137 - Arthur I. Miller [83]
The following year Arthur Rohn, president of the ETH, suggested that Pauli apply again for Swiss citizenship. He did so in December 1939 but heard nothing for six months.
By the end of May 1940 Germany had Switzerland surrounded. Pauli acted quickly. He had been invited to the Institute for Advanced Study as a visiting professor for the winter term 1940–1941. He immediately arranged visas for Franca and himself to travel to the United States. He also pressed Rohn to resolve his citizenship case.
Rohn warned the head of the police division, Dr. Heinrich Rothmund, that the eminent Professor Pauli could be lost to the United States if Swiss citizenship was not granted soon. Pauli also wrote to Rothmund about the delay in processing his application and his attitude toward Germany’s annexation of Austria. He received a negative reply.
In a more detailed letter to Rohn, Rothmund declared that Pauli’s disapproval of the political situation in Austria and his desire to rid himself of his German citizenship, which he had never wanted in the first place, were not grounds for accepting him as a Swiss citizen. The decisive factor, he added “follows from [Pauli’s] characterization, reflected in one of the present police reports from Zürich, given by a closer colleague [regarding] his fitness for naturalization.” In other words, as Charles Enz, Pauli’s last assistant, wrote, “Pauli’s difficulty was due to a colleague!” Pauli was well aware of the animosity of several colleagues to him due to his being a Jew. One, it seemed, had written antagonistic comments about him.
Rohn questioned the police report, even calling for support from Pauli’s close friend and colleague Paul Scherrer and the ubiquitous Adolf Guggenbühl, but to no avail.
By now the Swiss authorities were well aware of German expansionist ambitions. Granting a famous Jewish scientist citizenship would not be a politic move. It was only on their second attempt that Pauli and Franca managed to make it to the United States after an arduous and sometimes nail-biting journey. They traveled by train through southern France, then across to Barcelona and Lisbon, from where they took a ship to New York, arriving on August 24, 1940. During the journey Pauli lost his nerve several times. Franca had to argue with him fiercely to persuade him to push on through Portugal. Just before he left, Pauli wrote a letter to Jung, concluding in all sincerity, “With my best wishes to you in this difficult time.”
Franca Pauli wrote of this 1940 passport photograph, “To my opinion, it is the best existing photo of W. Pauli.”
Unknown to Pauli, just a few weeks later his sister Hertha took a similar escape route. Her journey was even more harrowing. She had had to leave Berlin in 1933 after the Nazis began to suppress the arts. She went back to Vienna where she founded a literary agency, did some journalism, and began writing novels—all very much in the footsteps of her mother. She arrived with her lover Odön von Horváth, a Hungarian author of political plays that lampooned the Nazis. Hertha had fallen madly in love with him in 1932 and divorced Carl Behr. The two fled Berlin together. In Vienna they were the toast of the town. His plays were highly acclaimed and along with her beauty and talent as an actress, writer, and sometimes painter they gained easy access to the city’s vibrant intellectual world. Her first breakthrough book was the biography of Baroness Bertha von Suttner, the first woman Nobel laureate, awarded the Peace Prize in 1905 for her pacifist activities. Hertha also painted a portrait of her that bears a touching resemblance to her mother, both a pacifist and a journalist. In fact, Hertha’s mother had been a close friend of von Suttner’s.
When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the couple fled to Paris where Hertha worked in publishing and continued writing novels. Not long after they arrived, the couple were caught in a violent rainstorm on the Champs Elysées. In a freak accident a branch of a tree fell on von Horváth, killing