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Lot 214: Max Planck Signed Letter 1842

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Lot  214: Max Planck Signed Letter 1842
<b>Autographs</b><hr><b>Max Planck Writes Wartime Letter to Nazi Industrialist Krupp!</b>

<b>MAX PLANCK, German theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in physics for his Quantum Theory.</b>
Autograph Letter Signed ('M. Planck'), in German, 2 pages, recto and verso, 6' x 8.25', on his personal letterhead, Berlin, May 18, 1942. To the industrialist Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbachholes. Choice Very Fine; punch holes at left margin, just a little creasing. Also rubber-stamped at top, and bearing penciled secretarial notation at top and on verso. Here Planck thanks Krupp for his letter and regrets that he was unable to see him. He refers to a trip to Italy and wonders whether it would be possible to see Krupp and his wife in Berlin.

Inasmuch as Planck openly opposed Nazi persecutions and intervened on behalf of Jewish scientists; and Krupp, a Hitler supporter, was none to particular about the labor used in many of his factories - one might wonder how they were friends. Science, which brought them together when Krupp funded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, probably remained their lingua franca - although it is worth noting that Planck resigned the presidency of the Institute in 1937 in protest against the Nazi regime, and that the Institute went on to support MengelesÕ 'medical' atrocities during the war.