The German academic game of competition for professors has figured several times in this story. The personnel files of Göttingen University contain a typical document relating to the constant threat of the poaching of prominent scholars. It’s a letter from 1926 by mathematician Richard Courant warning that other institutions may be planning to lure away famous physicist Max Born.1 Courant urges that Göttingen should make an active effort to retain Born, because he is “one of those colleagues upon whom the international reputation of this University rests.”

Near the word “colleagues” an anonymous official has penciled in the word “Jews.”

Up until 1933, the overt discrimination that Emmy Noether faced was based solely on the fact that she was a woman. Her family, although not strongly interested in religion or in their Jewish heritage, was not concerned with hiding it. In fact, as a girl, Emmy had attended Jewish religious school for a while, which was a bit unusual for the time and place. As an adult, she showed no interest in these things.

Both Max Noether and Paul Gordan (Emmy Noether’s PhD adviser) were also Jewish. These men were denied opportunities and suffered long delays in receiving appointments, because of their ethnicity.2 In a foreshadowing of the support that Felix Klein would lend to Max’s daughter decades later, the eminence of mathematics helped the father secure his first position at Erlangen in 1875.3

Emmy Noether’s heritage was not a secret and was easily discovered by anyone with sufficient idle curiosity. Some evidence suggests that her Jewish background might have been the reason for some of the treatment she received, although she would have been unaware of the details. For example, several writers believe that the refusal on the part of the Royal Göttingen Academy of Science to admit Noether as a member was due to three strikes against her: she was Jewish, she was female, and she had been at least friendly with socialists. (Many did consider her a socialist, although she had long since let a brief party membership lapse and did not take part in political activities.) It might very well have been that if any one of these demerits had not existed, then the academy could have been convinced to let her join its ranks.

She was certainly aware of being forced to vacate her apartment in 1932 after being denounced by another resident of her rooming house as a “Marxist Jewess.”4 The eviction is the first such incident involving Emmy Noether that history records. (The town of Göttingen reflected a political culture very different from the university, voting for Nazi-affiliated parties in proportions significantly higher than Germany as a whole.)5

Göttingen University, at least the parts swarming with mathematicians and scientists, may have been a partial refuge from the antisemitism endemic throughout continental Europe. But that the disease of Jew hatred was endemic, had been for centuries, and could make the lives of Jews trying to pursue a scientific career miserable is beyond debate. In his autobiography, Quest, Leopold Infeld, Einstein’s collaborator and coauthor of the popular book The Evolution of Physics, gives a moving account of the struggle to pursue a scientific career as a Jew in Europe before World War II.6 Infeld relates the impossibility of attaining an academic post in his native Poland and his repeated rejections, while non-Jews with inferior qualifications enjoyed enviable careers. He describes his near amazement, on traveling to England, to discover a land where he was judged on his merit and where his ethnicity was essentially irrelevant.

Immediately after the end of World War I, a new strain of antisemitism took root in Germany, one that would directly harm Noether and many of her colleagues. In his commentary to the published volume of his correspondence with Einstein, Max Born identified when “the great danger of antisemitism to German science first appeared.”7 He described a meeting of German doctors and scientists in September 1920, where Einstein responded with uncharacteristic anger after being viciously attacked by physicists Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. Born traces the absurd invention of the idea of “German” versus “Jewish” physics to Lenard, who began a systematic persecution of Einstein after this meeting. The two antisemitic physicists became scientific administrators under the Nazi regime and were responsible for the purging of Jewish researchers. Although both were important scientists who eventually were awarded the Nobel Prize, Stark and Lenard are as likely to be mentioned today for their collaboration with the Nazis and their persecution of Einstein, including their unhinged attacks on “Jewish physics.”

(Five years before this meeting, David Hilbert had blocked Stark’s appointment to Göttingen, expending considerable effort and political capital to do so. Hilbert acknowledged that Stark was the most qualified candidate academically but insisted that his nationalism and antisemitism made him unacceptable for Göttingen. I suppose this episode delineates the limits of Hilbert’s purely meritocratic policy.)

University students were in some ways the most enthusiastic vanguard of the Nazi pathology, as is so often the case with reactionary movements.8 By the 1930s, the idea that there were such things as Aryan and Jewish mathematics and physics was widely accepted, with the Jewish kind supposed to be somehow decadent or non-German. An anecdote dating from this period from Göttingen may illustrate the social disease that had swept over the university and set the stage for what was to come. Students organized a boycott of Jewish Göttingen professor Edmund Landau’s classes. (We met Professor Landau in the previous chapter, lamenting the inconvenience that Emmy Noether happened to be female.) When he arrived to teach, he found the doors of his classroom blocked. The student organizers explained to him that they were Aryans and insisted on being taught only Aryan mathematics.

