holland occupied
by Nazi Germany during the long 5 years 19401945. Henry recalls [Bau5]:
I myself, finally, started studying history at Leiden University but this
was interrupted when the Germans, during the war, closed the Uni-
versity. Somehow, nevertheless, I could remain in touch with my
professors, at least in the beginning. Of course the German occupation
made life extremely difficult, and this every year more and more.
Resistance was a new activity we had to learn; hiding Jews was a
daily concern and hiding ourselves was another. We lost many friends
but somehow or other I got through myself, though my wife, then my
girlfriend, then 17 years [old], got temporarily into jail for helping a
Jewish classmate to escapeshe (I mean: her Jewish girlfriend) lives
in Dallas now and we see each other and call each other by telephone.
In fact, Sentas name is inscribed in Yad Vashem in Israel, as she was
awarded the high title of a Righteous Among the Nations, granted to non-Jews
who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Senta helped her
Jewish friend Liny L. Yollick escape from Holland by lending her Sentas
identification card. The escape was successful, but Liny sent the card back
with a boy who was caught by the Germans. On June 27, 1942 Senta was
imprisoned by the Germans and spent a week in jail, interrogated daily and
nightly. Only her consistent denial of loaning the card to Liny had finally
convinced the jailers.485 This was but one episode of the young familys
participation in the resistance. In fact Henry and Senta risked their lives on
numerous occasions by helping Jews hide and escape. They themselves had to
hide from the Germans, who came to look for them on occasion.
With Henrys help, I was able to successfully investigate the question
whether his father earned the credit that Van der Waerden so nonchalantly
had given him. My dear friend Henry Baudet II was one of the most
charming people I have met in my life. He passed away on December
16, 1998. In 2003 Delft Technical University created the Henry Baudet
Institute dedicated to the history of design, one of his many interests.
We do not find Baudets initials in Van der Waerdens paper. Indeed, Van
der Waerden did not even know that at the time his publication came out in
1927, Baudet had been dead for 6 years. In reply to my questions, Van der
Waerden wrote (see facsimile of this letter in Photo 41) on April 24, 1995
[Wae26]:
1. I heard of Baudets Conjecture in 1926.
2. I never met Baudet.
4. I never met Schur.
5. I never heard about Schurs [1916] result.486
It appears that Alfred Brauer was the first to speak about Baudet on
November 8, 1960 [Bra3]487 ever since Baudets obituaries appeared in
1921 [Schu] and 1922 [Arr]. Since Brauer knew first hand that Schur created
the conjecture (and, I gather, assumed it to be unlikely that two people could
independently come up with such an unusual conjecture), he attempted to
prove that Baudet did not independently create the conjecture by showing
how the conjecture traveled from Schur to Baudet:
Baudet at that time was an unknown student at Gottingen, who has
later made no mathematical discoveries. On the other hand, at this time
Schurs friend Landau was a professor at Gottingen, who obviously
knew the conjecture, and used to offer unsolved conjectures as
485
I thank Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, for
providing me copies of the relevant documents.
486
In numbering his answers, Van der Waerden skipped number 3.:-).
487
See also a recent English translation [LN].
exercises to every mathematician he met. It was therefore highly

probable that Baudet learned the conjecture directly or indirectly
[from Landau].
Photo 54 Issai Schur (left) and Edmund Landau, Courtesy of Schurs daughter, Hilde
Abelin-Schur
Brauer repeated his assertions in English in print in 1969 [Bra2]:

It seems that the title of Van der Waerdens paper Beweis einer
Baudetschen Vermutung [Wae2] is not justified. Certainly Van der
Waerden heard about the conjecture from Baudet, a student at
Gottingen.
When Alfred Brauer spoke about Baudet (I wish he didnt!), he entered
the area not personally known to him. Consequently, Brauer presented his
hypotheses as if they were truths. In fact, I found Brauers hypotheses to be
dramatically false: Baudet at that time was not an unknown student at
Gottingen, but instead a brilliant young Ph.D. from Groningen. Brauers
suggestion that Baudet later made no mathematical discoveries was as
gratuitous as it was incorrect: in addition to publishing his doctoral thesis
[Bau1] and the inaugural speech [Bau2], Baudet wrote three papers [Bau3,
Bau4, Bau5] that appeared in Christiaan Huygensnot bad for someone
who left this world untimely at the age of 30. At 28 Baudet was a full
professor at Delft Technical Universitycan this be said of many 28-year
old mathematicians?
It is time to set the record straight, and convey how great a man the world
lost in P. J. H. Baudet. The following account of Baudets life was possible
due to the assistance of Henry Baudet II, the son of the mathematician Pierre
Joseph Henry Baudet. Unless otherwise credited, the following information,
slightly edited, comes from Henry Baudet IIs letters to me [BII1, BII2,
BII3, BII4, BII5, BII6, BII7, BII8, BII9, BII10, BII11, BII12, BII13] and my
interviews with him.
My father was born on January 22, 1891 in Baarn (province of Utrecht,
the Netherlands) . . . He was a dedicated chess player and cellist.
(In this, he followed the family tradition: we all are musicians and
chess players, though not on his level). In 1908 my father enrolled as a
student of mathematics at Leiden University, where he studied under
Albert Kluyver.
How my father and Schuh488 met, I dont know; probably in the
Society of Mathematicians. They were, however, close friends since
1914 or 1915 . . . With Schuh as supervisor, my father began to work
on his thesis, but he could not take his doctors degree with him as
Delft had no doctorate in mathematics. And [Johan A.] Barrau
[a professor of mathematics at Groningen University] ultimately took
over Schuhs job.
In Memoriam Prof. P. J. H. Baudet [Arr] by Dr. E. Arrias appeared on
January 28, 1922. The author, who had known Baudet for 15 years, reported
astonishing talents of Pierre Joseph Henry:
[At 15, Baudet was] known for virtually never losing a game [in chess]
and playing several simultaneous games blindfold . . . But all these
achievements were outshone by the miraculous things he has done
with the Laskagame, invented by Dr. E. Lasker.489 Before Lasker had
his new game published, he submitted it to Baudet for evaluation. With
his characteristic tempestuous application Baudet mastered this game;
it was as if he finally had found something that he could fully satisfy
his wits with. This exceptionally intricate game with its discs in four
488
Frederick Schuh, 18751966, Ph.D. under Diederik Korteweg, as was L. E. J. Brouwer
after him, a very versatile mathematician, with numerous publications in analysis, geometry,
number theory, statistics, recreational mathematics, teaching of mathematics, etc.
489
Emanuel Lasker (18681941), a mathematician, Ph.D. 1900 under Max Noether, the
father of Emmy Noether, and a legendary World Chess Champion for 27 years, 18941921.
different colors, its capricious, almost incalculable combinations,

suited his mathematical brain exactly. It is, therefore, not surprising
that having studied the game for half a year, he could scarcely be
beaten by Lasker himself. . .490
As proficient as he was at board games, as high was his reputation as
a musician . . . Being an extraordinarily sensitive cellist, he completely
mastered the technique of this instrument. Many were the times that he
contributed to the success of concerts by his impassioned playing. And
all this without score; a feat only very few people are so privileged.
With him it was not a matter of learning notes, but he absorbed the
complete picture of the composition, and even when he had not seen
the composition for ten years, he was able to conjure it up clearly and
to play it from memory, when only hearing the piano part . . . He was
excellent at reading scores and he conducted already during his gram-
mar school period . . .
It was pure scientific curiosity that had made him master this as well
as everything he did: . . . learning Hebrew and the four Slavic lan-
guages simultaneously was no trouble at all, since he was learning
anywayand in fact this was far more interestingthan comparative
linguistics. . .
490
As I learned from N. G. de Bruijn [Bru4], In his Brettspiele der Volker (Berlin 1931)
Lasker describes a game of Laska he lost to Baudet at a tournament in The Hague 1920.
(Laska was Laskers own invention, which he tried to promote at a time he thought that
eventually all serious chess games would lead to a draw.)
Photo 55 Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet (18911921). Courtesy of Henry Baudet II
On the birthday of Jesus this highly gifted man with his magnificent
Christ like features parted from this earthly life, at the same age, as his
greatest master. But in our thoughts he will rise again and stay alive for
us as long as we keep breathing!
Baudet defended his doctoral thesis cum laude in 1918 at Groningen

University, and became Professor in Pure and Applied Mathematics and
Mechanics at Delft Technical University in 1919. Pneumonia brought his
life to an untimely end on the Christmas Day of 1921.
Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet was an extraordinary man indeed. But did he
create the conjecture? The credit given Baudet by Van der Waerden [Wae2]
is insufficient, since he never met Baudet and heard of Baudets Con-
jecture in 1926 [Wae26]. However, by back-tracking the link from Van der
Waerden to Baudet, we reach firmer grounds.
The search, in fact, was started by Henry Baudet II. Born on January
29, 1919, Henry lost his father at the age of two, and always wanted to find
out more about him. In 19621963, professor of tax law and an amateur
mathematician Tj. S. Visser gave a talk Attack on Sequences of Natural
Numbers attended by Henry Baudet and his 1516 year old son Remy.
Surprisingly, the four-page brochure (in Dutch) of this talk survives, and
was shared with me by Henry. Thus we are granted an attendance to Vissers
lucid and informed talk:
My story is about the most beautiful statement of number theory,
The Theorem of Baudet. The pearl of Baudet. . .
Baudet is the early departed in the beginning of this century Delfts
Professor of mathematics. . .
His pearl of the theory of numbers is this: If one divides the natural
numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . ad infinitum into a random number of boxes,
then there is nevertheless always at least one box which contains an
arithmetic progression of arbitrary length . . .
This proposition was formulated by Prof. Dr. P. J. H. Baudet in
1921. He died shortly after, leaving a wife [and a daughter] and a baby.
Many celebrities tried to find a proof of this theorem. The young, also
Dutch mathematician, succeeded. His name was B. L. van der
Waerden. He published his proof in 1927 in Het Nieuw Archief
under the title Beweis einer Baudetschen Vermutung.
. . . Bartel van der Waerden is a son of the engineer-teacher Theo,
doctor in technical sciences, a very prominent person elected to Par-
liament from the SDAP, known as rooie Theo [Red Theo]. The young
Bartel became professor at Groningen, was later oil-mathematician, is
now at Zurich director of the mathematical institute, and is world
renowned.
After 1927, the statement and its proof fell asleep.
Tj. Visser then conveys how
the Russian mathematician Alexander Yakovlevich Khinchin brought

the theorem back to life by publishing it, with a slightly different proof
found by his491 student M. A. Lukomskaya, as one of the pearls in his
book Three Pearls of Number Theory, which appeared in Russian,
German and English.
As an amateur mathematician, Henry was fascinated by the conjecture.
Could I write to him [to Van der Waerden]? he asks the family friend and
his fathers mentor Frederick Schuh. Of course, Schuh replies. Henry
recalls:
In the context and the fact that I proposed to Schuh to give me the
address of Van der Waerden, it was clear that Schuh considered it [the
conjecture] to be an important affair. He agreed that I should write.
I asked Henry (we had long interviews in his medieval Bourgogne stone
house): Did it appear indirectly that Schuh was in total agreement that it
was Baudets conjecture that Van der Waerden proved? Absolutely,
absolutely yes, absolutely, replied Henry. And so, on September 1, 1965
Henry Baudet II writes to Van der Waerden in a style already known to you
from Henrys first letter to me:
I am the son of my father. It is always the case, but you understand
what meaning this introduction has in this case. Somehow from afar I
was following your publications, and thus I was able to get into my
hands your work in the Abhandlungen aus dem Mathematischen Sem-
inar Hamburg [Wae16]. . .
In this letter to you, a fairly remarkable fact is taking place. It is a
fact that I cannot say anything special, but nevertheless I wanted very
much to establish a contact with you. Of course, I would like to ask you
whether you have a reprint of your publication of 1926,492 in which
you present a well-known proof; possibly also other publications, if
such exist related to my father, especially to the abovementioned work
in Hamburgsche Abhandlungen.
Last year in Zurich I tried to find your name in the telephone book.
Unfortunately I was unable to find there your name. I also tried to
contact you at the University of Zurich, but also without result. . .
491
A rare mistake in a fine Vissers lecture; Lukomskaya was not a student of Khinchin. But
then in this book we have learned for the first time details about Lukomskaya.
492
Actually 1927.
I would appreciate it very much if I could hear something from you

and possibly you could send me one or several copies of your works of
those where you have written about my father.
On October 20, 1965 Van der Waerden replies:
It was very nice to receive a letter from you. I have not known your
father and have never written anything about him. I heard about his
conjecture which he had posed at Het Wiskundig Genootschap (Math-
ematical Society) in Amsterdam.
I am sending you a reprint (overdrukje) of my work from Ham-
burger Abh. and on loan a photocopy of my work in Het Archief from
1926 (see footnote 501). I will further ask the publisher Birkhauser to
send you a copy of my psychological research Einfall und

Uberlegung in which the history of the solution of this problem is
also discussed.
Thus, according to Van der Waerden, P. J. H. Baudet posed his conjecture
at the Mathematical Society in Amsterdam, where later Van der Waerden
learned about it. Van der Waerden attached to his letter copies of his original
proof [Wae2] and his just published reminiscences [Wae16]. Henry Baudet
II discussed this correspondence with Frederick Schuh, a major figure in the
Amsterdam mathematical circles in the 1920s. This is why the following
Henry Baudet May 27, 1996, reply to my inquiry is the crux of the matter
[BII12]:
When I told Schuh about my correspondence with Van der Waerden,
he would have definitely told me that the conjecture was not my
fathers, if it had been not his.
Schuh did not correct Henry Baudet, because for him P. J. H. Baudets
authorship of the conjecture was a long known fact.
After Henry Baudet the son, the next person who showed active interest
in the authorship of the conjecture was Nicolaas G. de Bruijn. Wiskundig
Genootschap (Mathematical Society) decided to publish a 2-vol. edition
entitled Two Decades of Mathematics in the Netherlands: 19201940. A
retrospection on the occasion of the bicentennial of the Wiskundig
Genootschap. The books were to reproduce short works of the leading
mathematicians of the period, such as Van der Corput, Van der Waerden,
Van Danzig, each followed by a commentary. Van der Waerden was to be
represented by Beweis einer Baudetschen Vermutung [Wae2], with a com-
mentary by de Bruijn. Accordingly, in his March 29, 1977 letter [Bru2] de
Bruijn poses to Van der Waerden several questions about the history of the
conjecture. The latter replies on April 5, 1977 [Wae19]. I thank N. G. de
Bruijn for sharing with me a facsimile of this important Van der Waerden
letter:
I will happily answer your questions.
1. I am quite sure that I heard about the conjecture for the first time in
1926, around the time I got my Ph.D. in Amsterdam. I probably
picked it up at one of the monthly meetings of the Wiskundig
Genootschap, where Schuh appeared regularly. I do not know if it
was Schuh himself or someone else who made me aware of this.
2. Yes, the entire affair [of finding the proof] happened on a single
afternoon. Only the cases k 2, k 3 I had already figured out
before.
3. I think I only later heard of I. Schurs [1916] proposition.
4. No, I do not know anything about Baudet. I have a vague memory
that he was a friend or pupil of Schuh.
5. My biography: I have studied mathematics, physics, astronomy and
chemistry. Mathematics mostly with Mannoury, Hendrik de Vries
and Brouwer. Astronomy with the excellent Pannekoek. In 1972 I
retired in Zurich. Not emeritus because that does not exist in
Switzerland.
Included is the Bibliography with a few corrections. Furthermore, I
have nothing to add to your piece. Your praise A thing of beauty is a
joy forever, pleases me.
Have you recognized the source of de Bruijns compliment that he and
Van der Waerden quoted in English in their otherwise Dutch letters? A
thing of beauty is a joy forever comes from Endymion, a poem by the
celebrated British poet John Keats (17951821).
From this letter we learn that Van der Waerden got the conjecture directly
or indirectly from Frederick Schuh, Baudets mentor and close friend, and
the authorship of Baudet came to Van der Waerden with the conjecture. Van
der Waerden even had a vague but correct memory that Baudet was
Schuhs friend and/or pupil. Thus, we have traced the way the conjecture
traveled from Baudet to Van der Waerden via Schuh and his seminar.
However, at this stage of my investigation one question remained open:
Did Baudet independently create the conjecture or received it somehow
indirectly from Schur (try not to mix up here Schur and Schuh)? This is the
question I was unable to resolve until December 18, 1995, when Henry
Baudet II, the son and historian, came up with what he humorously named
A Second Conjecture of Baudet [BII4]:
It seems reasonable to suppose that neither Professor F. Schuh nor my

