Short answers, pulled from the story.
The German Physical Society, or Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG), is the oldest organisation of physicists in the world. It was founded in Berlin in 1845 and grew from informal scholarly meetings at the Magnus-Haus, an 18th-century urban palace named after the natural scientist Gustav Magnus.
The DPG's worldwide membership in 2025 is cited as 50,668. Membership peaked at 63,012 in 2014.
The DPG opposed the National Socialist persecution of Jewish scientists and the movement known as Deutsche Physik, which rejected modern theoretical physics. DPG president Carl Ramsauer submitted a petition to the Reich Education Ministry in 1942 documenting the damage done to physics instruction by the politicisation of education. However, under pressure, the DPG also called on its Jewish members to withdraw their membership at the end of 1938.
The Zeitschrift fur Physik was a journal created on the recommendation of a committee that included Albert Einstein, established to allow rapid publication of original research without peer review. It was published from 1920 to 1997 by Springer-Verlag under the auspices of the DPG and was considered one of the most prestigious physics journals in the world during the golden years of quantum mechanics in the 1920s.
The two highest awards presented by the DPG are the Max Planck Medal for theoretical physics, first awarded in 1929, and the Stern-Gerlach Medal for experimental physics, first awarded in 1933. The DPG also administers other prizes including the Gustav Hertz Prize for Young Physicists and, in cooperation with other organisations, the Max Born Medal and Prize and the Otto Hahn Prize.
Johannes Stark, the 1919 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient and a proponent of Deutsche Physik, ran for president of the DPG against Karl Mey, an industrial physicist and head of Osram. Stark received only two votes. In retaliation he cancelled the DPG's use of rooms at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, removed travel expenses for its personnel, and barred PTR staff from lecturing at DPG events.