Johannes Juilfs

Juilfs was a theoretical physics assistant from 1938 to 1945 at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics; today, the Max-Planck Institut für Physik), first for Max von Laue and from 1943 to Werner Heisenberg.[4][5]

Juilfs was first a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA, Storm Detachments) and then, in 1933, of the Schutz-Staffel (SS, Defense Squadron). He was also a leader in the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (NSDStB, National Socialist German Student League). In the SS, he rose to the rank of Obersturmführer.[6][7]

On 1 April 1935 Arnold Sommerfeld, Heisenberg’s teacher and doctoral advisor at the University of Munich, achieved emeritus status. However, Sommerfeld stayed on as his own temporary replacement during the selection process for his successor, which took until 1 December 1939. The process was lengthy due to academic and political differences between the Munich Faculty’s selection and that of both the Reichserziehungsministerium (REM, Reich Education Ministry.) and the supporters of deutsche Physik, which was anti-Semitic and had a bias against theoretical physics, especially including quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

In 1935, the Munich Faculty drew up a candidate list to replace Sommerfeld as ordinarius professor of theoretical physics and head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich. There were three names on the list: Werner Heisenberg, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932, Peter Debye, who would receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1936, and Richard Becker - all former students of Sommerfeld. The Munich Faculty was firmly behind these candidates, with Heisenberg as their first choice. However, supporters of deutsche Physik and elements in the REM had their own list of candidates and the battle commenced, dragging on for over four years. During this time, Heisenberg came under vicious attack by the supporters of deutsche Physik.

One such attack was published in Das Schwarze Korps, the newspaper of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, headed by Heinrich Himmler. In the editorial, Heisenberg was called a “White Jew” who should be made to “disappear.”[8] These verbal attacks were taken seriously, as there was physical violence against the Jews and they were incarcerated. Heisenberg fought back with an editorial and a letter to Himmler, in an attempt to get a resolution to this matter and regain his honor.

At one point, Heisenberg’s mother visited Himmler’s mother to help bring a resolution to the affair. The two women knew each other as a result of Heisenberg’s maternal grandfather and Himmler’s father being rectors and members of a Bavarian hiking club. Eventually, Himmler settled the Heisenberg affair by sending two letters, one to SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich and one to Heisenberg, both on 21 July 1938. In the letter to Heydrich, Himmler said Germany could not afford to lose or silence Heisenberg as he would be useful for teaching a generation of scientists. To Heisenberg, Himmler said the letter came on recommendation of his family and he cautioned Heisenberg to make a distinction between professional physics research results and the personal and political attitudes of the involved scientists. The letter to Heisenberg was signed under the closing “Mit freundlichem Gruss und, Heil Hitler!” (With friendly greetings, Heil Hitler!”)[9]

Overall, the Heisenberg affair was settled with a victory for academic standards and professionalism, however, with Wilhelm Müller taking over for Sommerfeld on 1 December 1939, this appointment was a political victory over academic standards. Müller was not a theoretical physicist, had not published in a physics journal, and was not a member of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft; his appointment as a replacement for Sommerfeld was considered a travesty and detrimental to educating a new generation of theoretical physicists.[10][11][12][13][14]

During the SS investigation of Heisenberg, there were three investigators and all had training in physics. Heisenberg had participated in the doctoral examination of one of them at the Universität Leipzig. The most influential of the three, however, was Juilfs. During their investigation, they had all become supporters of Heisenberg as well as his position against the ideological policies of the deutsche Physik movement in theoretical physics and academia.[15]

It was in the summer of 1940 that Wolfgang Finkelnburg became an acting director of the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (NSDDB, National Socialist German University Lecturers League) at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt[16] (today, the Technische Universität Darmstadt). As such, he organized the Münchner Religionsgespräche (“Munich Synod”), which took place on November 15, 1940. The event was an offensive against the deutsche Physik movement. Finkelnburg invited five representatives to make arguments for theoretical physics and academic decisions based on ability, rather than politics: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Otto Scherzer, Georg Joos, Otto Heckmann, and Hans Kopfermann. Alfons Bühl, a supporter of deutsche Physik, invited Harald Volkmann, Bruno Thüring, Wilhelm Müller, Rudolf Tomaschek, and Ludwig Wesch. The discussion was led by Gustav Borer, with Herbert Stuart and Johannes Malsch as observers.[17] While the technical outcome of the event may have been thin, it was a political victory against deutsche Physik and signaled the decline of the influence of the movement within the German Reich.[18][19]

In November 1942, as a follow-on to the 1940 Münchner Religionsgespräche, 30 scientists met at Seefeld in the Austrian Tyrol to establish guidelines for the teaching of physics. Among those in attendance were Werner Heisenberg, Carl Ramsauer, Wolfgang Finkelnburg, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Juilfs, as well as supporters of the declining deutsche Physik movement. Juilfs clearly expressed the side the SS had taken against the movement. The deutsche Physik supporters were sufficiently cowed and the program of the 1940 Münchner Religionsgespräche was adopted, i.e., quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity were accepted as essential parts of German physics. This was a considerable victory by the physics establishment in Germany, as the state was forced to back down on ideological purity in the teaching of physics in order to get the physics community’s support.[20][21]