Some German academic officials who were responsible for enacting the government’s antisemitic policies and who bent their decisions to accord with the popular anti-Jewish hysteria didn’t consider themselves antisemitic. Occasionally, Nazi students were also given to rationalizing their actions against their Jewish teachers. One such leading student activist was at pains to explain to Landau the reasons for the boycott against him. He told the professor that the protest was nothing against Landau “as a Jew” but was meant only to “protect” the young German students from having to learn calculus from someone of an “entirely foreign race.”9 He had no doubt that Landau could teach the “purely international scientific aspects” of math, but in this student leader’s view, math contained “broader educational” values, something to do with the “spirit” of the thing, which somehow was connected to the “racial composition of the individual.” Therefore, clearly, “a German student should not be trained by a Jewish teacher.”

Two days after hearing all this, Landau applied for early retirement.

In 1935, an acquaintance of the by-then expatriated mathematician Richard Courant wrote to him, describing how antisemitism had become endemic in Germany and adding, “One has the feeling that the greater part of the population is mad—one of the characteristic features of such madness being that victims are normal and (frequently) delightful people—on all subjects but two or three.”10

The idea of racial differences in scientific or mathematical thought seems ludicrous to us, but this belief was the received wisdom in the Germany of this era.11 As I’ve argued earlier, if we want to understand the actions and utterances of people from another time and place, we must make an effort to know their worldviews, no matter how alien they may seem.

Even the brilliant Felix Klein took the idea of genetically based differences in mathematical style and ability for granted, freely partaking in the amateur anthropology indulged in by his colleagues. In Klein’s case, when speaking of the influx of Jewish mathematicians into German mathematical faculties, he welcomed the “fresh blood” as an invigorating tonic, healthy for German math. Of course, this new blood included Jews who had converted to Christianity. Jewishness, and whatever influence it had on mathematical style, was in the blood and was unaffected by baptism.

On an individual level, Klein sought appointments for many Jewish colleagues, sometimes, with embarrassment, discussing with them the regrettable circumstance of the resistance they would face because of their race. An institution or a department would often willingly accept a certain number of Jews but rankle if the number became too large, obliging Klein to perform delicate feats of demographic balance as he built his mathematical empire. (I would feel slightly remiss here in not reminding the reader that many institutions of higher learning in other countries, including the United States, also enforced similar unofficial or secret quotas at the time.)12

On this question, as on so many others, Hilbert again stands alone. We may wonder why his words, reproduced below, are so often quoted. Isn’t he stating the obvious? But that’s rather like criticizing Shakespeare for using too many clichés. Hilbert spoke these words in a different context, a speech encouraging renewed international cooperation in mathematics after the end of World War I. But his statement would apply even more poignantly to the situation a few years later:

Let us consider that we as mathematicians stand on the highest pinnacle of the cultivation of the exact sciences. We have no other choice than to assume this highest place, because all limits, especially national ones, are contrary to the nature of mathematics. It is a complete misunderstanding of our science to construct differences according to peoples and races, and the reasons for which this has been done are very shabby ones.… Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries. For mathematics, the whole cultural world is a single country.13

The German race theories that Klein and his friends took seriously may seem weird and silly. But nothing is more dangerous than an idea. By the 1930s, the academically genteel theories of disparate racial abilities, often applied in praise of the Jewish mathematical mind, or at least neutrally, had rapidly evolved into a vicious racism that saw Jews as invaders and corrupters of good German society, with their decadent math and science to be stamped out in favor of the proper Aryan variety. Actual academic papers appeared in scholarly journals, explicating the corrupting influence of Jewish mathematics and science. In one of these absurd analyses, Hilbert’s math was held up as a typical example of the “Germanic type” while Noether’s was an example of the other kind.14 Einstein, now having achieved celebrity status, became a popular whipping boy in the German press. Antisemitic writers leveraged the counterintuitive nature of relativity to mock Einstein as the representative of a corrupt, Jewish science that obviously made no sense. One German magazine carried his photograph on the cover over the words “Not yet hanged.”15

The ancient prejudice had affected Einstein’s prospects in the past in more subtle ways, of which he was sometimes unaware. Einstein achieved his first academic appointment, at the University of Zürich, despite faculty misgivings about his “Israelite” background.16 They wrote in their report that they might have been concerned about disagreeable Israelite character traits had not the recommendation of one of Einstein’s acquaintances reassured them that he was an exception to the common type.

