Einstein

by Philipp Frank

  At that time the German elementary schools were conducted on a denominational basis, the clergy of each religious group controlling its schools. Since Munich was for the most part Catholic, most of the schools were naturally of that denomination. Nominally Einstein’s parents probably adhered to the Jewish religion, but they were not sufficiently interested in a Jewish education to send their children to a Jewish school since there was none near their home and it would have been expensive. His parents may even have felt that by sending their boy to a Catholic school he would come into more intimate contact with non-Jewish children. At any rate, Albert attended the Catholic elementary school, where he was the only Jew in his class.

  Young Albert experienced no unpleasantness because of this situation. There was only a slight feeling of strangeness resulting naturally from the different religious traditions, and this factor was definitely of secondary significance and did not increase to any marked degree his difficulty in forming intimate friendships with his fellow pupils. The difficulty was due fundamentally to his character.

  Albert received regular instruction in the Catholic religion and he derived a great deal of pleasure from it. He learned this subject so well that he was able to help his Catholic classmates when they could not answer the teacher’s questions immediately. Einstein has no recollection of any objection having arisen to the participation of a Jewish pupil in Catholic religious instruction. On one occasion the teacher attempted a somewhat strange kind of object lesson by bringing a large nail to the class and telling the pupils: “The nails with which Christ was nailed to the cross looked like this.” But he did not add, as sometimes happens, that the Crucifixion was the work of the Jews. Nor did the idea enter the minds of the students that because of this they must change their relations with their classmate Albert. Nevertheless Einstein found this kind of teaching rather uncongenial, but only because it recalled the brutal act connected with it and because he sensed correctly that the vivid portrayal of brutality does not usually intensify any sentiments of antagonism to it but rather awakens latent sadistic tendencies.

  It was very characteristic of young Einstein’s religious feeling that he saw no noticeable difference between what he learned of the Catholic religion at school and the rather vaguely remembered remnants of the Jewish tradition with which he was familiar at home. These elements merged in him into a sense of the existence of lawfulness in the universe and in the representation of this harmony by means of different kinds of symbols, which he judged rather on the basis of their æsthetic value than as symbols of the “truth.”

  On the whole, however, Einstein felt that school was not very different from his conception of barracks — that is, a place where one was subject to the power of an organization that exercised a mechanical pressure on the individual, leaving no area open within which he might carry on some activity suited to his nature. The students were required to learn mechanically the material presented to them, and the main emphasis was placed on the inculcation of obedience and discipline. The pupils were required to stand at attention when addressed by the teacher and were not supposed to speak unless asked a question. Independent questions addressed by students to the teacher and informal conversations between them were rare.

  Even when Albert was nine years old and in the highest grade of the elementary school, he still lacked fluency of speech, and everything he said was expressed only after thorough consideration and reflection. Because of his conscientiousness in not making any false statements or telling lies he was called Biedermeier (Honest John) by his classmates. He was regarded as an amiable dreamer. As yet no evidence of any special talent could be discovered, and his mother remarked occasionally: “Maybe he will become a great professor some day.” But perhaps she meant only that he might develop into some sort of eccentric.

  3. Gymnasium in Munich

  At the age of ten, young Einstein left the elementary school and entered the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. In Germany the period between the ages of ten and eighteen, the years that are of decisive importance in the intellectual development of adolescents, are spent in the gymnasium. The aim of these institutions was to give the young people a general education based upon the acquisition of ancient Greek and Roman culture, and for this purpose most of the time was devoted to learning Latin and Greek grammar. Because of the complications of these subjects, and since the students were required to learn all the rules pedantically, little time was left to acquire a real understanding of the culture of antiquity. Furthermore, it would have been a much more difficult task for the majority of the teachers. It was claimed that the process of learning the grammar of one or two complicated languages is an indispensable training for the mind and a disciplining of the intellect hardly attainable otherwise. For Einstein, however, aspiring to learn the laws of the universe, this mechanical learning of languages was particularly irksome, and this kind of education seemed very much akin to the methods of the Prussian army, where a mechanical discipline was achieved by repeated execution of meaningless orders.

  Later, when speaking about his impressions of school, Einstein frequently said: “The teachers in the elementary school appeared to me like sergeants, and the gymnasium teachers like lieutenants.” The sergeants in the German army of Wilhelm II were notorious for their coarse and often brutal behavior toward the common soldiers, and it was well known that, with the troops completely at their mercy, sadistic instincts developed in them. The lieutenants, on the other hand, being members of the upper class, did not come into direct contact with the men, but they exerted their desire for power in an indirect manner. Thus when Einstein compared his teachers to sergeants and lieutenants, he regarded their tasks to be the inculcation of a certain body of knowledge and the enforcing of mechanical order upon the students. The pupils did not view the teachers as older, more experienced friends who could be of assistance to them in dealing with various problems of life, but rather as superiors whom they feared and tried to predispose favorably to themselves by behaving as submissively as possible.

