116. Gerald Holton, “On the Vienna Circle in Exile: An Eyewitness Report,” in DePauli-Schimanovich, Köhler, and Stadler, Foundational Debate, 269–292.
117. Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times, xiii–xiv.
118. Holton, Science and Anti-Science, 38–39.
119. Frank, Einstein: Sein Leben und seine Zeit, 5.
120. For example, see Jiří Bičák’s defense of the relation of his own account to Frank’s: “It is without question influenced by this—the author did not have at his disposal manuscript or other materials, the gradual publication of which expands the constantly developing Einsteinian historiography (which does not only touch the natural sciences), but none of the newer biographies carries in relation to Einstein’s Prague stay the imprimatur of immediacy and contains so much insight and humor as Frank’s book.” Jiří Bičák, ed., Einstein a Praha: K stému výročí narození Alberta Einsteina (Prague: Jednota československých matematiků a fyziků, 1979), 7. Most other authors are not so explicit or generous about their debts to Frank. In a 2014 article on the same topic, Bičák is much more critical of the accuracy of Frank’s account: “Einstein in Prague: Relativity Then and Now,” in Jiří Bičák and Tomáš Ledvinka, eds., General Relativity, Cosmology and Astrophysics: Perspectives 100 Years after Einstein’s Stay in Prague (Cham: Springer, 2014), 33–63.
121. Besso to Einstein, 27 April 1949, in Einstein and Besso, Correspondance, 398.
122. Rowe, “Einstein’s Allies and Enemies,” 234.
123. Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 21.
124. Frank, “Oral History Transcript,” 11.
125. Emil Utitz, “Einstein und die Prager Juden,” [undated, perhaps 1952], MÚA AV ČR, Emil Utitz Personal Papers, inventory number 78, sig. III.g)2, box 2.
126. For an example of apparent projection, Frank included an aside about how he had attended faculty meetings with Einstein and enjoyed watching Einstein’s entertainment at the academic vanity of his colleagues. Frank, Einstein: Sein Leben und seine Zeit, 145. Of course, Frank could not have done this, as he was never in Prague with Einstein aside from the visit in 1921. Frank’s student Reinhold Fürth recorded of his mentor regarding the Academic Senate: “In contrast to many of my other colleagues he did not like to be involved in academic affairs, and when I happened to sit next to him at Board meetings, he used to make amusing and sarcastic asides to me about some of the proceedings.” Fürth, “Reminiscences of Philipp Frank at Prague,” xvi. No doubt Einstein would have agreed with these asides, but here Frank may have been placing his own thoughts in Einstein’s head. On the contentious politicking within the philosophy faculty in Einstein’s and Frank’s days, see Kowalewski, Bestand und Wandel, 242.
CHAPTER 5: THE HIDDEN KEPLER
1. Edward Rosen, tr. and commentary, Kepler’s Somnium: The Dream, or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 11.
2. This was not Kepler’s only fanciful work that drew directly from his Prague surroundings. His classic description of the snowflake, replete with humanist embellishments, also drew from the courtly culture in Bohemia. See Anthony Grafton, “Humanism and Science in Rudolphine Prague: Kepler in Context,” in Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 178–203.
3. Philipp Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times, tr. George Rosen, ed. and rev. Shuichi Kusaka (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002 [1947]), 85. In the German original, “consciously or unconsciously” is actually “bewußt oder halb unbewußt,” and I have made the emendation in square brackets. Frank, Einstein: Sein Leben und seine Zeit (Munich: Paul List, 1949), 151–152. This is, if anything, even a stronger claim than appears in the English version. Frank’s ventriloquized Nernst has been rendered in multiple ways, such as “The image of Kepler reminds me of you!” (“Die Gestalt von Kepler erinnert mich an Sie!”; Carl Seelig, Albert Einstein: Leben und Werk eines Genies unserer Zeit [Zurich: Bertelsmann Lesering, 1960], 209) and “Brod’s Kepler, that’s you!” (“Kepler bei Brod, das sind Sie!”; Hans-Jürgen Treder, “Albert Einstein an der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften,” in Christa Kirsten and Hans-Jürgen Treder, eds., Albert Einstein in Berlin, 1913–1933, 2 vols. [Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1979], 1:7–78, on 11n). None of these works offers any source other than Frank or explains why it quotes the passage differently.
