All language subtitles for Copenhagen.2002.480p.DVDRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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Thank you.

"Copenhagen" will begin
after this brief introduction.

Michael frayn:
A lot of people think the play

Is about moral questions--

About whether scientists
should work on weapons.

And of course, moral questions
do come into it.

Before we can make any
moral judgments of anyone,

We have to understand why
they are doing what they do.

You can't make a moral
judgment about anyone

Unless you have some knowledge
of their intentions.

My play, "Copenhagen,"

Is based on a real event
and a real mystery.

It's about a meeting
between two great scientists

During
the second world war,

In nazi-occupied Denmark--

Werner Heisenberg,
the german physicist;

And Niels Bohr,
the danish physicist.

Now the two men
had been close friends

And colleagues
for over 20 years.

They had pioneered
the field of atomic physics,

And eventually,
their work would lead

To the development
of the first atomic bomb.

And the problem was

That at the time
of the meeting in Copenhagen

They were on opposite sides
in the war.

So the meeting
was fraught with difficulty from the beginning.

And ever since then,
people have argued

About what it was
the two men said to each other at the meeting,

And what it was
that Heisenberg wanted to say.

They were two of the greatest
physicists of the 20th century,

Because they had begun
to establish

What happens inside
the tiny world of the atom.

When they first met
at the beginning of the '20s,

Niels Bohr was already
extremely famous.

He was a great physicist
who had won the Nobel prize for his work.

And Heisenberg was a young man
at the very beginning of his career.

A very cheeky and brilliant
young student.

And they did a lot of their
very best work together.

They had taken the lead
in developing quantum mechanics,

Possibly the most important
and successful theory

Ever to be introduced
into physics.

Michio kaku:
It was a match made in heaven.

With Bohr pioneering
the physical picture

That he could see
in his mind's eye.

And Heisenberg,
the mathematician,

The person who could
then put into concrete mathematical language

The dance of atoms.

The dance of electrons that Bohr
could only dream about.

And that's where Niels Bohr
and Heisenberg worked so well.

Heisenberg's famous
"uncertainty principle"

That he introduced
into quantum mechanics in the 1920s,

Demonstrates that we can never
have total knowledge

Of the behavior
of physical objects.

It only matters
when we are talking

About very fast moving ones,
like particles.

But in theory,
it applies to everything.

And if we can't
know everything

About a physical object,

We can't make
predictions about it.

Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle

Challenges our normal
understanding of the world.

Michio kaku:
We physicists go crazy

When we think about
the uncertainty principle.

Some people think that physics
is a finished question;

We know everything
given enough information--

You know where objects are.

You know how they are
gonna perform.

You can predict
the outcomes of things.

So it's really upsetting--
it's really upsetting

To some people at a very
deep fundamental level

That we physicists
really don't know

Where things really are
at any given time.

That ultimately,
there is this uncertainty

That goes to the very heart
of reality itself.

Frayn:
Heisenberg was still only 33 when he won the Nobel prize

For the uncertainty
principle.

But it was also the year
in which Hitler came to power.

Heisenberg
could have left Germany--

He was offered jobs
in various american universities.

( crowd chanting )
seig heil! Seig heil!

Heisenberg has been much
criticized because he didn't go.

Absolutely no one thinks
Heisenberg was a nazi

Or a nazi sympathizer.

The criticism that's
made of him is that he acquiesced,

That he was too
prepared to compromise with the nazi regime.

The advent of Hitler
began to place

A great strain
on the friendship between the two men.

Then there was a discovery
in the field of atomic physics

Which changed everything.

In the 1930s,
it was demonstrated that if you fissioned the nucleus,

If you split
the nucleus of an atom, it released energy.

It suddenly seemed
theoretically possible

To use atomic physics
to produce power

For other constructive
or destructive purposes.

This was the moment

When atomic physics ceased
to be purely abstract

And took on an immense
significance

For the future
of the human race.

Niels Bohr,
because he liked to think in terms of physical pictures,

Had the idea that
the nucleus of the atom was like a droplet of water,

Where surface tension
kept the droplet of water intact and spherical.

However, if you
came in and hit it with an outside object,

This liquid drop
could then fission in half,

Into two smaller liquid drops.
And then he realized

That perhaps you could release
fantastic amounts of energy,

The energy that was known
to be stored in the nucleus of the atom,

By splitting it
with this liquid drop.

And then, he very
rapidly calculated

That you had to have
an exotic form of uranium,

U235.

Then began
an international chase

To see who could get
this fabulous u235,

This rare form of uranium.

What was at stake was the fate
of humanity itself.

Bohr and Heisenberg
were the leaders in a kind of physics

That could now be used
to produce,

In theory, a most
terrible weapon.

But they were cut off
from each other.

When the war broke out
in 1939, Heisenberg knew

That that was the end
of his contact with Bohr in Copenhagen.

And he wrote a very
moving letter to Bohr,

Which goes right
to the heart

Of the father-son
relationship they had.

"dear Bohr,
since I don't know whether

And when our destiny
will lead us together again,

I will once again thank you
for all your friendship,

For everything I have
learned from you

And for everything
you have done for me.

In old friendship, yours,
Werner Heisenberg."

Frayn:
In 1941, the two men

Had been out of contact
for two years.

And Bohr had been
living precariously,

Because he was half-jewish,
under nazi occupation.

And what he didn't know
was that his old friend Heisenberg

Was now running the german
atomic research program.

Now this enormous
difficulty--

Heisenberg managed
to go to Copenhagen,

And he was very insistent

On a personal meeting
with Bohr.

According to Heisenberg,

They began some kind
of conversation.

Niels Bohr became upset
and then angry

And the conversation
was broken off,

According to Heisenberg,

Before he could
explain what it was he wanted to say.

And people have been arguing
ever since about two things:

What it was they did
actually manage to say to each other;

And what it was Heisenberg
wanted to go on to say.

I thought the meeting
suggested a very good parallel

Between Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle

And the psychological
uncertainty that I think exists,

The theoretical barrier
in knowing why people do what they do.

And the particular
difficulty of knowing

Why Heisenberg
went to Copenhagen

Seemed to focus the difficulty
in one particular incident.

And what the play is about
is whether we can

Really have any
absolute knowledge of anyone's intentions.

Announcer:
And now "pbs hollywood presents:'Copenhagen.'"

( tower bell rings )

( steeple bells ring )

( doors hiss )

Margrethe Bohr:
But why?

Niels Bohr:
You're still thinking about it?

Margrethe:
Why did he come to Copenhagen?

Does it matter, my love,
now that we're all three of us dead and gone?

Margrethe:
Some questions remain

Long after
their owners have died.

Some questions have
no answers to find.

Why did he come?
What was he trying to tell you?

He did
explain later.

He explained over
and over again.

Each time he explained,
it became more obscure.

It was probably
very simple, when you come right down to it.

He wanted
to have a talk.

"a talk"?
To the enemy? In the middle of a war?

Margrethe, my love,
we were scarcely "the enemy."

It was 1941.

Bohr:
Heisenberg was one of our oldest friends.

Margrethe:
Heisenberg was german.

We were danes.

We were under
german occupation.

It put us in a difficult
position, certainly.

I've never seen you
as angry with anyone

As you were with
Heisenberg that night.

Not to disagree,
but I believe I remained remarkably calm.

I know
when you're angry.

It was
as difficult for him as it was for us.

Margrethe:
So why did he do it?

Bohr:
I doubt if he ever really knew himself.

And he wasn't
a friend...

Not after
that visit.

That was the end
of the famous friendship

Between Niels Bohr
and Werner Heisenberg.

Heisenberg:
Now we're all dead and gone, yes,

And there are only
two things the world remembers about me.

One is the uncertainty
principle,

The other is my
mysterious visit to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941.

Everyone
understands uncertainty, or thinks he does.

No one understands
my trip to Copenhagen.

Time and time again
I've explained it--

To Bohr himself
and Margrethe;

To interrogators
and intelligence officers;

To journalists
and historians.

The more I've explained,
the deeper the uncertainty has become.

Well, I shall be happy
to make one more attempt.

Now we're all dead
and gone.

Now no one can be hurt,

Now no one can be
betrayed.

Margrethe:
I never entirely liked him, you know.

Perhaps I can say that
to you now.

Bohr:
Yes, you did.

When he was first
here in the '20s? Of course you did.

On the beach
at tisvilde with us and the boys?

He was one
of the family.

Something alien
about him, even then.

Well, he was a very
great physicist.

I never changed
my mind about that.

They were all good--
all the people

Who came to Copenhagen
to work with you.

You had most
of the great pioneers in atomic theory here

At one time
or another.

And the more
I look back on it, the more I think

Heisenberg was
the greatest of them all.

Heisenberg:
So what was Bohr?

He was the first
of us all,

The father of us all.

Modern atomic physics
began when Bohr realized

That quantum
theory applied to matter as well as to energy,

1913.

Everything we did
was based on that great insight of his.

When you think
that he first came here to work with me in 1924

And in just over a year
he'd invented quantum mechanics...

It came out of his
work with you.