father were informed of Schurs work. Though Germany was next
door, the World War broke nearly all contacts, which were only
slowly restored in the course of the 20s.
Indeed, the first major mathematical event after World War I was le
Congre`s International des Mathematiciens that took place during
September 2230, 1920, in Strasbourg, France. The whole world was
represented there, with the notable exception of the German mathemati-
cians, even though Strasbourg was located right by the French border with
Germany. The wounds of World War I were still very painful. On the French
initiative, the Germans were banned from the 1920 and the consequent 1924
International Congresses of Mathematicians. It was not until the congress of
1928 that they were allowed to rejoin the world of mathematics.
Both J. A. Barrau and P. J. H. Baudet were in attendance at the 1920
Strasbourg Congress. Baudet mailed to his wife daily accounts of his
meetings at the Congress, and these letters have survived the long years
and another war that followed. The letters report the meetings with a most
impressive group of mathematicians: Denjoy, Frechet, Valiron, Ch^atelet,
Dickson, Eisenhart, Le Roux, Typpa, Lebesgue, Larmon, Young, de la
Vallee-Poussin, Deruyts, Jordan, Montel, Volterra [BII3]. The letters also
capture impressions and emotions of days long gone by [BII5]:
I am in nearly permanent contact with the Americans here. They are
after all the nicest people here. And this is not only my opinion but also
Barraus. The nicest of all is Eisenhart. [Letter of September 29, 1920]
Barrau told Dickson about the critical review he [Barrau] had
written and has modified after my severe critical comments. The
consequence of the discussion was that Dickson asked me to write to
him about the matter, as Barrau and I had here no copy of our
controversial texts. [Letter of September 23, 1920]
Thus, Baudet and Barrau met Princetons Dean and Mathematics Chair
Luther Pfahler Eisenhart. We have already met Eisenhart in Chapter 13,
when he invited Van der Waerden to a visiting professorship at Princeton.
As we see, Baudet and Barrau also met and had discussions with the famous
American number theorist Leonard Dickson. The meeting with Dickson
attracted my attention in particular, because Dicksons result inspired Issai
Schur to come up with Schurs 1916 Theorem. However, this route only
confirmed Baudet IIs conjecture. Right before the Congress, in April of
1920, Dickson had completed Volume 2 of his monumental 3-volume
History of the Theory of Numbers [Dic2]. He did cite there (p. 774) Schurs
1916 paper [Sch]: * I. Schur gave a simpler proof of Dicksons theorem.
But in the Preface Dickson explained that the symbol * before the authors
names signified that the papers were not available for review, i.e., even
Leonard Dickson, the most informed number theorist of his time, had not
seen Schurs 1916 paper before the Congress.
Geographically speaking, Baudet and Schur had one chance to meet in
August of 1921, when Henry and Ernestine Baudet with their daughter Puck
visited their legendary friend Emanuel Lasker and had a short stay in his
Berlin house. Puck still has clear recollection of their stay at the Laskers,
particularly when their rowing boat on Lake Wannsee493 was wrecked,494
because neither Lasker nor Baudet could swim and had to be rescued. We
are fortunate to have a photograph from this visit. Puck, however, does not
remember visiting the university.
The family correspondence has survived, and it does not indicate that any
new acquaintances were made during this trip, which took place just a few
months before the untimely passing of P. J. H. Baudet. Thus, it is highly
plausible to conclude that Baudet and Schur never met and that P. J.
H. Baudet discovered the conjecture independently of Issai Schur.
493
The reader would recognize the name of this lake. LaskerBaudet humorous episode
happened at the place where on January 20, 1942 15 high-ranking civil servants and SS-
officers decided on The Final Solution of the Jewish question in Europe. They agreed to
deport European Jews to the East and murder them all.
494
[BII7].
Photo 56 Seated: Ernestine, Puck and P. J. H. Baudet; standing ( from the left): Emanuel
Lasker and a Gymnasium Rektor, Laskers house, August 1921, Berlin, Courtesy of Henry
Baudet II
The evidence presented in this chapter shows that two brilliant men, Issai
Schur and Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet, independently created an early
conjecture of Ramsey Theory when the theory did not yet have its name.
Schur and his former doctoral students were major contributors to the new
theory, which could have been named Schur Theory.
On the other hand, if P. J. H. Baudet did not pose the conjecture, Van der
Waerden would have had nothing to prove. And if Van der Waerden did not
take on the conjecture or did not prove it, we would not have gotten Ramsey
Theory at the time and in the form it was born. To conjecture such a
pioneering result was surely as great a contribution as its proof by B. L.
van der Waerden; it is therefore fitting to name the monochromatic arith-
metic progressions theorem after all three brilliant contributors, which is
what I first did in the 1990s [Soi3]: The BaudetSchurVan der Waerden
Theorem.
As Pablo Picasso put it, It takes a long time to become young. And so it
took a long time for the ideas of Schurs Theorem and BaudetSchurVan
der Waerdens Theorem to eventually give birth to the young Ramsey
Theory. You can read a detailed 640-page account of that birth in [Soi9] and
the related latest historical discoveries in [Soi13].
I ought to point out amazing ways in which the lives of the players of this
story are interwoven. Mentor and friend of Baudet, Frederik Schuh was
instrumental in Van der Waerden getting to know the BaudetSchur con-
jecture. Baudets Ph.D. thesis Promotor (supervisor) was the very same
Johan Antony Barrau, who in 1928, while moving to Utrecht, offered Van
der Waerden his chair at Groningen, and again in 1942 offered Van der
Waerden his chair at Utrecht. It is a small worldor perhaps, Holland is a
small country!
The brutal war separated the authors of the BaudetSchurVan der
Waerden Theorem and their families. Baudets son Henry Baudet II and
his girlfriend Senta worked in the Dutch underground saving Jewish lives. A
Dutch citizen, Van der Waerden served as a Professor in German Leipzig
during the Nazi era. As a Jew, Issai Schur was thrown out of the University
of Berlin, and following years of humiliation escaped to Palestine; his tired
heart soon gave up.
Chapter 39
Zuruck nach Zurich
I do not suggest by the title of this chapter that Van der Waerden had
previously lived in Switzerland. You and I are returning to Zurich, where
we have already witnessed the 1946 and 1950 job searches that resulted in
calls to Nevanlinna and Van der Waerden respectively. Van der Waerden
aspired to be part of the German culture, live in a land of German language,
and his desire was granted. He arrived in Zurich with his wife Camilla and
children Ilse and Hansthe elder daughter Helga had long been married and
lived in Germany with her husband, the well-known Mathematics Professor
Walter Habicht, who obtained his doctorate in 1946 under Heinz Hopf.
In search for information, I approach Van der Waerdens close personal
and professional friend of his 45 Zurich years, the well-known ETH topol-
ogist Professor Beno Eckmann, who on December 7, 2004 generously
shares information with us [Eck0]:
Yes, I knew vdW [Van der Waerden] very well, until his death. But I
met him only after he came to Zurich. I and my wife saw him and his
wife at various occasions, mathematical and private. From 1956 on
vdW and I were managing editors of the Grundlehren Series [Yellow
Series] of Springer-Verlag. In that activity we had many contacts and
mathematical discussions, but more and more he let me do the job. His
interests moved later from Algebraic Geometry to Probability and then
to History.
In reply to my request for more details on Van der Waerdens research
interests during his long years in Zurich, Eckmann recollects on December
23, 2004 [Eck1]:

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_39
404 39 Zuruck nach Zurich
Van der Waerden was probably always interested in history

(of science). But his activity was in mathematical research, algebra,
algebraic geometry, group theory, etc. This remained so after he came
to Zurich, at least until the sixties. In Zurich he wrote papers on
algebraic geometry and related fields, had students, and gave colloquia
and other lectures. Soon also his interest in probability began. He
wrote a book on algebraic topology which was not publishedhe
decided to withdraw it because his friends told him that he clearly
had not realized that this field had developed rapidly and changed
completely.
During the May 4, 1993 interview [Dol1], Dold-Samplonius asked Van
der Waerden:
You worked in the theory of groups, in algebra, and, together with
Heisenberg and Hund in mechanics [sic],495 in number theory, which
one can consider part of algebra, and in the history of mathematics.
These are quite different areas. Which of these fields gave you the
most pleasure?
The question prompted the following discussion between the spouses:
Bartel van der Waerden: Actually, algebraic geometry.
Camilla van der Waerden: But now, as far as I know, it is the history
of mathematics.
Bartel van der Waerden: Yes, and the history of astronomy.
Camilla van der Waerden: This pleased him the most, to tell the
truth, for many years.
Dold: Has your wife always been interested in the history of mathe-
matics? This is really easier to understand than mathematics.
Camilla van der Waerden: I have always preferred that he were more
involved in mathematics. He didnt do it. I have always said he spends
too much time on history and truly too little on mathematics.
Camilla van der Waerden is correct: mathematically the Third Reich
years were more productive for Van der Waerden. She is unhappy with
Bartels switch to history, and declares it to the interviewer, and thus to the
whole world. Actually the switch commenced before the move to
Switzerland: the book Ontwakende wetenschap appeared in 1950, with its
English translation as Science Awakening in 1954. The MIT historian of
mathematics Dirk Struik pays high compliments to this book:
495
Heisenberg, Hund and Van der Waerden did not work in mechanics; the interviewer
must have meant quantum mechanics.
39 Zuruck nach Zurich 405
This is the first book which bases a full discussion of Greek mathe-
matics on a solid discussion of pre-Greek mathematics. Carefully
using the best sources available at present, the author acquaints the
reader not only with the work of Neugebauer and Heath, but also with
that of the philological critics who centered around the Quellen und
Studien . . . This book contains a wealth of material, critically
arranged, and reads exceedingly well. It has an original approach and
contains much novel material.
Van der Waerden continues with an impressive in breadth and fine detail
series of historical books, Science Awakening II: The Birth of Astronomy,
1974; Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations, 1983, [Wae22]; and A
History of Algebra, 1985, [Wae23]. In the preface to Geometry and Algebra
in Ancient Civilizations, Van der Waerden explains:
Originally, my intention was to write a History of Algebra, in two or
three volumes. In preparing the first volume I saw that in ancient
civilizations geometry and algebra cannot well be separated: more
and more sections on ancient geometry were added. Hence the new
title of the book: Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations. A
subsequent volume on the history of modern algebra is in preparation. It
will deal mainly with field theory, Galois theory and theory of groups.
In the introduction to Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations,
Van der Waerden lists three recent discoveries [that] have changed the
picture [of the history of ancient mathematics] entirely. They all deal with
the discovery of the Theorem of Pythagoras a millennium before Pythag-
oras birth, and one of the discoverieslet me cautiously call it hypothe-
sisabout the existence of a common pre-Babylonian source was made
by Van der Waerden himself:
I have compared the ancient Chinese collection Nine Chapters of the
Arithmetical Art with Babylonian collections of mathematical
problems and found so many similarities that the conclusion of a
common pre-Babylonian source seemed unavoidable. In this course,
the Theorem of Pythagoras must have played a central role as well.
Van der Waerdens main conclusion is that mathematics originated in
Neolithic Europe (p. 88):
We need not adopt Aristotles opinion that the mathematical sciences
originated in Egypt. It seems much more probable that they originated
in Neolithic Europe, and they were subsequently transmitted to China,
India, Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece.
This Van der Waerdens bold conjecture would have been an earth
shaking contribution to the history of mathematicsif it were true, or at
least much more probable. But how can it be proven? Van der Waerden
finds commonalities in mathematics of China, India, Babylonia, Egypt, and
Greeceand from these commonalities concludes that there had to be a
common mathematical ancestor, in Neolithic Europe. However, dont we
know of independent discoveries, which have accompanied the evolution of
mathematics from antiquity to the present? We have seen one even in this
book, when the classic theorem Van der Waerden proved in 1926 was
independently conjectured by Issai Schur in Germany and Pierre Joseph
Henry Baudet in Holland.
His 1980 observations [Wae31, pp. 4445], Van der Waerden himself
calls hypothetical. He eliminates, on linguistic grounds all the well-
established ancient civilizations as birth places of mathematics, and then
conjectures a Northern-European Neolithic birth of mathematics:
We have seen that a Sumerian or Babylonian origin of this tradition is
improbable. For similar reasons, we may exclude an Egyptian origin,
for the Egyptians had no names for mixed fractions m/n with m>1,
except for a few natural fractions like 2/3 and 3/4. . .
A Chinese origin of this mathematical theory is equally
improbable. . .
The Indo-European languages are eminently suitable for teaching
mathematics. Therefore, we may venture the hypothesis that mathe-
matics was first invented and taught by people who spoke an
Indo-European language.
Wilbur Richard Knorr, Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and
Classics and a member of the Program in History of Science, Stanford
University, disagrees in his 1985 very detailed 16-page long review [Kno]
of Van der Waedrens monograph Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civi-
lizations [Wae22]. Knorr opens his review as follows:
B. L. van der Waerden is a respected algebraist and historian of
mathematics. His Moderne Algebra has been a mainstay in the teach-
ing of abstract algebra for over five decades, while his Science Awak-
ening (Engl. Ed. 1954, 1963) continues to stimulate students of ancient
mathematics. In recent years Van der Waerdens research has moved in
a very speculative direction, following leads opened up in a long series
of articles by A. Seidenberg on the ritual origins of ancient mathemat-
ics and science. The book under review synthesizes and extends
several of Van der Waerdens own articles, in which he has argued a
pre-Babylonian ancestor for all the ancient traditions of geometry and
arithmetic. He now proposes that the primary tradition arose within the
neolithic culture of Indo-European peoples who migrated into Central
and Northern Europe in the 4th and 3rd millennia B.C.
The thesis, if true, would represent a finding of unparalleled signif-
icance for historians of early science. One is thus obliged to scrutinize
its claims with particular care; for the eminence of its propounder will
inevitably accord it widespread attention among both specialists and
general readers of mathematical history.
Let me refer you to the complete text [Kno] of this noteworthy review and
quote here Knorrs important conclusions:
It seems to me that the sensational impact of finding such complex
geometric patterns in these ruins has obscured for analysts like Van der
Waerden and the Thoms the phenomenal difficulties implicit in their
views [. . .]
By accepting these claims of the archaeogeometers and incorporat-
ing them into his thesis of mathematical origins, Van der Waerden has,
in effect, produced a reductio ad absurdum of their claims. For he has
displayed more fully what they seem only dimly to have perceived,
that the appearance of configurations like Pythagorean numerical tri-
angles must point to the presence of a highly elaborated system of
number theory and geometry. Neolithic life can hardly have posed the
demands or furnished the resources for developing such sophisticated
mathematical theory. In view of this, one ought to return to the data in
search of simpler ways to describe the plans of the megaliths, rather
than persist in the discredited hypothesis.
The frame of mind in which scholars like Van der Waerden and the
Thoms can even countenance such theses of neolithic expertise, let alone
presume to argue them on the basis of the available evidence, is utterly
alien to my own intuitions as a historian of ancient mathematics. In his
able popularization of the findings of archaeoastronomy, J. E. Wood
nicely expresses an attitude appropriate for a critical scholar in the field:
The way to look at megalithic monuments is to ask the question
What is the minimum amount of technical knowledge needed to
do this job? and then maintain a clear separation between fact
and speculation.
But in the account of megalithic mathematics that follows, he
immediately launches into the description of well-constructed ellip-
ses and deliberately modified circles as if these were a matter of
simple fact. The professional mathematicians, scientists and engineers
who dominate this field of scholarship, by their ready acceptance of
such notions and by their reluctance to seek simpler alternatives, more

