ABSTRACT
In 1934 Helmut Hasse left Marburg to become, at age 36, a Professor at Gottingen. Hasse, who is rightly much honored among mathematicians, was a conservative nationalist; in 1937 he applied for membership in the Nazi party. Hasse’s attitudes and behavior during the period of Nazi control of the Universities were representative of the ambiguous position of much of the mathematical community at that time. There is very little to add in describing the events surrounding Hasse’s appointment to Gottingen in 1934. If nothing else these events speak eloquently to the difficult position of serious academics at that time, whatever their political beliefs. While Hasse displayed open adherence to the Nazi party, he apparently never involved himself in ideological extremes like those found in Deutsche Mathematik, the journal which was devoted to the publication of “Aryan mathematics.”.
