ABSTRACT
My father wrote these recollections, as their text shows, at various times before and after his retirement from the Edinburgh Chair in 1953. Although my parents had been happy in Scotland there was no question of staying on there, mainly because they found the climate too harsh. At first they considered moving to the South of England to be near children and grandchildren. However, as my father had worked in Britain for a comparatively short period, his British pension was far too small to live on whereas under the German restitution laws he was now receiving his full professorial salary from the University of Göttingen. That money was not transferable to Britain at the time although it became so some years later. This financial situation was one reason for a return to Germany. Another reason, to my parents more important, was their wish to contribute what they could to a democratic rehabilitation of Germany and the hope that my father’s special position as a universally esteemed leader and teacher in physics might be put to use to help prevent any possibility of German rearmament and specifically to prevent atom bombs getting into German hands. In this, as it turned out, he achieved as much as any private individual could expect to do. Nevertheless, my parents’ return to Germany understandably offended many other refugees, particularly those whose families had suffered more than ours, and who saw this move as too conciliatory.
