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Heinrich Hertz wrote this in Berlin during the fall of 1880 to his parents in Hamburg. At this time, Hertz was 23 years old; he had just passed his physics exams under Hermann Helmholtz with flying colours and taken a position as assistant to his famous teacher. His enthusiastic statement about Berlin not only concerns his special and very successful situation at the time; above all, it reflects the fact that Berlin had developed into a leading international center of science, especially in physical research. In 1870, Berlin had not only taken over the position of the capital of the German Reich; this was also the year in which Hermann Helmholtz was called to Berlin University as director of its Institute of Physics. Through this appointment, the fame of physical research in Berlin began to spread to establish an international reputation by 1880. With the coming of Helmholtz, the general history of physics became closely connected with physics in Berlin for about half a century.² Apart from Helmholtz, many other scientists who contributed fundamentally to the development of physics worked there during this epoch. These include Max Planck and Albert Einstein above all, also Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, Friedrich Kohlrausch, Emil Warburg, Walther Nernst, Max von Laue, James Franck, Gustav Hertz, Erwin Schrödinger, Peter Debye etc. All of them are heroic figures in the history of physics, and many of them were awarded the Nobel prize in this century. During the twenties, Berlin was the place with the "highest density of Nobel prize winners' in the world. This development suddenly ended in January, 1933 when Hitler gained power; many Jewish and politically unpopular scientists were discharged by the Nazis from their positions and had to leave Germany The famous Berlin School of physics was damaged, and outstanding physical research remained very rare for many decades.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8855-3_1

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