The Nazis were able to weaponize the set of preexisting odd racial notions, combined with the ancient hatreds, to make such measures as the purging of Jews from faculties and from the entire German civil service acceptable to a critical mass of not only ignorant villagers but also the intelligentsia. And the world will never forget, and must never forget, the catalog of horrors that followed.

There seemed to be particular resentment in some quarters against the Jewish intellectual class. Jews made up about 1 percent of the population of Germany but about 8 percent of the teachers in German universities. In the days preceding Hitler’s takeover of the government, the warring political parties formed paramilitary groups to do battle in the streets, to disrupt each other’s rallies, and to protect their own. The Nazi paramilitaries were the Sturmabteilung, also called the SA. They went beyond interparty conflict, enforcing the National Socialist program through violence and intimidation against Jews and their property. Today, their nickname, the Brownshirts, survives as a synonym for fascist violence.

Because Hilbert had retired from Göttingen University in 1930, he was spared having to deal directly with what was to come. He stayed in the town until his death in 1943.

In 1933, when the Nazis gained control over Germany, Emmy Noether was one of the first to be summarily dismissed in what was to become a series of purges that removed all Jews from government and academic positions. Oddly, the order to remove her referred to the new law mandating the separation of Jews from the civil service, but as described earlier, Noether’s appointment specifically stipulated that she would not be one of its members. However, her lowly status failed to protect her.

Some academics, seeing what was coming, had already left Germany. Einstein was already gone when the Nazis took over. They stole his bank account and properties, claiming to have discovered a dangerous weapon in his vacation house (it turned out to be a bread knife).17

The distaste for Germany would remain with Einstein for the rest of his life. He even condemned his friend Max Born’s return to Germany in 1953 “to help with the country’s democratic rehabilitation” and criticized others who decided to return after the war.18

Noether’s friend the mathematician Pavel Alexandrov would later describe the event this way:

German culture and, in particular, Göttingen University, which had nurtured that culture for centuries, were struck by the catastrophe of the fascist takeover, which in a matter of weeks scattered to the winds everything that had been painstakingly created over the years. What occurred was one of the greatest tragedies that had befallen human culture since the time of the Renaissance, a tragedy which only a few years ago had seemed impossible in twentieth-century Europe. One of its many victims was Emmy Noether’s Göttingen school of algebraists. The leader of the school was driven from the halls of the university.19

After her expulsion, the mathematician Helmut Hasse organized a letter-writing campaign supporting her.20 He persuaded fourteen colleagues to write about Noether’s importance and argued that she should be allowed to retain at least a small group of advanced students. The government disagreed.

Hasse presents an interesting, if disturbing, case study of the psychological conflicts festering in the minds of some German intellectuals at the time. This support of Noether, and Hasse’s other relations with Jews throughout his career, make it clear that he didn’t partake in the slightest in the antisemitism of those in power. However, Hasse’s nationalistic fervor caused him to support Hitler as a hero and to aspire to join the Nazi Party. Nazi ideology was undoubtedly rendered more palatable for Hasse because of some of his peculiar ideas. For example, he once declared that American slavery was a good thing for black people, a judgment that he treated his acquaintances to when visiting Ohio State University in the 1960s.21

Other members of the academic community at Göttingen were less subtle in their support for Nazi policies. Werner Weber, whose doctoral dissertation was supervised by Noether, praised her expulsion by the Nazis and enthusiastically cheered the expulsion of others, including Landau, who was also on his thesis committee.22

Even after her purging, Noether kept her spirits up to the extent that she inspired those around her. Hermann Weyl remembers that “her courage, her frankness, her unconcern about her own fate, her conciliatory spirit, were in the midst of all the hatred and meanness, despair and sorrow surrounding us, a moral solace.”23

Weyl had taken over Hilbert’s position as head of the Göttingen mathematicians. By now, Weyl, Noether’s contemporary, had become a famous mathematician, theoretical physicist, and philosopher. When he was offered the prestigious appointment at Göttingen, he initially refused, saying that he would be embarrassed to take a position that should rightfully belong to Noether, whom he regarded as far superior to him in mathematical talent. But Noether told him that he was being silly: the university would never offer this position to a woman, and if he didn’t take it, someone less worthy would. So, with her blessing, he stepped into the job. Weyl would later write of the Nazis that he was “deeply revolted by the shame which this regime had brought to the German name.”

