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Brecht, Galileo, and Møller: A View from Copenhagen, 1938–1939

Abstract

The famous German author and playwright Bertolt Brecht lived in exile in Denmark from 1933 to 1939. During the last years of his stay, he was directly and indirectly involved with physicists at Niels Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. In the spring of 1938, he had a meeting with Christian Møller concerning his plan to write what became The Life of Galileo. Later, in the early months of 1939, Brecht became aware of and interested in the discovery of uranium fission, in part spurred by a radio broadcast with Møller and other physicists. The paper reconstructs what happened in Copenhagen and discusses how the events influenced Brecht’s writing of Galileo and his views on science and society. It also reconsiders how he was to some extent inspired by Albert Einstein and made theatrical use of the ideas of the great physicist.

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Source: Reproduced in Materialien zu Brechts “Leben des Galilei”, ed. W. Hecht (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1976), 23

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References

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  30. Paulsell, “Brecht’s Treatment” (ref. 25), 284, misreading a passage in Meinhard Adler, Brecht im Spiel der technischen Zeit (Berlin: Friedrich Nolte, 1976), 124.

  31. Mairhofer, “Interference” (ref. 27), 255.

  32. Mittenzwei, Leben des Bertolt Brecht, vol. 2 (ref. 4), 125–27.

  33. Entry in Arbeitsjournal of March 17, 1942. And the next day: “I like the world of the physicist which is changed by people.… Strangely, I feel more free in this world than in the old one.” Hecht, Bertolt Brecht Arbeitsjournal (ref. 15), 387–88.

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  36. Ernst Schumacher, Drama und Geschichte: Bertolt Brechts “Leben des Galilei” und Andere Stücke (Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1965), 411; Nørregaard, “Bertolt Brecht und Dänemark” (ref. 35), 447.

  37. Günter Glaeser, ed., Bertolt Brecht: Briefe 1913–1956 (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1983). The collection only includes a single letter to a physicist, namely to Heisenberg in 1955 concerning the impact of nuclear bombs on the literary world.

  38. John Willet and Ralph Manheim, eds., Brecht, Collected Plays: Five (London: Methuen Drama, 1995), 199; Bertolt Brecht, Leben des Galilei mit Anmerkungen Brechts (Leipzig: Reclam, 1965), 115.

  39. Parker, Bertolt Brecht (ref. 4), 394.

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  41. Schumacher, Drama und Geschichte (ref. 36), 38–41; Emil Wohlwill, Galilei und sein Kampf für die copernicanische Lehre, vol. 1 (Hamburg: Verlag Leopold Voss, 1909). On Wohlwill’s Galileo, see Hans-Werner Schütt, “Emil Wohlwill, Galileo and His Battle for the Copernican System,” Science in Context 13, no. 3–4 (2000), 641–43.

  42. This is what Nørregaard, “Bertolt Brecht und Dänemark” (ref. 35), 447, suggests. Although in my view a reasonable hypothesis, it lacks documentary evidence. Møller presumably knew Veibel, but again there is no solid evidence for a connection between the two or for a Berlau-Veibel connection. Berlau does not mention either Veibel or Møller in her recollections. See Bunge, Brechts Lai-Tu (ref. 7).

  43. Bunge, Brechts Lai-Tu (ref. 7), 63.

  44. Møller was first interviewed by Kuhn in 1963 and then by Weiner in 1971. The interview sessions are available online as parts of the Oral History Interviews of the American Institute of Physics. See https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories.

  45. Christian Møller, letter to Ernst Schumacher, February 19, 1959, cited in Schumacher, Drama und Geschichte (ref. 36), 112.

  46. Christian Møller, letter to Ernst Schumacher, January 3, 1959, cited in Schumacher, Drama und Geschichte (ref. 36), 113. Galileo wrote his seminal work Discorsi (Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences) in 1638.

  47. Nørregaard, “Bertolt Brecht in Dänemark” (ref. 35), 448. I have tried to locate the tape or any full transcript of it, but all efforts have been in vain.

  48. Hecht, Bertolt Brecht Arbeitsjournal (ref. 15), 35; Bertolt Brecht to Ferdinand Reyher, December 2, 1938, in Glaeser, Briefe (ref. 37), 360.

