“No Fugitive and Cloistered Virtue”—A tribute to Niels Bohr

A decade and a half ago in Denmark’s darkest days those who had taken her liberty were trying to snuff out her soul. To overwhelming force, the people of the country and their king presented unbending moral resistance. At the center of their spiritual unity stood Denmark’s men of learning under the leadership of Niels Bohr. What does it mean to preserve a nation’s soul? What makes a nation—or a man? In time of trouble the answer becomes clear: mankind is formless clay; his spirit he derives from his heroes, from his traditions, from well‐accepted thoughts and ways of life, from storied legends, and from firmly held standards of value. To hold high Denmark’s values Bohr and other leaders created and disseminated at their peril a great book entitled Danish Culture. Warned of a plot to seize him, Bohr had to flee for his life in a small boat across open waters to Sweden in November 1943, but the work went on and Danish resistance stood fast another year and a half.

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