4. Cornelius Lanczos, The Einstein Decade (1905–1915) (New York: Academic Press, 1974), 96.
5. Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years, rev. reprint ed. (New York: Citadel Press, 1995 [1956]), 233–235. On Frank’s repeated errors of interpretation when it comes to Nernst (and the Nernst–Einstein relationship), see Diana Kormos Barkan, Walther Nernst and the Transition to Modern Physical Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
6. Einstein to Hedwig Born, 8 September 1916, CPAE 8:257, on 336.
7. For some of many examples, see Seelig, Albert Einstein, 122; Jürgen Neffe, Einstein: A Biography, tr. Shelley Frisch (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 [2005]), 34–35; Isaacson, Einstein, 166–167; B. G. Kuznetsov, Einshtein (Moscow: Izd. AN SSSR, 1962), 193; Thomas Levenson, Einstein in Berlin (New York: Bantam Books, 2003), 99–100; Armin Hermann, Einstein: Der Weltweise und sein Jahrhundert (Munich: Piper, 1994), 181, 218. The exceptions are Banesh Hoffmann with Helen Dukas, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (New York: Viking, 1972); and a slim popular volume in Czech, Jan Horský, Albert Einstein: Genius lidstva (Prague: Prometheus, 1998), although this latter work does mention Brod’s novels in passing on 10.
8. See David Reichinstein, Albert Einstein: A Picture of His Life and His Conception of the World (Prague: Stella Publishing House, 1934); H. Gordon Garbedian, Albert Einstein: Maker of Universes (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1939); Anton Reiser, Albert Einstein: A Biographical Portrait (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1930).
9. Max Brod and Felix Weltsch, Anschauung und Begriff: Grundzüge eines Systems der Begriffsbildung (Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, 1913). On Frank’s lectures, see Max Brod, Streitbares Leben 1884–1968 (Munich: F. A. Herbig, 1969), 199.
10. Max Brod, “Vom Sinn und Würde des historischen Romans [1956],” in Brod, Über die Schönheit häßlicher Bilder: Essays zu Kunst und Ästhetik (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2014), 344.
11. For biographical details, see Gaëlle Vassogne, Max Brod in Prag: Identität und Vermittlung (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2009); Berndt W. Wessling, Max Brod: Ein Portrait (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1969); Hugo Gold, ed., Max Brod: Ein Gedenkbuch, 1884–1968 (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1969); and Margarita Pazi, Max Brod: Werk und Persönlichkeit (Bonn: H. Bouvier u. Co., 1970).
12. Hugo Bergmann to Martin Buber, 19 September 1919, reproduced in Schmuel Hugo Bergman, Tagebücher & Briefe, 2 vols., ed. Miriam Sambursky (Königstein: Athenäum, 1985), 1:128. On the Czech language, see Barbora Šrámková, Max Brod und die tschechische Kultur (Wuppertal: Arco, 2010), 95–97.
13. Karel Jezdinský, “Presse und Rundfunk in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1938,” in Karl Bosl and Ferdinand Seibt, eds., Kultur und Gesellschaft in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republic (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1982), 135–149, on 145.
14. Werner Kayser and Horst Gronemeyer, Max Brod (Hamburg: Hans Christian Verlag, 1972); Vassogne, Max Brod in Prag, 243–331.
15. Felix Weltsch, ed., Dichter, Denker, Helfer: Max Brod zum 50. Geburtstag (Mähr.-Ostrau: Julius Kittls Nachfolger, 1934); Ernst F. Taussig, ed., Ein Kampf um Wahrheit: Max Brod zum 65. Geburtstag (Tel Aviv: ABC Verlag, [1950]).
16. Max Brod, Der Prager Kreis (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1966); Eduard Goldstücker, ed., Weltfreunde: Konferenz über die Prager deutsche Literatur (Prague: Academia, 1967). On Germanophone writers in Prague in the generation before Brod, see Peter Demetz, René Rilkes Prager Jahre (Düsseldorf: Eugen Diedrichs, 1953).
17. Josef Körner, “Dichter und Dichtung aus dem deutschen Prag,” Donauland 1, no. 7 (
September 1917): 777–784, on 782.
18. Paul Raabe, “Der junge Max Brod und der Indifferentismus,” in Goldstücker, Weltfreunde, 253–269.
19. Idem, “Die frühen Werke Max Brods,” in Gold, Max Brod, 137–152. See also Camill Hoffmann, “Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott,” Die Zukunft 24, no. 38 (24 June 1916): 332–334, on 333; Arno Gassmann, Lieber Vater, Lieber Gott?: Der Vater-Sohn-Konflikt bei den Autoren des engeren Prager Kreises (Max Brod—Franz Kafka—Oskar Baum—Ludwig Winder) (Oldenburg: Igel Verlag Wissenschaft, 2002), 34.
