Einstein in Bohemia

by Michael D. Gordin

  18. Release from Württemberg Citizenship, 28 January 1896, CPAE 1:16, on 20. See also Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1971), 27–28.

  19. A. Einstein, “Meine Meinung über den Krieg,” reproduced in CPAE 6:20, on 212.

  20. Goenner, Einstein in Berlin, 65.

  21. Einstein to Berlin-Schöneberg Office of Taxation, 10 February 1920, CPAE 9:306, on 420.

  22. Fritz Haber to Einstein, 9 March 1921, CPAE 12:87, on 125. Emphasis in original.

  23. Einstein to Haber, 9 March 1921, CPAE 12:88, on 128.

  24. See, for example, the arrangements for his trip to East Asia: Einstein to Swiss Embassy in Berlin, 18 September 1922, CPAE 13:361, on 514–515.

  25. Einstein to Gilbert Murray, 13 July 1922, CPAE 13:286, on 408.

  26. Nonetheless, after arguing unpersuasively for a “Habsburg Einstein,” the usually astute Péter Hanák makes the enthusiastically ahistorical declaration: “I vote for late Austro-Hungarian citizenship for the late Albert Einstein.” Péter Hanák, The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 154 (quotation), 160.

  27. For the resolution of the dispute, see Heinrich Lüders to Einstein, 15 February 1923, CPAE 13:431, on 719; and Einstein, “Note on Prussian Citizenship,” 7 February 1924, CPAE 14:209, on 329. Yet in 1924 Einstein continued to demand that the Swiss government provide him and his wife with a diplomatic passport for their international travels: Einstein to the Swiss Foreign Ministry, 10 July 1924, CPAE 14:283a, in vol. 15 on 31; Einstein to the Swiss Foreign Ministry, 28 July 1924, CPAE 14:296a, in vol. 15 on 32.

  28. Banesh Hoffmann with Helen Dukas, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (New York: Viking, 1972), 234; Alice Calaprice, ed., The New Quotable Einstein (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 337.

  29. Fred Jerome, The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret War Against the World’s Most Famous Scientist (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), ch. 16.

  30. The classic piece is Hans Tramer, “Prague—City of Three Peoples,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 9 (1964): 305–339. See also Oskar Wiener, ed., Deutsche Dichter aus Prag (Vienna: Ed. Strache, 1919), 6–7.

  31. This has become the basis for a healthy pushback in recent scholarship in favor of those previously untold histories of people, often peasants, who were “indifferent” to nationalist intellectuals’ talking points. See especially Tara Zahra, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis,” Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 93–119.

  32. Rudolf Hilf, Deutsche und Tschechen: Bedeutung und Wandlungen einer Nachbarschaft in Mitteleuropa (Opladen: Leske, 1973); Johann Wolfgang Brügel, Tschechen und Deutsche, 1918–1938 (Munich: Nymphenberger, 1967); idem, Tschechen und Deutsche, 1939–1946 (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1974); Ferdinand Seibt, Deutschland und die Tschechen: Geschichte einer Nachbarschaft in der Mitte Europas (Munich: Piper, 1993).

  33. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity,’ ” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (February 2000): 1–47, on 14.

  34. James J. Sheehan, “What Is German History?: Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography,” Journal of Modern History 53, no. 1 (March 1981): 1–23; Peter J. Katzenstein, Disjoined Partners: Austria and Germany since 1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); and, especially for Bohemia, Ronald M. Smelser, The Sudeten Problem, 1933–1938: Volkstumspolitik and the Formulation of Nazi Foreign Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1975).

  35. Katherine Arens, “For Want of a Word …: The Case for Germanophone,” Die Unterrichtspraxis 32, no. 2 (1999): 130–142. On the implications of Bohemia for Germanophone intellectual history, see David S. Luft, “Austrian Intellectual History and Bohemia,” Austrian History Yearbook 38 (2007): 108–121; and William M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).

  36. The ur-text here is Angelo Maria Ripellino, Magic Prague, tr. David Newton Marinelli, ed. Michael Henry Heim (London: Macmillan, 1994 [1973]). For others that follow his lead, see Joseph Wechsberg, Prague: The Mystical City (New York: Macmillan, 1971); Jiří Kuchař, Esoteric Prague: A Guide to the City’s Secret History (Prague: Eminent, 2002); and Bernard Michel, Prague, Belle Époque (Paris: Aubier, 2008). Magical Prague appears in the Einstein literature as well. In Lewis S. Feuer, Einstein and the Generations of Science, 2nd. ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010 [1974]), the author wildly exaggerates both the mysticism of the local Zionists and their effect on the physicist.

  37. Derek Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Peter Demetz, Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes in the Life of a European City (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997).

  38. As Larry Woolf has demonstrated, that imaginary boundary has its origins much further back than the late 1940s: Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).

