Copenhagen Play Summary

The play, Copenhagen, imagines an encounter between the ghosts of two physicists, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, allowing them to reflect on their controversial meeting in 1941. Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, also plays a key role throughout the dialogue of the play, partially acting as a substitute for the audience. If I were to add a character to the play, I would select Albert Speer. Heisenberg met with Speer in 1942 to discuss the atomic bomb project (Frayn 48). Hitler had decided that only projects that could not succeed within a short period of time could no longer receive funding, and Speer determined which ones would continue receiving money and how much they would be given (Frayn 48). Heisenberg tells the Bohrs of this meeting and maintains

If he did, in fact, act in this manner to prevent the Nazis from producing an atomic bomb, then he seems less of an incompetent villain than if he simply did not create the bomb because he was unable to do so. Speer’s addition to part of the play could enlighten the audience on the meeting and provide a contrasting point to Heisenberg’s interpretation of the meeting. Most of the play centers around the notion that Heisenberg can never truly know his own intentions for his journey to Copenhagen and thus leads to the discussion of multiple motives. However, when it comes to this meeting with Speer, the only insight the audience has to the encounter is Heisenberg’s own understanding of it, an interpretation that has seemingly been proven inaccurate through the rest of the play. In fact, Heisenberg’s memory seems faulty in more ways than simply his ideas of his motives. When Bohr and Heisenberg first discuss their walk, Heisenberg claims he recalls “the drift of autumn leaves under the street-lamps next to the bandstand”, when in reality, there were not any street lamps or fallen leaves (Frayn 35). If we cannot trust Heisenberg when he states a reason for going to Copenhagen or even simple details, then how can we rely on his words for this consequential meeting with