Mostly out of
what he'd been doing with max born

And pascual jordan
at gottingen.

Another year or so
and he'd got uncertainty.

And you'd done
complementarity.

We argued them both
out together.

Heisenberg:
We did most of our best work together.

And we went on
working together

Long after he ceased
to be my assistant.

Heisenberg:
Long after I'd left Copenhagen in 1927

And gone back
to Germany.

Margrethe:
Then the nazis came to power.

Then the war broke out
and it became more and more difficult...

Until that day
in 1941.

When it finished
forever.

Yes...
Why did he do it?

( train whistle toots )

( whistle toots )

( grinding, hissing )

Heisenberg:
September, 1941, Copenhagen.

And at once here I am,

Getting off the night train
from berlin.

Among all the field gray
wehrmacht uniforms arriving with us.

All the naval gold braid,

All the well-tailored black
of the ss.

Margrethe:
He wants to see you?

I assume that's why
he's come.

You're not really
thinking of inviting him to the house?

That's obviously
what he's hoping.

Niels,
they've occupied our country!

He is not "they."

He is one of them.

First of all,
there's an official visit to Bohr's workplace,

The institute
for theoretical physics.

No doubt an awkward lunch
in the old familiar canteen.

The lunch
was a disaster.

He made a very bad
impression.

Occupation of Denmark,
"unfortunate."

Occupation of poland,
however, "perfectly acceptable."

Germany now "certain
to win the war."

Our tanks are almost
at moscow.

What can stop us?

Well, one thing, perhaps...
One thing.

He knows he's being
watched, of course.

One must remember that.
He has to be careful about what he says.

Or he won't be allowed
to travel abroad again.

My love, the gestapo
planted microphones in his house.

He told goudsmit
when he was in america.

The ss brought him in
for interrogation.

And then they
let him go again.

Margrethe:
I still think of him as a boy.

Bohr:
He's nearly 40.

A middle-aged
professor,

Fast catching up
with the rest of us.

You still want
to invite him here?

Let's add up
the arguments

In a reasonably
scientific way.

Firstly, Heisenberg
is a friend.

Firstly, Heisenberg
is a german.

"a white jew."

That's what the nazis
called him.

He taught relativity
and they said it was "jewish physics."

He couldn't mention
Einstein by name,

But he stuck
with relativity,

In spite of the most
terrible attacks.

All the real jews
have lost their jobs.

He's still teaching.

He's still teaching
relativity.

Wouldn't leave Germany.

He wants to be there
to rebuild german science when Hitler goes.

And if he is being
watched it will all be reported upon--

Who he sees,
what he says to them,

And what they say
to him.

Heisenberg:
I carry my surveillance around like an infectious disease.

But then I happen to know
that Bohr is also under surveillance.

You know you're being
watched yourself?

By the gestapo?
I've nothing to hide.

By our fellow danes.

It would be the most
terrible betrayal of all their trust in you

If they thought
you were collaborating.

Inviting an old friend
to dinner is hardly "collaborating."

It might appear
to be collaborating.

Yes...

He's put us
in a difficult position.

I shall never
forgive him.

He must have
good reason.

He must have
very good reason.

- You won't talk about politics?
- We'll stick to physics.

I assume it's physics
he wants to talk to me about.

I think you must also
assume that you and I

Aren't the only two people
who hear what's being said in this house.

If you want
to speak privately

You'd better go out
into the open air.

I shan't want
to speak privately.

You could go for another
of your walks together.

I don't think we'll be
going for any walks.

Whatever he has to say,
he can say where everyone can hear it.

Some new idea he wants
to try out on you, perhaps?

What can it be,
though?

Where are we
off to next?

So now of course
your curiosity is aroused,

In spite
of everything.

Heisenberg:
So now here I am,

Walking out through
the autumn light

To the bohrs' house
at ny-carlsberg,

Followed, presumably,
by my invisible shadow.

What am I feeling?
Fear, certainly.

The touch of fear
that one always feels for a teacher,

For an employer,
for a parent.

Much worse fear
about what I have to say,

About how to express it,
how to broach it in the first place.

Worse fear still
about what happens if I fail.

Margrethe:
It's not something to do with the war?

Heisenberg is
a theoretical physicist.

I don't think anyone
has yet discovered a way

You can use theoretical
physics to kill people.

It couldn't be
something about fission?

Fission? Why would he
want to talk to me about fission?

( sighs )
because you're working on it.

Heisenberg isn't.

Isn't he?

Everybody else
in the world seems to be

And you're
the acknowledged authority.

He hasn't published
on fission.

It was Heisenberg who did
all the original work

On the physics
of the nucleus.

He consulted you then--
consulted you at every step.

That was back in 1932.

Fission's only been around
for the last three years.

But if the germans
were developing

Some kind of weapon based
on nuclear fission--

My love, no one is going
to develop a weapon based on nuclear fission.

But if they were trying to,
then Heisenberg would be involved.

There's no shortage
of good german physicists.

There's no shortage
of good german physicists in america and britain.

The jews have gone,
obviously.

So Heisenberg would be
in charge of the work?

Margrethe,
there is no work.

There's no way
in the foreseeable future

In which fission
can be used to produce any kind of weapon.

Then why is everyone
still working on it?

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 different elements.

It's what the alchemists
were trying to do--

To turn one element
into another.

So why is he coming?

Heisenberg:
I crunch over the familiar gravel

To the bohrs' front door,
and tug at the familiar bell pull.

( bell rings )

What am I feeling?

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 the impossible responsibility--

( gate clanks )

My dear Heisenberg!

My dear Bohr.

Come in, come in.

Thank you.

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...

I'm so touched
you felt able to ask me.

We must try
to go on behaving like human beings.

I do realize
how awkward this is.

We scarcely had a chance
to do more than shake hands at lunch.

And Margrethe
I haven't seen since--

You were here
four years ago.

Niels is right...
You look older.

I had been hoping
to see you both

In 1938, at the congress
in warsaw.

I believe you had
some personal trouble.

A little business
in berlin.

In the prinzalbrecht-strasse
with the ss?

- A slight misunderstanding.
- We heard, yes. I'm so sorry.

These things happen.

The question
is now resolved. Happily resolved.

We should all have met
in zurich--

- In September 1939.
- Only of course...

There was
an unfortunate clash with the outbreak of war.

Sadly.

Sadly for us,
certainly.

A lot more sadly still
for many people.

- Heisenberg: Yes, indeed.
- Bohr: Well, there it is.

- What can I say?
- What can any of us say...

In the present
circumstances?

No.

And your sons,
they're...?

Are well, thank you.
Elisabeth? The children?

Oh, 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 realize... Quite how much it means to me

To be back here
in Copenhagen, in this house.

I've been rather isolated
over the past few years.

I can imagine.

Margrethe:
Me, he scarcely notices.

I watch him discreetly
from behind my expression of polite interest

As he struggles on.

Have things here
been difficult?

Difficult?

Margrethe:
Of course, he has to ask.

He has to get it
out of the way.

"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.

Yet.

A few months ago
they started deporting communists

And other anti-german
elements.

- But you personally...?
- Have been left strictly alone.

I've been anxious
about you.

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.

- Are you still sailing?
- Sailing?

Not a good start.

- No, no sailing.
- The sound is...?

Mined.

Of course.

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

You've managed
to get some skiing?

Skiing?
In Denmark?

Norway.
You-- you used to go to Norway.

I did, yes.

But since Norway
is also...

Well...

Also occupied?

Yes, that might
make it easier.

In fact I suppose we
could now holiday almost anywhere in Europe.

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

Perhaps I'm being
a little oversensitive.

Of course not.
No, I should have thought.

He must almost be starting
to wish he was back

In the prinzalbrecht-strasse
with the ss.

I don't suppose you feel
you could ever come to Germany?

Margrethe:
The boy is an idiot.

My dear Heisenberg...

It would be
an easy mistake to make

To think that the citizens
of a small nation,

A small nation overrun--

Wantonly and cruelly
overrun

By its more powerful
neighbor--

Don't have exactly
the same feelings

Of national pride
as their conquerors...

Exactly the same love
of their country.

Niels, we agreed.

To talk
about physics, yes.

Not about politics.

- I'm sorry.
- No, no...

I was simply
going to say...

That I still have
my old ski hut in bayrischzell.

So if by any chance...

At any time...

For any reason--

Perhaps Margrethe
would be kind enough

To sew a yellow star
on my ski jacket.

Yes, yes.
Stupid of me.

Those first brief sparks
have disappeared,

And the ashes have become
very cold, indeed.

So now of course I'm starting
to feel almost sorry for him.

He looks younger again,

Like the boy who first
came here in 1924.

Younger than christian
would have been now.

Shy and arrogant,
and anxious to be loved.

Homesick and pleased to be
away from home at last.

And, yes, it's sad...

Because Niels loved him.

He was like a father
to him.

So-- what are
you working on?

Fission, mostly.
And you?

- Various things.
- Margrethe: Fission?

Sometimes
I'm very envious of your cyclotron.

Why? Are you working
on fission yourself?

Heisenberg:
There are over 30 in the United States.

