A portrait book is not a neutral compilation but a selection. It puts certain people into a group and excludes others from it. The selection only follows the individual criteria of the publishers on a superficial level. After all, contemporary ideas of belonging matter as well. This shows itself particularly momentously in the time of National Socialism. In 1937, for the 200th year anniversary of the Georgia Augusta, the Göttingen native anatomist Max Voit (1876-1949) published a volume with portraits of Göttingen professors. While he included some Jewish scientists in the volume who were already dead, he did not consider his Jewish contemporaries. For instance, Max Born (1882-1970), one of the most famous quantum physicists of the time, or James Franck (1882-1964), who had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1925. Due to National Socialist injustices, neither of them were still active at the University of Göttingen at the time of Voit’s publication.