in line with the technical and social level of the neolithic tribes, strike
me as having abandoned the basic canons of scientific method and
rational inquiry. I fear that the lure of notoriety for sensational dis-
coveries, with the resulting rewards of public attention, may have
clouded their professional judgment. I fear even more the regrettable
impact on credulous nonspecialists, who may not know to distinguish
between the general enterprise of scientific research and the reckless
notions of some scientists.
Van der Waerdens research on the history of mathematics and astron-
omy in ancient civilizations has been limited to his fine talent of analyzing
translations done by others, for unlike, for example, Otto Neugebauer, Van
der Waerden did not know ancient languages. In 1996, the Delft University
Professor Herman Johan Arie Duparc brought it to my attention [Dup]:
Once (1950/1951) I asked vdW (who did not attend a gymnasium . . .
but another secondary school without Latin and Greek) whether he
thought his work on [the] history of mathematics missed this knowl-
edge. He answered I use the translations; they are good and suffi-
ciently help for my purpose.
Van der Waerdens A History of Algebra was favorably reviewed by the
British historian of mathematics Jeremy Gray:
It is almost unfailingly clear. The arguments presented are summarized
with a deftness that isolates and illuminates the main points, and as a
result they are frequently exciting. Since nearly 200 pages of it are
given over to modern developments which are only now receiving the
attention of historians, this book should earn itself a place as an
invaluable guide. Its second virtue is the zeal with which the author
has attended to the current literature. Almost every section gives
readers an indication of where they can go for a further discussion.
As a result, many pieces of information are here presented in book
form that might otherwise have languished in the scholarly journals.
Since one must be cynical of the mathematicians awareness of those
journals, the breadth and generosity of van der Waerdens scholarship
will do everyone a favour.
Yes, this is all true, I agree with the reviewer, unfailingly clear.
However, for the most part, the book appears to me rather dry, almost
without any of Van der Waerdens own experiences and views, except for
a few places where fond emotions briefly enter his prose, e.g., when he
writes about his beloved mentor (p. 211):
In 1924, when I came to Gottingen as a student, I had the pleasure to

attend a course of Emmy Noether on Hypercomplex Numbers.
As Van der Waerden explains in the 1993 interview [Dol1], the history of
mathematics has not been a topic he just turned to late in his life:
When I was a student, Hendrik de Vries gave a course on the history of
mathematics. After that I read Euclid and some of Archimedes. Thus,
my interest began very early. At Gottingenthe first time I was
thereI attended the lectures of Neugebauer, who gave a course on
Greek mathematics.
Indeed, Van der Waerdens paper Die Arithmetik der Pythagoreer
appeared rather early in 1947 followed by Die Astronomie der Pythagoreer
in 1951.
Throughout his 20 years at Zurich Van der Waerden was an incredibly
successful doctoral advisor. He supervised Ph.D. theses of a few dozen (!)
students, including those of the now well-known Gunther Frei (1968) and
Erwin Neuenschwander (1972). Van der Waerdens graduate students came
from both Zurich University and ETH, and from such diverse and numerous
fields as number theory, abstract algebra, topological groups, operations
research and mathematical programming, statistics, numerical analysis, and
history of algebra and geometry in antiquity.
During the long Zurich years, Van der Waerden continued to edit the
Courant conceived Yellow Series, now with his good ETH friend Beno
Eckmann [Dol1]:
Together with Eckmann we published the Yellow Series, the series
started by Courant. These are books with yellow covers; my algebra
was published there. Eckmann and I edited the series for quite a while,
until I left it completely to him.
In 1973 van der Waerden retired from his chair at Zurich at the mandatory
retirement age of 70, as the Emeritus title did not exist in Switzerland. He
continued to undertake research, primarily in the history of mathematics
publishing around 60 papers after the retirement. The papers which have
appeared in the years 19861988 include: Francesco Severi and the foun-
dations of algebraic geometry (1986), On Greek and Hindu trigonometry
(1987), The heliocentric system in Greek, Persian and Hindu astronomy
(1987), The astronomical system of the Persian tables (1988), On the
Romaka-Siddhanta (1988), Reconstruction of a Greek table of chords
(1988), and The motion of Venus in Greek, Egyptian and Indian texts
(1988). Although several of Van der Waerdens publications appeared
after 1988, they were taken from lectures he had given earlier.
Germany did not forget Van der Waerdens loyalty. In 1951 he was made
a corresponding member in the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. On June
12, 1985, Leipzig University awarded Professor Van der Waerden its
honorary doctoral degree. It appears that he did not quite reciprocate
feelings of East Germany, where Leipzig belonged at the time; his son,
Hans Van der Waerden recalls [WaH1]:
I further remembersometime about 1980he declined an invitation
to Leipzig University, saying: I have lived long enough under dicta-
torship, I need not see any more of it.
In 1989 Van der Waerden became an honorary member of the
Mathematische Gesellschaft of Hamburg. On 12 January 1996, he was
elected to an honorary membership of the Saxon Academy of Sciences. In
1962 he also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens.
The history of mathematics was not the only area that occupied Van der
Waerden in Zurich. In 1974, Van der Waerden published in Springer an
English edition [Wae29] of his 1932 book Die gruppentheoretische
Methode in der Quantenmechanik [Wae4]. He explains:
The German edition of this book appeared in 1932 . . . Its aim was to
explain the fundamental notions of the Theory of Groups and their
Representations, and the application of this theory to the Quantum
Mechanics of Atoms and Molecules. The book was mainly written for
the benefit of physicists who were supposed to be familiar with
Quantum Mechanics. However, it turned out that it was also used by
mathematicians who wanted to learn Quantum Mechanics from
it. Naturally, the physical parts were too difficult for mathematicians,
whereas the mathematical parts were sometimes too difficult for
physicists. . .
In order to make the book more readable for physicists and math-
ematicians alike, I have rewritten the whole volume.
While in Zurich, Van der Waerden was in touch with the great physicists
while editing the important 1967 source book of quantum mechanics. But
this project is a better fit in the next chapter, dedicated to the many reunions
of the old friends.
Chapter 40
Reunions of Old Friends: Van der Waerden
and Heisenberg
Heisenberg was not only a thinker of the highest level. He was also a
lovable person, a man of pure character and a loyal friend.
In Leipzig, Heisenberg, Friedrich Hund, Friedrich Carl Bonhoeffer

and v.d.W. [Van der Waerden] had formed an alliance to maintain the
scientific level in mathematics and physics against the Nazis. They
were all reliable anti-Nazis, met very frequently and talked a lot about
political questions.
Delia Meth-Cohn497
With Heisenberg and with Hund we talked about science and not
about politics.
Camilla van der Waerden498
As we have traced in this book, starting in 1931 and throughout his life
Bartel L. van der Waerden was in regular scientific, personal, and political
touch with Werner Heisenberg. They were close lifetime friends and con-
fidants, even during the Nazi era, when the consequences for a wrongly
chosen friend could be devastating. And yet Camilla van der Waerden, in
the presence of Bartel, denies it in the 1993 interview [Dol1]:
496
May 12, 1976 [Wae31] and [WW2].
497
Partly unpublished interview with Van der Waerden, conducted for Thomas Powers book
[Pow]; Zurich, February 21, 1989.
498
1993 [Dol1].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_40
412 40 Reunions of Old Friends: Van der Waerden and Heisenberg
With Litt and Gadamer, who were both philosophers, we spoke of

Nazism and how it would continue. Neither of the two were Nazis. We
then did not talk about science, only, in fact, of how it would continue.
We were so trapped during the whole time of Nazism. Instead, with
Heisenberg and with Hund we talked about science and not about
politics.
This is Camillas opinion one can argue, not Bartels. However, in this
interview Bartel corrects Camilla whenever he disagrees with her. Here is
one example:
Camilla van der Waerden These papers on algebraic geometry date from
before the 50s, not from when we were at Zurich. There you did no more, no?
Van der Waerden This is not true. The last paper, ZAG XX, is rather
recent, from 1971.
Why did Mrs. Van der Waerden deny, I would even say betray, such a
loyal lifelong friendshipfriendship personal, political, and scholarlyand
Bartel agreed with his wife by not objecting? As the Dutch say, this is not
done. Camilla van der Waerden must have felt compelled to rewrite history
and retroactively distance her husband from the controversialshall I say
radioactivefigure of Hitlers scientific leader of the atomic bomb and
reactor project Werner Heisenberg. This interview, published in German
and in English, reached a broad readership, broader than any archival
documents ever could. And so let me set the record straight. Yes, Werner
Heisenberg was a controversial figure, and disputes about his thoughts and
deeds continue still today. However, one thing about him clearly radiates
throughout my research: Heisenberg always cared a great deal about his old
friends. Werner Heisenberg was a loyal lifelong friend of Bartel van der
Waerden.
Needless to say, this distancing contradicts the brave 1935 faculty meet-
ing conspiracy of Heisenberg, Hund, and Van der Waerden to protest the
firing of Jewish professors, and their discussions of joint resignations from
Leipzig University in protest. It also contradicts Bartel van der Waerdens
own testimony given four short years earlier, in 1989.
The Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Powers, the author of the bestselling
book Heisenbergs War [Pow], generously provided me with partly
unpublished notes of the interview with Van der Waerden that his fact finder
Ms. Delia Meth-Cohn conducted in Zurich on February 21, 1989. Meth-
Cohn listens to Van der Waerden and records:
In Leipzig, Heisenberg, Friedrich Hund, Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer
and v.d.W. [Van der Waerden] had formed a clique (alliance) to
40 Reunions of Old Friends: Van der Waerden and Heisenberg 413
maintain the scientific level in mathematics and physics against the

Nazis. They were all reliable anti-Nazis, met very frequently and
talked a lot about political questions.
Facts show that politics was discussed among the two friends again
during the Nazi year 1937. Van der Waerden cites one such particular
political discussion in his private April 28, 1948 letter to Heisenberg that
we have already read:
Do you remember what I said to you when you showed me the [1937]
article in Das Schwarze Korps? That is a nice title, White Jew, you
can be proud of that.499
In 19471948 Van der Waerden sent food parcels from the United States
to help his personal friend Heisenberg in Gottingen during the hungry
postwar time in Germany. And Van der Waerden consulted with his trusted
friend Heisenberg on whether living in a large American city during the
Cold War would be dangerous for the Van der Waerden family.
During the long post-World War II years, Van der Waerden had tirelessly
worked on trying to improve Heisenbergs political and scientific reputation.
As we have discussed at length in Chapter 34, Bartel even composed an
Aide-Memoire in Werners defense and sent it to Hans Kramers and
Niels Bohr.
In 1947 Van der Waerden hoped to reunite with his friend Heisenberg in
Germany. In some years Germany would once again reach the heights.
Maybe we will get together again! he writes. This hope was destined to be
fulfilled a decade later.
During his young years, Werner Heisenberg was taken under the wing by
the Great Dane Niels Bohr who created a special circle of collaborating
colleagues-friends in his Copenhagen institute. Bohr instilled in young
Werner the joy of combining personal friendship and scientific collabora-
tion. When the 26-year old Werner arrived in Leipzig, he immediately
started building a Copenhagen-like circle there. We have touched on the
Leipzig Circle in Chapter 11.
After the war, Heisenbergs Gottingen years 19461958 were a busy time
of healing, rebuilding physics in Germany, and reestablishing scientific con-
tacts. The 1958 move of his institute to Munich commenced a new opportunity
to try and recreate The Heisenberg Circle. Heisenberg must have enjoyed his
interactions with bright young minds, but he held a special place in his heart
for his close old friends, such as Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker and Bartel
499
L. van der Waerden. As the Director of Max-Planck-Institut f ur Physik und

Astrophysik, Heisenberg was able to invite both of them for long and frequent
visits to Munich and cover their honorariums and expenses.
In this chapter, I will share with you the correspondence of the old
friends. As is often in history, the record is incomplete. However, we will
witness the continuation of the personal and professional friendship of
Heisenberg and Van der Waerden, the friendship that commenced in Leip-
zig, year 1931, and continued thereafter. I will provide a concise scientific
and political context for some of the surviving letters.
And so, we are in the Germany of the mid-1950s. West Germany agreed
to abstain from the production of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons
as part of the 1955 Paris Treaties in order to be accepted in NATO.
Nevertheless, in 1957 the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer announces
that his government is going to equip the German army with American-
made tactical nuclear weapons:
Tactical atomic weapons are basically nothing but the further devel-
opment of artillery. It goes without saying that, due to such a powerful
development in weapons technique (which we unfortunately now
have), we cannot dispense with having them for our troops. We must
follow suit and have these new typesthey are after all practically
normal weapons.500
The characterization practically normal weapons is, of course, a lame
excuse, and a good number of West German physicists, including some of
those you have met on the pages of this book, object to the plans of the West
German Army to acquire atomic weapons. On April 13, 1957, they sign the
Declaration of German Nuclear Physicists.501 Van der Waerden whole-
heartedly agrees with his friends and colleagues, and on April 16, 1957,
while in Graz, Austria, writes about it to his friend:502
You and Hahn, v. [von] Laue and [von] Weizsacker, in my opinion,
are completely correct in your declaration about the atomic bomb.
Van der Waerden continues with Heisenbergs early predictions of the
World War II outcome:
500
Mark Cioc, Pax Atomica: The Nuclear Defense Debate in West Germany during the
Adenauer Era, Columbia University Press, New York, 1988, 4243.
501
It was published under the same title in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June
1957, p. 228.
502
Hand-written letter in German; ETH, Hs 652: 3549.
If you are being ridiculed in the newspapers of the entire world,

even in Graztagespost, as a nave scholar, against that you are pre-
sumably powerless. But if one of your acquaintances says the same
thing, then you can put before him the following fact.
When the war had broken out, you told me: Germany would prob-
ably lose this war, but the real winners would not be the English but the
Russians.
I can swear that you said that. Is this naivete or ignorance of world-
wide contexts, as one has accused you of?
Heartfelt greetings,
Always yours,
[Van der Waerden]
The idea of recreating The Heisenberg Circle appears in these letters for
the first time in Heisenbergs July 9, 1959 letter to Van der Waerden:503
I think with some melancholy of the time of our Leipzig seminar, in
which thanks to you the counsel of a mathematician was always at my
disposal, and sometimes I have a quiet hope to be able to interest you
once again in the mathematical problems that come up in [quantum]
field theory.
Van der Waerden first visits his friend in Munich in 1959. On February
29, 1960, he is invited again:504
During your last visit to Munich, about which we were very pleased,
we spoke about a possibility of you coming to Munich for a month in
the fall, so that we can speak about the mathematics of quantum field
theory. In the meantime I have consulted with our administration and
would now like to invite you officially to stay in Munich for the entire
month of October. For this work and your travel and upkeep expenses
for your stay, we can offer you the sum of 4000 DM. We very much
hope that you together with your wife would come to Munich. The
weather in Munich in October is frequently very good and the region is
beautiful. If you should have a car I would suggest to you to bring it to
Munich.
In October Weizsacker will be in Munich too, and he will certainly
also enjoy the possibility of discussions with you.
503
Typed hand-signed letter in German; Hs 652: 3552.
504
Heisenberg is delighted to see his old friends and have a mathematician

in his group of theoretical physicists, which he conveys on November
22, 1960:505
Many thanks for your letter and for your working program, which
now is being circulated among the members of my circle of theoreti-
cians. Your stay in Munich had exactly the effect that I had hoped for,
and we are very thankful to you for coming to Munich. The theoreti-
cians had learned a great deal from you with regard to formulating the
question, and you contributed a great deal to clarification of various
issues. Therefore I hope that your visit will be repeated, and will be
particularly glad if through these visits your interest in field physics
would be awakened.
Always yours,
Heisenberg
On August 2, 1962, Heisenberg proposes another Oktoberfest:506
Because this coming October we want to have some discussions again
about quantum field theory and the theory of elementary particles with
Weizsacker, I would like to ask you if you would have time and
interest in coming to Munich in October for some weeks. Of course,
I would be particularly happy if your wife would come too. Of course,
we could arrange to cover your expenses as we have done in the last
visit.
For the next Oktoberfest Heisenberg invites not only Carl Friedrich and
Bartel, but also Edward Teller, as we learn from his July 29, 1964 letter:507
Since we have already had twice the pleasure of your visit to
Munich in October, I would like to ask you if you would have time
for a visit to Munich this coming October.
Same conditions as in the earlier years. In the coming October
probably, besides Weizsacker, (in any case, for part of the time)
Edward Teller will be in Munich and they both will certainly be
pleased to have discussions with you. My wife would particularly
enjoy if your wife would also come to Munich.
505
506
507
With many wishes,

