Abstract

The Constitution of a Network of Reactionary Physicists during the Republic of Weimar. The dominance of physicists from Berlin in the German Physical Society caused a controversial discussion on the statute initiated by those outside of Berlin in 1914. It could not be finished because of the outbreak of World War I. This antagonism got a political and ideological quality when only the ‘Non‐Berliners’ supported a chauvinistic appeal of German physicists in the so‐called “Krieg der Geister”. After the war this development led to the constitution of a network of reactionary physicists just before the “Naturforscherversammlung” in Bad Nauheim in 1920. Its members shared a hostile attitude towards the new Republic of Weimar and were mostly chauvinistic and anti‐Semitic. Temporarily the network was able to mobilise a considerable part of German physicists for their aims. A decentralisation of the German Physical Society was put through. Considering this network we examine one of the theses of Paul Forman according to which there is a close correlation between political and scientific orientations during that time. We are able to confirm this as far as science policy is concerned. There a bias for a certain kind of research can be found. It becomes more difficult when we investigate the influence of a political attitude on the individual research. We succeed in those cases where the modern theories are involved.