CPL310 10/27/2004 Exam on Friday will have more stress on the short answer questions based on the reports -- who wrote what, and what country they're from. -- also one-two sentence answers about the themes of the plays More on Copenhagen: Back to questions and answers: -- central question: Why did he come to copenhagen (3) -- central thesis: some questions have no answers to find (3) Historical background: -- this was a real meeting in 1941 -- during the play they circle back to 1922, 1924, 1930s, all of which have historical background too -- Relationship to WH (3ff) -- every time he explained it it became more obscure; compare to paradox as Durrenmatt explained it in The Physicists -- 1941 visit begins at train (6) -- expulsion of Jewish physicists from Germany; Nazis undermined physics (18); Nazis coined the term "Jewish physics," referring to Einstein's theoretical science -- G?ttingen 1922 (21); Bohr had given a talk and Heisenberg challenged him; Bohr was a huge figured (nicknamed "The Pope") and this kid challenged his math -- walking in G?ttingena nd Denmark (31f); 1927 uncertainty paper -- 1942 meeting with Speer (Hitler's architect and head of armaments during the war); end of German atomic bomb, under Heisenberg's control (48ff); all research canceled unless Speer deems it of immediate use; H was able to convince S to retain control of atomic research to keep Hitler's colleagues from making bombs [who's Moe Berg? He was a major league baseball player who'd played at Princeton; he knew several languages; he was very eccentric; he was a second-string catcher, barely good enough to stay in the majors; he went to the libraries in every city the team visited; first he'd been sent on a baseball tour in Japan in the 1930s and taken photos of the Tokyo skyline in case we ever had a war with them ; he learned enough German to be sent by the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA in WWII) to Switzerland where Heisenberg was lecturing in Zurich and to kill him if he thought he was working on a bomb -- he overheard a conversation between H and colleagues afterwards and decided he didn't need to kill him; book called The Catcher was a Spy] -- Copenhagen 1924 (55ff); for three years we lived inside the atom; Golden Age (59); equating particles and people -- Farm Hall (80ff); where captured scientists were brought in England after the war; they were treated very well though the whole place was bugged; perhaps this was the inspiration for Durrenmatt's play; Heisenberg hadn't checked his math because he'd come up with such a huge amount of uranium needed because he wanted the Germans to think building a bomb impossible -- third draft of his visit to Copenhagen (86ff) -- rescue of the Danish Jews (89ff); someone in the German embassy had tipped the Danish resistance off -- last days of the war and SS threats (92f); the SS executed anyone they thought was disloyal -- Heisenberg buys his life with 20 American cigarettes -- he bemoans his ruined, dishonored, beloved homeland (93) [Dr H's mother lived in a small town of 2000 people in Denmark; the Danes love their flag which dates from 1219; the Germans make fun of the Danes and the Americans for flag waving] Heisenberg & Germany: -- Germany is more complex than it may perhaps appear from the outside (20); H tells B that there are old guard (the diplomatic corp) in the embassy who will look out for B and wants B to go to embassy functions to cement that; B is too patriotic to do that; H is pointing out that not all Germans are Nazis; Gleichshaltung refers to the Nazis trying to bring everything in society under their control -- Germany is where I was born. Germany is ... (42); H tells himself and B that he just wanted to stop an American bomb in exchange for stopping a German one; an American bomb would have killed his family and destroyed his homeland; H remembers his childhood in Munich after WWI where there was anarchy, civil war, starvation; [Dr H thinks that H probably thought he wouldn't be able to work in England or the US because they weren't his homeland] -- It would have been Germany physics that achieved the world's self-sustaining chain reaction (51); except that Fermi had done it first in Chicago (in a squash court under the stands at the football field) -- my ruined and dishonored and beloved homeland (93) Dilemmas -- impossible responsibility (13) -- moral right to work on the practical exploitation of atomic energy? (twice; pp 36 & 88) [even if historicans know the words, they can't know what was meant by the speaker or how they were received by the hearer] -- control, decision, consequences, stop to think what they were doing (40ff) [M?bius's comment on consequences: "It was my duty to consider the consequences; I did and they were devestating"] [Szilard also thought about the consequences, first putting away his patent, then taking it out when Hitler's power rose, then trying to urge Roosevelt not to use it against Japan] -- Bohr was spared the decision of whether to drop the bomb; Heisenberg was not, and American physicists shunned him even though it was the Americans who actually built and used a bomb (47) -- moral independence ... moral dilemma (75) More questions and answers -- What was Bohr The father of us all (5) -- Why is everyone still workoing on [fission]? -- an element of magic (12) -- What can I say? Have things here been difficult(14) -- What are you working on? Fission. H Dodges.16 -- What do you want to know? Curious 17 -- Is this [privilege why you've come? 20 --25 -- What's he thinkin abou tnow? His life? Or ours? 29 -- But what exactly had H said? And what did Bohr reply? 34 -- 36 -- 37 -- 41 -- 43 -- 44 -- What's happening? (at Farm Hall) (45) -- We've been locked up to stop us discussing the subject until it's too late (46) -- What does he do? He goes back to Berlin and tells the Nazis he can produce atomic bombs! (47) -- Why did you come? Why did I come? (53) -- And that's what you were trying to get back to in 1941? -- To get back to something we did in those three years (the 20s) together (61) [Comparison between H and B in their methodology. B could describe a physical model of how the atom might be built; H applied math to B's physical conceptions] -- So it's no good asking him why he came to Copenhagen in 1941. He doesn't know! (72) -- 76f -- Why didn't you do the calculation? -- I don't know -- Why didn't you do it? -- Because he wasn't trying to build a bomb. -- Because I wasn't trying to build a bomb (85) -- 86 -- 88 -- 89 -- what will be left of our beloved world Our ruined and dishonored and beloved world? (94) Copenhagen video -- Epilogue -- physicist in a totalitarian country -- Frayn says he's taken aback by people now rushing to judgment of Heisenberg without having any experience of living in Nazi Germany -- Bohr wrote a letter to H disputing H's account of the meeting but didn't send it, instead redrafting it so as not to hurt H's feelings; Bohr's family kept it under wraps for 50 years</plaintext><br /></body></html>