  39. Soňa Štrbáňová, “Patriotism, Nationalism and Internationalism in Czech Science: Chemists in the Czech Revival,” in Mitchell G. Ash and Jan Surman, eds., The Nationalization of Scientific Knowledge in the Habsburg Empire, 1848–1918 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 138–156; Luboš Nový, ed., Dějiny exaktních věd v českých zemích do konce 19. století (Prague: Nakl. ČSAV, 1961); Adalb. Wraný, Geschichte der Chemie und der auf chemischer Grundlage beruhenden Betriebe in Böhmen bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Prague: Fr. Řivnáč, 1902).

  40. Important models for me have been Derek Sayer, Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man (New York: Tauris Parke, 2010 [1999]); and Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity” (New York: Knopf, 2016).

  CHAPTER 1: FIRST AND SECOND PLACE

  1. Quoted in Oskar Kraus, Franz Brentano (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1919), 139.

  2. Tara Zahra, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis,” Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 93–119. See also idem, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).

  3. Einstein to Pauline Einstein, [28 April 1910], CPAE 5:204, on 238.

  4. On the evolution of this system and the interconnections among universities across different sovereign states during the nineteenth century, see Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCommach, The Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

  5. On Lippich, see Jan Havránek, “Ke jmenování Alberta Einsteina profesorem v Praze,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae—Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 17, no. 2 (1977): 105–130, on 109; on Lecher, see Andreas Kleinert, “Anton Lampa und Albert Einstein: Die Neubesetzung der physikalischen Lehrstühle an der deutschen Universität Prag 1909 und 1910,” Gesnerus 32, no. 3/4 (1975): 285–292, on 285. On Prague’s less than coveted status, which produced on average a younger professoriate as the venerable lions decamped for more elite locales, see Josef Petráň, “The Philosophical Faculty 1848–1882,” in František Kavka and Josef Petráň, eds., A History of Charles University, 2 vols. (Prague: Karolinium, 2001): 2:109–122, on 119; and idem, Nástin dějin filozofické fakulty Univerzity Karlovy v Praze (do roku 1948) (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1983), 184.

  6. The documents and background for the empanelment of the commission and its deliberations are provided in Havránek, “Ke jmenování Alberta Einsteina profesorem v Praze.”

  7. Proposal of the committee nominating for the vacant position in mathematical physics, 27 January 1910, reproduced in Havránek, “Ke jmenování Alberta Einsteina profesorem v Praze,” 121.

&
nbsp; 8. Ibid., 122.

  9. Ibid., 122.

  10. Max Planck, quoted in ibid., 122–123.

  11. Ibid., 123.

  12. Ibid., 123.

  13. Ibid., 125–126.

  14. Einstein to Arnold Sommerfeld, July [19]10, CPAE 5:211, on 246.

  15. For examples, see Wolfgang Wolfram von Wolmar, Prag: Die älteste Universität des Reiches ([Munich]: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Prager und Brünner Korporationen, 1998); Eugen Lemberg, “Die Prager Universität und das Schicksal Mitteleuropas,” in Die deutsche Universität in Prag: Ein Gedenken anläßlich der 600 Jahrfeier der Karls-Universität in Prag (Munich: Edmund Gans, 1948): 12–38; Adolf Hauffen, “Zur Geschichte der deutschen Universität in Prag: Mit einem bibliographischem Anhang,” Mittheilungen des Vereines für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen 38 (1900): 110–127, on 115. On the university as essentially “Czech/Bohemian,” see Ernest Denis, “University of Prague,” Czechoslovak Review, November 1919, 316–319, 374–377. For a moderate view from the leading Czech philosopher active in the interwar period, see the comments declaring it a regional “Bohemian” university, as opposed to an ethnic university, in Emanuel Rádl, Der Kampf zwischen Tschechen und Deutschen, tr. Richard Brandeis (Reichenberg [Liberec]: Gebrüder Stiepel, 1928), 35.

  16. Lisa Wolverton, Hastening Toward Prague: Power and Society in the Medieval Czech Lands (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Ferdinand Seibt, Deutschland und die Tschechen: Geschichte einer Nachbarschaft in der Mitte Europas (Munich: Piper, 1993), 76.

  17. Michal Svatoš, “The Studium Generale (1347/8–1419),” in Kavka and Petráň, History of Charles University, 1:23–88. For another informative study, with a slightly more German nationalist flavor, see Peter Moraw, “Die Universität Prag im Mittelalter: Grundzüge ihrer Geschichte im europäischen Zusammenhang,” in Die Universität zu Prag, vol. 7 of Schriften der Sudetendeutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste (Munich: Verlaghaus Sudetenland, 1986), 9–134.

  18. V. Patzak, “The Caroline University of Prague,” Slavonic and East European Review 19, no. 53/54 (1939–1940): 83–95, on 88; Renate Dix, “Frühgeschichte der Prager Universität: Gründung, Aufbau und Organisation, 1348–1409” (Ph.D. diss., Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn, 1988), on 133; and especially Sabine Schumann, “Die ‘nationes’ an den Universitäten Prag, Leipzig und Wien: Ein Beitrag zur älteren Universitätsgeschichte” (Ph.D. diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 1974).