  There was one teacher in the gymnasium, named Ruess, who really tried to introduce the students to the spirit of ancient culture. He also showed them the influence of these ancient ideas in the classical German poets and in modern German culture. Einstein, with his strong feeling for everything artistic and for all ideas that brought him closer to the hidden harmony of the world, could hardly have enough of this teacher. He aroused in him a strong interest in the German classical writers, Schiller and Goethe, as well as in Shakspere. The periods devoted to the reading and discussion of Hermann und Dorothea, Goethe’s half-romantic, half-sentimental love story written in a period of the greatest political unrest, remained deeply engraved in Einstein’s memory. In the gymnasium the students who had not completed their assignments were punished by being made to stay after school under the supervision of one of the teachers. In view of the tedious and boring character of the ordinary instruction, these extra periods were regarded as a real torture. But when Ruess conducted the extra period, Einstein was happy to be punished.

  The fact that in the midst of all the mechanical drilling he was sometimes able to spend an hour in an artistic atmosphere made a great impression on him. The recollection of this class remained very vivid in his mind, but he never stopped to consider what sort of impression he had made on the teacher. Many years later, when he was already a young professor at Zurich, Einstein passed through Munich and, overcome by his memories of the only man who had really been a teacher to him, decided to pay him a visit. It seemed obvious to him that the teacher would be happy to learn that one of his students had become a professor. But when Einstein arrived at Ruess’s quarters dressed in the careless manner that was characteristic of him then as well as later, Ruess had no recollection of any student named Einstein and could not comprehend what the poorly dressed young man wanted of him. The teacher could only imagine that by claiming to be one of his former pupils the young man thought he could borrow money from him. Apparentl
y it never entered Ruess’s mind that a student could pay him a visit to express a feeling of gratitude for his teaching. It is possible that his teaching had not been so good as it appeared in Einstein’s memory and perhaps he had only imagined it. But in any case the visit was very embarrassing for Einstein and he departed as quickly as possible.

  4. Intellectual Interests

  When Einstein was five years old his father showed him a pocket compass. The mysterious property of the iron needle that always pointed in the same direction no matter how the compass case was turned made a very great impression on the young child. Although there was nothing visible to make the needle move, he concluded that something that attracts and turns bodies in a particular direction must exist in space that is considered empty. This was one of the impressions which later led Einstein to reflect on the mysterious properties of empty space.

  As he grew up, his interest in natural science was further aroused by the reading of popular scientific books. A Russian Jewish student who ate at Einstein’s home on Thursdays called his attention to Aaron Bernstein’s Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbücher (Popular Books on Natural Science), which were widely read by laymen interested in science about that time. These books discussed animals, plants, their mutual interdependence, and the hypotheses concerning their origin; they dealt with stars, meteors, volcanoes, earthquakes, climate, and many other topics, never leaving out of sight the greater interrelation of nature. Soon Einstein was also an enthusiastic reader of such books as Büchner’s Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter), which attempted to gather together the scientific knowledge of the time and to organize it into a sort of complete philosophical conception of the universe. The advocates of this view, frequently called “materialism” although it should rather be called “naturalism,” wanted to understand and explain all celestial and terrestrial occurrences by analogy with the natural sciences and were particularly opposed to any religious conception of the nature of the universe.

  Today such books as Büchner’s Kraft und Stoff are considered superficial and we may wonder how at that time young people like Einstein who were capable of independent thought could have been stirred by them. Yet if we have any sense of historical values and justice, we should ask ourselves what recent books are to be regarded as the analogues of those earlier works. In reply we can point to such books as Sir James Jeans’s The Mysterious Universe. Probably a really critical judge would not be able to say that Büchner’s book is more superficial than those of similar contemporary writers. At any rate, we find a very good popular presentation of the scientific results themselves, and a rather vague philosophical interpretation, which may be accepted or not according to one’s taste.

  Einstein’s interest in mathematics was also aroused at home and not at school. It was his uncle and not the teacher at the gymnasium who gave him his first understanding of algebra. “It is a merry science,” he told the boy; “when the animal that we are hunting cannot be caught, we call it x temporarily and continue to hunt it until it is bagged.” With such instruction, Albert found a great deal of pleasure in solving simple problems by hitting upon new ideas instead of just using a prescribed method.

