The experimental physicist Ernst Gehrcke (1878-1960) spends his professional life as a specialist in optics at the National Institute for Physics and Technical Standards in Berlin. His scholarly interests are broad, however, and range from physics, medicine, philosophy, and geology to acoustics and patent law.

Gehrcke starts publishing against the theory of relativity in 1911. He believes that relativizing simultaneity would lead to a relativization of our entire world view, and that the experimental confirmations of the theory of relativity can be explained just as well with classical physics. In the early 1920s Gehrcke is the key figure in a network of Einstein opponents who wish to proceed jointly against modern physics. Their public campaign begins with the lecture series against the theory of relativity in August 1920 in the Berlin Philharmonie.

Gehrcke never accepts modern physics, and writes satirical poems about Einstein even in old age.