Misplaced Pages

Deutsche Physik

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

Rudolf Karl Anton Tomaschek (23 December 1895 in Budweis , Bohemia – 8 February 1966, Breitbrunn am Chiemsee ) was a German experimental physicist. His scientific efforts included work on phosphorescence, fluorescence, and ( tidal ) gravitation. Tomaschek was a supporter of deutsche Physik , which resulted in his suspension from his university posts after World War II. From 1948 to 1954, he worked in England for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) . In 1954, when AIOC became BP, he went to Germany and was president of the Permanent Tidal Commission.

#354645

82-526: Deutsche Physik ( German: [ˈdɔʏtʃə fyˈziːk] , lit. "German Physics") or Aryan Physics ( German : Arische Physik ) was a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s which had the support of many eminent physicists in Germany. The term was taken from the title of a four-volume physics textbook by Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard in the 1930s. Deutsche Physik

164-465: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it

246-402: A second language , and 75–100   million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220   million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90   million people, or 16% of

328-612: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become

410-559: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from

492-458: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained

574-696: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In

656-558: A radical break from earlier theories, there was also an anti-Jewish element to some of the criticism. The leading theoretician of the Deutsche Physik type of movement was Rudolf Tomaschek , who had re-edited the famous physics textbook Grimsehl's Lehrbuch der Physik . In that book, which consists of several volumes, the Lorentz transformation was accepted, as well as the old quantum theory . However, Einstein's interpretation of

738-483: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it

820-547: A strictly linear hierarchy created along ideological lines. The figureheads of "Aryan physics" met with moderate success, but the support from the Nazi Party was not as great as Lenard and Stark would have preferred. They began to fall from influence after a long period of harassment of quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg , which included getting him labeled a "White Jew" in Das Schwarze Korps . Heisenberg

902-601: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as

SECTION 10

#1732772329355

984-612: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German

1066-558: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic

1148-478: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German

1230-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25   million speak it as

1312-535: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in

1394-611: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as

1476-565: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are

1558-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and

1640-597: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as

1722-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German

SECTION 20

#1732772329355

1804-525: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c.  1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period

1886-578: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish

1968-433: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers

2050-689: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to

2132-639: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as

2214-537: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share

2296-480: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language

2378-534: The German nuclear weapons program was never pursued with anywhere near the vigor of the Manhattan Project in the United States , and for that reason would likely not have succeeded in any case. The movement did not actually go as far as preventing the nuclear energy scientists from using quantum mechanics and relativity, but the education of young scientists and engineers suffered, not only from

2460-522: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout

2542-746: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in

Deutsche Physik - Misplaced Pages Continue

2624-779: The Michelson–Morley experiment and the Trouton–Noble experiment , whose negative outcome further supported Albert Einstein 's special relativity – although Tomaschek was a critic of that theory . In November 1926, Tomaschek went to the Technische Hochschule München (today, the Technical University of Munich ) and then to Philipps-Universität Marburg , where he was appointed ausserordentlicher Professor (extraordinarius professor) for experimental physics, in late 1927. From 1934, Tomaschek

2706-666: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c.  765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in

2788-676: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung

2870-550: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit.   ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this

2952-513: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and   Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German

3034-437: 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

3116-469: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from

3198-723: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In

3280-748: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of

3362-536: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of

Deutsche Physik - Misplaced Pages Continue

3444-451: The German states; the invention of the printing press c.  1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of

3526-681: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by

3608-655: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are

3690-1033: The Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and the Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German

3772-469: The Lorentz transformation was not mentioned, and Einstein's name was completely ignored. Many classical physicists resented Einstein's dismissal of the notion of a luminiferous aether , which had been a mainstay of their work for the majority of their productive lives. They were not convinced by the empirical evidence for relativity . They believed that the measurements of the perihelion of Mercury and

3854-518: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c.  thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c.  1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy

3936-610: The Third Reich. It is occasionally put forth that there is a great irony in the Nazis' labeling modern physics as "Jewish science", since it was exactly modern physics—and the work of many European exiles—which was used to create the atomic bomb . Even if the German government had not embraced Lenard and Stark's ideas, the German antisemitic agenda was enough by itself to destroy the Jewish scientific community in Germany. Furthermore,

4018-460: The defense of relativity and quantum mechanics . As historian Mark Walker puts it: ... despite his best efforts, in the end his science was not accepted, supported, or used by the Third Reich. Stark spent a great deal of his time during the Third Reich fighting with bureaucrats within the Nazi state. Most of the Nazi leadership either never supported Lenard and Stark, or abandoned them in the course of

4100-430: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with

4182-456: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in

SECTION 50

#1732772329355

4264-519: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of

4346-427: The especially passionate Philipp Lenard, a scientific rival of J. J. Thomson, had then signed further "declarations" , so that gradually a "war of the minds" broke out. On the German side it was suggested to avoid an unnecessary use of English language in scientific texts (concerning, e.g., the renaming of German-discovered phenomena with perceived English-derived names, such as " X-ray " instead of " Röntgen ray"). It

4428-488: The former naval cadet Oltwig von Hirschfeld tried to assassinate German Finance minister Matthias Erzberger , Lenard sent Hirschfeld a telegram of congratulation. After the 1922 assassination of politician Walther Rathenau , the government ordered flags flown at half mast on the day of his funeral, but Lenard ignored the order at his institute in Heidelberg . Socialist students organized a demonstration against Lenard, who

