Nine

Abstract

In the spring of 1920 the period of the Social Democratic Party’s dominance in the post-war government of Germany was essentially at an end. In the elections that year, parties to the right and to the left both made great gains. Courant was relieved to have an excuse to resign from the town council. He had found its sessions “more boring than faculty meetings” and had regularly come home with the dry announcement that he “had successfully worked for the end of the debate.” Leaving Nina and their new baby in Göttingen, he went cheerfully to Münster at Easter (the beginning of the German academic year) for what he hoped would be only a very short stay at that university.