Whereas in the whole
of Germany--

Well...

"whereas in Germany"--
you were saying?

There is not one
single cyclotron.

Bohr:
You haven't come to borrow the cyclotron, have you?

That's not why
you've come to Copenhagen?

No. That's not why
I've come to Copenhagen.

I'm sorry.
We mustn't jump to conclusions.

No, we must,
none of us,

Jump to conclusions
of any sort.

We must wait patiently
to be told.

It's not always easy to explain
things to the world at large.

I realize that we must
always be conscious

Of the wider audience
our words may have,

But the lack of cyclotrons
in Germany is surely not a military secret.

I've no idea what's a secret
and what isn't.

No secret either,
about why there aren't any.

You can't say it, but I can.
It's because the nazis

Have systematically undermined
theoretical physics.

Why?

Because so many people
working in the field were jews.

Margrethe:
Physics, yes? Physics?

- This is physics.
- It's also politics.

The two are sometimes painfully
difficult to keep apart.

Are you in touch with any
of our friends in England?

Born? Chadwick?

Heisenberg... We're
under german occupation.

Germany's at war
with britain.

I thought you might have
contacts of some sort...

Or people in america?
We're not at war with america.

Yet.

You've not heard
from pauli in princeton? Goudsmit? Fermi?

What do you want
to know?

I was simply...
Curious.

You realize...

We both have good friends
in the german embassy here...

Who are quite
old-fashioned

In the way they use
their influence.

They would certainly
be trying to see

That distinguished
local citizens were able to work undisturbed.

Are you telling me

That I'm being protected
by your friends in the embassy?

What I'm saying
is that...

You might find
congenial company there.

I know people
who would feel very honored

If you were able to accept
the occasional invitation.

To cocktail parties
in the german embassy?

Coffee and cakes
with the nazi plenipotentiary?

Lectures, perhaps...

Discussion groups.

Social contacts
of any sort

Could be... Helpful.

I'm sure they could.

Essential, perhaps,
in certain circumstances.

- In what "circumstances"?
- I think we both know.

Because I'm
half jewish?

We all at one time
or another may need the help of our friends.

Is this why you've come
to Copenhagen?

To invite me to watch
the deportation of my fellow danes

From a grandstand
seat in the windows of the german embassy?

Bohr, please!
Please!

What else can I do?
How else can I help?

It's an impossibly difficult
situation for you,

I understand that.

It's also an impossibly
difficult situation for me.

( sighs )

( door creaks )

I'm sure you have
the best of intentions.

Forget what I said.

- Unless--
- unless I need to remember it.

In any case,
that's not why I've come.

Do you remember
where we first met?

Of course.
At gottingen in 1922.

At a lecture festival...
Held in your honor.

It was a high honor.
I was very conscious of it.

You were being honored
for two reasons.

Firstly, because you
were a great physicist.

- Yes, yes.
- And secondly...

Because you were one
of the few people in Europe

Who was prepared to have
dealings with Germany.

The war had been over
for four years,

We were still lepers.
You held out your hand to us.

You bit it.

Bit it?

Bit my hand. You did.

I held it out
in my most statesmanlike and reconciliatory way,

And you gave it
a very nasty nip.

I did?

The first time
I ever set eyes on you,

One of those lectures
I was giving in gottingen.

- What are you talking about?
- You stood up and laid into me.

- I offered a few comments.
- Beautiful summer's day...

The scent of roses drifting in
from the gardens.

Rows of eminent physicists
and mathematicians,

All nodding approval
of my benevolence and wisdom.

Suddenly up jumps
a cheeky young pup

And tells me
my mathematics are wrong.

They were wrong.

How old were you?

20.

( chuckles )

Margrethe:
And Niels has suddenly decided to love him again,

In spite of everything.

Why?
What happened?

Was it the recollection
of that summer's day in gottingen?

Or everything?
Or nothing at all?

Whatever it was, by the time
we sat down to dinner,

The cold ashes have started
into flame once again.

You were always
so combative!

It was the same when
we played table tennis at tisvilde.

Well, I wanted to win.
Of course, I wanted to win. You wanted to win.

I wanted
an agreeable game of table tennis.

You couldn't
see the expression on your face.

I could see
the expression on yours.

What about those games of poker,
then, at the ski hut at bayrischzell?

You once cleaned us out,
you remember that?

With a nonexistent
straight!

We're all mathematicians.
We're all counting cards.

We're all 90% certain
he hasn't got anything.

But on he goes, raising us,
and raising us.

This insane confidence.

Till our faith
in mathematical probability

Begins to waver,
and one by one we all throw in.

I thought I had a straight!
I misread the cards. I bluffed myself!

( laughs )
poor Niels.

"poor Niels"?
He won! He bankrupted us!

- You were
insanely competitive! - Bohr: At bayrischzell...

We'd ski
down from the hut to get provisions,

And he'd make even that
into some kind of race!

Do you remember
when we were there with weizsacker and someone?

You got out a stopwatch!

It took poor weizsacker
18 minutes.

- You were down there
in 10, of course. - Eight!

- I don't recall
how long I took. - 45.

Thank you.

Some rather swift skiing
going on here, I think.

Heisenberg:
Your skiing was like your science.

I mean, what
were you waiting for? Me and weizsacker

To come back and give you
a slight change of emphasis?

Probably.

You were doing 17 drafts
of each slalom.

Bohr:
At least I knew where I was. At the speed you were going,

You were up against
the uncertainty relationship.

If you knew where you were
when you were down,

You didn't know how fast
you'd got there.

If you knew
how fast you'd been going, you didn't know you were down.

The faster you ski,
the sooner you're over cracks and crevasses.

The faster you ski,
the better you think.

Not to disagree,
but... That is most...

Most interesting.

( laughs )

By which he means,
"it's nonsense."

But it's not nonsense.
Decisions make themselves

When you're coming downhill
at 70 kilometers an hour.

Suddenly, there is
the edge of nothingness--

Swerve left
or swerve right?

Or think about it
and die?

( piano plays softly )

I've always been envious
of the way you and Margrethe

Manage to talk to each other
about everything--

Your work... Your problems...
Me, no doubt.

I was formed by nature to be
a mathematically curious entity.

Not one, but half of two.

Mathematics
becomes very odd

When you apply it
to people.

One and one can add up
to so many different sums.

Heisenberg:
Silence...

And of course they're
thinking about their children again.

Margrethe:
Silence.

What's he
thinking about now?

His life...

Or ours?

Bohr:
So many things we think about at the same time--

Our lives and our physics.

Margrethe:
All the things that come into our heads out of nowhere.

Bohr:
Our private consolations.

Our private agonies.

Margrethe:
The same bright things... The same dark things.

Back and back they come.

Heisenberg:
Their four children living,

And their two children
dead.

Margrethe:
Harald, lying alone in that boat.

Bohr:
She's thinking about christian and harald.

Heisenberg:
The two lost boys... Harald...

Bohr:
All those years alone in that terrible ward.

Heisenberg:
...And christian.

The first born.
The eldest son.

Bohr:
And once again I see

Those same few moments
that I see every day.

Heisenberg:
Those short moments on the boat,

When the tiller slams over
in the heavy sea...

And christian is falling.

Bohr:
If I hadn't let him take the helm...

Heisenberg:
Those long moments in the water.

Bohr:
Those endless moments in the water.

About some things
even we only think.

Margrethe:
Because there's nothing to be said.

( piano music
continues )

You suggested a stroll.
We shan't be long.

- Heisenberg: A week at most.
- Bohr: What?

Our great hike
through zealand?

We went to elsinore.

I often think
about what you said there.

You don't mind, my love?
Half an hour.

- An hour, perhaps.
- ( soft chuckle )

No, the whole appearance
of elsinore, you said,

Was changed by our knowing
that hamlet had lived there.

Every dark corner
there reminds us...

Of the darkness
inside the human soul.

Margrethe:
So, they're walking again. He's done it.

Then if they're walking,
they're talking.

Talking in a rather
different way, no doubt.

I knew Niels would
never hold out

If they could just get through
the first few minutes...

If only out of curiosity.
Now they're started,

An hour will mean two,
of course, perhaps three.

The first thing they ever did
was to go for a walk together.

At gottingen,
after that lecture...

Niels immediately went to look
for the presumptuous young man

Who'd queried
his mathematics,

And swept him off
for a tramp in the country.

Walk... Talk,
make his acquaintance.

And when Heisenberg
arrived here to work for him,

Off they go again
on their great tour of zealand.

A lot of this century's physics
they did in the open air,

Strolling around
the forest paths at tisvilde.

Going down to the beach
with the children,

Heisenberg holding
christian's hand.

Yes...

And every evening
in Copenhagen after dinner,

They'd walk
around faelled park--

Walk and talk.

( door slams )

But this time...

Heisenberg wants
to say goodbye. He's leaving.

Thank you for
a delightful evening. Almost like old times.

It was kind of you.

Margrethe:
You'll have some coffee? A glass of something?

I must prepare
for my lecture.

But you'll come
and see us again before you leave?

He has a great
deal to do.