Your
W. Heisenberg
On January 13, 1965, Van der Waerden informs Heisenberg that The
preface to the Sources [English word used] is ready and in a few days will
go to [the] printer.508 This letter about Sources requires my commentary.
In the early 1960s, Paul Rosbaud509 asked Van der Waerden to serve as the
editor of a very important anthology for North-Holland Publishing Com-
pany. The idea of the anthology was due to Max Born (18821970, Nobel
Prize in Physics 1954), who envisioned a collection of the most important
papers that had given birth to quantum mechanics. Van der Waerden
selected, in consultation with the leading physicists, seventeen papers by
Einstein, Ehrenfest, Bohr, Ladenburg, Kramers, Slater, Born, Van Vleck,
W. Kuhn, Jordan, Dirac, and Pauli. He then insured the copyrights for the
republication of the selected papers. For example, I am holding in my hands
his November 23, 1964 inquiry of the copyrights for a Niels Bohr paper
from his son Aage Bohr since Niels Bohr passed away on November
18, 1962.510 On top of it all, Van der Waerden wrote a fabulous 59-page
historical introduction. There he not only sketches the evolution of quantum
mechanics, but sprinkles it with quotations from the letters of its creators.
Van der Waerden was one of the great expositors of science. In my opinion,
this introduction, long enough to fill a small book, is perhaps Van der
Waerdens best piece of prose. Here is how he opens his opus [Wae28]:
Quantum theory was born on December 14, 1900, when Max Planck
delivered his famous lecture before the Physikalische Gesellschaft.
Van der Waerden incorporates unforgettable and humorous portraits
written by the creators of quantum mechanics about each other. Here are
my two favorites. First Max Born recollects October 1923, when the 22-year
old Werner Heisenberg became Borns assistant at Gottingen:
[When he arrived,] he looked like a simple peasant boy, with short fair
hair, clear bright eyes and a charming expression. He took his duties as
508
Typed letter in German; Hs 652: 3563.
509
Paul Rosbaud (18961963), was after the firing of Arnold Berliner the editor of Springers
Naturwissenschaften, where in January 1939 he rushed into print Otto Hahns paper on
nuclear fission in order to warn the world of the danger and the significance of this work.
Only in 1986 was it revealed that Rosbaud was a British undercover agent during the war
(Arnold Kramish, The Griffin: The Greatest Untold Espionage Story of World War II,
Houghton Mifflin, 1986).
510
I thank The Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen, for kindly providing the copies.
an assistant more seriously than Pauli and was a great help to me. His
incredible quickness and acuteness of apprehension has always
enabled him to do a colossal amount of work without much effort:
he finished hydrodynamics thesis, worked on atomic problems partly
alone, partly in collaboration with me, and helped me to direct my
research students.
And now Werner Heisenberg recollects his first meeting with Niels Bohr
in the summer of 1922:
For the first time I met Niels Bohr in Gottingen in the summer of 1922,
when Bohr held a series of lectures at the invitation of the faculty
of exact sciences, which we liked to call the Bohr Festival.
Sommerfeld, my teacher in Munich, had taken me along to Gottingen,
although I was at that time a 20 year old student in my fourth semester.
Sommerfeld was warmly interested in his students, and he had noticed
how strongly Bohr and his atomic theory interested me. The first
impression of Bohr still remains quite clearly in my memory. Full of
youthful excitement, but a little self-conscious and shy, his head a little
to one side, the Danish physicist stood on the platform in the audito-
rium, the strong Gottingen summer light streaming in through the open
window. He spoke softly and with some hesitation, but behind every
carefully chosen word one could discern a long chain of thought,
which eventually faded somewhere in the background into a philo-
sophical viewpoint which fascinated me . . .
When the discussion was over, Bohr came to me and suggested that
we should go for a walk together on the Hainberg outside Gottingen.
Of course, I was very willing. That discussion, which took us back and
forth over Hainbergs wooded heights, was the first thorough discus-
sion I can remember on the fundamental physical and philosophical
problems of modern atomic theory, and it has certainly had a decisive
influence on my later career. For the first time I understood that Bohrs
view of his theory was much more skeptical than that of many other
physicistse.g. Sommerfeldat that time, and that his insight into the
structure of the theory was not a result of a mathematical analysis of
the basic assumptions, but rather of an intense occupation with the
actual phenomena, such that it was possible for him to sense the
relationships intuitively rather than derive them formally.
Thus I understood: knowledge of nature was primarily obtained in
this way, and only as the next step can one succeed in fixing ones
knowledge in mathematical form and subjecting it to complete rational
analysis. Bohr was primarily a philosopher, not a physicist, but he
understood that natural philosophy in our day and age carries weight
only if its every detail can be subjected to the inexorable test of
experiment.
Heisenberg is thrilled about Van der Waerdens introduction, as we can
see from his March 29, 1967 letter:511
Heartfelt thanks for mailing the newly appeared Sources of Quan-
tum Mechanics. I have now read your historical introduction with
complete pleasure and believe that you not only describe the historical
development with great precision, but make it come alive in an
understandable way for the reader. Again I found interesting the
strongly emotional statements in the letters between Pauli, Jordan,
Born and me, in which the contrast between physical thought and
mathematical erudition is emphasized. Because in the end a descrip-
tion of nature that is as mathematically correct as possible is sought,
I have tried to reflect on the basis of these strong emotions against
mathematics. I think that when a theory arises the theoretical physicist
has in front of his minds eye an entire fabric of natural phenomena
connected by (natural) law and is extremely intent on finding a math-
ematical schema whose structure corresponds exactly to this fabric.
From the outset he is convinced that the correct mathematical schema
must be intrinsically free of inconsistency, that it is indeed nature; but
he fears all formal mathematical arguments that could distract his
thoughts from the point of contact between the fabric of physical
phenomena on the one hand and the mathematical reflection on the
other. Since the attempts at fitting the two together involve an unstable,
delicate balance, every distraction into other thought processes entails
dangers that disturb the physicist terribly in his work and therefore lead
to the emotions in question. I do not know whether this description is
exactly right, but also in the current development of elementary
particle physics, when I read distinctly mathematical treatises I often
have similar feelings.
With many greetings from house to house
Your
H
As a major co-creator, Werner Heisenberg knows best the history of
quantum mechanics. In addition, he is the author of several well written
511
books, and so his words you not only describe the historical development
with great precision, but make it come alive in an understandable way for
the reader comprise the highest compliment. Well-deserved by Van der
Waerden, I will add!
The order Pour le Merite was founded in 1740 by King Frederick II of

Prussia, and named in French, which was the official language of the
Prussian Royal Court. A century later, King Frederick William IV founded
a civil class of the order, Orden Pour le Merite f ur Wissenschaften und
Kunste (the Order Pour le Merite for Sciences and Arts), with three sections:
humanities, natural sciences, and fine arts. The first recipients of the civil
class of the Pour le Merite order in 1842 included such great Germans as
Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Jakob Grimm, Felix Men-
delssohn; and such foreign celebrities as Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand,
Michael Faraday, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Franz Liszt.
Between the two world wars, the membership was renewed and awarded,
among others, to Albert Einstein (1923) and the first female and Communist,
artist Kathe Kollwitz (1929). The Nazi government left its imprint on the
award: in 1933 Einstein resigned from the Order and refused a reinstatement
after the fall of Nazism.
Since 1952, the renewed Order membership has been limited to thirty
German citizens, ten each in the fields of humanities, natural sciences and
medicine, and the arts. Additionally, honorary memberships may be con-
ferred on foreigners, also limited to thirty. Let me list some of the greats who
have been inducted in the Order without specifying their artistic or scientific
field, so that you can test your erudition: Otto Hahn (1952), Paul Hindemith
(1952), Emil Nolde (1952), Hermann Hesse (1954), Albert Schweitzer
(1954), Thomas Mann (1955), Oskar Kokoschka (1955), Carl Orff (1956),
Erwin Schrodinger (1956), Thornton Wilder (1956), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
(1956), Werner Heisenberg (1957), Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker (1961),
Henry Moore (1972), Hans Bethe (1984), Umberto Eco (1998), Sofia
Gubaidulina (2002), Wim Wenders (2005), Andras Schiff (2012), and Eric
Frank Wieschaus (2013).
Why did I acquaint you with this Order? In the following, September
28, 1973, letter,512 Werner Heisenberg as the Chancellor of the Order, asks
Van der Waerden whether the latter would accept the membership in the
Order. I venture a conjecture that Heisenberg was the one who nominated
Van der Waerden to this honor:
512

May I turn to you with the official request? The Orden Pour Merite
f
ur Wissenschaft und K unste, at its last meeting decided to elect you as
a foreign member of the Order. Insofar as you accept the election, it is
usual not to publish the results of the elections before the person being
elected has given his consent. In commission of the Chancellor of the
Order I would like to ask you if you accept the election.
Enclosed I am sending you the statutes of the Order, a roster of
former members, and a list of current members of the Order. In
addition to the official information, I would like to say that the Order
is not at all an extremely ceremonial and official club, that it rather
meets each year completely unofficially at a nice spa and that I have
always myself felt that these get-togethers were a large enrichment.
You colleague Emil Staiger in Zurich could tell you details. We very
much hope that you accept the election.
Many heartfelt greetings from house to house.
Your
W. Heisenberg (signed)
Enclosures
And so Van der Waerden was awarded the honorary Orden Pour le Me
rite f
ur Wissenschaften und K
unste.
Heisenberg passed away at his home, on 1 February 1976. On May

12, 1976 he would have celebrated his 75th birthday. It was celebrated at
the Max Planck Society in Munich, sadly without him. The first speakers
were Reimar Lust, President of the Society, followed by Alfons Goppel,
Prime Minister of Bavaria. Bartel van der Waerden then gave a speech
Heisenbergs Career before 1927, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker
Heisenbergs Career after 1927. I am holding in front of me the texts of
these speeches published by the Society [WW1]with gratitude to
Dr. Marion Kazemi for a gift of this original brochureand in the 1977
book [WW2] comprised of Van der Waerdens speech and several eulogies
authored by Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, who talked about Werner
Heisenbergs unquestionably great contribution to quantum mechanics.
One of the sections of his talk he named Physics and Politics [WW1,
pp. 3237. Let us listen to Carl Friedrich:
The physicist of the 20th Century is bound up in politics, whether he
wants it to be so or not. Heisenberg took up this assignment with
reluctance, but with resolve. The challenge of politics faced him in
three ways: in National Socialism, the atomic bomb, and in the daily
work of three decades on the construction of a free society in the age of

knowledge.
On the 30th of January 1933 he and I looked through the window of
my Leipzig students room at the unending torch-lit parade of the SA
[Nazi storm troopers] celebrating Hitlers assumption of power. Our
mood during these hours was one of anxious pain: so many young
people willing to be of good use but entranced by the pied piper. Then
the persecution of Jewish colleagues forced its way into the everyday
life of a young professor. Soon he had to conduct the defensive
struggle, which took years, against one of the absurd sideshows of
the regime, the so-called German physics. Those concerned told jokes
at the time, saying German is a new word for inauthentic, like
German beefsteak, German tea, German Christians, German physics.
Modern theoretical physics was dismissed as Jewish, a threat that at
the time carried the penalty of death. Heisenberg publically defended
relativity theory and was attacked in the SS paper Das Schwarze
Korps as a White Jew. But the physicists stuck together. When
the war began, the regime began to appreciate the value of good
science. We won this defensive struggle before the regime fell.
The real problem was moral: what concessions had to be made to
conduct this defensive struggle? Did the end justify the means? I do
not think we failed to see that everyday life under a deceitful regime
corrupts the one who accepts it and tries to be effective within
it. Afterwards none of us had an immaculate conscience; for Heisen-
berg, it would be absurd to think that. The question is, would he have
had a more quiet conscience if he had withdrawn from this work?
Many old friends did not understand him anymore, after he returned to
Germany from America in the summer of 1939, with the impending
war before his eyes. This misunderstanding, from which he suffered
afterwards, is probably unresolvable, for it is the misunderstanding of
one clear moral decision from the position of another clear moral
decision. Morality divides, only love connects.
His decision was not, as some have interpreted it, motivated by
nationalism. In a precise sense it was the decision of a citizen; he did
not want to withdraw from the people from whom he came and who
needed him. His position was also not what one has called inner
emigration, the wish to outlast the flood and not be caught in the
net. He came home not to outlast anything, but to work towards a
better future in the midst of events.
The means by which he sought to have an effect became if anything
an even greater moral problem: atomic energy. In a short time he was
in fact the intellectual leader of the German uranium project. His

research at the time was good, craftsman-like applied physics; the
development of reactor theory in Germany was tied in with it. The
central problem, which he saw clearly, was moral: May one begin
research that could end up with the bomb, the bomb for Hitler or the
bomb for all those who in the future would succumb to the temptation
of deciding conflicts with this weapon? His position at the time was: he
wanted to know and be in control. In retrospect I regard that as nave
(I was in that way nave, too); the control would not have remained in
our hands. However, as was often the case with him, it was naivete at a
very high level of reflection. He saw through the basic structures of
political exigency better than most politicians and academics; he
tended to underestimate the difficulties of realizing what he knew to
be the case. He sought cautiously during the war, in conversation with
Bohr, an agreement among scientists to prevent construction of the
weapon; the conversation had no effect, because neither of these
friends dared to let down their guard (vabanque zu spielen) any longer
as they tried to be mutually open in a personal sense.
After the war the bomb was there and it was clear that it was driving
world politics toward an end that has not yet been revealed. It was also
clear that Germany would play a modest role in the decisions of world
politics, but that our survival in the event that the prevention of a Third
World War fails is more threatened than that of any country aside from
the superpowers themselves. Heisenberg shared the opinion of his
colleagues that in this situation national possession of atomic weap-
onry would not protect us, but would be a further danger for us. In his
house in Gottingen the letter was written in November 1956, as a result
of which we soon made our opinion a public knowledge.
There is much wisdom and truth in Carl Friedrichs speech. I disagree
with a number of his important assertions, but do not wish to argue over this
beautifully written heartfelt eulogy for a dear friend. Besides, I have
expressed my views on his representation of history elsewhere in this book.
Van der Waerden opens his speech with a sorrow of losing a great man,
A great scientist is gone from us: Werner Heisenberg, one of the greatest
men of our century, and ends with the heartfelt requiem for a friend [WW2,
p. 24]:
Heisenberg was not only a thinker of the highest level. He was also a
lovable person, a man of pure character and a loyal friend.
Photo 57 Werner Heisenberg, Courtesy of Max Planck Gesellschaft

Chapter 41
The Drama of Van der Waerden
While mistrusting the heart and reason,

Having hidden our eyes to be firm,
How often remained we silent,
Not against resolution, but for!
Where are now big mouths and weepers?
They have ceased, disappeared in youth.
Silence-keepers have gilded their coffers
Because silence is golden, so true.
Its so easy to come to success
Its so easy a fortune possess
Its so easy to punish with death
Keep the silence, say nothing, no less.
Alexander Galich513
If you do not resign and stay on . . . in order to survive you will be

forced to make compromise after compromise . . . and the compromises
you will have to make will later be held against you, and quite rightly so.
Max Planck514
513
This epigraph comes from (Conformists Little Waltz),
1963, a song by the great Russian poet, song writer-performer, and dissident Alexander
Galich, translated from the Russian by Ilya Hoffmann, Natalia V. Kuznetsova, and Alexander
Soifer for this book.
514
Max Plancks admonition to Werner Heisenberg [Hei2].

