Einstein

by Philipp Frank

  At first it seemed to indicate a considerable confusion in the registry of landed property. When the leaders of the municipal council heard about this mistake, they wanted to correct it as soon as possible. The park in which the frustrated “Einstein house” stood was large and filled with beautiful trees, and there was enough room in it for several houses. The council therefore chose another part of the park, very close to the water, and offered it to Einstein as a birthday present. The house, however, was to be built at his own expense. Einstein and his wife were very happy about it and agreed to this arrangement. But on closer investigation it was found that this was also impossible. When the owner of the “Einstein house” received the right to live in it, he had also been assured that no other house would be built in the park that might in any way disturb his enjoyment of nature and his view over the lake.

  Finally the entire matter began to become unpleasant for both Einstein and the municipal council. A gift that came into being in this way could no longer give pleasure to anyone. Thus it became more and more of a mystery what was actually occurring in the famous model city of Berlin.

  But the matter was not yet at an end. After considerable reflection the municipal council hit upon a third piece of land near the water. It was not nearly so well situated nor was it actually near the water. The neighbors, however, permitted at least a passage from the piece of land in question to the water. The gift became poorer and poorer. When it was finally discovered that the city had no right to dispose of this third plot of land, all Berlin burst out laughing. The laughter aimed at the municipal administration was justified, but Einstein was involved in the matter through no fault of his own.

  Now the council finally became aware that there was no land whatever at its disposal along the water. But since the magnificent gesture of presenting a gift to the Berlin scientist had already become public knowledge, the members of the council felt ashamed to let the entire matter turn into a fiasco. A delegate came to Einstein and said: “In order to be sure that the land we will present to you really belongs to us, please pick out a plot of land that suits you and is for sale. We will buy it.” Einstein agreed. But since he did not like to occupy himself with choosing a piece of land, he let his wife go out to look. Finally she found a beautiful place in the village of Caputh, near Potsdam. The council agreed to the selection, and at the next session of the council a motion for the purchase of the land was presented. Thereupon the entire matter began to develop into a political dispute. A representative of the nationalist parties began to discuss whether Einstein actually deserved such a gift. The subject was postponed to the next session.

  Then Einstein finally lost patience. The gift from his adopted city presented in the name of all the citizens had become an object of political strife, and under the most favorable circumstances it would result from a political bargain. Einstein wrote a letter to the Mayor of Berlin, who later occupied a prominent place in the public eye when it became known that he had accepted a gift of a fur coat for his wife from persons to whom he had given municipal contracts. Einstein wrote approximately as follows: “My dear Mr. Mayor: Human life is very short, while the authorities work very slowly. I feel therefore that my life is too short for me to adapt myself to your methods. I thank you for your friendly intentions. Now, however, my birthday is already past and I decline the gift.”

  The result of the entire matter was that Einstein not only built the house at his own expense, but also had to buy the land with his own money. Some time after these events I was in Berlin and Mrs. Einstein said to me: “In this way, without wanting it, we have acquired a beautiful home of our own situated in the woods near the water. But we have also spent most of our savings. Now we have no money, but we have our land and property. This gives one a much greater sense of security.”

  This feeling was to be proved wrong, because hardly three years later Einstein and his wife had to leave the land and their beautiful villa with its new furnishings. This, however, is more a private matter. Much more interesting is the question of how this entire comedy of errors was possible in the orderly city of Berlin. The answer to this question is the answer to the whole problem of the German Republic. The city of Berlin was apparently headed by men who represented culture and who wished to express this position by honoring Einstein. The decisive power, however, lay in the hands of persons who sabotaged the work of the apparent rulers. The officials of the city of Berlin carried out the orders of the municipal council in such a way as to result in failure and to make the republican administration look ridiculous.

  The situation was similar throughout the German Republic. The Chancellor and the government showed their admiration for art and science; but even at that time the real power already lay in the hands of the underworld.

  2. Visiting Professor at Pasadena

  In the following year, 1930, Einstein received an invitation to spend the winter in Pasadena, California, as visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. Consequently in December he sailed for America. At this time his entire political interest was concentrated on pacifism, and he felt that this was also the great mission of the United States. While still on shipboard he broadcasted a message to America in which he said :

  “Greetings to America. This morning, after an absence of ten years, when I am once more about to set foot on the soil of the United States, the thought uppermost in my mind is this: This country has through hard labor achieved the position of undisputed pre-eminence among the nations of the world.… It is in your country, my friends, that those latent forces which eventually will kill any serious monster of professional militarism will be able to make themselves felt more clearly and definitely. Your political and economic condition today is such that you will be able to destroy entirely the dreadful tradition of military violence.… It is along these lines of endeavor that your mission lies at the present moment.…”

  Einstein was not of the opinion, however, that the United States could accomplish this mission by a policy of isolation. On March 29, 1931 he wrote: “In this country the conviction must grow that her citizens bear a great responsibility in the field of international politics. The role of passive spectator is not worthy of this country.” Moreover, he always regarded America’s intervention in world politics as an intervention in favor of peace. He quoted Benjamin Franklin, who had said: “There never was a bad peace or a good war.”

