Letter from Richard Willstatter to Michael Heidelberger

Richard Willstatter, the son of a prosperous German Jewish merchant, resigned from his position as professor of chemistry at the University of Munich in 1924 in protest over the refusal of a professorship to the geochemist Victor Moritz Goldschmidt, which Willstatter regarded as a sign of growing anti-Semitism in German academia. Heidelberger's former mentor fled Germany in March 1939, and after considerable difficulty, succeeded in emigrating to Switzerland, where he settled near Locarno on Lago Maggiore. As he wrote Heidelberger in this letter, he was forced to leave behind most of his belongings as well as all of his financial assets. One of the items he was able to take with him was a piece of petrified wood from Arizona, a gift from Heidelberger and his wife in 1934. Willstatter commented on the rise of Nazism in Germany and the outbreak of World War II: "My thoughts about Germany are shaped, more than by indignation about the criminals and their heinous deeds, by disappointment and pain caused by the behavior of the many who allowed it all to happen."