Non Fiction Authors From Germany

"Einstein's theory of relativity has advanced our ideas of the structure of the cosmos a step further. It is as if a wall which separated us from Truth has collapsed. Wider expanses and greater depths are now exposed to the searching eye of knowledge, regions of which we had not even a presentiment. It has brought us much nearer to grasping the plan that underlies all physical happening."

"A new development began for relativity theory after 1925 with its absorption into quantum physics. The first great success was scored by Dirac's quantum mechanical equations of the electron, which introduced a new sort of quantities, the spinors, besides the vectors and tensors into our physical theories. ...But difficulties of the gravest kind turned up when one passed from one electron or photon to the interaction among an indeterminate number of such particles. In spite of several advances a final solution of this problem is not yet in sight and may well require a deep modification of the foundation of quantum mechanics, such as would account in the same basic manner for the elementary electric charge e as relativity theory and our present quantum mechanics account for c and h."

"In my work, I have always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful."

"This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind."

"Symmetry is a vast subject, significant in art and nature. Mathematics lies at its root, and it would be hard to find a better one on which to demonstrate the working of the mathematical intellect."

"[Physicists and philosophers] stick stubbornly to the principles of a mechanistic interpretation of the world after physics has, in its factual structure, already outgrown the latter. They have the same excuse as the inhabitant of the mainland who for the first time travels on the open sea: he will desperately try to stay in sight of the vanishing coast line, as long as there is no other coast in sight, towards which he steers."

"We now come to a decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for... [The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for."

"In these days the angel of topology and the devil of abstract algebra fight for the soul of each individual mathematical domain."

"The introduction of numbers as coordinates by reference to the particular division scheme of the open one dimensional continuum is an act of violence whose only practical vindication is the special calculatory manageability of the ordinary number continuum with its four basic operations. The topological skeleton determines the connectivity of the manifold in the large."

"On a certain level of generality A which I call the ground level, you have certain theorems that have been proved and certain unsolved problems P of recognised interest. Suppose you discover a generalisation of one of these theorems and thereby rise to a higher level of generality A. Write it up, but lock it away in a drawer - unless or until it serves to solve one of the problems P on the ground level... But the deeper one drives the spade the harder the digging gets; maybe it has become too hard for us unless we are not given some outside help, be it even by such devilish devices as high-speed computing machines."

"Cartan developed a general scheme of infinitesimal geometry in which Klein's notions were applied to the tangent plane and not to the n-dimensional manifold M itself."

"Important though the general concepts and propositions may be with which the modern industrious passion for axiomatizing and generalizing has presented us, in algebra perhaps more than anywhere else, nevertheless I am convinced that the special problems in all their complexity constitute the stock and core of mathematics; and to master their difficulties requires on the whole the harder labor."

"It seems clear that [set theory] violates against the essence of the continuum, which, by its very nature, cannot at all be battered into a single set of elements. Not the relationship of an element to a set, but of a part to a whole ought to be taken as a basis for the analysis of a continuum."

"To trample democracy with one’s feet and give power to a single man over almost eighty million people is so terrible one can really tremble over the things that will come."

"When dictators enslave their own people and seek to impose their anti-democratic ideology upon others, when evil seeks power, men and women of good will must set aside their own differences of opinion and stand together and fight – including those who hate war."

"Nothing more confounds your enemies than when you suddenly and silently recall a better moment and smile."

"Better days and better people make bad days and bad people bearable."

"Thank God for youth; there will always be love."

"Even in days of loss and sorrow, beauty remains, and I am ever grateful."

"No one has the right to steal our dreams and trespass upon our liberties."

"My main goal after the war was to help rebuild the Social Democratic Party that Hitler had banned and use it to reunite the people of Germany who had forgotten how a democracy worked – through tolerance, compromise and a dedication to individual freedom."

"Every person has the choice between Good and Evil. Choose Good, and stand against those who would choose Evil."

"I could not fight the Nazis in the present, as they had the power to still my voice, so I decided to fight them in the future."

"Gutenberg, your printing press has been violated by this evil book!"

"If now, after the collapse, any of these lackeys of Adolf Hitler has the insolence to want to be considered as a harmless onlooker, then one can only wish he immediately feels the scourge of avenging mankind. . . . Whoever cries about having lost the totalitarian system or wants to resurrect National Socialism is to be treated as an incorrigible lunatic."

"Adolph Hitler, "the most ingenious field marshal of all time," the all-powerful ruler over the 1,000 Year Reich-- which collapsed after twelve years --- has disappeared from the scene. The NSDAP has come to a complete and inglorious end."

"We can hold up under everything if only we have the certainty the monster Hitler with his insatiable bloodletting and plundering will have committed soon his last shameful deed."

"The Party uses the lies up to the last moment as a cover-up. Thus it intimidates the political opponents and provides its Party comrades with sedatives. It is so unbelievably simple for the current gang to lie to this German people and to lead these fools around by the nose."

"Under the category, "Air Force aided by Hitler youth," the children wear military uniforms and become used to handling the artillery. Fifteen- and sixteen-year-old children as warriors! If the war still continues to last for a long time, perhaps infants also will be used. Total war!"

