The Berlin Mittwochsgesellschaft, the Wednesday Society, was officially founded on 19 January 1863. It called itself a freie Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Unterhaltung, a free society for scholarly conversation. It had 16 members, at most 17, each a leading expert in his field, and it met every second Wednesday. Each member invited the others to his home twice a year and gave a lecture, which the group then discussed. In its last years its members included Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Werner Heisenberg and Ludwig Beck. After the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944, Beck was shot on 21 July without trial. The society’s last session, the 1,056th, took place on Wednesday 26 July 1944, at the home of Paul Fechter.