Forgive me if I've
done or said anything...

Yes, yes.

Perhaps,
when this war is over--

If we're
all spared--

Goodbye.

( door echoes )

Politics?

Physics.

- What did he say?
- Nothing.

I don't know.
I was too angry to take it in.

Something
about fission?

Margrethe:
But what exactly had Heisenberg said?

That's what everyone
wanted to know.

Then and forever after.

Bohr:
That's what the british wanted to know

As soon as chadwick managed
to get in touch with me--

"what exactly
did Heisenberg say?"

Heisenberg:
"and what exactly did Bohr reply?"

That was of course,
the first thing

My colleagues asked me
when I got back to Germany.

Margrethe:
What did Heisenberg tell you?

What did you reply?

The one person
who wanted to know was Heisenberg himself.

You mean when he
came back to Copenhagen after the war, in 1947?

Bohr:
I think he wanted various things.

Margrethe:
Two things. Food parcels.

Bohr: For his family
in Germany. They were on the verge of starvation.

Margrethe: And for you
to agree on what you'd said to each other in 1941.

The conversation
went wrong almost as fast as it did before.

You couldn't
even agree where you'd walked that night.

Where we walked?
Faelled park, of course.

Where we went so often
in the old days.

Margrethe:
No, no, not faelled park. That's behind the institute,

Four kilometers away
from where we lived!

But I can see
the street lamps next to the bandstand.

It was 1941--
no street lamps.

Bohr:
I thought we hadn't got any further than my study.

I can see
the drift of papers

Under the reading lamp
on my desk.

It must have been
outside.

What I was going to say
was treasonable.

If I'd been overheard
I would have been executed.

So what was
this mysterious thing you said?

There's no mystery about it.
There never was any mystery.

Heisenberg:
I remember it absolutely clearly,

Because my life
was at stake,

And I chose my words
very carefully.

Does one,
as a physicist...

Have the moral right

To work on the practical
exploitation of atomic energy?

Bohr:
The implication was obvious that you were working on it.

That I was
trying to provide Hitler with nuclear weapons.

- Bohr: And you were!
- No! A reactor!

That's what we
were trying to build!

A machine to produce power,
to generate electricity,

- To drive ships!
- But then I asked you...

Do you actually think
uranium fission

Can be used
for the construction of weapons?

I now know
that it can be.

Bohr:
This is what really horrified me.

What happens
in fission?

You fire a neutron
at a uranium nucleus,

It splits,
and it releases energy.

A huge amount
of energy, yes?

About enough to move
a speck of dust,

But it also releases
two or three more neutrons.

Each of which has the chance
of splitting another nucleus.

So then those two or three
split nuclei

Each release energy
in their turn?

And two or three
more neutrons.

You start a trickle of snow
sliding as your ski,

The trickle
becomes a snowball.

An ever-widening chain
of split nuclei

Forks through the uranium,
doubling and quadrupling

In millionths of a second
from one generation to the next.

The thunder
of the gathering avalanche

Echoes from all
the surrounding mountains.

Until eventually, after
let's say 80 generations,

280 specks of dust
have been moved.

Enough specks of dust
to constitute a city,

And all who live in it.

But there is
a catch.

There is a catch,
thank god.

Natural uranium consists
of two different isotopes, u238 and u235.

Less than 1% of it is u235,
and this tiny fraction

Is the only part of it
that's fissionable by fast neutrons.

What we'd
realized, though...

That if we could once
get the reactor going...

The u238 and the natural uranium
would absorb the fast neutrons

And be transformed by them
into a new element altogether.

Plutonium.

Plutonium.

Heisenberg:
If we could build a reactor, we could build bombs.

That's what had brought me
to Copenhagen.

But none of this
could I say.

And at this point,
you'd stopped listening.

The bomb had already gone off
inside your head.

Bohr:
Because I'd grasped the central point already.

One way or another,
you saw the possibility

Of supplying Hitler
with nuclear weapons.

You "grasped" at least four
different central points,

All of them wrong.

You told rozental that I'd
tried to pick your brains on fission.

You told weisskopf
that I'd asked you

What you knew about
the allied nuclear program.

Chadwick thought
I was hoping to persuade you

There was no german program.
But then it seems

You told some people that
I'd tried to recruit you to work on it!

Very well, let's
start all over again from the beginning.

No gestapo
in the shadows this time. No british intelligence officer.

- No one watching us at all.
- Only me.

Bohr:
Only Margrethe.

We're going to make
the whole thing clear to Margrethe.

You know
how strongly I believe

That we don't
do science for ourselves,

That we do it
so we can explain to others--

- Heisenberg:
In plain language. - In plain language.

Not your view, I know.
You'd be happy to describe

What you were up to purely
in differential equations

If you could,
but for Margrethe's sake...

- In plain language.
- Plain language.

Bohr:
All right, so here we are, walking along once more.

And this time,
I'm absolutely calm,

I'm listening intently.

- What is it you want to say?
- It's not just what I want to say.

The whole german
nuclear team in berlin,

They all wanted me to come
and discuss it with you.

Go back to Germany,
Heisenberg.

Gather your colleagues
together in the laboratory.

Get up on a table
and tell them... What?

Niels Bohr says
that in his considered judgment,

Supplying
a homicidal maniac

With an improved instrument
of mass murder is...

What shall I say?
An interesting idea.

No, not even
an interesting idea.

A really rather seriously
uninteresting idea.

What happens?
You all fling down your geiger counters?

- Obviously not.
- Because they'll arrest you.

My one hope
is to remain in control.

So you don't want me
to say yes, and you don't want me to say no.

What I want is for you
to listen

Very carefully to what
I'm going on to say next.

Very well. Here I am,
listening most carefully as you tell me...

That nuclear weapons
will require an enormous technical effort.

- True.
- They will suck up huge resources.

- Huge resources. Certainly.
- That sooner or later,

Governments
will have to turn to scientists and ask them

Whether it's worth
committing those resources,

Whether there is
any hope

Of producing the weapons
in time for them to be used.

Wait-- so they will
have to turn to you and me.

We are the ones

Who will have to advise them
whether to go ahead or not.

In the end,

The decision will be
in our hands, whether we like it or not.

That's what you
want to tell me?

That's what I want
to tell you.

That's why you have come
all this way with so much difficulty?

That's why you have
thrown away nearly 20 years of friendship?

- Simply to tell me that?
- Simply to tell you that.

But Heisenberg, this is
more mysterious than ever.

What are you
telling me it for?

What am I supposed
to do about it?

The government
of occupied Denmark isn't going to come to me

And ask me
whether we should produce nuclear weapons.

No, but sooner or later,

If I manage to stay
in control of our program,

The german government
is going to come to me.

They are going to ask me
whether to continue or not.

I will have to decide
what to tell them.

Then you have an easy way
out of your difficulties.

You tell them the same truth
that you've just told me.

You tell them
how difficult it will be.

And perhaps
they'll be discouraged, perhaps they'll lose interest.

There was a report
in a stockholm newspaper

That the americans
are working on an atomic bomb.

Ah. Now it comes,

Now it comes.
Now I understand everything.

You think I have contacts
with the americans.

Well, you may.
It's just conceivable.

If anybody
in occupied Europe does, it will be you.

So you do want to know about
the allied nuclear program.

I simply want to know
if there is one.

Some hint. Some clue.

I've just
betrayed my country and risked my life

To warn you
of the german program.

And now I'm supposed
to return the compliment?

Bohr, I have to know.
I'm the one who has to decide.

If the allies are
building a bomb, what am I choosing for my country?

Germany is where
I was born.

Germany is where
I became what I am.

Germany is all the faces
of my childhood,

All the hands
that picked me up when I fell,

All the voices
that encouraged me, that set me on my way,

All the hearts
that speak to my heart.

Germany
is my widowed mother,

My impossible brother, my wife!
Germany is our children!

I have to know
what I'm deciding for them!

Another defeat?

Another nightmare
like the nightmare I grew up with?

Bohr, my childhood ended
in anarchy and civil war.

Are more children
going to starve as we did?

But my dear Heisenberg,
there's nothing I can tell you.

I've no idea whether there's
an allied nuclear program.

Heisenberg:
But that allied nuclear program

Is just getting underway
even as we're talking.

And the bomb they're building
is to be used on us.

On the evening of Hiroshima,
oppenheimer said

It was his one regret

That they hadn't produced
the bomb in time to use on Germany.

He tormented himself
afterwards.

Afterwards, yes. At least
we tormented ourselves beforehand.

Did a single one of them
stop to think

Even for a brief moment
about what they were doing?

Did you when you went
to los alamos?

My dear good Heisenberg,
we weren't supplying the bomb to Hitler.

You weren't dropping it
on Hitler, either.

You were dropping it
on anyone within reach--

On old men
and women in the street-- on mothers and their children--

And if you had
produced it in time,

They would have been
my fellow countrymen,

My wife, my children.
That was the intention, yes?

That was the intention.

You never had
the slightest conception

Of what happens when bombs
are dropped on cities.

Even conventional bombs.
None of you ever experienced it.

You know why allied scientists
worked on the bomb?

