Michael Frayn - Copenhagen

Margrethe But if the Germans were trying to, Heisenberg would be involved.

Bohr There’s no shortage of good German physicists.

Margrethe There’s no shortage of good German physicists in America or Britain.

Bohr The Jews have gone, obviously.

Heisenberg Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Max Born … Otto Frisch, Lise Meitner.… We led the world in theoretical physics! Once.

Margrethe So who is there still working in Germany?

Bohr Sommerfeld, of course. Von Laue.

Margrethe Old men.

Bohr Wirtz. Harteck.

Margrethe Heisenberg is head and shoulders above all of them.

Bohr Otto Hahn — he’s still there. He discovered fission, after all.

Margrethe Hahn’s a chemist. I thought that what Hahn discovered …

Bohr… was that Enrico Fermi had discovered it in Rome four years earlier. Yes — he just didn’t realise it was fission. It didn’t occur to anyone that the uranium atom might have split, and turned into an atom of barium and an atom of krypton. Not until Hahn and Strassmann did the analysis, and detected the barium.

Margrethe Fermi’s in Chicago.

Bohr His wife’s Jewish.

Margrethe So Heisenberg would be in charge of the work?

Bohr Margrethe, there is no work! John Wheeler and I did it all in 1939. One of the implications of our paper is that there’s no way in the foreseeable future in which fission can be used to produce any kind of weapon.

Margrethe Then why is everyone still working on it?

Bohr Because there’s an element of magic in it. You fire a neutron at the nucleus of a uranium atom and it splits into two other elements. It’s what the alchemists were trying to do — to turn one element into another.

Margrethe So why is he coming?

Bohr Now your curiosity’s aroused.

Margrethe My forebodings.

Heisenberg I crunch over the familiar gravel to the Bohrs’ front door, and tug at the familiar bell-pull. Fear, yes. And another sensation, that’s become painfully familiar over the past year. A mixture of self-importance and sheer helpless absurdity — that of all the 2,000 million people in this world, I’m the one who’s been charged with this impossible responsibility.… The heavy door swings open.

Bohr My dear Heisenberg!

Heisenberg My dear Bohr!

Bohr Come in, come in …

Margrethe And of course as soon as they catch sight of each other all their caution disappears. The old flames leap up from the ashes. If we can just negotiate all the treacherous little opening civilities …

Heisenberg I’m so touched you felt able to ask me.

Bohr We must try to go on behaving like human beings.

Heisenberg I realise how awkward it is.

Bohr We scarcely had a chance to do more than shake hands at lunch the other day.

Heisenberg And Margrethe I haven’t seen …

Bohr Since you were here four years ago.

Margrethe Niels is right. You look older.

Heisenberg I had been hoping to see you both in 1938, at the congress in Warsaw …

Bohr I believe you had some personal trouble.

Heisenberg A little business in Berlin.

Margrethe In the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse?

Heisenberg A slight misunderstanding.

Bohr We heard, yes. I’m so sorry.

Heisenberg These things happen. The question is now resolved. Happily resolved. We should all have met in Zürich …

Bohr In September 1939.

Heisenberg And of course, sadly …

Bohr Sadly for us as well.

Margrethe A lot more sadly still for many people.

Heisenberg Yes. Indeed.

Bohr Well, there it is.

Heisenberg What can I say?

Margrethe What can any of us say, in the present circumstances?

Heisenberg No. And your sons?

Margrethe Are well, thank you. Elisabeth? The children?

Heisenberg Very well. They send their love, of course.

Margrethe They so much wanted to see each other, in spite of everything! But now the moment has come they’re so busy avoiding each other’s eye that they can scarcely see each other at all.

Heisenberg I wonder if you realise how much it means to me to be back here in Copenhagen. In this house. I have become rather isolated in these last few years.

Bohr I can imagine.

Margrethe Me he scarcely notices. I watch him discreetly from behind my expression of polite interest as he struggles on.

Heisenberg Have things here been difficult?

Bohr Difficult?

Margrethe Of course. He has to ask. He has to get it out of the way.

Bohr Difficult What can I say? We’ve not so far been treated to the gross abuses that have occurred elsewhere. The race laws have not been enforced.

Margrethe Yet.

Bohr A few months ago they started deporting Communists and other anti-German elements.

Heisenberg But you personally …?

Bohr Have been left strictly alone.

Heisenberg I’ve been anxious about you.

Bohr Kind of you. No call for sleepless nights in Leipzig so far, though.

Margrethe Another silence. He’s done his duty. Now he can begin to steer the conversation round to pleasanter subjects.

Heisenberg Are you still sailing?

Bohr Sailing?

Margrethe Not a good start.

Bohr No, no sailing.

Heisenberg The Sound is …?

Bohr Mined.

Heisenberg Of course.

Margrethe I assume he won’t ask if Niels has been skiing.

Heisenberg You’ve managed to get some skiing?

Bohr Skiing? In Denmark?

Heisenberg In Norway. You used to go to Norway.

Bohr I did, yes.

Heisenberg But since Norway is also … well …

Bohr Also occupied? Yes, that might make it easier. In fact I suppose we could now holiday almost anywhere in Europe.

Heisenberg I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought of it quite in those terms.

Bohr Perhaps I’m being a little oversensitive.

Heisenberg Of course not. I should have thought.

Margrethe He must almost be starting to wish he was back in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.

Heisenberg I don’t suppose you feel you could ever come to Germany …

Margrethe The boy’s an idiot.

Bohr My dear Heisenberg, it would be an easy mistake to make, to think that the citizens of a small nation, of a small nation overrun, wantonly and cruelly overrun, by its more powerful neighbour, don’t have exactly the same feelings of national pride as their conquerors, exactly the same love of their country.