It all started with a Big Bang!

Jerome Haaf Psychoanalyst Carl Jung and Physicist...

It all started with a Big Bang!

Bad Habit was packed (on a day they are not usually open) this week as we discussed Last Call. Each chapter in my next book, Lying Close, is introduced with a physics or other science theory. I’ve learned some interesting information in my research for this book (that didn’t fit into the book) that I’ll share a little of below.

For example, Big Bang theory was proposed by a Catholic Priest. Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, a Jesuit educated Belgian Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. Father Lemaitre expanded on the work of Albert Einstein. He was the first to propose that the recession of nearby galaxies could be explained by a theory of an expanding universe. Father Lemaitre’s theory was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble. Lemaitre was the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law, or the Hubble–Lemaître law, and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927 (two years before Hubble's article). Reverand Lemaître's proposal of the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe was initially called the "hypothesis of the primeval atom."

Georges Lemaître Reverand Lemaitre believed that science and religion are intertwined. I agree. The fact that the theory was suggested by a Priest surprised me as I remember being told when I was younger that the Big Bang theory went against religion. (I never agreed with this interpretation.)

Leopold Szondi, Hungarian Psychiatrist, was deported with his family to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on the Kastner train in June of 1944. After 1700 American intellectuals paid a large ransom to Adolf Eichmann, Szondi, his family, and other prominent intellectuals were released to Switzerland in December 1944. Szondi developed a theory of sadism, called Drive Theory. Drive Theory proposes that sadism is not restorative in intent. Behaviorally, it is aggression for its own sake, and is driven by unstrained biological urges.

The Szondi test: The subject is asked to describe the above pictures. The aim was to explore the deepest repressed impulses of a person on the basis of sympathy or aversion caused by the specific photos of psychopaths. The Szondi test is based on the general notion that the characteristics that bother us in others, are those that caused aversion to ourselves at an early stage of our life. In 1961, the test developed by Szondi was used by Israeli judges to test the same Adolf Eichmann who had Szondi arrested, during Eichmann’s 1961 trial.

Leopold Szondi was widely acknowledged as an internationally renowned psychoanalyst, Szondi proposed what he called "the family unconscious." He felt the genes of our ancestors are present in our unconscious and influence our choices.

German Physicst Max Born was instrumental in the development of Quantum Physics and wrote the popular college textbook Atomic Physics. Max’s daughter, Irene, became engaged to Welshman Brinley (Bryn) Newton-John. His granddaughter is Olivia Newton John.

And perhaps one of the more intriguing stories was of Max Plank. Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Max Planck was a classical pianist and revolutionary physicist. Planck is credited with the origin of Quantum theory. Plank played piano and cello and composed operas.

Max Planck
In March 1887, Max married Marie Merck (1861–1909), sister of a school fellow, and moved with her into a sublet apartment in Kiel. They had four children: Karl (1888–1916), the twins Emma (1889–1919) and Grete (1889–1917), and Erwin (1893–1945).

Here is how the lives of Max’s family tragically ended:
Marie Merck died from tuberculosis in 1909. During World War I, his oldest son Karl was killed in action at Verdun. His son, Erwin, was taken prisoner by the French in 1914. (I’ll describe his tragic death in the next paragraph.) Grete died in 1917, while giving birth to her first child. Emma married Grete’s widower, and also died giving birth, two years later. Both granddaughters survived and were named after their mothers. Planck endured these losses stoically.

Edwin Planck became a deputy minister in 1932, and retained this post when his friend, Kurt Von Schleicher was appointed Reich Chancellor in December. In 1933 Schleicher resigned and Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Edwin immediately resigned office, and went abroad to East Asia for a year. Shortly after he came back to Germany, Kurt von Schleicher and his wife were shot at their Babelsberg home by members of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in the Night of the Long Knives on June 30, 1934. Planck tried in vain to get an explanation for his friend's murder.

Operation Valkyrie: On July 20, 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators (including Edwin Planck) attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia.

The apparent aim of the assassination attempt was to wrest political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party (including the SS) and to make peace with the Western Allies as soon as possible. The plot was the culmination of efforts by several groups in the German resistance to overthrow the Nazi German government. The failure of the assassination attempt and the intended military coup d'état that was to follow led the Gestapo to arrest more than 7,000 people, of whom they executed 4,980. (The assassination attempt was used by Hitler to execute numerous people who had criticized him, but were not necessarily a part of the assassination attempt.)

They had considered shooting Hitler, but Adolf had taken to wearing a bullet proof vest. They also considered poisoning him, but Adolf was having his food tested before he ate. Ultimately, they felt a bomb was the best route. The first bombing attempt was aborted on July 7, as SS Commander Heinrich Himmler wasn’t present. The conspirators felt Himmler and Hermann Goering needed to be killed at the same time. Operation Valkyrie failed. Claus von Stauffenberg placed the single primed bomb inside his briefcase and, entered the conference room containing Hitler and 20 officers. Claus positioned the briefcase under the table near Hitler. After a few minutes, Stauffenberg received a planned telephone call and left the room. Unaware of the significance of the briefcase, Colonel Heinz Brandt, who was standing next to Hitler, used his foot to move the briefcase aside by pushing it behind the leg of the conference table. This deflected the blast from Hitler but caused his own demise and the loss of one of his legs when the bomb detonated.

On November 29, 1944 Adolf Hitler stated that the Pope was somehow a conspirator, specifically naming Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, as being a party in the attempt. Hitler had been unhappy with the Pope and the criticism he was receiving from Christians. In 1943, Hitler had put together a plot to kidnap or murder the Pope. Evidence indicates that the Valkyrie plotters Colonel Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven, Colonel Erwin von Lahousen, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris were involved in the foiling of Hitler's alleged plot to kidnap or murder Pope Pius XII, when Canaris reported the plot to Italian counterintelligence officer General Cesare Amè, who passed on the information.