Of course.
Fear.

The same fear
that consumed you,

Because they were afraid
that you were working on it.

But Bohr, you could have
told them.

- Told them what?
- What I told you in 1941...

That the choice
is in our hands-- mine and oppenheimer's.

That if I can
tell them the simple truth when they ask me,

The simple discouraging
truth, so can he.

This is what
you wanted from me?

Not to tell you
what the americans were doing, but to stop them?

To tell them we can
stop it together.

I had no contact
with the americans.

You did with the british.

Only later.

The gestapo intercepted
the message you sent them about our meeting.

- And passed it to you?
- Why not?

They began to trust me.
That's what gave me the opportunity

Of remaining in control
of events.

Not to criticize,
Heisenberg,

But if this was your plan
in coming to Copenhagen,

It's-- what can I say?

It's most interesting.

It wasn't a plan,
it was a hope. Not even a hope--

A microscopically
fine thread of possibility.

A wild
improbability.

Worth trying though, Bohr.
Worth trying, surely.

But already you were
too angry to understand what I was saying.

No, why he was angry
was because he was beginning to understand.

The germans drive out
most of their best physicists

Because they're jews; america
and britain give them sanctuary.

Now it seems that this
might offer the allies a hope of salvation.

And at once you came
howling here to Niels,

Begging him
to persuade them to give it up.

Margrethe, my love, perhaps
we should express ourselves a little more temperately.

But the gall of it.
The sheer, breathtaking gall of it.

Bold skiing,
I have to say.

But, Bohr,

We weren't skiing then.

I refused to believe it
when I first heard the news of Hiroshima.

I thought it was
just one of those

Strange dreams we were
living in at the time--

But you'd done it.
You'd built the bomb.

- Bohr: Yes.
- And used it on a living target.

- On a living target.
- You're not suggesting

That Niels did anything wrong
by working at los alamos?

- Of course not.
- The decision had been taken

Long before Niels arrived.

The bomb would have
been built whether he'd gone or not.

In any case,
my part was very small.

Oppenheimer
described you as the team's "father-confessor."

It seemed to be
my role in life.

He said you made
"a great contribution."

Spiritual, possibly,
not practical.

Fermi said it was you
worked out how to trigger the Nagasaki bomb.

I put forward
an idea.

You're not implying
that there's anything

That Niels needs
to explain or defend?

No one has ever expected him
to explain or defend anything.

He is a profoundly
good man.

It's not a question of goodness,
I was spared the decision.

Yes, and I was not.

So, explaining
and defending myself

Was how I spent the last
30 years of my life.

When I went to america
in 1949,

A lot of the physicists
wouldn't even shake my hand.

Hands that had actually built
the bomb wouldn't touch mine.

Let me tell you,
if you think you're making yourself

Any clearer to me now,
you're not.

Margrethe, I understand
his feelings.

I don't.
I'm as angry as you were before.

It's so easy to make you
feel conscience-stricken.

Why should he transfer
his burden to you?

Because what does he do after
his great consultation with you?

He goes back to berlin
and tells the nazis

That he can produce
atomic bombs.

But what I stress
is the difficulty in separating 235.

You tell them
about plutonium?

I tell some
of the minor officials.

I have to keep
people's hopes alive.

And you ask albert speer
for the funding to continue?

To continue
with the reactor? Of course I do.

But I ask him for so little
that he doesn't take the program seriously.

Do you tell him the reactor
will produce plutonium?

I don't tell him
the reactor will produce plutonium, not speer,

No, I don't tell him
the reactor will produce plutonium.

A striking omission,
I have to admit.

And what happens?
It works.

He gives us
barely enough money

To keep the reactor program
ticking over

And that is the end

Of the german atomic bomb.
That is the end of it.

You go on
with the reactor, though.

We go on with the reactor,
of course, because now

There's no risk
of getting it running in time

To produce enough
plutonium for a bomb.

No, we go on
with the reactor, all right.

I keep that program going.
I keep it under my control, till the bitter end.

Everything was still
under your control?

Under my control,
yes, that's the point. Under my control!

Nothing was under anyone's
control by that time.

Perrin examined it
after the allied troops took over.

They said it had
no cadmium control rods.

There was nothing to absorb
any excessive neutrons

To slow down the reaction
when it overheated.

You were no longer running
that program, Heisenberg,

- The program was running you.
- But we were almost there.

Two more weeks.
Two more blocks of uranium,

And it would have been
german physics that achieved

The world's first
self-sustaining chain reaction.

Except that fermi
had already done it in chicago,

Two years earlier.

But we didn't
know that.

You didn't know
anything.

Perrin said
there wasn't even anything

To protect you all
from the radiation.

We didn't have time
to think about it.

So if it had gone
critical--

Margrethe:
You'd have all died of radiation sickness.

My dear Heisenberg.

My dear boy.

Yes, but by then
the reactor would've been running.

I should've been there
to look after you.

That's all we could
think about at the time--

To get the reactor running.
To get the reactor running.

You always needed me there
to slow you down a little.

If I had died then,
what should I have missed?

30 years of attempting
to explain.

30 years of reproach
and hostility.

Even you turned
your back on me.

Look at him,
he's lost.

He is like
a lost child.

So, Heisenberg,
why did you come to Copenhagen in 1941?

It was right
that you told us about all the fears you had.

But you didn't really
think I'd tell you whether

The americans were
working on a bomb?

No.

You didn't seriously
hope that I'd stop them?

No.

You were going back to work
on that reactor whatever I said.

Yes.

So, Heisenberg...
Why did you come?

Why did I come?

Tell us once again--
another draft of the paper--

And this time,
we shall get it right.

This time,
we shall understand.

You might even
understand yourself.

Why did I come?

And once again,
I go through that evening in 1941.

I crunch over
the familiar gravel, and tug at the familiar bell pull.

( bell rings )

What's in my head?
Fear, certainly...

And the absurd
and horrible importance

Of someone
bearing bad news.

But yes...

Something else as well.

Here it comes again--
I can almost see its face--

Something good, something
bright and eager and hopeful.

( gate clanks )

- Bohr: I open the door...
- Heisenberg: And there he is...

I see his eyes light up
at the sight of me.

Bohr:
He's smiling his wary "schoolboy" smile.

Heisenberg:
And I feel a moment of such consolation...

Bohr:
A flash from such pure gladness...

Heisenberg:
...As if I'd come home after a long journey,

Bohr:
...As if a long-lost child had appeared on the doorstep.

Margrethe: Look at them--
father and son, still-- just for a moment.

Bohr:
For a moment, yes, it's the '20s again...

Heidelberg: ...And we
shall speak to each other and understand each other

- In the way we did before.
- Bohr: My dear Heisenberg!

- My dear Bohr.
- Come in, come in.

Heisenberg:
It was the very beginning of spring--

The first time I came
to Copenhagen, in 1924, March,

Raw, blustery northern
weather--

But every now and then,
the sun would come out

And leave that first marvelous
warmth of the year on your skin,

That first breath
of returning life.

What did we do?

Put on our boots
and rucksacks--

Took the tram
to the end of the line.

- Start walking--
- northwards to elsinore.

- If you walk, you talk.
- Walking, talking...

For a hundred miles.

Bohr:
After which, we talked more or less nonstop

For the next three years.

Those years?
Those amazing years.

- Those three short years.
- Bohr: From 1924 to 1927.

From when I arrived
in Copenhagen to work with you--

To when you departed
to take up your chair in leipzig.

Three years of raw, bracing
northern springtime.

At the end of which,
we had quantum mechanics,

- We had uncertainty--
- we had complementarity--

--We had the whole
Copenhagen interpretation.

Europe in all its glory again.
A new enlightenment,

With Germany back
in its rightful place at the heart of it.

And who led the way
for everyone else?

You and Niels.

- Well, we did.
- We did.

And that's what you're
trying to get back?

To something we did
in those three years-- something we thought.

I keep almost seeing it
out of the corner of my eye

While we're talking.
Something in the way we worked,

Something in the way
we did all those things.

- Together.
- Together, yes. Together.

Margrethe:
No.

No?
What do you mean, no?

Not together.

You didn't do any
of those things together.

Yes, we did.
Of course we did.

No, no you didn't.

Every single one of them
you did when you were apart.

You first worked out
quantum mechanics on heligoland.

I remember the evening

When the mathematics first began
to chime with the principle--

- On heligoland.
- --On heligoland.

On your own.

On my own.
And I was happy?

Happier than when you came
back to us all in Copenhagen

The following winter.

With all that
schrodinger nonsense?

Nonsense? Come, come--
schrodinger's wave formulation?

Yes, and suddenly
everyone all turned their backs

On your wonderful
new matrix mechanics.

Heisenberg:
They couldn't understand it.

They could understand
schrodinger's wave mechanics.

Because they'd
learned it in school.

Well, you described it
as "repulsive."

Schrodinger said
my mathematics were "repulsive."

They simply thought
you were jealous.

You'd gone mad by this time.
You'd become fanatical.

You were refusing to allow
wave theory

Any place
in quantum mechanics at all.