20. Max Brod, “Distanzliebe,” Europäische Begegnung 4 (1964): 149–153; Hans Dieter Zimmermann, “ ‘Distanzliebe’: Max Brod zwischen Deutschen und Tschechen,” in Marek Nekula and Walter Koschmal, eds., Juden zwischen Deutschen und Tschechen: Sprachliche und kulturelle Identitäten in Böhmen 1800–1845 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2006), 233–248. On Brod as an intermediary for Czech culture, especially among German-identified audiences in and out of Bohemia, see Šrámková, Max Brod und die tschechische Kultur. On Brod and Jewishness, see Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch, Max Brod im Kampf um das Judentum: Zum Leben und Werk eines deutsch-jüdischen Dichters aus Prag (Vienna: Passagen, 1992).
21. Robert Weltsch, “Max Brod and His Age,” Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture 13 (1970), on 15.
22. Max Brod, Franz Kafka: A Biography, tr. G. Humphreys Roberts and Richard Winston (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995 [1937]), 81; idem, Streitbares Leben, 82.
23. Max Brod to Kurt Wolff, 30 June 1914, in Kurt Wolff, Briefwechsel eines Verlegers, 1911–1963, ed. Bernhard Zeller and Ellen Otten (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Heinrich Scheffler, 1966), 176.
24. Max Brod, Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott: Roman (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2013 [1915]), 17.
25. Ibid., 18.
26. Ibid., 23. On the following page, John Dee and Edward Kelley, the well-known alchemists who served in the employ of Rudolf II, are rejected as “English swindlers” (“englischen Schwindler”). On Dee and Kelley in Prague, see Jennifer Rampling, “John Dee and the Alchemists: Practising and Promoting English Alchemy in the Holy Roman Empire,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012): 498–508.
27. Brod, Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott, 28.
28. Ibid., 111.
29. Ibid., 175–176.
30. Ibid., 252.
31. Tengnagel’s story would make for a gripping novel in its own right: after marrying Tycho’s daughter and gaining control of his estate (much to Kepler’s annoyance), Tengnagel and his children served as diplomatic fixers across the Habsburg lands. See Jan Bedřich Novák, Rudolf II. a jeho pád (Prague: Nákl. Českého zemského výboru, 1935), on 25, 68n1, 239–240; John Robert Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe, Science, and Culture in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 [2000]), 237, 301–305.
32. On the court dynamics that resulted in Tycho’s appointment, see R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History 1576–1612 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), 135–137.
33. The most detailed account of these historical events is Edward Rosen, Three Imperial Mathematicians: Kepler Trapped Between Tycho Brahe and Ursus (New York: Abaris, 1986). Rosen repeatedly censures Brod’s novelistic account as doing violence to the historical material and as based on inadequate research in local archives, points that he also published as Edward Rosen, “Brod’s Brahe: Fact vs Fiction,” Sudhoffs Archiv 66, no. 1 (1982): 70–78. Rosen never fully acknowledges the gap between historical scholarship and historical fiction.
34. Brod, Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott, 129.
35. Ibid., 145. Ellipses in original. For the full text of Kepler’s letter to Ursus as published by the latter, see Nicholas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler’s A Defence of Tycho Against Ursus with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 10.
36. For a complete edition, translation, and commentary, see Jardine, Birth of History and Philosophy. On the philological mastery exhibited by Kepler in the Apologia, see Grafton, “Humanism and Science,” 199.
37. As noted in André Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: David Gans (1541–1613) and His Times, tr. David Maisel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), this conversation could never have happened at this place and time, because the Maharal’s only audience with the emperor was in 1592, and Tycho did not arrive in Prague until 1599. Nonetheless, Tycho also reportedly met with Löw on another occasion, and he had a pedagogical relationship with David Gans, one of the few Jewish astronomers of this period, who had also studied with Löw. On Gans, see George Alter, Two Renaissance Astronomers: David Gans, Joseph Delmedigo (Prague: Československá Akademie věd, 1958); Mordechai Breuer, “Modernism and Traditionalism in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Historiography: A Study of David Gans’ Tzemaḥ David,” in Bernard Dov Cooperman, ed., Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 49–88; André Neher, “L’exégèse biblique juive face à Copernic au XVIème et au XVIIème siècles,” in M.S.H.G. Heerma van Voss, Ph. H. J. Houwink ten Cate, and N. A. van Uchelen, eds., Travels in the World of the Old Testament: Studies Presented to Professor M. A. Beek on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp., 1974), 190–196. On Löw and the (much) later ascription of the Golem story, see Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); Frederic Thieberger, The Great Rabbi Loew of Prague: His Life and Work and the Legend of the Golem (London: East and West Library, 1954); Vladimír Sadek, “Stories of the Golem and Their Relation to the Work of Rabbi Löw of Prague,” Judica Bohemiae 23, no. 2 (1987): 85–91; idem, “Rabbi Loew—sa vie, héritage pédagogique et sa légende (à l’occasion de la 370e anniversaire de sa mort),” Judica Bohemiae 15 (1979): 27–41; and Hillel J. Kieval, “Pursuing the Golem of Prague: Jewish Culture and the Invention of a Tradition,” Modern Judaism 17, no. 1 (February 1997): 1–23.
