EN
The eminent German physicist Walther Nernst (1864–1941) was an eyewitness not only to the successes of German science but also to its decline. Having spent his professional life in Berlin and achieved international recognition, neither he nor his close friends (such as M. von Laue) were able to prevent the nationalist and anti-Semitic psychosis that swept through German universities after the First World War and after 1933. A fervent patriot (which he expressed during the First World War), he was dismayed by the way the Nazis dealt with the science he practised. This article explores W. Nernst’s attitude to patriotic values during the First World War and to chauvinism in science after the cessation of that conflict.