theory under Richard Becker. In general, he found the instruction “far better than at the Sorbonne.” Outside of formal classes, Barschall studied the theoretical physics text of Georg Joos, along with fellow student Werner Stein, a convinced anti-Nazi who “made a point of being friendly [with Heinz]” and came to the Barschall home once a week to work with Heinz. After the war in which Stein, though with a Ph.D., was drafted and served on the Russian front, he became a professor at the University of Berlin and the senator (secretary) for art and science in the government. When Barschall visited Berlin after the war, Stein put his official limousine, with driver, at Heinz's service.

In 1936, when Barschall was to find a major professor, the discriminatory procedures had consequences again. (Barschall's Berlin 1934 Studienbuch marking him as Jewish is prominently displayed at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington.) Many of the professors feared to take him on. He called on Lise Meitner, but unprotected by her Lutheran religion from the discriminatory laws herself and counseled by her colleague Otto Hahn to avoid risks, she expressed her regrets that she could not take him as a research student. Heinz spoke of seeing her at a conference in Birmingham twenty years later, where she immediately recognized him and recalled the conversation.

With the problem of finding a professor unresolved and at the suggestion of his aunt, Heinz called on Max Planck at his home. Planck was long retired, but he was still editor of the Annalen der Physik, along with Eduard Grüneisen. Planck gave Heinz a note to Grüneisen, a physics professor at Marburg. Grüneisen, who Heinz described as “an honorable and courageous man” immediately agreed to accept him as a student and Heinz went to Marburg in the fall of 1936. After World War II, when conditions in Germany were very difficult, Barschall was able to help Grüneisen and