"There is no punishment that would be hard enough to be applied to these Nazi beasts. Of course, in the case of retribution the innocent will have to suffer along with them. Ninety-nine percent of the German people, directly or indirectly, carry the guilt for the present situation. Therefore we can only say this: Those who travel together, hang together."

"The world will rightfully be outraged over so much inhumanity, and it will ignite a hatred that can never be extinguished. . . . How long will this reign of terror continue?"

"Hitler knew weapons alone would not be decisive, he focused on molding the people’s spirit, breeding something singular in history: bravado, blind obedience, ruthlessness, and brutality. There was contempt for every noble human emotion; contemptible disregard for the thinking of others; destruction of religion and religious establishments -- and there was the extermination of the Jews because they were wiser than the German people."

"Spineless politics do not change the mind of a tyrant. The sharpest means would still be too mild."

"The carnage will eventually come to an end, but the Western powers will carry the historical guilt for not promptly providing the most intensive preventative measures against Germany's incessant politics of aggression. Possibilities existed, but no actions were taken."

"Why only hate? Where does love remain? Or at least a little decency toward other people? We think we can behave against everyone in the exact same rabid way we did against the Jews: to smash, crush--and even exterminate."

"This "Conqueror of Berlin," as he [Joseph Goebbels] has named himself, has completely conquered Germany. And not only that: many Germans living abroad--all too many of them, unfortunately--have fallen for the cunning propaganda."

"If the Jews, who over the centuries contributed demonstrable achievements in the economy for the total development of the nation, can be made a people without rights, then that is an act unworthy of a cultured nation. The curse of this evil deed will indelibly rest on the entire German people. The authors, the National Socialists, will have disappeared some day; their deeds, however, will live on"

"Terror is trump. Methods of common brutal suppression are considered sanctified laws. "Old Fighters" are saints, and from the district leader upwards there are only Gods!"

"Gewönlich wird eine Entdeckung nicht auf den einfachsten, sondern auf einem komplizierten Wege gemacht; die einfachen Fälle zeigen sich erst später."

"In postwar Germany, Otto Hahn became the most revered elder statesman of what had once been Europe's proudest scientific establishment. He collected many awards, including a Nobelprize in Chemistry for his discovery of fission. But he always accepted such honours with characteristic humility. Visiting an atomic reactor or nuclear power station, he would shrug modestly: 'It has all been the work of others.' In a soon-to-be-published 300-page memoir, he brushed off his historic workin fewer than five pages. Last week, at he age of 89, the father of fission died peacefully in his beloved Göttingen."

"Professor Meitner stated that nuclear fission could be attributed to chemistry. I have to make a slight correction. Chemistry merely isolated the individual substances, but did not precisely identify them. It took Professor Hahn's method to do this. This was his achievement."

"Hahn and Strassmann were able to discover nuclear fission by exceptionally good chemistry, fantastically good chemistry, which was way ahead of what anyone else was capable of at that time. The Americans learned it to do later. But at that time, in 1938, Hahn and Strassmann were really the only ones who could do it, because they were such good chemists."

"His father city Frankfurt am Main thus honours a scholar of worldwide fame, who, as a result of his trail-blazing discoveries in the sphere of atomic research, radioactivity and radiochemistry, enjoys a surpassing reputation in the world. The city at the same time stresses its bonds with a personality of exceptional talent and creative energy, whose scientific and administrative work serve progress and the well-being of the whole of humanity."

"Otto Hahn is a figure of world history. But he possesses none of the attributes of the traditional luminaries in history books. His slight, somewhat bowed figure, which with its high brow has the effect of his features having been carved, with his expression of searching honesty and critical inviolability, have something of a boundless nobility about them."

"Never has a Nobelprize-winner been in the outward sense so absent at a Nobel festival as Professor Hahn. And I suppose, too, that no Nobelprize-winner has ever, through the consequences of his discoveries, been so intensely present to our consciousness. Alfred Nobel hoped that in dynamite he had discovered such a powerful explosive that future wars would be impossible. The hope was not fulfilled; but dynamite is used today mostly for peaceful purposes. May we venture to hope the same of atomic energy? Hahn's discovery of the cleavage of atoms is the crowning feat, so far, in a series of discoveries for which Nobelprizes have been awarded. We acclaim today this celebrated researcher's scientific achievements."

"Strategy is a system of expedients; it is more than a mere scholarly discipline. It is the translation of knowledge to practical life, the improvement of the original leading thought in accordance with continually changing situations."

"The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon's saying: "I have never had a plan of operations." Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."

"Der ewige Friede ist ein Traum, und nicht einmal ein schöner, und der Krieg ist ein Glied in Gottes Weltordnung. In ihm entfalten sich die edelsten Tugenden des Menschen, Mut und Entsagung, Pflichttreue und Opferwilligkeit mit Einsetzung des Lebens. Ohne den Krieg würde die Welt im Materialismus versumpfen."

"Helmuth von Moltke was born in 1800, technically the last year of the 18th century. [...] There's a wonderful irony here: Moltke's nickname was 'der große Schweiger' (the great silent one), because he had a reputation for speaking very little; and yet, of all the hundreds of millions of people born in the 18th century, his is the only voice we can hear today."

"Der euch gewappnet und gewehrt, Bedenkt, die ihr ihm naht: Es stuetzt der Friede sich auf`s Schwert, im Schweigen waechst die Tat."