Philipp Lenard Autograph Letter Signed. Two pages, 7" x 10.5", Heidelberg; July 22, 1927. Letter is composed in German to Nobel Prize winning physicist Wilhelm Wien. Lenard, under the assumption that Wien shares his anti-Semitic views, discusses his upcoming publications on "Phosphorescence" before segueing into complaints about Albert Einstein's acceptance into the prestigious Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich, claiming that the academy is dominated by Jews. Lenard won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 and would join the Nazi party and support Adolf Hitler in the 1920s. He also coined the term "Deutsche Physik" or Aryan Physics. It reads in part [English translation]: "...The Munich Academy – and probably I am not telling you anything new or anything improper or unfriendly on my part – with its Einstein action, which is still in the newspapers (even now, when the deception is very clear), has given somewhat unexpected testimony of its domination by Jews (Sommerfeld, Willstatter, as far as I know). Actually, only during rare glory days, even in the past, were academies (and thus universities as well) something better than they are today. A special center of the shallow intellectuality, by the way, is always Planck; he is being pushed upwards because he is a patron of the Jews, and thus the Jews are coming back up again as well... You probably will not want to write anything about this to me; but it is hardly necessary anyway; I think I know that you do not see any of this differently. If you preserve this letter, however, then perhaps later years will be able to judge from a newly won perspective (provided any non-Jewish persons are still alive then), where at our time things were different form how I describe them." Condition: .25" closed tear to right margin fold. Light foxing and soiling. Smoothed mail folds with minor creasing. HID03101062020 © 2020 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved