Abstract

Into the Germany “of Hilbert and Einstein”: Letters of Einstein, Planck, Nernst, Debye, Born, Sommerfeld, Courant, Ehrenfest, Weyl and Althoff to David Hilbert found in an attic in Göttingen. Abraham Pais described the discovery of Einstein's letters to Hilbert as “Helen's most important single contribution to the archives”1. Helen Dukas, of the Einstein Archive, had in fact only received photocopies. The location of the originals was unknown. The author first came across this correspondence between Hilbert and Einstein as well as between Planck, Born, Sommerfeld, Debye, Nernst, Ehrenfest, Weyl, Courant, Althoff and many others, in the 1980s and then once again, early in 2000, in an attic in Göttingen. – Göttingen had developed between the beginning of the 20th century and 1933 into a ‘Mecca’ of Mathematics and Physics. Hilbert's papers are thus a central source of research into this period. The essential discovered letters throw new light not only on the ‘heyday’ of Physics since the beginning of the last century but also on the political views of Hilbert and his pupils Courant and Born. These letters are described in the following for the first time within their context along with their discovery – which is almost a detective story2