  49. Nørregaard, “Brecht in Dänemark” (ref. 35), 450, and Schumacher, Drama und Geschichte (ref. 36), 16–18. It is generally assumed that Brecht wrote Galileo with an eye to the political situation in Europe and that he portrayed Galileo as a predecessor of scientific socialism, a kind of seventeenth-century Marxist.

  50. For the list of recipients, see Mittenzwei, Leben des Bertolt Brecht (ref. 4), 1:657, and also “Margarete Steffin: Diary Entry regarding Brecht’s Galileo (27 to 29 March 1939),” Arts in Exile, accessed April 17, 2022, https://kuenste-im-exil.de/KIE/Content/EN/Objects/steffin-kalender-brecht-en.html?single=1.

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  61. Quoted in Badash, Hodes, and Tiddens, “Nuclear Fission” (ref. 57), 210.

  62. Møller, interview with Weiner (ref. 14).

  63. Ebbe Rasmussen, letter to Niels Bohr, February 20, 1939, in Rudolf Peierls, ed., Niels Bohr: Collected Works (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1986), 9:627.

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  65. Berlingske Tidende, February 23, 1939. On the same day Aftenbladet reported that Frisch had succeeded in splitting the atom.

  66. Paul Bergsøe, Naturen og – Mennesket (Copenhagen: Fremad, 1940), 72–73, which includes the complete broadcast transcript. Møller anticipated what is known as prehistoric nuclear reactors, a phenomenon only confirmed in 1972 by the French physicist Francis Perrin. See John D. Barrow, From Alpha to Omega: The Constants of Nature (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), 231–39.

  67. Niels Bohr, letter to Ebbe Rasmussen, March 10, 1939, in Peierls, Collected Works (ref. 63), 635–37.

  68. Mittenzwei, Leben des Bertolt Brecht (ref. 4), 1:656. Berlingske Tidende, February 28, 1939, with a photography of Bergsøe and the four physicists (figure 4). As mentioned, even before the radio broadcast the Danish public was made aware of the fission of uranium and its possible consequences.

  69. Hecht, Bertolt Brecht Arbeitsjournal (ref. 15), 41, entry of February 25, 1939.

  70. Bertolt Brecht, “The Experimental Theatre,” Tulane Drama Review 6, no. 1 (1961), 2–17. For the earlier versions, see Schumacher, Drama und Geschichte (ref. 36), 114, 409–10. See also Helmuth Kiesel, “Triumph und Trauma: Die kopernikanische Wende und ihre Folgen in Brecht’s ‘Leben des Galilei,’” in Weltbilder, ed. Hans Gebhardt and Helmuth Kiesel, 221–39 (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2004), 234. Engberg, Brecht på Fyn (ref. 5), 2:118, dates the radio interview to 1938 and suggests that it inspired Brecht to write Galileo, which is of course completely wrong.

  71. Bergsøe, Naturen og – Mennesket (ref. 66), 73.

  72. Schumacher, Drama und Geschichte (ref. 36), 116; Mittensweier, Leben des Bertolt Brecht (ref. 4), 1:656; Nørregaard, “Brecht und Dänemark” (ref. 35), 451.

  73. Werner Hecht, ed., Materialen zu Brecht’s “Leben des Galilei” (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 16. I have used the translation in Willet and Mannheim, Brecht, Collected Plays (ref. 38), 196.

  74. Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1982), 121.

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  77. Jydske Tidende, March 15, 1970.

  78. Helene Weigel-Brecht, letter to Niels Bohr, October 3, 1956, Bohr Private Correspondence, Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen.

  79. Sophie Hellmann, letter to Helene Weigel-Brecht, October 22, 1956, Bohr Private Correspondence, Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen. Schumacher, Drama und Geschichte (ref. 36), 468, misdates the letter to 1955. Weigel also sent a similar request to Otto Hahn. For Bohr’s Open Letter and his Geneva address see Finn Aaserud, ed., Bohr Collected Works, vol. 11 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005).

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Helge Kragh is emeritus professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has written papers and books on the history of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and cosmology. In 2019 he received the Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics from the American Physical Society.

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Kragh, H. Brecht, Galileo, and Møller: A View from Copenhagen, 1938–1939. Phys. Perspect. 24, 99–124 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-022-00289-5

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Keywords

  • Bertolt Brecht
  • Galileo Galilei
  • Christian Møller
  • Albert Einstein
  • nuclear fission
  • Copenhagen
  • communism
  • Third Reich