4510-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,

4592-481: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of

4674-732: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Rudolf Tomaschek From 1913 to 1918, Tomaschek studied at the Deutsche Universität Prag . He earned his doctorate in the early 1920s under Philipp Lenard , at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , and then became Lenard’s assistant. He completed his Habilitation under Lenard in 1924. From 1921, he conducted several aether drift experiments, repetitions of

4756-560: The library of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven . The burning of the library led to a protest note which was signed by eight distinguished British scientists, namely William Bragg , William Crookes , Alexander Fleming , Horace Lamb , Oliver Lodge , William Ramsay , Lord Rayleigh , and J. J. Thomson . In 1915, this led to a counter-reaction in the form of an "appeal" formulated by Wilhelm Wien and addressed to German physicists and scientific publishers, which

4838-519: The loss of the Jewish scientists but also from political appointments and other interference. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and

4920-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted

5002-423: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from

SECTION 60

#1732772329355

5084-464: The null result of the Michelson–Morley experiment might be explained in other ways, and the results of the Eddington eclipse experiment were experimentally problematic enough to be dismissed as meaningless by the more devoted doubters. Many of them were very distinguished experimental physicists, and Lenard was himself a Nobel laureate in Physics . When the Nazis entered the political scene, Lenard quickly attempted to ally himself with them, joining

5166-457: The party at an early stage. With another Nobel laureate in Physics, Johannes Stark, Lenard began a core campaign to label Einstein's relativity as Jewish physics . Lenard and Stark benefited considerably from this Nazi support. Under the rallying cry that physics should be more "German" and " Aryan ", Lenard and Stark embarked on a Nazi-endorsed plan to replace physicists at German universities with "Aryan physicists". By 1935, though, this campaign

5248-489: The physicist. Heisenberg would later employ his "Jewish physics" in the German project to develop nuclear fission for the purposes of nuclear weapons or nuclear energy use. Himmler promised Heisenberg that after Germany won the war, the SS would finance a physics institute to be directed by Heisenberg. Lenard began to play less and less of a role, and soon Stark ran into even more difficulty, as other scientists and industrialists known for being exceptionally "Aryan" came to

5330-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation

5412-492: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,

5494-449: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in

5576-532: The university environment, political factors took priority over the historically applied concept of scholarly ability, even though its two most prominent supporters were the Nobel Laureates in Physics Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark . When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, the concept and movement took on more favor and more fervor. Supporters of deutsche Physik launched vicious attacks against leading theoretical physicists, including Arnold Sommerfeld and Werner Heisenberg . It

5658-438: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during

5740-415: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching

5822-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of

5904-547: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially

5986-510: Was an extremely eminent physicist, and the Nazis realized that they were better off with him rather than without, however "Jewish" his theory might be in the eyes of Stark and Lenard. In an historic moment, Heisenberg's mother rang Heinrich Himmler 's mother and asked her whether she would please tell the SS to give "Werner" a break. After beginning a full character evaluation, which Heisenberg both instigated and passed, Himmler forbade further attack on

6068-492: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which

6150-686: 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 (today, Technische Universität Darmstadt ). As such, he organized the Münchner Religionsgespräche , which took place on November 15, 1940. The event was an offensive against

6232-611: Was led by Gustav Borer, with Herbert Stuart and Johannes Malsch as observers. 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. In 1945, the Allied occupation authority in Germany suspended Tomaschek from his positions at the Technische Hochschule München ; he

6314-528: Was opposed to the work of Albert Einstein and other modern theoretically based physics, which was disparagingly labeled "Jewish physics" ( German : Jüdische Physik ). This movement began as an extension of a German nationalistic movement in the physics community which went back to the start of World War I with Austria's declaration of war on 28 July 1914. On 25 August 1914, during the German Rape of Belgium , German troops used petrol to set fire to

6396-500: Was signed by sixteen German physicists, including Arnold Sommerfeld and Johannes Stark . They claimed that German character had been misinterpreted and that attempts made over many years to reach an understanding between the two countries had obviously failed. Therefore, they opposed the use of the English language by German scientific authors, editors of books, and translators. A number of German physicists , including Max Planck and

6478-508: Was stressed, however, that this measure should not be misunderstood as a rejection of British scientific thought, ideas and stimulations. After the war, the perceived affronts of the Treaty of Versailles kept some of these nationalistic feelings running high, especially in Lenard, who had already complained about England in a small pamphlet at the beginning of the war. When, on 26 January 1920,

6560-613: Was superseded by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. There were no longer any Jewish physics professors in Germany, since under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews were not allowed to work in universities. Stark in particular also tried to install himself as the national authority on "German" physics under the principle of Gleichschaltung (literally, "coordination") applied to other professional disciplines. Under this Nazi-era paradigm, academic disciplines and professional fields followed

6642-420: Was taken into protective custody by state prosecutor Hugo Marx. During the early years of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein 's theory of relativity caused bitter controversy within the worldwide physics community. There were many physicists, especially the "old guard", who were suspicious of the intuitive meanings of Einstein's theories. While the response to Einstein was based partly on his concepts being

6724-498: Was the director of the physics department at the Technische Hochschule Dresden (today, TU Dresden ). From 1939 to 1945, Tomaschek was an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) and director of the physics department at the Technische Hochschule München. Tomaschek was a supporter of deutsche Physik . The deutsche Physik movement was anti-Semitic and anti-theoretical physics. As applied in

#354645