“The Happy Thirties” Available to Purchase

Hans Bethe was born on 2 July 1906 in Strasbourg, when Alsace was part of the Wilhelminian empire. His father, Albrecht Bethe, was trained as a physician and became a widely respected physiologist. In 1915 he accepted a professorship in the newly founded Frankfurt University. Hans’s mother, Ella, was raised in Strasbourg where her father was a professor of medicine. An only child, Hans grew up in a Christian household, but one in which religion did not play an important role. His father was Protestant; his mother had been Jewish but she became a Lutheran before she met Hans’s father. Hans’s mother was a talented and accomplished musician, but a year or two before World War I her hearing was impaired as a result of contracting influenza. The illness left psychological scars, and she became prone to what was diagnosed at the time as bouts of “nervous exhaustion,” or extended...