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_41
426 41 The Drama of Van der Waerden
Photo 58 Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, ca. 1980, Courtesy of Leipzig University
41 The Drama of Van der Waerden 427
Most writers tend to concentrate on exceptional personages. There are

many books about the heroes, such as Bruno, Galileo, and Einstein. And
there are numerous books about the villains. For example, recently volumi-
nous scholarly books were published by university presses about Himmler
(Longerich, P., Heinrich Himmler, Oxford University Press, 2012,
1031 pp.); Heydrich (Gerwarth, R., Hitlers Hangman, Yale University
Press, 2011, 393 pp.); and Hitler (Stephen G. Fritz, Ostkrieg: Hitlers War
of Extermination in the East, University Press of Kentucky, 2011, 688 pp.).
Such books can produce allegories about good and evil, but they miss out on
capturing the essence of the times and lives of ordinary people.
The key period for me in my narrative, the years 19331950, encompass
the Nazi era with World War II, and de-Nazification of Europe. These tragic
times provide such profound lessons of human nature that we have got to
learn from them as much as we possibly can. We encounter heroes and
villains, but also a much more numerous group in between of these two
extremes. The life of one such a person in between has been the subject of
this research. Bartel Leendert van der Waerden was not overall a hero and
surely not a villain. Studying his life allows us to pose important questions
about the role of a scientist in tyranny, and address some of the moral issues
surrounding World War II and its aftermath.
On my request, Bartels son, Hans van der Waerden contributes a valu-
able perspective in his June 20, 2004 letter [WaH1]:
There can be no doubt about my fathers unshakable anti-fascist
convictionsI think, in this we agree. I remember him, till the end
of his life, becoming furious, when anybody dared to compare irre-
sponsible political activities of whatever kind with Nazi crimes. I
further remember thatsometime about 1980he declined an invita-
tion to Leipzig University, saying: I have lived long enough under
dictatorship, I need not see any more of it. From his father, who at his
time was a socialist rejecting bolshevism, he had inherited a strong
conviction that one-party-government is the worst kind of government
at allhe used to quote an article of his father on this issue, and my
mother recalled that when she and her mother had been listening to
Hitler speeches on the radio, and the two of them got into doubts,
asking Couldnt there be perhaps some truth in it, anyway?my
father vividly explained to them that Hitler was wrong in every
respect.
In 2010, Hans van der Waerden adds [WaH2]:
I remember him as a perfectly honest man with a high, sometimes
almost fanatical sense of duty and moral integrity; and as an extremely
modest man, never jealous of other peoples achievements or liable to

exaggerate his own.
Indeed, Bartel van der Waerden strived to be a highly moral individual, a
fitting member of his great family of Dutch public servants. During the first
two and a half years of the Nazi regime, he reached the moral heights he
aspired. In 1933 he protested students boycotts of Edmund Landau lectures.
In 1935 he publicly objected to the firing of five Jewish professors and tried
to hold the Third Reich to living by its own laws. In 1935 he published in
Nazi Germany a eulogy for his Jewish liberal mentor Emmy Noether.
Through 1940 he determinedly published Jewish authors in Mathematische
Annalen. This is more than most had done in Nazi Germany.
On the other hand, we witness certain compromises with the Nazi author-
ities, instances of insensitivity, declared desire to save the German culture
and little effort to contribute to the culture of Holland, his Motherland that
has been served with such a high distinction by the rest of the Van der
Waerden family. How does one explain such diverging facts?
People, who have known and liked Van der Waerden, are surprisingly
unanimous in their explanations of these contradictions. For example, Beno
Eckmann, a fellow mathematician and Van der Waerdens friend for nearly
half a century, writes to me in 2004, As a person and friend vdW [Van der
Waerden] was very kind but seemed to be quite nave. The Van der
Waerden familys collective memory agrees [WaT1]: Bart was very
nave in all matters other than mathematics. The influence of his Austrian
wife Camilla was evident. As recently as in 2005 [Soi7], I too believed that
Van der Waerden was a nave, stereotypical abstract mathematician, who, as
I put it then, built his morality on the foundation of laws of the lands he
lived in, by rules of formal logic. He seems to have been quintessentially a
mathematicianand not only by professionbut by his moral fabric.
Van der Waerden might have been nave. However, I find this explana-
tion inadequate. He clearly sees Nazi Germany for what it is. In the early
years of Nazism, he criticizes the regime. But the regime easily finds Van
der Waerdens soft spot: his clinging to a German professorship. Once
warned not to interfere in the German internal affairs or else lose his
professorship, Van der Waerden no longer speaks out publicly in Germany.
However, in his August 1935 letter from the free Netherlands to Courant, he
shows a fluent knowledge of the Third Reich, although he seems to view the
Nazi deeds as a farce rather than a tragedy: We are here in Holland for
2 months and rest up our souls from the constant tensions, hostilities, orders
and paperwork . . . Ministries examine who has not yet been completely
switched over [to the National Socialism], who is a friend of Jews, who has a
Jewish wife, etc., as long as they themselves are not torn apart by their fight
for power.515
In July 1939 Bartel and Camilla are so afraid of losing Bartels German
professorship that they consult Peter Debye. Can Bartel lose his job if his
father were promoted to a cabinet post in the Netherlands? I am compelled
to answer their question with a question: Is German professorship worth
opposing Bartels father being honored by a Hollands cabinet post?
When in May 1940 Nazi Germany treacherously invades the neutral
Netherlands, Van der Waerden is warned that keeping his professorship
might cost him a switch from Dutch to German citizenship. In a letter to
Hecke, Van der Waerden expresses no objections against German citizen-
ship, but does not want to abandon neutralityneutrality between his
Homeland and her Nazi tormenters. Is German professorship worth such
neutrality?
In his April 1943 letter from Leipzig, Van der Waerden describes to
Hecke the tragedy of the occupied Netherlands and visions of the Holocaust.
He no longer makes fun of the Nazis; he finally understands the horrific
reality: How is he [Blumenthal]? During my Christmas [1942] stay in
Holland, I learned nothing about him. Maybe he is in hiding like thousands
of others. Maybe he is already in Poland like tens of thousands Jews from
Holland.516 Is German professorship worth the price of working for the
criminal regime committing the Holocaust?
No, Van der Waerden is not nave, or not nave enough. He knows the
truth about the Nazi regime, and consciously chooses to tolerate it. I was
asked rhetorically, what was wrong with Van der Waerden keeping his
mouth shut and going about his business in Nazi Germany? Isnt that what a
good person was supposed to do? Of course, I replied, it is much better than
joining the Nazi Party as did Blaschke and Hasse, to say nothing about the
father of the Deutsche Mathematik Bieberbach. However, too many good
people kept their mouths shut, and thus allowed Hitler and his henchmen to
commit their crimes with impunity.
Van der Waerden writes to Van der Corput,517 Germany attacked the
Netherlands and shamefully abused it, and the whole German people are
also responsible for that. Exactly right, Bartel. However, you too lived in
that Nazi Germany the entire 12+ years of the Third Reich, and retaining
Dutch citizenship is a lame excuse. You ought to accept your small part of
responsibility for what your Germany did on your behalf, with your silent
515
516
Nachlass von Erich Hecke, Universit
at Hamburg.
517
ETH, Hs 652: 12153. Undated letter, written between August 21 and August 27, 1945.
approval, to the German people and the peoples of your beloved Europe.
You chose the benefits of staying in Germanybenefits come with the
responsibility.
I faced a similar Hamletian question in the Soviet tyranny: to leave or not
to leave? It was unbearable to see in August 1968 how on my behalf my
country drove tanks through the heart of Czechoslovakia. I started to openly
criticize the regime for not living by its constitution. However, sometimes
strangers on the street told me, this is not your country, you are not Russian,
go to your Israel. And so I decided not to pay with my life and freedom for
freedom of those who did not consider me an equal citizen. I terminated my
Soviet citizenship and left as a refugee protesting tyranny, left without any
job (let alone Princeton or Utrecht), money, connections, and language.
How did you feel, Bartel, when your Germany drove through the lives of
tens of millions of peoples of Europe, good old Europe you said you so
much loved? Is German professorship worth the price of responsibility for
Europes suffering, Bartel?
Old wise Max Plank warned your friend Heisenberg about assuming
responsibility for inevitable compromises [Hei2]: If you do not resign
and stay on, you will have a task of quite a different kind. You cannot
stop the catastrophe, and in order to survive you will be forced to make
compromise after compromise . . . and the compromises you will have to
make will later be held against you, and quite rightly so. You and Heisen-
berg stayed on, made compromises in order to survive under the Nazi
regime, but did not accept the responsibility for them.
You chose not to remain in Holland during your many Nazi era visits
(in 1933, 1935, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1942 and possibly 1944), including those
visits when you were in Holland with your wife and children (e.g., in 1935
and 1939). You did not accept an American invitation either. You preferred
to live in Nazi Germany. I see much in common between the choices you
made and those of your distinguished colleague Constantin Caratheodory, a
German mathematician of Greek ancestry. The following passage from
Caratheodorys biography [Geo, p. 288] by Maria Georgiadou should ring
your bell as well:
The emigration of scientists who were not discriminated against on
racial or political grounds seems to have been rather the exception.
Those who decided to stay in Germany belonged to three broad
groups: convinced National Socialists, those who saw an opportunity
to improve their careers under that regime and shamefully used every
sort of denunciation of their colleagues, and those who might have
wished to leave but believed they would have had no other opportunity
elsewhere. Caratheodory decided to remain in Germany, but he
belonged to none of these three categories . . . He could have taken

steps to leave Germany. But it seems that he viewed his decision to
remain as his patriotic duty and believed that he could get by in life
under the Nazis as best he could and, moreover, he would be able to
have an influence on affairs. The tragedy of his case lies in the fact that,
in the end, he gained nothing from his decision but gave away too
much.518
You closed your official letters and started your lectures with the
recommended Heil Hitler! salute. In 1934 you signed an oath of alle-
giance to Hitler. Once you were threatened with losing your German
professorship, you succumbed to the pressure of your academic Nazi bosses.
You stepped on the throat of your own song, as Russian poet Mayakovsky
put it, and in 1935 abandoned your public criticism of the Nazi regime. I
have no doubt whatsoever that you retained your distaste for the Nazi
tyranny, but you kept it inside yourself. Why did you prefer to remain in
Germany, where you could no longer even express your opinion publicly? Is
German professorship worth losing the freedom of speech?
As a brilliant mathematician, you desiredperhaps, felt entitledat all
times to be at the best place for doing mathematics, even if the time and
place was Nazi Germany, even if there was a price of moral compromise
attached to it. How could you declare being a full-blooded Aryan through
three generations no less, when Jews, including your mentors Emmy
Noether and Richard Courant were thrown out of their jobs?
I was asked, what could have Bartel done alone? This reminds me a play I
saw in the spring 1969.519 A man comes on stage and thinks aloud: There
were times when writing was a dangerous profession. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
was sent to 4 years of hard labor in Siberia; Alexander Herzen was forced to
live life in exile. And now? But what can I do alone? The second man
appears on stage, and the two walk around as if not seeing or hearing each
other, each exclaiming, What can I do alone? The third, fourth, etc.
518
While himself remaining in Germany, in 1935 Caratheodory sent his daughter Despina, a
Munich law student, to Athens, likely to protect her from the oppressive conditions of Nazi
Germany [Geo, pp. 305306].
519
I was an undergraduate student when Mathematics Professor Abram Khaimovich Livshitz
invited me to see his performance at the Moscow State Universitys (MGU) student theater
Nash Dom (Our Home). This theater-studio was founded by Mark Rozovsky in 1958 when he
was still a student of journalism. The theater was closed down by the Soviet totalitarian
authorities on December 23, 1969, a few months after my visit. By the spring 1969 all
previous plays were banned, leaving measly scenes collected under the title Take Old Staff
and Show. The scene I describe was originally written by Novosibirsk student theaters
authors Evgeny Vishnevsky and Vadim Sukhoverkhov.
persons appear onstage. Soon we witness some thirty men and women
walking randomly and complaining What can I do alone! The whole
scene is full of random motion of people exclaiming What can I do
alone! Slowly, unnoticeably they form rows and columns, marching and
chanting together, What can I do alone! What can I do alone! Half of the
audience sat in grave silence while the other half loudly applauded. Millions
of good Germans were righteously exclaiming, just like the actors in this
production, What can I do alone!
Van der Waerden knows the moral price he has paid for the comfort of
doing mathematics in Nazi Germany, and he acknowledges it privately
twice, in his December 1945 letter to Richard Courant and February 1946
letter to Dijksterhuis. Yet, he is too proud to admit it to anyone else,
including ever so helpful a friend Van der Corput, let alone Het Parool.
Despite having no illusions about the nature of the Nazi regime, despite
his fathers and Uncle Jans insistence that it was Bartels duty to leave
Nazi Germany even before its occupation of Holland, Van der Waerden
choses to stay there, because he believes that even during the Nazi era
Germany is the best place for doing mathematics. Why would I go to
Holland where oppression became so intolerable and where every fruitful
scientific research was impossible? he writes to Van der Corput520 without
even realizing that the intolerable oppression of his Homeland was inflicted
by the very country he served!
How could Van der Waerden not notice that right from its birth, Nazi
Germany was not the best place for doing mathematical research? The Old
Sage of Gottingen, David Hilbert, did not believe that the supremacy of
Gottingen survived the Nazi 1933 purges [Re1]:
About a year after the purge [i.e., in early 1934], Hilbert attended a
banquet and was seated next to the new Minister of Education,
Bernhard Rust. Rust asked, How is mathematics in Gottingen now
that it has been freed of the Jewish influence? Hilbert replied, Math-
ematics in Gottingen? There is really none anymore.
Van der Waerdens choice of the Third Reich for doing his labor of love,
brings to mind the 1953 book The Captive Mind [Mil] by the Polish poet and
1980 Nobel Laureate Czesaw Miosz, who defines the term Professional
Ketman. Under such a Ketman (unwritten contract between a scientist and
a totalitarian State), the scientist reasons in the following manner:
520
Van der Waerden, letter to van der Corput; July 31, 1945; ETH, Hs 652: 12160.
I find myself in circumstances over which I have no control, and since I