- You'd completely
turned your coat. - I said that wave mechanics

And matrix mechanics were
simply alternative tools.

Something you were
always accusing me of.

"if it works, it works.
Never mind what it means."

- Of course
I mind what it means. - What it means in language.

- In plain language, yes.
- What something means

Is what it means
in mathematics.

You think that so long
as the mathematics works out,

- The sense doesn't matter.
- Sense is mathematics!

That's what sense is!

Yes, you are far better
apart, you two.

You actually love the paradoxes,
I mean, that's your problem.

You revel
in the contradictions.

Yes and you've never
been able to understand the suggestiveness

Of paradox and contradiction.
That's your problem.

Having him out of town
was as liberating

As getting away
from my hay fever in heligoland.

I actually started
to think at last.

I wouldn't let you
even sit anywhere near each other,

- If I were the teacher.
- And that's when I did it.

That's when I did
uncertainty.

Walking round faelled park
at night on my own.

Oh--!

It's very late,
and as soon as I've turned off into the park

I'm completely alone
in the darkness.

I start to think
about what you'd see

If you could train a telescope
on me from the mountains of Norway.

You'd see me
by the street lamps on the blegdamsvej...

Then nothing as I vanished
into the darkness...

Then another glimpse of me
as I passed the lamppost

In front of the bandstand,
then nothing again.

And that's what we see
in the cloud chamber.

Not a continuous track,
but a series of glimpses--

A series of collisions
between the passing electron

And various molecules
of water vapor.

I don't know why we hadn't
thought of it before,

Except that we were too busy
arguing to think at all.

You seemed to have given up
on all forms of discussion.

By the time I get back
from Norway, I find

You've done a draft
of your "uncertainty" paper

And you've already sent it
for publication.

And an even worse
battle begins.

My dear good Heisenberg,
it was not open behavior

To rush a first draft
into print before we've discussed it together.

It was not the way
we worked.

No, "the way we worked"
was that you hounded me

From first thing in the morning
till last thing at night.

The "way we worked"
is you drove me mad.

Yes, because the paper
contained a fundamental error!

Here we go again.

I show him one of
the strangest truths about the universe

That any of us
has stumbled across since relativity--

That you can never
know everything about the whereabouts of a partic,

Or anything else--
even Bohr now, as he prowls up and down the room

In that
maddening way of his--

Because we can't observe it
without introducing

Some new element
into the situation--

A molecule of water vapor
for it to hit,

A piece of light--
things which have an energy of their own,

Which therefore
have an effect on that they hit.

I shatter the objective
universe around you, and all you can say is,

"there's an error
in the formulation!"

There was!

Listen--
in my paper,

What we were
trying to locate is not a free electron

Off on its travels
through a cloud chamber,

But an electron
when it's at home,

Moving around
inside an atom.

And the uncertainty arises,
not, as you claim, through

Its indeterminate
recoil when it's hit by an incoming photon--

- Plain language,
plain language. - This is plain language.

- Listen--
- the language of classical mechanics.

Listen--
Copenhagen is an atom... Margrethe is its nucleus.

It's about the right scale,
10,000 to 1?

- Yes, yes...
- Now, Bohr is an electron.

He is wandering
about the city...

Somewhere in the darkness.

No one knows where.

He's here, he's there,
he's everywhere and nowhere.

Up at faelled park,

Down at new carlsberg,
passing city hall,

Out by the harbor.

I am a photon--
a quantum of light.

I have been dispatched...

Into the darkness...

To find Bohr.

And I succeed. Why?

Because I've managed
to collide with him.

But look--
what's happened?

He's slowed down--
he's been deflected.

He's no longer doing
exactly what he was so maddeningly doing

When I walked into him.

But, Heisenberg, Heisenberg--
you also have been deflected.

If people can see
what's happened to you-- to their "piece of light"--

Then they can work out
what must have happened to me.

The trouble is knowing
what's happened to you.

You see what we did
in those three years, Heisenberg?

Not to exaggerate,
but we turned the world inside out.

Yes, listen.
Now it comes, now it comes.

We put man
back at the center of the universe.

Throughout history,
we keep finding ourselves displaced.

We keep exiling ourselves
to the periphery of things.

First, we turn ourselves

Into a mere adjunct
of god's unknowable purposes--

Tiny figures
kneeling in the great cathedral of creation.

And no sooner have we recovered
ourselves in the renaissance,

No sooner has man become,
as protagoras proclaimed him,

"the measure of all things,"

Than we're
pushed aside again,

By the products
of our own reasoning.

We're dwarfed again

As physicists build
the great new cathedrals for us to wonder at--

The laws of classical
mechanics

That exist whether
we exist or not.

And then we
come to the beginning of the 20th century...

And we're
suddenly forced to rise from our knees again.

It starts
with Einstein.

It starts
with Einstein.

He shows
that measurement--

Measurement on which
the whole possibility of science depends--

Measurement is not
an impersonal event

That occurs
with impartial universality.

It's a human act...

Carried out from
a specific point of view in time and space,

From the one
particular viewpoint of a possible observer.

And then...

Here in Copenhagen
in the mid '20s,

We discover that there is
no precisely determinable objective universe.

That the universe exists

Only as a series
of approximations,

Only within the limits
determined

By our relationship
with it...

Only through the understanding
lodged inside the human head.

Margrethe:
If it's Heisenberg at the center of the universe,

Then the one
bit of the universe he can't see is Heisenberg.

Forgive me,
but you don't even know

Why you did uncertainty
in the first place.

And I'm sorry, but you
want to make everything

Seem so heroically
abstract and logical.

I look around me
and what I see isn't a story.

I see confusion and rage
and tears and jealousy

And no one knowing
what things mean or which way they're going to go.

All the same,
it works, it works.

Oh yes, it works.
It works wonderfully.

Within three months
of publishing your "uncertainty" paper

You're offered
the chair at leipzig.

I didn't mean that.

And if you want to know
why you've come here to Copenhagen,

I'll tell you that
as well.

You're right,
there's no great mystery about it.

You've come to show
yourself off to us.

Bohr:
Margrethe...

When he first came in 1924,
he was a humble assistant lecturer

From a humiliated nation,
grateful to have a job.

Now he's here,
back in triumph--

The leading scientist
in a nation that's conquered most of Europe.

He's come to show us
how well he's done in life.

This is
so unlike you.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
but isn't that really why he's here?

Because he's burning
to let us know that he's in charge

Of some vital piece
of secret research?

And that even so...

He's preserved a lofty
moral independence.

Preserved it
so famously

That he's being watched
by the gestapo.

Preserved it so
successfully

That he's now also got
a wonderfully important moral dilemma to face.

Yes, well,
now you're simply working yourself up.

A chain reaction?

You tell one painful truth
and it leads to two more.

And as you frankly admit,
you're going back to continue

Doing precisely
what you were doing before, whatever Niels tells you.

Yes.

Because you wouldn't
dream of giving up

Such a wonderful
opportunity for research.

Not if I can
possibly help it.

Also you want
to demonstrate to the nazis

How useful theoretical
physics can be.

You want to save
the honor of german science.

You want to be there
to reestablish it in all its glory

As soon as the war is over.

All the same,
I won't tell speer that the reactor--

Will produce
plutonium? No.

Because you're afraid
of what will happen

If the nazis commit
huge resources,

And you fail
to deliver the bombs.

Please, don't try
and tell us that you're a hero of the resistance.

I never said
I was a hero.

Your talent
is for skiing too fast

For anyone to see
where you are;

For always being
in more than one position at a time...

Like one of your
particles.

I can only say
that it worked.

Unlike most
of the gestures

Made by the heroes
of the resistance, it worked.

Oh, I know
what you're thinking.

I should have joined
the plot against Hitler

And got myself hanged
like the others.

- Bohr: Of course not.
- You don't say it,

Because there are things
that can't be said, but you think it.

- No.
- Heisenberg: What would it have achieved?

Really,
it is ridiculous.

You reasoned your way,
both of you,

With astonishing delicacy
and precision

Into the tiny world
of the atom.

And now it turns out
that everything depends

On these really
rather large objects on your shoulders.

And what's going on
there is--

Elsinore.

Elsinore...

Yes.

And maybe
you're right--

I was afraid
of what might happen.

I was conscious of being
on the winning side.

Why didn't you kill me?

- Why didn't I--?
- Kill me... That night in 1941.

My dear Heisenberg,
the suggestion is of course--

"most interesting."

So interesting in fact,
it didn't even occur to you.

Complementarity,
once again.

I'm your enemy.
I'm also your friend.

I'm a danger to mankind,
I'm also your guest.

I'm a particle,
I'm also a wave.

We have one set
of obligations to the world in general,

And other sets,
never to be reconciled

To our fellow countrymen,
to our neighbors, to our family,

To our friends,
to our children.

All we can do
is to look afterwards, and see what happened.

I'll tell you
another reason why you did uncertainty--

You have a natural
affinity for it.

Well, I must have
cut a gratifyingly chastened figure

When I returned
in 1947,

Crawling on my hands
and knees, my nation back in ruin.

Not really.