Immediately after the events of 1933, he quit his job. Although he was not Jewish, his wife was, and this may have hastened his decision. He had previously received offers to come to America and join the new Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, but he couldn’t bear to abandon his beloved Germany, despite his horror at the worsening political landscape. Now, he prepared to leave.

There are several theories attempting to explain why Noether was such a priority for the Nazis. Fierce misogyny was deeply rooted in Nazi ideology, beginning with Hitler’s remarks about the nature of women in Mein Kampf. Noether would have stood out as a rare female member of the faculty of an important university. Göttingen University itself was high on the Nazi list of enemy camps, because of its reputation as not only liberal in outlook but also welcoming of foreigners of all kinds and of women. As mentioned, Noether had, at times in the past, been a member of the Social Democratic Party (a leftist party hated by the Nazis) and had even lent her apartment to some of the members for political meetings. She had expressed pacifist ideas during the war. She had been a visiting professor in Moscow in 1928–1929 and, on her return, had made approving remarks about the people and society there. Some writers have claimed that Noether’s early purge had less or even nothing to do with her identity as a Jew but was instead entirely due to the Nazi authorities’ perception of her as a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. However, her official notice of dismissal mentions her Jewish background. Nevertheless, her political sympathies and her sex undoubtedly played a big part in putting her near the top of the list.

Being unemployed had never stopped Noether from doing and teaching math before, and she was not about to let the lack of a job slow her down this time, either. But this time was different. There would be no lecturing under the radar in Göttingen classrooms. There would be no appeal. Not even Hilbert could help her now. It was one thing to thumb one’s nose at a gaggle of stodgy professors of theology; one could even enjoy watching their eyes widen behind their monocles. But now people were being shot in the street. There would be no defying the Nazis.

And yet, she did defy them. On her removal, she immediately did two things. First, thinking, as always, of others rather than worrying about herself, she joined Weyl (who deferred his escape to Princeton) and immediately organized to help other purged math professors survive. Second, she moved her classroom to her apartment. She had found no legal loophole: she was not permitted to teach Göttingen students at all, with or without pay, officially or unofficially. These math meetings were secret. Noether and her students knew that this was a subversion of authority. But she loved her students and would not leave them, and they loved her, and they flocked to her little apartment for regular seminars, and to sample her sometimes-amusing attempts at cooking.

One day, after most of Noether’s students had arrived at her apartment for another secret class, there was a knock at the door. She opened it to reveal a man dressed in the uniform of the brutal Nazi SA: the Brownshirts.

Everything froze, and time stopped.

Then suddenly the world was reanimated with greetings, smiles, and warm embraces. The man entered the apartment, his jackboots thumping the floor, and took his place with her other students.24

Noether was permanently ready to joyfully discuss mathematics with anyone, at any time, under any circumstances. Math was her life, her only real interest. For most people, the daily concerns of Noether and those few of her comrades who traveled with her at the highest reaches of mathematical thought are part of another, barely perceivable dimension. She lived her life as if, to her, the normal affairs that occupy people’s days—politics, relationships, material comforts—were equally murky and distant and of no real importance to her.

After the purges of the Jewish faculty at Göttingen were complete, Hilbert somehow found himself at a banquet, seated next to the Nazi minister of culture, Bernhard Rust.

Rust was a wild-eyed super-Nazi, considered mentally unstable even by some others in the government. He added to this perception by continually enacting and rescinding strange decrees rearranging the minutiae of the school week, altering German spelling, requiring students and teachers to greet each other with the Nazi salute, and imposing more decrees along these lines. (Rust shot himself the day after the surrender of the Nazis.) Rust was very personally active in drawing up lists of Jews for purging. A well-known proponent of the “Jewish science” concept, he asserted, “The problems of science do not present themselves in the same way to all men. The Negro or the Jew will view the same world in a different light from the German investigator.”25

The minister must have heard about the opinions of some in the scientific community about the government’s new personnel policies. He turned to Hilbert and inquired if it were true that “the Mathematical Institute really suffered so much because of the departure of the Jews?” The brutality of the Nazi regime, which had intimidated so many of his colleagues into silent acquiescence, had not inspired in Hilbert any newfound reticence or concern for his own safety. He spat out his reply.

“Suffered? It doesn’t exist any longer, does it!”

5

The Purge