"The principal events... took place in the early months of 1933... By April the Nazis had almost total control of Germany. One of their first decrees, on April 7, was intended to bring about the dismissal of all Jews from the civil service. ...University professors were civil servants ...Of the five professors teaching mathematics at Götingen, three—Edmund Landau, Richard Courant, and Felix Bernstein—were Jewish. A fourth, Hermann Weyl, had a Jewish wife. ...the April decree did not apply to Landau or Courant, since they fell within the Hindenburg exceptions. ...It did not help that Götingen at large was rather strong for Hitler. This was true of both "town" and "gown." ...(That grand house of which Edmund Landau was so proud had been defaced with a painting of the gallows in 1931.) On April 26 the town newspaper... printed an announcement that six professors were being placed on indefinite leave. ...One holdout was Edmund Landau (the only Götingen math professor... who was a member of the town's synagogue). Relying on the integrity of the law, Landau attempted to resume calculus classes in November... but the Science Student's Council... organized a boycott. Uniformed storm troopers prevented Landau's students from entering the lecture hall. With singular courage, Landau asked the Council leader, a 20-year-old student named Oswald Teichmüller, to write out as a letter his reasons... his reasons were ideological. He... felt it improper that German students should be taught by Jews. We are accustomed to think of Nazis activists as thugs, low-lifes, opportunists and failed-artists... which, indeed, most of them were. ...they also included in their ranks some people of the highest intelligence."