The German Genius

be a feeling being, a sad and cynical clown allowed by tradition to raise awkward truths so long as they are wrapped in riddles. Out of this format, Schoenberg managed to produce what many people consider his seminal work, what has been called the musical equivalent of Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon or Einstein’s E=mc 2 . Pierrot ’s main focus is a theme we are already familiar with, the decadence and degeneration of modern man. Schoenberg introduced in the piece several innovations in form, notably Sprechgesang , literally song-speech in which the voice rises and falls but cannot be said to be either singing or speaking. Listeners have found that the music breaks down “into atoms and molecules, behaving…not unlike the molecules that bombard pollen in Brownian movement.” Schoenberg saw himself more as an Expressionist, and he shared many of the aims of Kandinsky though some of his early atonal pieces have the sunny fog and silence of Caspar David Friedrich’s landscapes. 47
    The first performance took place in mid-October in Berlin, in the Choralionsaal on the Bellevuestrasse (destroyed by Allied bombs in 1945). Following the premieres of the Second String Quartet, the critics gathered, ready to kill off the clown. But the performance was heard in silence and, when it was over, Schoenberg was given an ovation. It was short, so many in the audience shouted for the piece to be repeated, and they liked it even better the second time. So too did some of the critics, one going so far as to describe the evening “not as the end of music; but as the beginning of a new stage in listening.” Like it or not, Schoenberg had found a way forward after Wagner.

The Discovery of Radio, Relativity, and the Quantum
     
    T wo upheavals took place in physics at the turn of the twentieth century. These were, first, the unexpected discoveries of x-rays, the electron, and radioactivity; and then, what some people regard as “the real revolution,” the discovery of the quantum and the theory of relativity. As well as being possibly the greatest intellectual adventure of the twentieth century, this was also one of the most international—advances being made by New Zealanders, Danes, Italians, French, British, and Americans, besides Germans, many of whom, to begin with at least, behaved with a commendable sense of international camaraderie. So if this chapter concentrates on the German contribution, this is not in any way to belittle the contributions of others, which were vital.
    Nevertheless, Amos Elon says that in the natural sciences there was at this time “talk of a new German ‘Age of Genius,’ second only to the era of Goethe, Schiller, Hegel and Kant,” and Helge Kragh, in his study of twentieth-century physics, gives two tables which show how the Germans were at least ahead of others in their physics institutions . 1
     
     
    P HYSICS I NSTITUTES AND F ACULTY
     
    Britain
    N O. OF I NSTITUTES : 25
    F ACULTY , 1900: 87
    F ACULTY , 1910: 106
     
    France
    N O. OF I NSTITUTES : 19
    F ACULTY , 1900: 54
    F ACULTY , 1910: 58
     
    Germany
    N O. OF I NSTITUTES : 30
    F ACULTY , 1900: 103
    F ACULTY , 1910: 139
     
    United States
    N O. OF I NSTITUTES : 21
    F ACULTY , 1900: 100
    F ACULTY , 1910: 169
     
    P HYSICS J OURNALS IN 1900
     
    Britain
    C ORE J OURNAL : Philosophical Magazine
    P APERS , 1900: 420
    %: 19
     
    France
    C ORE J OURNAL : Journal de Physique
    P APERS , 1900: 360
    %: 18
     
    Germany
    C ORE J OURNAL : Annalen der Physik
    P APERS , 1900: 580
    %: 29
     
    United States
    C ORE J OURNAL : Physical Review
    P APERS , 1900: 240
    %: 12
     
     
    Many new physics laboratories were built between 1890 and World War I , twenty-two in Germany, nineteen in the British Empire, thirteen in the United States, twelve in France. 2 The Dictionary of Scientific Biography lists 197 physicists who were twenty years old in 1900: 52 were German (and 6 Austrian), Britain came next with 35, France with 34, and the United States with 27.
    It is not altogether clear why such attention was being paid to physics. When Max Planck started at the University of Munich in 1875, he was warned by his professor that his chosen field “was more or less finished and that nothing new could expect to be discovered.” 3
    W AVES T HROUGH THE A IR
     
    But there was undoubtedly change in the air. Most physicists still clung to a mechanical view of the universe, even James Clark Maxwell, whose field theory found many supporters. This was