Why did Nazi physicists attack Werner Heisenberg as a supporter of so-called Jewish physics?

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Werner Karl Heisenberg sits at a desk in a suit with his hands folded, bookshelves in the background. — Werner Heisenberg Werner Heisenberg.

Nazi-affiliated physicists, led by figures such as Johannes Stark, attacked Werner Heisenberg because they promoted a movement for "German" or "Aryan" physics that rejected abstract mathematical approaches.1

They characterized these abstract methods—specifically relativity and quantum mechanics—as manifestations of "Jewish" influence. Because Heisenberg championed these theoretical frameworks, he was targeted by this ideological movement. In 1937, the official SS journal published an article by Stark that labeled Heisenberg a "white Jew" and the "Ossietzky of physics," associating him with Carl von Ossietzky, a pacifist and critic of the Nazi regime.1

These attacks were fundamentally rooted in antisemitic ideology and a rejection of modern theoretical science, which the Nazi-affiliated group sought to purge from German academia.1