‘Copenhagen’ in Jerusalem revisits the Nazi-era meeting that shaped the nuclear age

The Khan Theatre in Jerusalem will host the Ben Bard Players' production of "Copenhagen," a play that delves into the enigmatic 1941 meeting between two of the world's most prominent physicists, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, in Nazi-occupied Denmark. This pivotal encounter is considered a key moment in the development of the nuclear age.

Werner Heisenberg, a leading German theoretical physicist and pioneer of quantum mechanics, met with Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist of Jewish heritage and a Nobel laureate who had mentored Heisenberg. The meeting took place in September 1941, a period when Nazi Germany was at the height of its power. There is no official record of their conversation, and both physicists later offered differing accounts of what transpired.

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Heisenberg, who participated in Germany's nuclear weapons research, claimed after World War II that he had inquired about the moral right of physicists to work on atomic energy and had proposed a plan for mutual agreement among scientists to prevent the development of atomic weapons. However, Bohr's recollections, revealed in letters published posthumously in 2002, presented a starkly different perspective.

In these unsent letters, Bohr wrote that Heisenberg was actively working on developing an atomic bomb for Germany and had visited Copenhagen to suggest Danish cooperation, believing Germany would win the war. The play "Copenhagen" offers a fictionalized exploration of this critical meeting, examining the reasons behind Heisenberg's visit and the profound implications of their discussion on the trajectory of nuclear science and the ethics of warfare.

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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.