 This period came to an end when the Nazi Party won power in Germany in an election on 2 March 1933 . The following month it enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service , which provided for the retirement or dismissal of all Jewish civil servants , along with political opponents of the government . As a veteran of the First World War , Franck was exempt , but he submitted his resignation anyway on 17 April 1933 . He once commented that science was his God and nature was his religion . He did not require his daughters to attend religious instruction classes at school , and even let them have a decorated tree at Christmas ; but he was proud of his Jewish heritage all the same . He was the first academic to resign in protest over the law . Newspapers around the world reported it , but no government or university protested . 
