En busca de Klingsor

Jorge Volpi

4 ideas

1. Hunting Klingsor through Heisenberg's circle

   In 1946 Francis P. Bacon, a young American physicist attached to the occupation forces, is sent to find 'Klingsor', a codename for the scientist said to have secretly overseen Nazi research policy, including the uranium project. Guided by Gustav Links, a German mathematician who survived involvement in the July 20 plot against Hitler, he interrogates suspects such as Werner Heisenberg and Johannes Stark. The case never resolves, and Links, narrating decades later from a psychiatric hospital, leaves open whether Klingsor ever existed or whether Links himself fits the role.

2. Uncertainty principle applied to investigation

   The act of investigating a past event disturbs the evidence, much as measurement disturbs a quantum system. Witnesses reshape their testimony in response to the questioner's presence, suspicions and needs. The investigator therefore cannot fix a suspect's guilt and motive at the same time with precision. Historical truth becomes a range of probabilities produced partly by the inquiry itself, not a hidden fact waiting to be uncovered.

3. Testimony as a strategic game

   Every informant reveals or withholds information to maximize their own payoff, so an interrogation is a non-cooperative game rather than a transfer of facts. To read testimony correctly, ask what each player gains from the version they offer. The narrator who guides the investigation is himself a player with stakes, which makes the guide the least trustworthy source.

4. Abstraction lets scientists evade moral responsibility

   Scientists under a criminal regime rationalized their collaboration by treating their work as pure research, detached from how the state would use it. The prestige and abstraction of theoretical physics supplied an alibi. Because of this, guilt spread diffusely across many people instead of settling on one villain, which is why the search for a single Klingsor keeps failing.

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