Pursuing Common Cultural Ideals

“The Copenhagen Spirit” and Niels Bohr’s successful strategy in making his institute a center for international collaboration in the interwar period are classic loci in the history of science. The sources seem exhausted and yet a contextual treatment of Bohr’s commitment to scientific internationalism is still absent from the literature. While some writers have pointed to Bohr’s personality as the basis for his international outlook, ¹ most authors seem to have taken internationalism and international collaboration for granted as a natural part of normal scientific practice. At the same time Bohr has often been pictured as an innovative pioneer and a unique figure both nationally and internationally. Consequentially, Bohr’s commitment to scientific internationalism has been treated as a rather isolated, unique phenomenon and it has not been contextualized within the broader political and cultural situation of that time. ² This paper aims to address this omission by placing Bohr and his views on internationalism in the context of the emergence of a neutralist and internationalist policy of science and culture in Denmark. An outlook that was common among the cultural elite in the neutral Scandinavian countries after the Great War.