Once more
you demonstrated how you personally came out on top.

Enough, my love,
enough.

No.

I've kept
my thoughts to myself for all these years,

But it's so maddening
having this "clever son"

Forever dancing about
in front of one's eyes,

Forever demanding
our approval,

Forever struggling
to shock us,

Forever begging
to be told what the limits to his freedom are,

If only so he can
go out to transgress them.

I'm sorry,
but really--

On your
"hands and knees"?

It was my good,
dear, kind husband

Who was on his hands
and knees-- literally.

Crawling down to the beach
in the darkness in 1943...

Fleeing like
a thief in the night

From his homeland
to escape being murdered.

I warned you in 1941,
but you wouldn't listen.

At least Bohr
got across to sweden.

And where were you?

I can only say
I didn't do it. I didn't build the bomb.

No, and why
didn't you?

I'll tell you that as well.
Because you couldn't.

You didn't
understand the physics.

I understood very clearly.
I simply didn't tell the others.

- Ah...
- I understood, though.

But-- secretly.

You can look it up
if you don't believe me.

There's evidence
for once?

It was all most
carefully recorded.

- Witnesses, even?
- Unimpeachable witnesses.

Who wrote it down?

Who recorded it
and transcribed it.

Even though you
"didn't tell anyone"?

I told one person.

I told Otto Hahn
that terrible night

After we heard
the news of Hiroshima.

Somewhere in the small
hours, I gave him

A reasonably good account
of how the bomb had worked.

After the event?

After the event. Yes.
When it didn't matter anymore.

The critical mass.
That was the most important thing.

The amount of material
you needed to establish the chain reaction.

Did you tell him
the critical mass?

I gave him
a figure, yes.

You can
look it up.

We were all rounded up
by the british,

The whole team,
everyone who worked on atomic science,

And we were spirited away
to farm hall in huntingdonshire.

Hahn asked me
when we first arrived

Whether I thought
there were any hidden microphones.

I laughed.
I said the british were far too old-fashioned

To know any
gestapo methods.

I underestimated them.
They had microphones everywhere.

They recorded everything.
So look it up.

But the critical mass.
You gave him a figure.

What was the figure
you gave him?

- I forget.
- Heisenberg--

It's on the record.
You can see for yourself.

The figure
for the Hiroshima bomb was--

50 kilograms.

So that was
the figure you gave Hahn? 50 kilograms?

I said about a ton.

"about a ton"?

A thousand
kilograms?

Heisenberg, I believe
I am at last, beginning to understand something.

One thing
I was wrong about.

You were
20 times over.

The one thing.

But Heisenberg,
your mathematics,

Your mathematics--
how could they have been so far out?

They weren't.

As soon as I calculated
the diffusion

- I got it just about right.
- As soon as you calculated it?

I gave everybody
a seminar on it a week later.

It's in the record.
Look it up.

You mean you hadn't
calculated it before?

There was no need.
It already been done.

For natural uranium.

You needed to calculate
the figure for pure 235.

- Obviously.
- And you didn't?

I didn't.

Oh, all your agonizing
in Copenhagen

About plutonium
was beside the point.

You could have done it
without ever building the reactor.

You could have done it
with 235 all the time.

Almost certainly not.

- Just possibly, though.
- Just possibly.

And that question
was settled

Long before you arrived
in Copenhagen...

Simply by failing to try
the diffusion equation.

Such a tiny failure.

But the consequences
kept branching out over the years,

Doubling
and redoubling--

Until they
were large enough to save a city.

Which city?

Any of the cities
that we never dropped our bomb on.

London, presumably,
if you'd had it in time.

If the americans had
already entered the war,

And the allies had
begun to liberate Europe, then--

Who knows?
Paris as well.

Amsterdam.
Perhaps Copenhagen.

So, Heisenberg, tell us
this one simple thing--

Why didn't you do
the calculation?

I don't know.

I don't know
why I didn't do it.

Because I never
thought of it.

Because it didn't
occur to me.

Because I assumed
it wasn't worth doing.

"assumed"?

Assumed?

You never
assumed anything.

That's how you got
uncertainty--

Because you rejected
our assumptions.

You calculated, Heisenberg.
You calculated everything.

The first thing
you did with a problem was the mathematics.

You should
have been there to slow me down.

Yes...

You wouldn't have
got away with it if I'd been standing over you.

Though in fact,
you made exactly the same assumption.

You thought there
was no danger for exactly the same reasons as I did.

Why didn't you
calculate it?

Why didn't I
calculate it?

Tell us why
you didn't calculate it and we'll know why I didn't.

It's obvious
why I didn't.

Well, go on.

Because he wasn't trying
to build a bomb.

Yes. Thank you.

Because he wasn't
trying to build a bomb.

I imagine it was
the same for me,

Because I wasn't trying
to build a bomb. Thank you.

Bohr:
So you bluffed yourself,

Like I did at poker
with the straight I never had.

But in that case...

Why did I come
to Copenhagen? Yes.

Why did I come?

One more draft, yes?
One final draft.

And once again I crunch
over the familiar gravel

To the bohrs' front door,
and tug at the familiar bell pull.

( bell rings )

Why have I come?

I know perfectly well.

Know so well
that I've no need to ask myself.

Till once again,
the heavy front door opens.

Bohr:
He stands on the doorstep.

Until this instant,
his thoughts have been everywhere and nowhere

Like unobserved particles
through all the slits and the diffraction

Grating simultaneously.

Now, they have to be
observed and specified.

- My dear Heisenberg!
- My dear Bohr!

Heisenberg:
And at once the clear purposes inside my head

Lose all definite shape.

The light falls on them
and they scatter.

How difficult it is to see
even what's in front of one's eyes.

All we possess
is the present,

And the present endlessly
dissolves into the past.

Bohr has gone, even
as I turn to see Margrethe.

Niels is right.
You look older.

Bohr:
I believe you had some personal trouble.

Margrethe slips into history
even as I turn back to Bohr.

To catch
the slightest glimpse of what's behind one's eyes.

Here I am at the center
of the universe,

And yet all I can see
are two smiles that don't belong to me.

- Elisabeth? The children?
- Oh, very well.

They-- they send their love,
of course.

I can feel a third smile
in the room, very close to me.

Could it be the one
I suddenly see for a moment in the mirror there?

And is the awkward stranger
wearing it in any way connected

With this presence that I
can feel in the room?

This all-enveloping,
unobserved presence?

Margrethe:
I watch the two smiles in the room--

One awkward
and ingratiating,

The other rapidly
fading from incautious warmth to bare politeness.

There's also a third smile
in the room I know,

Unchangingly courteous,
I hope,

And unchangingly guarded.

You've managed
to get some skiing?

Bohr:
I glance at Margrethe,

And for a moment
I see what she can see and I can't--

Myself-- and the smile
vanishing from my face as poor Heisenberg blunders on.

Heisenberg:
I look at the two of them looking at me,

And for a moment I see
the third person in the room

As clearly as I see them.

Their importunate guest,
stumbling

From one crass and unwelcome
thoughtlessness to the next.

Bohr:
I look at him looking at me,

Anxiously, pleadingly
urging me back to the old days,

And I see what he sees.

And yes, now it comes,
now it comes.

There's someone missing
from the room.

He sees me.
He sees Margrethe.

He doesn't see himself.

( plays softly )

You suggested a stroll.
We shan't be long.

- Heisenberg:
A week at most. - Bohr: What?

Our great hike
through zealand?

You remember elsinore?
"the darkness inside the human soul"?

Bohr:
And out we go. Out under the autumn trees.

Heisenberg:
Now there's no one in the world

Except Bohr
and the invisible other.

Who is he,
this all-enveloping presence in the darkness?

Margrethe:
The flying particle wanders the darkness...

No one knows where.

It's here, it's there,

It's everywhere
and nowhere.

Bohr:
With careful casualness

He begins to ask
the question he's prepared.

Does one, as a physicist,
have the moral right

To work on the practical
exploitation of atomic energy?

Margrethe:
The great collision.

Bohr:
I stop, he stops.

Margrethe:
This is how they work.

Heisenberg:
He gazes at me, horrified.

Margrethe:
Now at last, he knows where he is

And what he's doing.

And even as the moment
of collision begins, it's over.

Heisenberg:
He turns away.

Bohr:
Already I'm hurrying back towards the house.

Margrethe:
Already they're both flying away from each other

Into the darkness again.

Heisenberg:
Our conversation's over.

Bohr:
Our great partnership.

Heisenberg:
All our friendship.

Margrethe:
And everything about him

Becomes as uncertain
as it was before.

Bohr:
Unless...

Yes, a thought
experiment.

Let's suppose
for a moment

I don't go flying off
into the night.

Let's see what happens
if instead...

I remember the paternal role
I'm supposed to play.

If I stop
and control my anger...

( brief sigh )

...And turn back to you,
and ask you...

- Why?
- Why?

Why are you confident
that it's going to be so reassuringly difficult

To build a bomb
with 235?

Is it because you've done
the calculation?

- The calculation--?
- Of the diffusion in 235.

