A mysterious meeting in Nazi-occupied Denmark in the fall of 1941 between two of the world’s most prominent physicists, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, is the setting for the play Copenhagen, which will be presented by the Ben Bard Players at the Khan Theatre in Jerusalem, May 27-28, and June 2-4, 10, and 11. Copenhagen is produced and directed by Barak Bard and stars David Golinkin as Heisenberg, Yehoshua Looks as Bohr, and Miriam Metzinger as Bohr’s wife, Margrethe. The Broadway version of the play received the Tony Award for Best Play in 2000.
Werner Heisenberg was one of Germany’s leading theoretical physicists and the person who pioneered quantum mechanics. He also formulated the uncertainty principle, which states that in the world of atoms and particles, one cannot know both a particle’s exact position and its exact speed (or momentum) at the same time with perfect accuracy.
Niels Bohr was a Jew and a pioneering Danish physicist who mentored Heisenberg in the 1920s and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Like Bohr, Heisenberg was a Nobel laureate, having received the prize in 1932 for his work in quantum mechanics.
In 1939, Germany began its research into the development of nuclear weapons, and Heisenberg participated in this research. In April 1940, Nazi Germany conquered and occupied Denmark.
Bohr was then living in Copenhagen with his wife and family.
In September 1941, Nazi Germany was at the peak of its strength, controlling most of continental Europe and rapidly advancing through the Soviet Union. The Germans had begun the siege of Leningrad in early September, capturing Kyiv later that month.
On September 30, the Wehrmacht began Operation Typhoon, its offensive to capture Moscow.
Heisenberg traveled from his home in Leipzig to visit Bohr and met with him some time during the week of September 15-21. There is no record of what they discussed; later, both parties expressed divergent opinions about what was said.
After World War II, Heisenberg said that he had asked Bohr whether physicists had “the moral right to work on the practical exploitation of atomic energy” and that he had formulated a plan to prevent the development of atomic weapons through a mutual agreement between German and Allied scientists.
Bohr died in 1962, and his recollections of the meeting were not revealed until 2002, when his family published the contents of 11 letters that he had written on the subject.
In the letters, which he did not send to Heisenberg, Bohr wrote that Heisenberg was working on developing an atomic bomb for Germany and had come to Copenhagen to tell the Danes to cooperate with the Germans, since the Germans were going to win the war.
Copenhagen is a fictional account of what may have been discussed and addresses the reasons for Heisenberg’s meeting with Bohr in Copenhagen.
In the play, Heisenberg, Bohr, and Margarethe are already dead, and looking back on that day, they discuss why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen.
One possible subject of the meeting, raised in the play, is Heisenberg’s supposed moral quandary: Does a physicist have a moral right to work on applications of atomic energy? Another possible reason given for his visit was to ask Bohr if he knew whether the United States was working on a nuclear bomb.
After exchanging pleasantries and having dinner with Margrethe, the two physicists go for a stroll in a nearby park but return abruptly, after which Heisenberg leaves. Bohr is clearly disturbed about the nature of their conversation.
The play reveals all the different theories of the visit, beginning each version with Heisenberg approaching the door, ringing the bell, and greeting Bohr and his wife before discussing the reasons for his trip.
The play is faithful to the storyline of the 2002 television version of Copenhagen, starring Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig, and Francesca Annis. Actors Golinkin, Looks, and Metzinger delivered their lines convincingly, lending the production authenticity and emotional weight. History buffs, fans of psychological drama, and anyone interested in the moral questions of scientific discovery will undoubtedly enjoy it.
Neil Bohr's escape to Sweden
One interesting historical fact not part of the play is the escape of Bohr and his wife to Sweden by sea two years later, in September 1943, with the aid of the Danish resistance.
The Nazis had targeted Bohr, and after arriving in Sweden, he appealed to King Gustav V to publicly announce that Sweden was prepared to offer asylum to Jewish refugees. On October 2, Swedish radio broadcast the announcement, and 7,000 Jews eventually escaped to the Swedish kingdom.
In Jerusalem conducted interviews with the play’s principals via Zoom. “One of the central questions that the play is exploring is the natural urge of science to rush forward to be able to discover whatever can be discovered, and finding out that one has walked into a territory where all of a sudden you’ve opened the Pandora’s box of destructivity,” Yehoshua Looks, who plays Neils Bohr, said.
A great deal of the tension between the two in the play’s meeting is the matter of the trust, or lack of it, between the Germans and the US, he said. “If Germany gets the bomb, America has to have the bomb. Heisenberg suggests to Bohr that if each party would tell the other that they would not create a bomb, then everything would be fine because no one would have nuclear weapons. But, as he said, “no one trusts the other.”
Looks pointed out that Bohr himself was morally conflicted. After he escaped to Sweden, he eventually went to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he worked on the development of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.
“He says to Heisenberg, ‘You didn’t kill a single human being your entire life, and I am responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people.’”
David Golinkin, who plays Heisenberg, said that throughout the play, his character is very apologetic. “He’s saying, ‘I have no evil intentions. I strung the Nazis along. I made sure they were researching a nuclear reactor, but I didn’t tell Albert Speer [minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany] that we could produce plutonium.’
“He keeps saying that he did not want the Nazis to have a nuclear weapon. His intention was not to give Hitler a nuclear weapon and so on. I have no idea whether it’s true or not, but that’s the way he appears in the play.”
Miriam Metzinger, who plays Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, said that her role in the play is primarily as the defender of her husband.
Referring to her role, she said, “Even though I’m an intelligent woman, I’m not a scientist, and so I feel shut out. My role is to be Bohr’s defender, and I’m there to prop him up when he sometimes thinks he was responsible for the deaths of all these people [in Nagasaki].”
Margarethe’s function in the play is also to explain the arguments and discussions on the technical aspects of nuclear power in an accessible, easily understood language.
“I think that I’m there for the audience,” she said, “because it simplifies the science. They have to break it down in terms that people can understand. Plus, I think she represents the audience’s mistrust of Heisenberg, given how we feel about people working for the Nazis at that time.
“Margarethe is very, very aggressive towards Heisenberg, and I feel the audience is probably biased against Heisenberg. So I think that the fact that Heisenberg seems sympathetic in the play despite all of that is a testament to a very balanced playwright.”
Eighty-five years after Heisenberg and Bohr met, the world is still grappling with the issue of nuclear weapons. The concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the search for its enriched uranium has been the focus of news headlines for many months, and is especially pertinent in this country. Even Iran’s suggestion that its development of nuclear power was for peaceful purposes is echoed in the play when Heisenberg says that the German development of a nuclear reactor was for peaceful use.
Should Copenhagen be considered a historical drama or a contemporary warning about the usage of nuclear weapons? All the play’s principles agreed that it addresses both issues. “We grew up with the fear of the world being destroyed during the Cold War,” Metzinger said, explaining that the fear was “happening again.”
“One of the reasons this play is so relevant,” Golinkin said, “is that in recent years, Trump and everybody else talks about ‘fake news.’ And, of course, with AI, you can easily create fake news.
“I think that 50 or 100 years ago, people thought they could write objective history. Today, many historians say you can’t write objective history: Everybody who writes affects the history that they are writing and portrays the events differently,” Golinkin said.
“People rewrite history all the time, and this play very cleverly keeps rewriting the same scenes over and over again. There really is an uncertainty, the final core of uncertainty at the heart of things, which is in everything we remember and all the history that we write. So I think that’s a very important theme in the play, and I think that it’s true,” Golinkin noted.
“The best way to describe this play is ‘thought-provoking.’ And that’s what it does each time you read it and each time you perform it,” he concluded.