Abstract: Part 1 retraces the development of arguments raised against major areas of modern physics: Relativity and quantum theory.Many conflicts that became volatile in the Nazi era such as, for instance, the confrontation between experimental and theoretical physicists, have their origins well within the Weimar Republic.Max von Laue's book review of Johannes Stark's 1923 pamphlet on what the latter perceived to be a 'crisis' in German physics (doc.2) reveals these two Nobelists and leading figures from the two rival groups, as personal enemies long before the National Socialists' rise to power.The succeeding documents show that these conflicts only became more entrenched in the final years of the Weimar Republic, especially following the onset of the global economic crisis in 1929.Part 2 covering the years 1933 to 1936 documents the rapid encroachment of National Socialism into science through jurisdiction.Excerpts are taken from the Law for the Restoration ofthe Professional Civil Service, for example (see doc. 7), which was the legal basis for the persecution of Jewish university employees as well as of the few liberal and left-wing professors, forcing them into exile, though not without some public scandal, as is demonstrated by James Franck's and Wolfgang Kohler's articles from 1933 (docs.9 and 13).We also document Nazi attempts at achieving political streamlining, the opportunistic applause by some, and the ongoing opposition among the majority of physicists against the loss of academic freedom which often went hand in hand with toleration and accommodation to xviii 1.2 Organization of the anthology the changed working conditions.But we also encounter flagrant cases of selfmobilization for the new regime among engineers and scientists.171These Jewish refugees thus constituted the vast majority of the approximately 500,000 German-speaking migrants (estimate by Strauss in: Strauss et al. (Eds.)[1991]' p. 10).According to Werner Roeder (ibid.),only 6% of these refugees, that is 30,000, were political refugees not of Jewish origin, with the percentage much higher for specific groups such as intellectuals, scientists and artists.