  This time Einstein did not have to make such troublesome and disturbing trips throughout the entire country. Instead he was invited to take part in the scientific research that was being carried on at the California Institute of Technology and the Mount Wilson Observatory. Both institutions are situated near Pasadena, a quiet suburb of Los Angeles. Through the efforts of R. A. Millikan, the California Institute of Technology had become a center of physical research. Millikan, a recipient of the Nobel prize, was originally a student of Michelson, and was consequently acquainted with the entire trend of Einstein’s research from its experimental aspect. He has been a man possessing not only scientific, but also administrative ability, and he has always been a realist. Einstein’s enthusiasm for pacifism always appeared to him as something not suited to our world, and this opinion was to be proved correct only too soon Millikan was in accord with Einstein on one point, however: neither of them denied the important role of religious communities in the advancement of human co-operation. But neither Millikan nor Einstein recognized any control over science by religious dogmas.

  In the spring of 1931 Einstein returned to Berlin and in the fall went back again to Pasadena to spend another winter there. When he again returned to Berlin in the spring of 1932, he arrived just in time to witness the principal act in the death agony of the German Republic.

  In March 1932 a presidential election was to take place. The Imperial field marshal, the octogenarian Hindenburg, was the candidate of the Democrats and Socialists; his chief opponent was Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Right-radical revolutionaries. Thanks to the propaga
nda of Reich Chancellor Brüning, Hindenburg won the election. The Republicans and Democrats were jubilant, but the truth was that now the power was in the hands of an adherent of the former German monarchy. Under the influence of his immediate environment, he used the power to overthrow the Republic.

  Hindenburg’s first act after his election in May was to compel Brüning, his most faithful champion and the man who had brought about his election, to resign as Chancellor. In his place he appointed Papen, a man who was resolved to rule with the support of bayonets and to eradicate every trace of republicanism and democracy. He announced to the Reichstag that a “fundamentally new regime” was beginning, now that the period of “materialism” was at an end. With the aid of the Reichswehr, he deposed the Prussian government.

  Many scientists were happy at these developments. They believed that now the reins were in the hands of the military. Since the time of Bismarck they had been accustomed to the belief that for Germany as a state and people, the rule of the “professors” could only be harmful. The fall of the “intellectuals and democrats” would enable Germany to become great.

  I can still recall very well a conversation that I had with Einstein in the summer of 1932. We were at his country home in Caputh. It was a log house, constructed of sturdy beams, and we looked out through enormous windows on the idyllic forest landscape. When a professor who was present expressed the hope that a military regime might curb the Nazis, Einstein remarked: “I am convinced that a military regime will not prevent the imminent National Socialist revolution. The military dictatorship will suppress the popular will and the people will seek protection against the rule of the junkers and the officers in a Right-radical revolution.”

  Someone asked Einstein for his opinion of Schleicher, the “social general” who would perhaps soon seize power. “He will produce the same result as the present military dictatorship,” Einstein replied.

  During this summer Abraham Flexner, the famous American educator, came to Caputh to interest Einstein in his new research institute at Princeton. “For the time being,” said Einstein, “I am still under obligation to spend the coming winter in Pasadena. Later, however, I shall be ready to work with you.”

  When Einstein set out with his wife for California in the fall of 1932, and as they left the beautiful villa in idyllic Caputh, Einstein said to her: “Before you leave our villa this time, take a good look at it.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “You will never see it again,” Einstein replied quietly. His wife thought he was being rather foolish.

  In December, Schleicher became Chancellor. He wanted to form a new government based on the working class, but the power of President Hindenburg was exerted against him. Schleicher was only a transitional phase. At the end of January 1933, while Einstein was still in sunny California discussing with the astronomers of Mount Wilson Observatory the distribution of matter in space and similar problems of the universe, Schleicher resigned and President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler, his opponent at the last presidential election, as Chancellor of the German Reich.

  3. Racial Purging in German Universities

  Heretofore no aspect of Marxism had been so repugnant to the German professors as the assertion that the evolution of scientific knowledge is influenced by political power. Their highest ideal was always the complete independence of science from politics and the sharp separation of the two. But now the political power had come into the hands of Chancellor Hitler and his party whose foremost principle was the primacy of politics over all fields of human life; over science just as much as over economic life, art, and religion.

  The standpoint of the new government is understandable if one remembers that the new state not only appeared as a new political organization, but also claimed to represent a new philosophy and a new orientation in all fields of life. The new orientation was that every effort was to be directed toward the goal of serving the German people and the German race. This was the ultimate aim of science just as it was of any other activity.

