Werner Karl Heisenberg was born on December 5, 1901, in Würzburg,
Germany. His father, August Heisenberg, was a professor of Greek
philology, one of the most prestigious and competitive fields in
Germany at that time. He had received his appointment at the University
of Würzburg just weeks after Werner's birth, and the position meant
security as well as social advancement. Werner's mother, Annie
Heisenberg, was a smart homemaker who did not have opportunities
for higher education in Germany. Instead, she lived through the
success of her husband and children, whom she raised with skill
and dedication. She managed to receive some advanced education
from her father, and she even helped her husband grade homework.
August is remembered as a stiff authoritarian figure.
He treated his sons as he did his students: with proper respect
but little tolerance for laziness. His career progressed brilliantly,
as he excelled both as a teacher and a scholar. The rigor of his
workload, however, took its toll on his family life. August was
known for a fiery temper, and without Annie's calm and pleasant
disposition, their children may have suffered the consequences
of a turbulent family environment. Instead, Werner's parents played
a positive role for the most part and gave their son an atmosphere
in which to flourish.
The Heisenberg family was no different from the typical
bourgeois family at the time, placing an emphasis on social grace
and respectability. Such respectability required the appropriate
expressions of nationalism and religion. Early on, Werner questioned
the pretense, recognizing that his parents themselves did not believe
in much of the dogma, though they maintained Christian ethics. Werner's
reluctance to accept dogma foreshadowed a similarly critical perspective
that he would develop as a scientist. He saw religion and science
as complementary aspects of reality, each covering only a limited
jurisdiction.
Werner's childhood companion was his brother, Erwin, who
was older by a year and a half. Competition between the two brothers was
fierce. It began with music, which was essential for all cultured children–Werner
playing the cello and later the piano, Erwin on the violin, and
August singing with his operatic voice. Later, the competition
turned to academics, particularly mathematics, as August would
challenge his sons to compete on the problems assigned to Erwin
for homework. Competition often turned into violent struggles,
and it was only after a particularly bloody fight, involving the use
of wooden chairs, that the two brothers decided to call a truce. At
about the ages of thirteen and fourteen, Werner and Erwin finally
saw the futility of violence between them, but they never really
became close either. Erwin would leave for military duty soon and
go on to school in Berlin. He eventually became a chemist, but little
mention is made of him in Heisenberg's public recollections. The
two probably saw each other only occasionally at family functions.
Werner was competitive outside the family as well. He
recognized his weaknesses in the athletic arena, for example, and
often trained alone to improve. Though not a naturally talented
runner, he soon became one of the top long-distance runners in
the area–all for the sake of personal challenge rather than any
real desire for recognition or victory. On the other hand, Werner
also had a large capacity for holding grudges whenever he felt
himself wronged. Rather than confront the offender, he would simply
retreat into his own world and cut off all relations with that
person. Once at the age of five or six, for example, a teacher
rapped him on the knuckles for some transgression of which Werner
believed himself to be innocent. For the rest of the year, he refused
to cooperate in any way with the teacher who had punished him.
As Werner matured, it became clear that science would
be his path, though he apparently toyed with the idea of pursuing
music. He often hibernated in his inner world, but this withdrawal
contributed to the development not of a wild imagination, but of
an abstract, logical, and mathematical mind. The reasons for this development
are numerous. Werner's father's early challenges must have contributed
to his precocity, while the stability and exactness of science may
have appealed to his emotional sensitivity.
