The Hitler spirit and science [may 8, 1924]

Philipp Lenard

Johannes Stark

pp. 7-10

in: Klaus Hentschel (ed), Physics and national socialism, Basel, Birkhäuser, 1996

Abstract

We have had the pleasure of receiving general recognization as scientists and would like to speak here in this capacity. Following our innermost feeling we would like to make known herewith our recognization as scientist of hitler and his comrades. We recognize—in the way they expressed themselves before and during the recently conclude legal proceeding ^[3] and in their whole thinking and sentiment—the very same spirit [Geist] that we ourselves have it profound and at the same time of inner uniformity; that spirit which hates any compromising activity because it is insincere. But we have already recognized early on and revered this—to us exemplary—spirit in the great scientist of the past as well: in galileo, kepler, Newton, and Faraday.^[4] We admire and revere it in the same way also in Hitler, Ludendorff, Pöhner, and their comrades.^[5] We recognize in the closest affinity of ideas with our own.