Anna Maria Heisenberg (Edited by) Elisabeth Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg - My dear Li!

Difficult times: the personal side of the great Physicist

When Werner Heisenberg first met Elisabeth Schumacher in 1937 he was 35 years old and had been a professor for Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig for ten years. In 1932 he had received the Nobel Prize. But he wasn’t doing so well: He was lonely and the political situation and ensuing exodus of German scientists was a heavy weight on his chest. He was attacked as the “White Jew” because he taught Einstein’s theory of relativity. Only two weeks after meeting the couple got engaged, a few months later they were married. Shortly after the war broke out, Heisenberg was asked to join the “Uranium Project”, the German nuclear energy project – from then on he barely saw his young family for years. The exchange of letters shows his heartfelt efforts to share a life in spite of the many obstacles and large distance separating him from his family. The letters are supplemented with previously unpublished dairy entries from the last days of the war. It is the touching testimony of a time period where he sought to preserve a personal emotional retreat.