have but one life and that is fleeting, I should strive to do my best . . . If
I am a scientist, I attend congresses at which I deliver reports strictly
adhering to the Party line. But in the laboratory I pursue my research
according to scientific methods, and in that alone lies the aim of my
life. If my work is successful, it matters little how it will be presented
and toward whose glory. Discoveries made in the name of a disinter-
ested search for truth are lasting, whereas the shrieks of politicians
pass. I must do all they demand, they may use my name as they wish,
as long as I have access to my laboratory and money for the purchase
of scientific instruments . . . The State, in its turn, takes advantage of
this Ketman because it needs chemists, engineers and doctors.521
Likewise, Van der Waerden served Nazi Germanys Civil Service, and
lent his credibility and his acclaim as a distinguished scientist to that of the
Third Reich. In 1994 the German historian Herbert Mehrtens [Meh2] aptly
coined a term irresponsible purity for scientists who pursued their pure
academic fields in the Third Reich and assumed no responsibility for thus
serving and strengthening the criminal state. Van der Waerdens many
words and deeds serve as an example of this phenomenon. The great
anthropologist and my dear friend James William Fernandez, upon reading
the early version of this book, summarized my findings concisely during our
Fang Summit522 in early August 2007: Frailty of Brilliance!
Van der Waerden must have felt the weight of his Nazi period conflicts
and compromises for the rest of his life. We never really talked about his
time in Leipzig, in any case not about politics. He and his wife seemed to
avoid these themes, Beno Eckmann recalls. What troubles the editors of
Het Parool and Van der Corput the most is seeing a man who aspiredand
was capable ofhigh moral ground fall victim of compromises with the
Nazi tyranny. They are willing to understand the compromises, to take into
account the difficult times, and embrace Bartel. But they are deterred by his
oversized pride and his appearing hypocritical by denying any compro-
mises, demanding a complete unconditional exoneration, and invoking
high moral ground, the ground they thought has eroded.
In the Story of Van der Waerden, I confirmed one lesson of my own life: I
resent the old wisdom that Silence is golden. Silence in the face of a
tyranny makes one a slave, an accomplice, and an executioner. I have
521
[Mil], pp. 6970.
522
Our annual meeting devoted to the art and culture of the Fang people of West Equatorial
Africa, extensively studied by Fernandez, and to other topics of mutual interest, such as a role
of a scientist in tyranny.
thought about the following simple formula for a very long time. It has
evolved, and it has inspired, to my satisfaction, an ongoing debate:
Ones response to living under tyranny without willingly supporting it
can only be to leave, to engage in resistance, or to compromise.523
Van der Waerden chose the compromise between his high moral aspira-
tions and his desire to do mathematics in Nazi Germany. The struggle
between these two conflicting goals produced the dramaperhaps, the
tragedyof the life of Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, one of the great
mathematicians of the twentieth century, the century marked by merciless
tyrannies and the brutal war.
523
Bartels son, Hans van der Waerden contributes his view [WaH1]: Let us turn to the
underlying general question, whether it was right or wrong for my father to stay in Germany
after 1933, and even more so after 1940. I am glad to hear you pronounce your personal
opinion on the subject (a moderate and carefully deliberated opinion indeed). Allow me to
add some of my personal reflection too.
Judging the behavior, decision, Life choices of other people can only be done by
applying general principles, which must ne true not only in one place, but in every place
on earth at any time. How, which could have been the general principle stating as a moral
imperative for my father to leave Germany after 1933? Could it be this: When the
government of a country is turned into cruel and criminal tyranny, all intellectuals serving
that government are obligated to emigrate, otherwise they become guilty of contributing
(as you put it) to the dictatorship? Is this really a general principle, applied all over the world
and at any epoch? I only heard it being pronounced for Germany, and only after 1945 in
retrospection, and even that not to everybody, and not applied to everybody. I never heard the
principle being applied to the USSR under Stalin (whose dictatorship was as horrible as
Hitlers, if comparing the devil to satana is possible at all). Under Stalin, some intellectuals
emigrated (as a personal choice) or were forced to do so. But never has anybody been blamed
for not emigrating and so contributing to the Staling tyranny.
Allow me to add yet another, even more general consideration. In a wider sense, every
intellectual in a public position contributes to the government he is working for. If this
governmenteven without mutating into open tyrannycommits criminal actis on a larger
scale, the intellectual gets involved and makes himself responsible, unless he acts bravely
by openly protesting (or emigrating, if protesting seems too dangerous). This applies, for
instance, to the actual U.S. government.
In 2010, Hans van der Waerden returns to this topic [WaH2]: As a crude approximation,
your three-cross-road theory may be of some use; it is inadequate when it comes to really
understand day-to-day life in a totalitarian system. Because there is a fourth way, chosen by
many who wished to preserve both life and soul. It says: Stay in the country, avoid great
gestures of opposition, but quietly and persistently show by small signs that you disagree, and
so give hope and comfort to others. Under a perfectly organized surveillance system as
Stalin established in the USSR, this sideway too apparently was barred; in Hitlers Germany,
however, thousands of anti-fascists have followed it, thus surviving and uniting in an
invisible network of free thinking and breathing.
This has been my report on research I titled The Scholar and the State. In
it, I faithfully followed the approach used by Professor Van der Waerden
himself [Wae15]:
I have tried to consider the great mathematicians as human beings
living in their own environment and to reproduce the impression which
they made on their contemporaries.
This work is forever in progress, in search of the hero. While I have found
answers to most of the questions I posed to myself, I prefer to consider this
book as a report on research in progress, In Search of Van der Waerden. A
complete insight is impossible, we can only aspire to come as close as
possible to it!
Chapter 42
The Scholar and the State
Unless the direction of science is guided by a consciously ethical

motivation, especially compassion, its effects may fail to bring benefit.
They may indeed cause great harm.
Dalai Lama524
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever

human beings endure suffering and humiliation
We must always take sides.
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel525
524
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.
525
The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1986. The Peace Nobel Prize
Committee called Eli Wiesel a messenger to mankind.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_42
438 42 The Scholar and the State
Photo 59 Elie Wiesel, 1987, by Erling Mandelmann, Wikipedia

42 The Scholar and the State 439
In the previous chapter, we discussed the drama of Bartel Leendert van

der Waerden that was a result of his choice to stay on and accept certain
compromises, perhaps, inevitable in the Third Reich. So was the drama of
his friend Werner Heisenberg who decided to stay on in his Germany,
make compromise after compromise, and then, when the compromises
were held against him, and quite rightly so, as Planck warned in 1935, try
to explain away any guiltinstead of accepting the responsibility. This kind
of a problem was not new to the Third Reich, and did not go away with the
end of World War II. It is with us today, in our response to and acceptance of
these kinds of compromises, and in our own susceptibility to corruption of
money and good conditions for doing our favorite research. Read the
following passage with me and try to determine when it was written,
which our time it refers to:
In our time the military mentality is still more dangerous than formerly
because the offensive weapons have become much more powerful than
the defensive ones. Therefore it leads, by necessity, to preventive war.
The general insecurity that goes hand in hand with this results in
sacrifice of the citizens civil rights to the supposed welfare of the
state.
Dont these concerns of our time sound like concerns of our Post 911
World? And yet, these lines [Ein3] were written by Einstein in the year
1947!
I read with great interest and reviewed [Soi12] David C. Cassidys
biography of Werner Heisenberg [Cas]. I see exactly the same problems
with financial and intellectual corruption of scientists by governments as the
author so insightfully describes in this book ([Cas], p. 389):
What is remarkable in Heisenbergs case is that, despite their frustra-
tion with him, many of Heisenbergs severest American critics
remained sympathetic and more than politely cordial toward him,
even while publishing the most devastating public repudiations. It
was as if they recognized how much they shared his difficulties.
How much scientists everywhere are caught up in the universal
dilemmas created by the rise of contemporary science in concert
with the contemporary global power structure: that scientists every-
where, no matter how devoted they may be to the search for truth and
universal understanding, are, for many reasons, invariably drawn into
work for their governments, and that many will serve their govern-
ments by fashioning the weapons of war and destruction.
I have heard an argument that creating weapons of mass destruction is not

necessarily a bad thing, that these weapons would deter wars and thus would
play a positive role in the world. I submit it is a risky business. The Russian
writer and playwright Anton Chekhov famously remarked: If you say in the
first act that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third act it
absolutely must go off. If its not going to be fired, it shouldnt be hanging
there.526 Here Chekhov addresses the laws of good staging. However, good
theater reflects and anticipates the laws of real life. In the recent decades
nuclear weapons have deterred a nuclear war, but have been unable to
prevent wars fought with conventional arms. Russian 2008 military excur-
sion into Georgia and the 2014 annexation of parts of Ukraine sadly
illustrate this point. On May 14, 2014, the Russian political scientist Andrei
Piontkovsky gave us a taste of a possible future:527
Consider, in this context, for example, one possible scenario of the era
of World War IV [The Cold War the author counts as World War III].
In terms of implementation of the inspiring concept of collecting
native Russian lands proclaimed in the historic speech of Vladimir
Putin on March 18 [2014], possessing a unique genetic code passionate
Russian-speaking residents of Narva in Estonia hold a referendum on
accession to the Russian world. In order to implement the results of
their free will, armed to the teeth little green men with [Russian]
national insignia or without, enter the territory of Estonia and busily
arrange new border signs. What will be the actions of the aggressive
NATO Bloc in this situation? According to a key article of the 5th
charter of this organization, all its Member States should provide
Estonia with an immediate military aid. Some of these states have
the technical capacity of eliminating the newcomers within half an
hour by remote fire action. Refusal of the Estonian allies to fulfill their
obligations will be an event of historic significance: it would mean the
end of NATO, the end of the U.S. as a world power and a complete
political dominance of Putins Russia, not only in the area of Russian
control, but on the whole European continent. Nevertheless, the
answer to the questionwhether NATO will defend Estonia in the
case of Russian attempts to rape a neighboris not obvious.
The concerns about the use of weapons of mass destruction are the issues
of Werner Heisenberg, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, Otto Hahn, and also
526
S. N. Shchukin, Memoirs about A.P. Chekhov, Russkaya Mysl (Russian Thought), band
X, 1911.
527
Andrei Piontkovsky, (Oh, magical new nuclear word),
Radio Freedom, http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/25383195.html
J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, Leo Szilard, Andrei Sakharov, and

other scholars, whose labor of love was to be used for mass destruction.
Elsewhere in his book David Cassidy presents a solution to these dilemmas,
the solution formulated by Albert Einstein ([Cas], pp. 207208). We have
already read it, but let me repeat these lines here:
I do not share your view that the scientist should observe silence in
political matters, i.e., human affairs in the broader sense . . . Does not
such restraint signify a lack of responsibility? Where would we be had
men like Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Humboldt thought
and behaved in such a fashion? I do not regret one word of what I have
said and am of the belief that my actions have served mankind.
Van der Waerden spells out one of his principles as follows:528
My point of view is that when appointments are concerned, only
capacities of the appointee should be taken into account, and notas
it is usual in the Fascists regimesthe persons character, his past, and
his political trustworthiness.
Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer disagrees:529
It is my opinion that the tiniest moral matter is more important than all
of science, and that one can only maintain the moral quality of the
world by standing up to any immoral project.
In my opinion, Van der Waerden is wrong about Fascist regimes empha-
sizing morality. They emphasize immorality, they demand citizens to
blindly obey the orders of the criminal regime, they strip individuals of
basic human rights. Yes, Brouwer often did not differentiate between the
important and unimportant, and fought all battles. But when on March
15, 1977, Van der Waerden told his interviewer Dirk van Dalen that he
[Brouwer] was no hero, he insinuated, just as in the dialogues with Van der
Corput, a moral equality of service to Nazi Germany and resistance to the
Nazi invaders. Brouwer not only did not work for Nazi Germany, he refused
to even visit the land of his Hollands occupiers when he was invited.
Brouwer was in fact a hero, as his biographer van Dalen concisely points
out to me in his January 24, 2011 e-mail:
In Brouwers mathematics institute there was a section of the resis-
tance movement that provided counterfeit identification cards, etc.
528
ETH, Hs652: 12170.
529
February 24, 1929 letter to H. Hahn, quoted from [Dal2], p. 651.
And on his grounds at home he hid Jews and people wanted by the
Germans (see [Dal2] pp. 772773).
Sometimes while requesting Nazi era documents for this book, I heard,
let us forget about the harm done long ago, and live in peace and
harmony. Oh, no, I replied, we cannot afford to forget. We must unearth
every detail of our horrific past, understand what made it possible, and strive
to not repeat it. Freedom and liberation are an unending task, warns us
Italian writer Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay [Eco]:
Ur-Fascism [Eternal Fascism] is still around us, sometimes in plain-
clothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the
world scene somebody saying, I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the
Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares. Life is not that
simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of dis-
guises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new
instancesevery day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelts
words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: If American democ-
racy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by
peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in
strength in our land. Freedom and liberation are an unending task.
The great sage Dalai Lama warns that without consciously ethical
motivation, especially compassion science may indeed cause great
harm. Exactly right. We have seen throughout history, time and again,
how evil usage of science and technology can be if it is not built on high
moral foundation. Atrocities of Nazi Germany alone provide countless
examples of how science, technology, and even arts and literature can be
used for ill deeds. I value education, and dedicated my life to it. However, I
must admit that
Fine education does not guarantee high culture,
And high culture does not guarantee humanity.530
In order for creative work to be good, it must also serve the good. It ought
to be humane. It has to be grounded in high morality, empathy, compassion,
and benevolence. The great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (17991837)
wrote beautifully about it. Let me translate his lines for you:531
530
A. Soifer, Charge to the Winners, The 30th Colorado Mathematical Olympiad, May
3, 2013.
531
,
,

.
And people will be pleased with me for years to come,

For I awakened kindness with my lyre,
For in my cruel age I Freedom praised and sang
And urged I mercy for the fallen people.
We ought to be principled, for there is no appreciation of the good
without recognition of the evil. And the principled scholars cannot afford
to be silent in spite of the folk wisdom of many lands, such as the Old
Russian proverb Silence is Golden and the Old British proverb A closed
mouth catches no flies. We ought to never be silent accomplices of
injustice, as the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel so eloquently argues:532
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever
human beings endure suffering and humiliation.
We must always take sides.
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
532
Elie Wiesel, The Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1986.
Chapter 43
Farewell to the Reader: I Hope
and I Hope533
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but

there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel534
Our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then

history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching
up with us.
Edward R. Murrow535
533
This quotation comes straight from Richard Courants January 6, 1934 letter to Van der
Waerden; New York University, Archive, Courant Papers.
534
The Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1986.
535
Chicago, October 15, 1958.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8_43
446 43 Farewell to the Reader: I Hope and I Hope
Photo 60 Edward R. Murrow, 1957, Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland,

Wikipedia
At the tender age of 24 Edward R. Murrow (19081965) served as the

Assistant Secretary of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced For-
eign Scholars. His job was to identify and help prominent European scholars
and artists, who were dismissed, harassed, and threatened by the Nazi
regime. During World War II, Murrow became one of the most famous
journalists due to his radio reportages from London and other European
locations. Murrows job as a humanitarian and a war journalist provided such
a profound school of life that I am not surprised that Murrow was the one
who on live television took on U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who almost
succeeded in terrorizing the United States with his anti-Communist paranoia.
On March 9, 1954, Murrow, Fred W. Friendly, and their news team aired a
half-hour CBS-TV See It Now special entitled A Report on Senator Joseph
43 Farewell to the Reader: I Hope and I Hope 447
R. McCarthy. Let us listen together to Murrow, admire his bravery, and