No, it's because
you haven't calculated it.

You haven't considered
calculating it.

You haven't
consciously realized

There was a calculation
to be made.

Heisenberg:
And of course, now I have realized--

In fact it wouldn't be
all that difficult.

Let's see... The scattering
cross-section's about 6 x 10-24,

So the mean free path
would be-- hold on.

Bohr:
And suddenly a very different

And very terrible new world
begins to take shape.

That was the last
and greatest demand

That Heisenberg made
on his friendship with you--

To be understood... When he
couldn't understand himself.

And that was
the last and greatest act of friendship for Heisenberg

That you performed
in return--

To leave him
misunderstood.

Yes.

Perhaps I should
thank you.

Perhaps you should.

Anyway, it was
the end of the story.

Though perhaps there was
also something I should thank you for--

That summer night
in 1943,

When I escaped
across the sound in the fishing boat,

And the german
freighters arrived--

What's that to do
with Heisenberg?

When the ships arrived
on the Wednesday,

There were 8,000 jews
in Denmark to be arrested and crammed into their holds.

The following day, on the eve
of the jewish new year,

When the ss
began their roundup,

There was scarcely
a jew to be found.

For a handful of us
in one fishing smack

To get past
the german patrol boats was remarkable enough.

For a whole armada
to get past,

With the best part
of 8,000 people on board,

Was... Like
the red sea parting.

So perhaps
I should thank you.

For what?

My life.

All our lives.

Nothing to do
with me by that time,

I regret to say.

But after I'd gone,
you came back to Copenhagen.

To make sure
our people didn't take over the institute in your absence.

I never thanked you
for that, either.

You know they offered me
your cyclotron?

You could have
separated a little 235 with it.

Meanwhile,
you were going on from sweden to los alamos.

Bohr:
To play my small but helpful part

In the deaths
of a hundred thousand people.

Margrethe:
Niels, you did nothing wrong.

- Didn't I?
- Heisenberg: Of course not.

You were a good man
from first to last,

And no one could ever
say otherwise.

Whereas I--

Whereas you,
my dear Heisenberg,

Never managed
to contribute to the death

Of one single
solitary person in all your life.

Bohr:
Before we can lay our hands on anything, our life's over.

Heisenberg:
Before we can glimpse who or what we are,

We're gone
and laid to dust.

Bohr:
Settled among all the dust we raised.

Margrethe:
And sooner or later there will come a time

When all our children
are laid to dust,

And all our children's
children.

Bohr:
When no more decisions, great or small, are ever made again.

When there's no more
uncertainty,

Because there's no more
knowledge.

Margrethe:
And when all our eyes are closed,

When even
the ghosts have gone,

What will be left
of our beloved world?

Our ruined and dishonored
and beloved world?

Heisenberg:
But in the meanwhile,

In this most precious
meanwhile,

There it is.
The trees in faelled park.

Our children
and our children's children

Preserved, just possibly,

By that one short moment
in Copenhagen.

By some event
that will never quite be located or defined.

By that final
core of uncertainty at the heart of things.

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Announcer:
This is pbs.

This play isn't an attempt

To come to any final
judgment of Heisenberg.

He was in a very,
very difficult situation

As a physicist
in a totalitarian country.

Heisenberg didn't present
himself as a hero.

He undoubtedly
did make compromises with the nazi regime,

And I'm sure he made them
for mixed motives--

Some of them which I think
were undoubtedly honorable.

And I'm very taken aback
by people living now

Who had no experience
of living in nazi Germany

Who rush to judgment
on Heisenberg.

( classical piano
solo plays )

( barbara blum speaking )

( music continues )

( barbara blum speaking )

I think he felt very much
that he had lost a friend.

Erik rudinger:
It was an occupied country

And here comes a person
from the occupier.

And I think that was
very naive of Heisenberg--

To think that they could
just talk like old friends

Under those circumstances.

I think he was-- there was
some psychological deficiency

That he wasn't aware
of how Bohr would feel

When he came
as-- formally

As a representative
of the occupier.

Frayn:
Various people have speculated

That Heisenberg
was trying to find out

About the allied
atomic program--

Indeed, that he was sent
by the german government--

And I think
that's quite possible.

What I cannot believe

Is that anyone
in the german government

Ever authorized Heisenberg

To go to Copenhagen
and say to Niels Bohr--

Who was known to be in touch
with western scientists--

To say to him that there was
this highly secret program

Running in Germany
to produce atomic weapons.

That, Heisenberg must have done
off his own bat.

And to me it suggests
that at the very least

That he hoped that Bohr would
pass on the news to the allies

That there was an atomic
bomb program in Germany.

And I think it just possibly
gives some color

To Heisenberg's own account
of the meeting,

His own explanation
of the meeting--

That he hoped that Bohr would
persuade allied scientists

To be as discouraging
to their governments

About nuclear weapons

As the german
physicists were being to the german government.

Now of course, I knew
that Bohr was a dane

And Denmark was occupied
by german troops,

So it was obvious that
Bohr would have very strong feelings in this matter.

At the same time,
I felt that Bohr and I were good friends

And he knew my attitude
to problems of this kind from earlier years,

So I felt that still
this would be

A good basis for confidence
and for conversation on this problem.

Frayn:
Everyone since the war

Has had suspicions
about Werner Heisenberg.

I have to say as a young man,

He was thought to be
very straightforward

And very open
and very charming man and everyone liked him.

But he certainly
seems to have changed during the nazi period.

He does seem to have
become much more closed up as life went on.

And he certainly felt
he had been misunderstood,

And not surprisingly,
he was much attacked after the second world war

And people still have

Passionately vituperative
feelings about him.

In fact, Margrethe,
Niels Bohr's wife, was particularly angry

About all his attempts
to exculpate himself.

Margrethe was offended

By his coming in 1941,
and afterwards said,

"whatever anyone
says about that meeting, it was a hostile one."

When I wrote the play,

Heisenberg had commented
publicly on the meeting

And said what he
thought had happened. But Niels Bohr hadn't.

What I didn't know

Was that Bohr had written
an account of the meeting

In a very angry
letter to Heisenberg long after the war

In which he put his version
of the meeting.

However, absolutely
characteristically, he didn't send the letter.

He started to redraft it.

He was trying
to dissent very strongly from Heisenberg

Without hurting Heisenberg's
feelings because he was a very kindly man.

And he never sent the letter.
He went on redrafting it until he died.

His family found all
these drafts of the letter among his papers

And decided
not to publish them

But to put them
in the Niels Bohr archive in Copenhagen

And to embargo them
until 50 years after his death.

One of the ideas
that Heisenberg and Bohr introduced into physics

Is that the act
of observation affects what you're observing.

And curiously,
the production of the play

Has had a somewhat similar
effect on the subject.

It has persuaded
the Bohr family

To release the letter

And indeed, all the various
drafts of the letter early.

"I think that
I owe it to you to tell you

That I am greatly amazed

To see how much your memory
has deceived you.

You spoke in a manner

That could only give me
the firm impression that under your leadership

Everything was being done
in Germany to develop atomic weapons.

A great matter for mankind
was at issue--

In which, despite
our personal friendship,

We had to be regarded
as representatives of two sides

Engaged in mortal combat."

Bohr certainly
seemed angrier

Than I have made him seem
in the play

And he certainly claims
to remember the meeting

Better than I've made him.

And I very much
wish I'd had the letter when I wrote the play.

Jochen Heisenberg:
I think the fact

That Bohr did not send
the letter to my father

Was a much more difficult
situation to deal with

Than if he had sent it.

In some way, I think my father
would have welcomed the response.

And in any relationship

I think it is extremely
important

To talk about situations--
even unpleasant ones.

The fact that
that did not take place

I think made him
in some way hurt

And indicated

That there was a loss in trust
in the relationship.

It is imaginable

That there is some evidence
somewhere

That would put beyond doubt

What occurred
at the meeting.

But that still wouldn't put
beyond doubt

What Niels Bohr thought
Heisenberg's intentions were

And what Heisenberg thought
Niels Bohr had understood at the meeting.

That would be
just as elusive as ever.

Hans-peter du%%rr:
Heisenberg died in a very biblical way.

He was at home.

He asked some of his
closest friends to his deathbed.

He said, "look, I'm dying,

And I'm very sad
that I did not have this last talk with Bohr."

So I knew when he said that
on his deathbed

That this cast

A very dark
shadow on his life.

And I felt that,
whenever this comes up,

It was a friendship
which was very important for him, you know?

It was destroyed by this.

Frayn:
There's something very sad about these two men

As they got over in life.

Each of them separately
going through that meeting

Over and over again,
trying to see what had fractured their friendship,

Trying to actually
get precisely right

What had occurred
at that fatal meeting.

At least in my play

Their ghosts get together
to talk about it.

This play is
about the difficulty of knowing

Why people do what they do.

It's also about the difficulty
of knowing

Why one does
what one does oneself.

And in the end it comes
to the conclusion

That in order to understand
ourselves,

We have to talk
to other people.

We have to see our ideas
reflected in other people.

And that is what
"Copenhagen" is about.

( piano music continues )