[4][5] Gehrcke contributed to the experimental techniques of interference spectroscopy (interferometry), physiological optics, and the physics of electrical discharges in gases.
[6][7] Like a number of other prominent physicists of the time (including the leading Dutch theoretician H. A. Lorentz) Gehrcke, an experimentalist, was not prepared to give up the concept of the luminiferous aether, and for this and various other reasons had been highly critical of Einstein's theories of relativity at least since 1911.
In response, Weyland organized the Arbeitsgemeinschaft deutscher Naturforscher zur Erhaltung reiner Wissenschaft (Working Group of German Natural Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science), which was never officially registered.
Max von Laue, Walther Nernst, and Heinrich Rubens published a brief and dignified response to the event, in the leading Berlin daily Tägliche Rundschau, on 26 August.
Rising anti-Semitism and antipathy to recent trends in theoretical physics (especially with respect to the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics) were key motivational factors for the Deutsche Physik movement.
[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Under advice from some of his closest associates, Einstein later publicly challenged his critics to debate him in a more professional environment, and several of his scientific adversaries, including Gehrcke and Lenard, accepted.
The ensuing debate took place at the 86th meeting of the German Society of Scientists and Physicians in Bad Nauheim on 20 September, chaired by Friedrich von Müller, with Hendrik Lorentz, Max Planck, and Hermann Weyl present.
This was a surprising collaboration in view of what had happened just 18 months earlier at the gathering under the auspices of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft deutscher Naturforscher and the responses in the press by Einstein, Laue, and Nernst.