  19. Schumann, “Die ‘nationes’ an den Universitäten Prag, Leipzig und Wien,” 102. On the proportions, see Svatoš, “Studium Generale,” 74.

  20. Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2002 [1977]), 323; Moraw, “Die Universität Prag im Mittelalter,” 26; Thomas A. Fudge, The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 125–126.

  21. Seibt, Deutschland und die Tschechen, 160; Schumann, “Die ‘nationes’ an den Universitäten Prag, Leipzig und Wien,” 41, 205, 233; and František Šmahel, “The Kuttenberg Decree and the Withdrawal of the German Students from Prague in 1409: A Discussion,” History of Universities 4 (1984): 153–166.

  22. R. W. Seton-Watson, A History of the Czechs and Slovaks (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1965 [1943]), 46.

  23. Wolfgang Wolfram von Wolmar, Prag und das Reich: 600 Jahre Kampf deutscher Studenten (Dresden: Franz Müller Verlag, 1943), 59.

  24. On the theological questions, see Hieromonk Patapios, “Sub utraque specie: The Arguments of John Hus and Jacoubek of Stříbro in Defence of Giving Communion to the Laity under Both Kinds,” Journal of Theological Studies 53, no. 2 (October 2002): 503–522. On the functioning of the Utraquist Church over the next two centuries, see Zdeněk V. David, Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003).

  25. For classic works, see Howard Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); František Šmahel, “The Hussite Movement: An Anomaly of European History?,” in Mikuláš Teich, ed., Bohemia in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 79–97. On the university as a hotbed of the Hussite Reformation, see Thomas A. Fudge, The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). On the university during the war years, see Howard Kaminsky, “The University of Prague in the Hussite Revolution: The Role of the Masters,” in John W. Baldwin and Richard A. Goldthwaite, eds., Universities in Politics: Case Studies from the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1972): 79–106.

  26. Petráň, Nástin dějin filozofické fakulty Univerzity Karlovy v Praze, 52, 79. On the two institutions, see Petr Lozoviuk, Interethnik im Wissenschaftsprozess: Deutschsprachige Volkskunde in Böhmen und ihre gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2008), 93; Michal Svatoš, “The Utraquist University (1419–1556),” in Kavka and Petráň, History of Charles University, 1:187–197; and Ivana Čornejová, “The Jesuit Academy up to 1622,” in Kavka and Petráň, History of Charles University, 1:217–234.

  27. Josef Petráň and Lydia Petráňová, “The White Mountain as a Symbol in Modern Czech History,” in Teich, Bohemia in History, 143–163; R.J.W. Evans, “The Significance of the White Mountain for the Culture of the Czech Lands,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 44 (1971): 34–54.

  28. Howard Louthan, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

  29. Käthe Spiegel, “Die Prager Universitätsunion (1618–1654),” Mitteilungen des Vereines für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen 62 (1924): 5–94; Patzak, “Caroline University in Prague,” 90–91; Jan Krčmář, The Prague Universities: Compiled According to the Sources and Records (Prague: Orbis, 1934), 20; Ivana Čornejová, “The Administrative and Institutional Development of Prague University (1622–1802),” in Kavka and Petráň, History of Charles University, 1:261–297, on 275.

  30. S. Harrison Thomson, “The Czechs as Integrating and Disintegrating Factors in the Habsburg Empire,” Austrian History Yearbook 3, pt. 2 (1967): 203–222, on 209; Hans Lemberg, “Universität oder Universitäten in Prag—und der Wandel der Lehrsprache,” in Lemberg, ed., Universitäten in nationaler Konkurrenz: Zur Geschichte der Prager Universitäten im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2003), 19–32, on 25.

  31. On language, see Peter Burian, “The State Language Problem in Old Austria (1848–1918),” Austrian History Yearbook 6–7 (1970–1971): 81–103. On the Toleranzpatent and the university, see Joseph F. Zacek, “The Czech Enlightenment and the Czech National Revival,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 10 (Spring 1983): 17–28, on 20; Lemberg, “Universität oder Universitäten in Prag,” 23. On the subsequent transformations of the position of the Jews from Joseph II’s era through the nineteenth century, see the comprehensive account in Hillel J. Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

  32. Irena Seidlerová, “Science in a Bilingual Country,” in Teich, Bohemia in History, 229–243, on 230; Peter Bugge, “Czech Nation-Building, National Self-Perception and Politics, 1780–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of Aarhus, 1994), on 18; Die Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands Universität in Prag unter der Regierung seiner Majestät des Kaisers Franz Josef I. (Prague: Verlag der J. G. Clave’schen K. u. K. Hof- u. Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1899), 21–22; Jan Havránek, “The University: Organization, Administration, Students (1802–1848),” in Kavka and Petráň, History of Charles University, 2:25–34, on 30.

  33. Hugh LeCaine Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993); John F. N. Bradley, Czech Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984); Joseph Frederick Zacek, Palacký: The Historian as Scholar and Nationalist (T
he Hague: Mouton, 1970).