  This conviction that an entirely new Weltanschauung had to be taught at the universities led the government to put pressure on the university teachers. But since the freedom of science was one of the most favored slogans in the professorial world, the new government sought to introduce its goal by compulsion while retaining the old mode of expression as far as possible. The fine-sounding word “freedom” continued to be used, but it received a new meaning. The equivocal use of this word in earlier German philosophy had already prepared the ground for the National Socialist use. In an essay on “German Freedom” written under the influence of the first World War, the American philosopher George Santayana had already said:

  “Freedom in the mouth of German philosophy has a very special meaning. It does not refer to any possibility of choice nor any private initiative. German freedom is like the freedom of the angels in heaven who see the face of God and cannot sin. It lies in such a deep understanding of what is actually established that you would not have it otherwise; you appropriate and bless it all and feel it to be the providential expression of your own spirit. You are merged by sympathy with your work, your country and the universe, until you are no longer conscious of the least distinction between the Creator, the state and yourself. Your compulsory service then becomes perfect freedom.”

  A clear presentation of the practical application of this profound metaphysical theory was given by E. Krieck, German pedagogical leader at this period:

  “It is not science that must be restricted, but rather the scientific investigators and teachers; only scientifically talented men who have pledged their entire personality to the nation, to the racial conception of the world, and to the German mission will teach and carry on research at the German universities.”

  Thus a philosophical foundation was provided for the “cleansing” of the faculties of the German universities.

  The first application of the new theories was in the eradication of all teachers at institutions of higher learning who on the basis of their racial origin were not considered fit to train the youth in the spirit of the new philosophy. In this group were all those who did not belong to the Germanic or Nordic, or, as it was frequently called, the Aryan race. This grouping of non-German or non-Aryans was meant specifically for the Jews, since it was believed that because of their history and education they formed a group that would tend to hinder the training in the spirit of the new rulers. The term “Jews” included not only those who professed the Jewish religion. The new government assumed a standpoint of neutrality toward religion as such What the National Socialists meant was the Jews as a race; but in this case there was no clear criterion by which to determine a racial Jew. Since such a definition was difficult to make and had to be arbitrary in some degree, the conscientious and thorough German professors believed that no racial “cleansing” could take place. Without a neat and tidy definition the German government would be unable to do anything.

  But they were still unacquainted with the “pragmatic” spirit of the new philosophy. The definitions that were needed were produced with the greatest speed, even though they did not satisfy the requirements of the German professors with respect to anthropological, ethnological, or philological accuracy, or even logical consistency. From the very beginning it was obvious that there was no scientific definition of an “Aryan,” except that he was a person who spoke a language belonging to the “Aryan linguistic family.” Such a definition, however, was impossible; otherwise everyone who spoke Yiddish, which is basically a German dialect, would be an Aryan. Thus from the beginning it was not the “Aryan,” but rather the “non-Aryan” who was defined. The definition of a non-Aryan included everyone who had at least one non-Aryan grandparent. The grandparents, however, were defined as non-Aryan if they professed the Jewish religion; they were defined, that is, in terms of a criterion that has nothing to do with race in the ethnological sense. It was simply taken for granted that two generations earlier there were no persons o
f Jewish origin who professed the Christian religion.

  This cunning combination of definitions on the basis of origin and religion achieved the intended political purpose: namely, to exclude an entire group of people that it was feared could exert a dangerous political or ideological influence on the students. The definition, however, was not characterized by the scientific clarity and precision that the professors required. Quite a few would have been ready to co-operate in carrying out a political purge of the universities, but it would have to be done in a scientifically unobjectionable manner.

  The attempt to exclude the Jews everywhere, but to talk only of non-Aryans, gave rise to many difficulties. According to the customary meaning and usage of the word “Aryan” prior to the advent of the Nazis, there were other non-Aryans besides the Jews. At first rather unpleasant sensations were aroused by the idea that such peoples as Hungarians and Finns, who were very popular with the National Socialists, were to be branded as non-Aryans. On the other hand, one could not very well call a Hungarian an Aryan. Consequently, it was decided that a non-Aryan status is determined by means of the official definition using the religion of the grandparents. Nevertheless, even if anyone — a Hungarian, for instance — can prove that he is not a non-Aryan, it does not follow that he is an Aryan. Thus one of the fundamental rules of ordinary logic was dropped: namely, the principle of the excluded middle, which says that a thing either has or does not have a certain characteristic; there is no other possibility. According to the new official mode of expression, however, a Hungarian was neither a non-Aryan nor an Aryan.

  As the new regime achieved political successes the number of people who were neither Aryans nor non-Aryans grew ever greater. The Japanese were soon the outstanding members of this group. Finally, however, when their anti-British policy led the National Socialists to seek the friendship of the “Semitic” Arabs, the latter were also included among the “non-non-Aryans.” Previously the Jews had been opposed because, it was said, they belonged to the “Semitic” race. Now, however, with the inclusion of this race among the noble races, it was asserted that the Jews did not belong to any race at all, but instead formed a mongrel “anti-race.”