learn the lessons, applicable to the personages of this book Van der Waerden
and Werner Heisenberg, who found themselves in Nazi Germany, applicable
to McCarthys America, to Stalins and Putins Russia, to todays world, and
the world of the future if it will still be populated by humans:
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear
into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine,
and remember that we are not descended from fearful mennot from
men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes
that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthys methods to
keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and
our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is
no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a
nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We
proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom,
wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend
freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm
and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to
our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didnt create this
situation of fear; he merely exploited itand rather successfully. Cassius
was right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
In March 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, a part of
sovereign Ukraine, Murrows words sounded relevant again. Some of my
Moscow friends told me, this is not my fault, I did not vote for [Russian
President] Putin. I hope my friends will understand, the sooner the better,
that Putin acted on their behalf, and all Russian citizens share their part of
responsibility for actions of their president, of their country. As Shake-
speareand Murrowsaid, The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
but in ourselves.
The Russian Ministry of Culture, on its official Internet site published a
group letter Russian cultural figuresin support of the position of the
President [Putin] on Ukraine and Crimea, signed by 511 prominent people,
including celebrated and beloved movie stars, film directors, presidents of
major museums and theaters, such as Oleg Tabakov, Valery Gergiev, and
Yuri Bashmet. The letter proclaimed:536
536
http://mkrf.ru/press-tsentr/novosti/ministerstvo/deyateli-kultury-rossii-v-podderzhku-pozitsii-
prezidenta-po-ukraine-i-krymu?codedeyateli-kultury-rossii-v-podderzhku-pozitsii-prezidenta-
po-ukraine-i-krymu&printY
448 43 Farewell to the Reader: I Hope and I Hope
In the days when the fate of Crimea and our compatriots is decided,
Russian cultural figures cannot be indifferent observers with a cold
heart. [. . .] That is why we firmly reiterate support for the position of
President of the Russian Federation on Ukraine and Crimea.
Minister of Culture V.P. Medinsky could not hide his delight:537
The workers of culturepublic opinion leaders, enjoyed considerable
moral weight and influence. [. . .] The more intense the political
moment is, the more tangible is the need [of their support of the
President]. A poet in Russia is more than a poet.
I am compelled to address Minister Medinsky: Evgeny Evtushenko,
whom you quote (without credit), meant that the poet in Russia is a
prophetnot a conformist!
On his Facebook timeline, film and theater director Kiril Serebrennikov
defended Oleg Tabakov, director of the prestigious Moscow A The-
ater, who openly supported Putin and cosigned the letter of 511 in the hopes
of continued governmental funding for his theater. A heated discussion
erupted, which prompted my response:
Dear Viktor Balabanov, you write: Theater directors and the like
leaders of Centers for the Arts, worry about preserving the culture,
their nest, and fear that the Usurper [Putin] will deprive them of this
opportunity. And what of it? Is it seemly to support peoples tyranny
in order to carry culture to those same people? Is culture worth the
tyranny? I dedicated my life to culture and education, but I do not
support corruption with good intentions. They paved the road to hell,
as is well-known. Praise those who did not sell out: Yuri Norstein, Yuri
Shevchuk, etc., and not the artists with a price tag sewn to them.538
I hope you and I have learned worthwhile lessons together, and when we
are offeredvery much like a Trojan Horsea laboratory and money to
conduct our favorite research, we would think long and hard whether to
accept the horse and risk seeing the fruits of our labor of love used in
weapons of war and destruction.
I hope that scholars all over the world will reject Werner Heisenbergs
view, expressed in the waning days of 1947, and thus with full knowledge of
the World War II catastrophe. He stated that most leading scientists
537
www.gazeta.ru/culture/2014/03/14/a_5949581.shtml
538
My friend Yuri Norstein, as well as Yuri Shevchuk and other wise and noble Russian
artists, signed a counter-letter, critical of Putins invasion of Crimea.
43 Farewell to the Reader: I Hope and I Hope 449
[in Nazi Germany] disliked the totalitarian system. Yet as patriots who
loved their country they could not refuse to work for the Government [!]
when called upon, even though that was the Nazi government. As Nurem-
berg Trials declared loud and clear, I followed my orders was notand
will not bea valid defense for those who follow criminal orders.
I hope that, to the contrary, enough people on the Planet Earth will choose
to stand up and be counted when they find themselves in tyranny.
I hope the scholars will see the great wisdom of the young Albert Camus
reportages written underground in the Nazi-occupied Paris, in which the
20-something year old future 1957 Nobel Laureate profoundly invokes,
I love my country too much to be a nationalist.
I hope that we will never accept Nobel Laureate Heisenbergs hypothet-
ical choice of signing a death verdict to an innocent man, no matter what
benefit, even for the sake of saving other innocent men. As another Nobel
Laureate Eli Wiesel calls upon us all in his 1986 Nobel Lecture,
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but
there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us
that by saving a single human being, man can save the world. We may
be powerless to open all the jails and free all the prisoners, but by
declaring our solidarity with one prisoner, we indict all jailers. None of
us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce
it and expose it in all its hideousness.539
Our greatest enemy in all that matters to our existence is our own
indifference:540
The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference.
The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, its indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, its indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death,
but indifference between life and death.
I hope and I hope that indifference to injustice will never enter your heart,
my reader. Your heart and mine.
539
Elie Wiesel, The 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture Hope, Despair, and Memory, December
11, 1986.
540
Elie Wiesel, US News & World Report, 27 October 1986.
List of Illustrations
Photo 1 Memorial Plaque for Dr. Theo van der Waerden by Jacobus de
Graaff, a Courtesy of Theo van der Waerden. P. 17.
Photo 2 Dr. Theo, Bart, Dorothea, Ben and Coen van der Waerden, 1916,
Courtesy of Dorith van der Waerden. P. 18.
Photo 3 Dr. Theo, Bart, Dorothea, Ben and Coen van der Waerden, 1925,
Courtesy of Dorith van der Waerden. P. 19
Photo 4 The Van der Waerden familys Amsterdam house at Hondecoe-
terstraat 5; A recent photo by Theo van der Waerden, the grandson of
Dr. Theo van der Waerden. P. 21
Photo 5 Camilla, Bartel, Theodorus, Coenraad, Dorothea and Benno van der
Waerden; 30th Anniversary of Theo and Dorotheas marriage, Circa
August 28, 1931, Freudenstadt, Southern Germany. Courtesy of
Coenraads son Theo van der Waerden. P. 25
Photo 6 Bartel at 16 ( first row, fourth from the right). Inauguration in the
Amsterdam Student Corps (Amsterdamsch Studenten Corps), 1919;
Courtesy of Theo van der Waerden. P. 28
Photo 7 Hamburg Mathematicians, 1927, From the left: Petersson, Furch,
Artin, Herglotz, Reidemeister, Brauner, Haack, Hoheisel, Slotnik, Rein-
hardt, Schreier, Blaschke, Behnke, Kloosterman, Van der Waerden;
Archives of P. Roquette, Courtesy of the Archives of the Mathematisches
Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach. P. 33
Photo 8 The Facsimile of August 6, 1927, letter from Courant to Van der
Waerden. New York University, Archive, Courant Papers. P. 41
Photo 9 Bartel L. van der Waerden (left) and Richard Brauer, Photo by
Wolfgang Gaschutz, Courtesy of the Archives of the Mathematisches
Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach. P. 66
Photo 10 Peter Debye, Leipzig, 1928, Courtesy of Leipzig University. P. 68

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8
452 List of Illustrations
Photo 11 Bartel L. van der Waerden, Leipzig, June 1931, Courtesy of

Leipzig University. P. 72
Photo 12 Heisenbergs Seminar: Blass, Heisenberg, Trefflitz, and Hund,
Courtesy of Leipzig University. P. 75
Photo 13 B. L. van der Waerden Lecturing at Leipzig, ca. 1931, Courtesy of
Photo 14 Werner Heisenberg Lecturing at Leipzig, ca. 1931, Courtesy of
Photo 15 Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, 1934,
Photo 16 Albert Einstein, ca. early 1930s, Photo by E. Zieber, Courtesy of
Alice Calaprice. P. 82
Photo 17 B.L. van der Waerden, ca. 1933, Courtesy of Leipzig University.
P. 86
Photo 18 Facsimile: B. L. van der Waerden claims his full-blooded
Aryanness. Courtesy of Leipzig University. P. 88
Photo 19 Facsimile: B. L. van der Waerdens Oath of Allegiance to Hitler,
Photo 20 From the left: Ernst Witt; Paul Bernays; Helene Weyl; Hermann
Weyl; Joachim Weyl, Emil Artin; Emmy Noether; Ernst Knauf;
Unknown; Chiuntze Tsen; Erna Bannow (later Mrs. Ernst Witt);
Nikolausberg (near Gottingen), Photo by Natasha Artin, 1932, Courtesy
of the Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach.
P. 107
Photo 21 Leipzig Faculty, including some major players of the May 8, 1935
Faculty Meeting. From the left, first row: Friedrich Klinger, Werner
Heisenberg; second row: Bernhard Schweitzer, Joachim Wach; third
row: Hermann Heimpel, Theodor Hetzer, Konstantin Reichardt, and
Dekan Helmut Berve. April 1935, Courtesy of Leipzig University. P. 114
Photo 22 Konstantin Reichardt, 1935, Courtesy of Leipzig University.
P. 118
Photo 23 Bartel L. van der Waerden, ca. 1935, Courtesy of the Archives of
the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach. P. 120
Photo 24 Werner Heisenberg, giving his Inaugural Lecture, February
1, 1928; Courtesy of Leipzig University. P. 121
Photo 25 Arthur Golf, 1935, Courtesy of Leipzig University. P. 122
Photo 26 Friedrich Hund, 1920s, Gottingen, Wikipedia. P. 123
Photo 27 Bernhard Schweitzer, 1935, Courtesy of Leipzig University.
P. 125
Photo 28 Max Planck, Courtesy of Max Planck Gesellschaft. P. 128
List of Illustrations 453
Photo 29 Copy of Himmlers Letter to Heisenberg, July 21, 1938, Courtesy

of Leipzig University. P. 134
Photo 30 Werner and Elisabeth Heisenberg, April 1937 (They were married
on April 29, 1937), Courtesy of Leipzig University. P. 135
Photo 31 Werner Heisenberg, 1933, Bundesarchiv Bild183-R57262,
Wikipedia. P. 137
Photo 32 Heinrich Himmler, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S72707, Wikipedia.
P. 137
Photo 33 Facsimile: F uhrer of Dozentenbund recommends the removal of
B.L. van der Waerden from the position of the Director of the Mathe-
matics Institute on the grounds of foreign citizenship and sympathy
toward Jews; April 20, 1940; Courtesy of Universit atsarchiv Leipzig,
PA 70, p. 54. P. 149
Photo 34 Erich Hecke, contributed by L. Reidemeister, Courtesy of the
Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach. P. 154
Photo 35 Destruction of Rotterdam, May 14, 1940; Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-
2005-0003,_Rotterdam,_Zerstorungen, Wikipedia. P. 161
Photo 36 Dutch Ship being torpedoed by a German submarine, October,
1945; Alexander Soifers collection; Photo ANEFO.541 P. 165
Photo 37 Helmut Hasse, contributed by Konrad Jacobs, Courtesy of the
Photo 38 B. L. van der Waerdens Germanness, a facsimile of a fragment
of the letter to W. Suss, Courtesy of ETH. P. 195
Photo 39 Breidablik, Courtesy of Dorith van der Waerden. P. 205
Photo 40 Double Portrait of Hans and Ilse van der Waerden, drawn by Hans
van der Waerden, Courtesy of ETH. P. 210
Photo 41 B. L. van der Waerden, April 24, 1995 letter to Alexander Soifer.
P. 225
Photos 4243 Facsimile: B.L. van der Waerden, Defense, Courtesy of
RANH. Pp. 230231
Photo 44 Johannes Gualtherus van der Corput, Courtesy of Prof. Sibrand
Poppema, President of Groningen University, P. 234
Photo 45 Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, Wikipedia. P. 260
Photo 46 Three Recently Released Detainees, all Nobel Prize Laureates:
Werner Heisenberg, Max von Laue, and Otto Hahn, Gottingen, 1946;
541
From Wikipedia: The Algemeen Nederlandsch Fotobureau (General Dutch Photo Bureau,
or ANeFo) was a photograph press agency in the Netherlands, that worked together with the
Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP) and other press agencies, until it ceased to exist
in 1989.
454 List of Illustrations
Photo 47 Niels Bohr, Courtesy of Max Planck Gesellschaft. P. 340

Photo 48 Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn, 1960s, contributed by Konrad Jacobs,
Courtesy of the Archives of the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut
Oberwolfach. P. 354
Photo 49 Beno Eckmann, 1988, by Konrad Jacobs, Courtesy of the
Photo 50 Issai Schur, Courtesy of his daughter, Hilde Abelin-Schur. P. 381
Photo 51 Letter relieving Issai Schur from his duties at the University of
Berlin, Courtesy of the Archive of Humboldt University at Berlin. P. 383
Photo 52 Facsimile of B. L. van der Waerdens March 9, 1995 letter to
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Photo 53 Facsimile of B. L. van der Waerdens April 4, 1995 letter to
Alexander Soifer. P. 387
Photo 54 Issai Schur (left) and Edmund Landau, Courtesy of Schurs
daughter, Hilde Abelin-Schur. P. 390
Photo 55 Pierre Joseph Henry Baudet. Courtesy of Henry Baudet II. P. 393
Photo 56 Seated: Ernestine, Puck and P. J. H. Baudet; standing ( from the
left): Emanuel Lasker and a Gymnasium Rektor, Laskers house, August
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Photo 57 Werner Heisenberg, Courtesy of Max Planck Gesellschaft. P. 424
Photo 58 Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, ca. 1980, Courtesy of Leipzig
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Photo 59 Elie Wiesel, 1987, by Erling Mandelmann, Wikipedia. P. 438
Photo 60 Edward R. Murrow, 1957, Broadcasting Archives at the Univer-
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111, 1935, 469476. Engl. Transl. by Blocher, H. I., in Dick, A.,
Emmy Noether 18821935, Birkhauser, Boston, 1981.
[Wae6] Waerden, B. L. van der, Moderne Algebra, vol. 1(1937) and 2
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[Wae7] Waerden, B. L. van der, Letter to Behnke, October 5, 1940, Erich
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[Wae9] Waerden, B. L. van der, Prof. Van der Waerden verweert zich, Het
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[Wae10] Waerden, B. L. van der, Rechtzetting, Propria Cures, February
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[Wae11] Waerden, B. L. van der, Moderne Algebra, vol. 1 and 2(1950), 3rd
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[Wae12] Waerden, B. L. van der, Over de Ruimte, Rede, 4 December 1950,
P. Noordhoff N.V., Groningen-Djakarta, 1950.
[Wae13] Waerden, B. L. van der, Einfall und U berlegung in der
Mathematik,1. Mitteilung, Elem. Math. VIII(6) (1953), 121144;
2. Mitteilung, Elem. Math. IX(1) (1954), 124; 3. Mitteilung:
Der Beweis der Vermutung von Baudet, Elem. Math. IX(3)
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[Wae14] Waerden, B. L. van der, Einfall und Uberlegung: Drei Kleine
Beitrage zur Psychologie des Mathematischen Denkens (Idea
and Reflection: Three Little Contributions to the Psychology of
the Mathematical Thinking. In 3 parts; 3rd part: Der Beweis der
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[Wae17] Waerden, B. L. van der, letter to Henry Baudet, October 20, 1965.
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[Wae19] Waerden, B. L. van der, letter to N. G. de Bruijn, April 5, 1977.
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[Wae22] Waerden, B. L. van der, Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civili-
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[WW2] Weizsacker, C.F. von, Waerden, B. L. van der, et al., Werner
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Index
A Bonhoeffer, Karl Friedrich, 127, 283, 284, 411,

Achelis, Hans Georg, 88 412
Adenauer, Konrad, 343, 414 Born, Max, 94, 417, 419
Ahlfors, Lars Valerian, 285, 361, 362 Bowman, Isaiah, 295, 296
Akutagawa, Ryunosuke, 3 Brauer, Alfred T., 11, 371, 379, 382, 384, 385,
Aristotle, 3, 4, 405 389, 390
Brauer, Richard D., 59, 6166, 364, 384, 385
Brecht, Berthold, 90
B Brouwer, L.E.J., 9, 20, 2731, 42, 53, 5557,
Bagge, Erich, 326, 330, 339 252, 259263, 347349, 366, 391, 397,
Barrau, Johan Antony, 3132, 51, 5354, 441442
171179, 226, 348, 391, 398, 401 Bruijn, Nicolaas G. de, xxii, xxiii, 57, 12, 32,
Barsotti, Jacopo, 188 47, 48, 54, 203, 223, 261, 281, 299,
Baudet, Ernestine, 399, 400 353355, 366, 367, 371, 379, 387, 392,
Baudet, Henry, xxii, xxiii, 12, 387391, 396, 397
393401 Bush, George W., 247
Baudet, P.J.H., 5, 12, 48, 49, 371, 376, 377,
379, 384387, 389401, 406
Baudet, Puck, 399, 400 C
Baudet, Senta Govers, xxiii, 388 Camus, Albert, 12, 449
Behnke, Heinrich, 33, 37, 155157, 167 Caratheodory, Constantin, 150, 178, 199, 219,
Berliner, Arnold, 64, 138, 139, 417 232, 238, 349, 430, 431
Berve, Helmut, 114, 116 Cartan, Elie, 189, 190
Bethe, Hans, 69, 343, 420 Cartan, Henri, 190
Bieberbach, Ludwig, 141, 142, 168169, Cassidy, David C., 439, 442
251, 429 Chagall, Marc, 89
Blaschke, Wilhelm, 33, 34, 36, 37, 51, 52, 429 Chow, Wei-Liang, 227, 297
Bloch, Felix, 69, 78, 84, 85, 99, 343 Clara, Max, 150, 168, 169
Blumenthal, Otto, 156, 178, 181, 238, 349, 429 Clay, Jacob, 237, 252, 260262, 268, 269, 271,
Boer, Feike de, 268, 275278 276, 279, 280, 349, 352
Bohr, Harald, 141, 168169, 187, 239 Corput, Johannes Gualtherus van der, 12, 54,
Bohr, Niels, xxiii, 10, 12, 67, 78, 85, 130, 131, 74, 169, 200, 232254, 256, 260263,
141, 304, 308, 311313, 333336, 339, 269, 272, 274, 275, 279, 280, 284, 308,
340, 345, 413, 417, 418, 423 349, 350, 352, 353, 394, 429, 432,
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 283 433, 441

