Carl von Weizsaecker, 94; physicist did atomic research for Nazis

Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, 94, a German physicist who researched atomic weapons for the Nazis and became a philosophy professor who espoused pacifism after World War II, died Saturday after a long illness, his family told the Associated Press in Berlin.

Weizsaecker said he worked on the atomic bomb to avoid being conscripted into the German army. He also insisted in postwar interviews that he was grateful that the nuclear technology was never used by the Nazis.

But a secret recording of German scientists captured by the Allies caught Weizsaecker saying, after hearing of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japan that, “If they were able to finish it by summer ‘45, then with a bit of luck, we could have been ready in winter ‘44-45.”

After the war, Weizsaecker became a philosophy professor at the University of Hamburg. He also remained a physicist, conducting research for Germany’s Max Planck Institute.

In 1957, he and 17 other leading German physicists formed the Gottinger 18, which protested the idea of arming the West German army with nuclear weapons.

Born in Kiel, Germany, on June 28, 1912, into a nationally prominent family of jurists and theologians, Weizsaecker studied physics and mathematics in Leipzig, Berlin and Gottingen, and became a professor of physics. His brother Richard was president of West Germany from 1984 to 1990 and of the reunited Germany until 1994.