  He was impressed most, however, when at about the age of twelve he obtained for the first time a systematic textbook on geometry. It was a book to be used in a class that had just started, and, like many children who are curious about the new subjects they are going to take up in school, he tried to delve into the subject before it acquired the unpleasant and irksome quality that teachers generally imparted. Having begun to read the book, he was unable to put it down. The clarity of the exposition and the proof given for every statement, as well as the close connection between the diagrams and the reasoning, impressed him with a kind of orderliness and straightforwardness that he had not encountered before. The world with its disorder and uncleanliness suddenly appeared to him to contain also an element of intellectual and psychological order and beauty.

  Ever since Albert was six years old his parents had insisted that he take violin lessons. At first this was only another kind of compulsion added to the coercion of the school, as he had the misfortune to be taught by teachers for whom playing was nothing but a technical routine, and he was unable to enjoy it. But when he was about thirteen years old he became acquainted with Mozart’s sonatas and fell in love with their unique gracefulness. He recognized that his technique was not equal to the performance of these compositions in the light-handed manner necessary to bring out their essential beauty, and he attempted repeatedly to express their light, carefree grace in his playing. In this way, as a result of his efforts to express a particular emotional mood as clearly as possible and not through technical exercises, he acquired a certain skill in playing the violin and a love for music, which he has retained throughout his life. The feeling of profound emotion that he experienced in reading the geometry books is perhaps to be compared only with his experience as a fourteen-year-old boy when for the first time he was able to take an active part in a chamber-music performance.

  At the age of fourteen, while he was still reading Büchner’s books, Einstein’s attitude toward religion experienced an important change. While in the elementary school he had received Catholic instruction, in the gymnasium he received instruction in the Jewish religion, which was provided for the students of this sect. Young Einstein was greatly stirred by the comments of the teachers of religion on the Proverbs of Solomon and the other parts of the Old Testament dealing with ethics. This experience made a permanent impression and left him with a profound conviction of the great ethical value of the Biblical tradition. On the other hand Einstein saw how the students were compelled to attend religious services in Jewish temples whether they had any interest in them or not. He felt that this did not differ from the coercion by means of which soldiers were driven to drill on the parade ground, or students to unravel subtly invented grammatical puzzles. He was no longer able to regard ritual customs as poetic symbols of the position of man in the universe; instead he saw in them, more and more, superstitious usages preventing man from thinking independently. There arose in Einstein an aversion to the orthodox practices of the Jewish or any other traditional religion, as well as to attendance at religious services, and this he has never lost. He made up his mind that after graduation from the gymnasium he would abandon the Jewish religious community and not become a member of any other religious group, because he wanted to avoid having his personal relationship to the laws of nature arranged according to some sort of mechanical order.

  5. Departure from Munich

  When Einstein was fifteen an event occurred that diverted his life into a new path. His father became involved in business difficulties, as a result of which it appeared advisable to liquidate his factory in Munich and seek his fortune elsewhere. His pleasure-loving, optimistic temperament led him to migrate to a happier country, to Milan in Italy, where he established a similar enterprise. He wanted Albert, however, to complete his studies at the gymnasium. At this time it was axiomatic for every middle-class German that an educated person must have a diploma from a gymnasium, since only this diploma entitled him to become a student at a university. And as a course of study leading to a degree was in turn necessary before one could obtain a position in one of the intellectual professions, Einstein, like all the others, felt compelled to complete his course at the gymnasium.

  In the field of mathematics Einstein was far ahead of his fellow students, but by no means so in classical languages. He felt miserable at having to occupy himself with things in which he was not interested but which he was supposed to learn only because he had to take an examination in them. This feeling of dissatisfaction grew greater when his parents departed and left him in a boarding-house. He felt himself a stranger among his fellow students and regarded their insistence upon his participation in all forms of athletic activities as inconsiderate and coarse. He was probably friendly to all, but his skeptical attitude toward the organization and the spirit of the school as
a whole was quite clear to the teachers and students and aroused a sense of uneasiness in many of them.

  As he developed into an independently thinking man, the thought of having to submit for some time yet to the pedagogical methods of the gymnasium became more and more unbearable. Although he was good-natured and modest in personal intercourse, nevertheless then as well as later he stubbornly defended his intellectual life against the entry of any external constraint. He found it more and more intolerable to be compelled to memorize rules mechanically, and he even preferred to suffer punishment rather than to repeat something he had learned by rote without understanding.

  After half a year of suffering in solitude Einstein tried to leave the school and follow his parents to Italy. To Einstein, living in Munich, which was dominated by the cold, rigid Prussian spirit, colorful Italy, with its art- and music-loving people living a more natural and less mechanized life, appeared to be a beckoning paradise. He worked out a plan that would enable him to run away from school, at least for a while, without forfeiting his chances of continuing his studies. Since his knowledge of mathematics was far ahead of the requirements of the gymnasium, he hoped that he might perhaps be admitted to a foreign institute of technology even without a diploma. He may even have thought that, once he was out of Germany, everything would take care of itself.