38. Brod, Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott, 288.
39. Ibid., 289.
40. On the link to Buber, see Vassogne, Max Brod in Prag, 57; Pazi, Max Brod, 87; Peter Fenves, “The Kafka-Werfel-Einstein Effect,” in Max Brod, Tycho Brahe’s Path to God: A Novel, tr. Felix Warren Crosse (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), vii–lviii, on xxxv; and Felix Weltsch, “Philosophie eines Dichters,” in Weltsch, Dichter, Denker, Helfer, 8–26, on 14.
41. Max Caspar, Kepler, tr. and ed. C. Doris Hellman (New York: Dover Publications, 1993 [1959]); Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (London: Arkana, 1989 [1959]).
42. J.L.E. Dreyer, Tycho Brahe: A Picture of Scientific Life and Work in the Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1890); idem, Tycho Brahe: Ein Bild wissenschaftlichen Lebens und Arbeitens im sechzehnten Jahrhundert, tr. M. Bruhns (Karlsruhe: G. Braun, 1894). For a more recent scholarly biography, which places significantly less emphasis on the Ursus affair than do Dreyer or Brod, see Victor E. Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
43. Johannes Kepler, Opera Omnia, 8 vols., ed. Ch. Frisch (Frankfurt am Main: Heyder & Zimmer, 1858–1871), vol. 8, pt. 2. On Brod and Latin, see Scott Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 212.
44. G. Kowalewski, Bestand und Wandel: Meine Lebenserinnerungen zugleich ein Beitrag zur neueren Geschichte der Mathematik (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1950), 249. On Kowalewski’s search for new Kepler manuscripts from the Strahov monastery, see 234.
45. Johannes Heinrich von Mädler, Geschichte der Himmelskunde von der ältesten bis auf die neueste Zeit, 2 vols. (Braunschweig: George Westermann, 1873); F. J. Studnička, Bis an’s Ende der Welt!: Astronomische Causerien (Prague: Šimáček, 1896); idem, Bericht über die astrologischen Studien des Reformators der beobachtenden Astronomie Tycho Brahe: Weitere Bei
träge zur bevorstehenden Saecularfeier der Erinnerung an sein vor 300 Jahren erfolgtes Ableben (Prague: Kön. Böhm. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1901). On František Josef Studnička, the Jesuit and mathematician at the Czech University, see Josef Petráň, “The Czech Philosophical Faculty 1882–1918,” in František Kavka and Josef Petráň, eds., A History of Charles University, 2 vols. (Prague: Karolinium, 2001), 2:147–161, on 156.
46. Josef von Hasner, Tycho Brahe und J. Kepler in Prag: Eine Studie (Prague: J. G. Calve, 1872), 4.
47. This point is illustrated in the discussions of both Kepler and Ursus as “Germans” in Ferdinand B. Mikowec, Tycho Brahe: Žiwotopisný nástin (Prague: Jar. Puspišil, 1847).
48. Ernst Lemke, Review of Max Brod’s Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott, Neuphilologische Blätter 23 (1915–1916): 415–416.
49. On Julius Kraus, see Michel Vanoosthuyse, “L’espace partagé: Considérations sur quelques romans pragois au tournant de siècle,” in Allemands, juifs et tchèques à Prague/Deutsche, Juden und Tschechen in Prag, 1890–1924: Actes du colloque international de Montpellier, 8–10 décembre 1994 (Montpellier: Université Paul-Valéry-Montpellier III, 1996), 311–319, on 313. See also Auguste Hauschner, Der Tod des Löwen (Berlin: Egon Fleischel, 1916); and the 1924 Tycho fictionalization by Karl Hans Strobl, Die Vaclavbude: Eine Prager Studentengeschichte (Leipzig: L. Stackmann, 1924). Brod’s views of Hauschner’s work are outlined in Brod, Der Prager Kreis, 45.
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