DOI 10.1007/978-3-0348-0712-8
468 Index
Courant, Ernst, xxii, 221 G

Courant, Richard, 9, 30, 3436, 39, 4145, 51, Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 167, 412
54, 5964, 67, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 99, Garsia, Adriano, 376
102, 103, 137139, 181, 182, 187, 207, Georgiadou, Maria, 150, 167, 430
208, 221, 252, 253, 295, 308, 348350, Gillispie, Charles C., xxii, xxiv, 297
401, 409, 428, 431, 432 Goedhart, Frans Johannes, a.k.a. Pieter t
Hoen, 265, 272
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 27, 136, 380
D Golf, Arthur, 10, 116, 122
Dalen, Dirk van, viiviii, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, Goring, Herman, 182, 183, 228, 240
2831, 56, 57, 67, 74, 261, 347349, Goudsmit, Samuel Abraham, 135, 276, 277,
441 297, 301314, 323328, 333336
Dam, Jan van, 171, 174177, 228, 229 Groves, Leslie R., 302, 329
Dantzig, David van, 235, 261, 353, 355 Grunbaum, Branko, xiiixiv, xxi, xxii
Davenport, Harold, 187 Gunning, Robert C., 45
Debye, Peter, 12, 26, 69, 70, 145, 147, 166,
243, 244, 429
Dehn, Max, 183 H
Dieudonne, Jean, 188 Habicht-van der Waerden, Helga, 54, 75, 137,
Dold-Samplonius, Yvonne, 40, 126, 279, 404 146, 204, 208, 209, 295, 369, 403
Duparc, H.J.A., xxii, 7, 349, 367, 408 Hahn, Otto, 305, 310, 322, 328330, 414, 417,
420, 440
Hasse, Helmut, 184193, 196198, 200, 228
E Hecke, Erich, 12, 33, 3537, 67, 68, 154156,
Eckmann, Beno, xxii, 7, 12, 284, 292, 356, 167, 177, 178, 181, 185, 194, 238, 239,
360363, 365, 403, 409, 428, 433 253, 429, xxiii
Ehrenfest, Paul, 67, 334, 417 Heine, Heinrich, 159
Einstein, Albert, 7, 12, 67, 8284, 8994, Heisenberg, Elisabeth (Schumacher), 135, 327,
107109, 132, 135, 285, 306, 307, 344, 330
345, 349, 417, 420, 427, 439, 441 Heisenberg, Jochen H., xxii, 327
Eisenhart, Luther P., 98, 99, 216, 398 Heisenberg, Werner K., xvii, xxiii, xxiii, 10,
Epple, Moritz, xxi, xxii, 228 12, 69, 75, 7779, 81, 89, 99, 101, 105,
Erdos, Paul, xxii, 7, 43, 281, 371, 385 113115, 121, 132, 133, 135, 136, 167,
Ernst, Max, 89 179, 198, 274, 297, 299, 301303, 305,
Euwe, Max, 28, 32 313, 315, 316, 324, 327331, 333, 339,
343, 345, 411413, 417421, 423425,
439, 440, 447, 448
F Heydrich, Reinhard, 133
Faulkner, William, 1 Heyting, Arend, 32, 348
Fernandez, James W., ixxii, xxi, xxii, Hilbert, David, 9, 30, 44, 55, 56, 60, 67, 109,
13, 433 155, 156, 178, 181, 182, 209, 260, 348,
Fernandez, Renate, ixxii, xxi, xxii, 13, 433 349, 383, 432
Feuchtwanger, Lion, 1, 3, 4, 89, 90 Himmler, Heinrich, 132137, 286, 287, 302,
Finsler, Paul, 285, 290, 291, 361, 362, 364 306, 307, 320, 324, 327, 335337, 427
Flexner, Abraham, 64, 90, 91, 104, 109 Hitler, Adolf, xiii, 80, 8284, 88, 92, 93, 95,
Frei, Gunther, 190194, 323, 409 105, 130, 165, 181, 185187, 191193,
Freudenthal, Hans, 81, 89, 159, 171, 177, 226, 200, 227, 239, 240, 242, 244246, 248,
236, 237, 246, 248, 252, 259, 261263, 249, 251, 256, 274, 283, 286, 287, 289,
268, 269, 271, 283, 353 292, 303, 306, 307, 309, 312, 317, 321,
Friedrichs, Kurt O., 44 334339, 343, 345, 347, 380, 382, 427,
Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg, 62 429, 434
Fueter, Rudolph, 290292, 360, 361, 363, Hopf, Heinz, 147, 213, 218221, 227,
365, 366 241243, 276, 361, 362, 403
Index 469
Houtermans, Friedrich Georg Fritz, 308, 335, Ledermann, Walter, xxii, 380
336, 339 Leeuw, Gerard van der, 235, 236, 247249,
Huizinga, Johan, 338 263, 275, 278280, 285
Hund, Friedrich, 75, 77, 78, 115, 116, 123, 124, Lefschetz, Solomon, 90, 91, 98, 99, 208,
126, 127, 404, 411, 412 213217, 221, 295
Lehrer, Tom, 324
Lehto, Olli, 285, 286, 291
I Lenard, Philipp, 132
Ille, Hildegard, 384, 385 Levi, Friedrich Wilhelm Daniel, 87, 115, 117,
119
Lichtenstein, Leon, 70, 71, 100
J Littel, Freddy, 150
Johnson, Jr., Peter D., xvxviii, xxi Lukas, Richard C., 188
Jong, Louis de Lukomskaya, Mira Abramovna, 372374, 395
Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands, 159, 350,
351
Jungk, Robert, 338340, 343, 344 M
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1
Mac Lane, Saunders, 44, 181
K Mann, Heinrich, 90
Katz, Nick, xxiiixxiv, 97 Mannoury, Gerrit, 31, 397
Khinchin, Alexander Yakovlevich, 371, 372, Mann, Thomas, 89, 420
374376, 378, 395 Mehrtens, Herbert, 433
Kipling, Rudyard, 42, 43 Meitner, Lise, 322
Kloosterman, Hendrik Douwe, 33, 36, 37, 219, Minnaert, M.G.J., 235, 239, 244, 248
241, 353 Miosz, Czesaw, 432
Knegtmans, Peter J., xxii, xxiii, 223, 225, 234, Mises, Richard E. von, 94
247, 270, 274, 277, 279 Moore, Gregory, 55
Kneser, Hellmuth, 29, 348 Morrison, Philip, 323, 324
Knorr, Wilbur R., 406, 407 Murnaghan, Francis Dominic, 295, 296
Kochen, Simon B., 45 Murrow, Edward R., 445447
Kohn, Joseph J., 45 Mutschmann, Martin, 115
Koksma, J. F., 235, 261, 353
Korteweg, Diederik, 391
Kramers, Hendrik Anthony "Hans,", 10, 235, N
333, 334, 336, 345, 413, 417 Neugebauer, Otto, 8, 60, 64, 150, 187, 207,
Kreuzer, Alexander, 34, 35, 178, xxiii 208, 213, 215, 219221, 295, 405,
Krueger, Felix Emil, 115, 132, 157 408, 409
Kuhn, Harold W., xix, xxi, xxii, 45, 46, 417 Neumann, John von, 214, 288, 384
Kurosawa, Akira, 3 Nevanlinna, Rolf, 189, 286292, 360, 363, 364,
403
Nicolai, Friedrich, 27
L Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3
Lambina, Elena Nikolaevna, xxiii, 373, 374 Noether, Emmy, xix, 9, 30, 31, 34, 35, 40, 45,
Landau, Edmund, 37, 52, 53, 89, 191, 226, 348, 46, 52, 53, 59, 6163, 77, 86, 89, 102,
389, 390, 428 107110, 181, 182, 185, 186, 192, 193,
Landau, Lev, 78, 342 227, 275, 348, 376, 391, 409, 428, 431
Landsberger, Benno, 115, 117, 119
Lang, Serge, 46, 189
Lasker, Emanuel, xxiii, 391, 392, 399, 400 P
Laudal, Arnfinn, 190 Pash, Boris T., 302
Laue, Max von, 92, 303, 323, 324, 328, 329, Pauli, Wolfgang, 69, 417419, 441
339, 414 Peremans, Wouter, 47
470 Index
Petersson, Hans, 37 Stark, Johannes, 132, 133, 302, 306, 307

Petersson, Holger P., xxiii, 33, 155, 167 Steiner, Hans, 285, 286, 288291
Planck, Max, 12, 75, 81, 89, 93, 99, 127132, Stephan, Alexander, 90
167, 301, 417, 421, 425, 439 Struik, Dirk J., xxii, 224, 404
P
olya, George, 361365 Suss, Wilhelm, 167, 182, 183, 194, 196, 197,
Powers, Thomas, xxii, xxiii, 297, 411, 412 253
R T
Rado, Richard, 371, 384 Tarkovsky, Andrei, 320
Ramsey, Frank P., xiv, 10 Teller, Edward, 78, 343, 416
Reichardt, Konstantin, 114, 118 Thiele, Rudiger, 8, 35
Reich, Karin, 35 Tisdale, Wilbur Earle, 3537, 102104
Reid, Constance, 44, 91 Tonelli, L., 188
Reid, Miles, 8 Trotsky, Leon, 83
Rellich, Franz, 44, 54, 138, 367 Trotter, Hale F., 45
Remarque, Erich Maria, 89 Trowbridge, Augustus, 30, 35
Reve`sz, Geza, 252 Turan, Paul, 371
Robbins, Herbert, 45 Twain, Mark, 16
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 165, 309, 335,
337, 344, 345, 442
Roquette, Peter, 33, 190192, 194 V
Rosbaud, Paul, 339, 417 Vahlen, Theodor, 115, 119
Rust, Bernhard, 115, 119, 136, 142, 144, 145, Veblen, Oswald, 8, 64, 101, 102, 187,
202, 203, 337, 382, 432 188, 190, 191, 207, 208, 214, 215,
221, 295
Visser, Tj. S., 394, 395
S Vries, Hendrick de, 31, 32, 397, 409
Schmidt, F.K., 61, 6365, 100, 101
Schouten, Jan A., 52, 224, 235, 261, 288, 289,
355, 361, 362, 364, 365 W
Schreier, Otto, 3337, 40, 47, 48, 371, 376, Wach, Joachim, 114117, 119
377 Waerden, Annemarie van der, 27, 209, 251
Schuh, Frederik, 391, 395398, 401 Waerden, Bartel Leendert van der, vii,
Schur, Issai, xxiii, 5, 12, 49, 62, 65, 371, 373, viii, x, xi, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xix,
377, 379390, 397401, 406 xxi, xxii, xxiii, xiv, xxv, 513, 24,
Schweitzer, Bernhard, 114, 115, 125 25, 2737, 3949, 51, 5457, 5989,
Segal, Sanford, 155, 185, 187, 189 97105, 108, 109, 115, 116, 120, 121,
Seifert, Herbert, 227, 228 126, 127, 131, 132, 137139, 141157,
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 44 159, 166179, 181, 182, 185, 190,
Sepinwall, Harriet, 5 192199, 201204, 207, 208, 213257,
Shakespeare, William, xxiv, 91, 101, 320 259263, 265281, 283286, 288, 289,
Shelah, Saharon, 43, 97 293, 295299, 301314, 331, 333353,
Siegel, Carl Ludwig, 150, 190, 191 355, 356, 360364, 366369, 371401,
Siegmund-Schultze, Reinhard, xxii, 30, 35, 90, 403435, 439, 441, 447
104, 117, 198 Waerden, Benno van der, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25,
Skolem, Thoralf, 190 205, 355, 356, 368
Smith, D. A., 11 Waerden, Camilla van der, 25, 54, 75, 137,
Sommerfeld, Arnold, 69, 418 145147, 199, 204, 208, 232, 245, 247,
Speiser, Andreas, 285, 291, 361, 363365 283, 295, 298, 352, 356, 357, 367369,
Spinoza, Benedict de, 92, 94, 441 403, 404, 411, 412, 428, 429
Springer, Ferdinand, 6065, 155157, 187 Waerden, Coenraad van der, 6, 16, 18, 19,
Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 4 2225, 205, 355
Index 471
Waerden, Dorith van der, xxii, 15, 16, 1820, Weitzenbock, Roland, 29, 31, 237, 249, 348
22, 23, 205, 206, 355, 368 Weizsacker, Carl Friedrich von, 12, 78, 79,
Waerden, Dorothea van der, 16, 1820, 22, 25, 131, 302, 307, 316, 318, 329, 342, 413,
146, 147, 205, 206 420, 421, 440
Waerden, Hans van der, xxii, 126, 146, 170, Weizsacker, Ernst Ulrich von, 78, 333
196, 203, 204, 208211, 295, 357, 367, Weizsacker, Ernst von, 316
403, 410, 427, 434 Weizsacker, Richard von, 318
Waerden, Helga van der, 54, 75, 137, 146, 204, Weyl, Hermann, 46, 52, 53, 63, 64, 107, 109,
208, 209, 295, 369, 403 181, 182, 219, 221, 348, 382
Waerden, Herman van der, 209 White, Alfred, 289
Waerden, Ilse, 54, 137, 146, 204, 208210, Wiesel, Elie, 437, 438, 443, 445, 449
295, 403 Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands, 52, 73,
Waerden, Jan van der, 16, 17, 22, 200, 201, 251 159162, 283, 350
Waerden, Theo van der, 9, xxii, 1522, 25, 28, Wilmanns, Wolfgang Otto, 143, 202
74, 144147, 200, 203, 205, 206, 209, Winkelman, Henri Gerard, 150, 161170
251, 367 Wintner, Aurel Friedrich, 78, 296
Walker, Mark, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, 10, 297, 302, Wirtz, Karl, 342
315, 316, 342, 344 Witt, Ernst, 107, 191, 376
Washnitzer, Gerard, 45, 186, 188
Wedderburn, Joseph Henry Maclagan, 216
Weickmann, Ludwig, 85, 87, 100 Z
Weigert, Fritz, 115, 117, 119 Zweig, Stefan, 1

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Alexander Soifer 2015

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Printed on acid-free paper

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Foreword by Dirk van Dalen

In 1950 I was a freshman at the University of Amsterdam. Its Mathematics

Soifers journey through a long list of archives, combined with an

Utrecht, The Netherlands Dirk van Dalen

Foreword by James W. Fernandez: On Acquiescence

There are many reasons why this so impressively researched biography

To be sure it has long been said of mathematicians, so often men and

transcendent humanization in which the other, the Nebenmenschen,

Chicago, IL James W. Fernandez

Foreword by Branko Grunbaum

Seattle, WA Branko Grunbaum

Foreword by Peter D. Johnson, Jr

faculties of historians are indispensable, but if we are interested in what

Soifers warning to mathematicians and scientists strikes home: would I, in

Auburn University, AL Peter D. Johnson Jr.

Foreword by Harold W. Kuhn

In the best graduate schools of my generation, Modern Algebra was synon-

Princeton, NJ Harold W. Kuhn

My deep gratitude goes to Dirk van Dalen, James W. Fernandez, Branko

someone I havent met, so well understood this research, appreciated its

M. Katz, Former Chair, Department of Mathematics, and the Archive of the

Foreword by Dirk van Dalen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

13 The Princeton Job Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

40 Reunions of Old Friends: Van der Waerden and

The past is never dead. Its not even past.

Life travels upward in spirals. He who takes pains to search the

He alone reads history aright who, observing how powerfully cir-

[Historical novelist] wants to understand the present, and thus

Alexander Soifer 2015 1

The artistic representation of history is a more scientific and serious

Good history is possible when historians take the initiative to under-

It is hard to be a historian. It is difficult if you have not lived in the

Bartel Leendert van der Waerden was a distinguished mathematician and

Alexander Soifer 2015 5

most liberally on the history of mathematics, astronomy, and natural sci-

In the process, I discovered many new documents, not introduced earlier

Many of my predecessors apparently believed that a personal acquain-

contribution is often suppressed because a number of mathematicians

express my views on some of the important issues that the personages of my

To Dorith & Theo van der Waerden,

Alexander Soifer 2015 15

Those of us fortunate to grow up in an inspiring family know how

could become an engineer or architect. They had to study quickly in

taught mathematics and mechanics in Leeuwarden, Dordrecht and finally

Holland was overwhelmed by German invaders in the course of five short

After the war, in 1947 he [Coen] . . . became Secretary of the Board of

Alexander Soifer 2015 27

Dirk van Dalen in his remarkable two-volume biography [Dal1, Dal2]25

when he tries to get him the Rockefeller (International Education Board, or

In mathematics Van der Waerden was easily recognized as an out-

concerning the number of intersections of a curve and a surface in the

Alexander Soifer 2015 33

He confirms it to the interviewer on May 4, 1993 [Dol1]:

Hamburg Universitys Prof. Dr. Karin Reich of the Geschichte der