35. Institutionally, Jews occupied high positions at the most significant German-focused establishments, such as the German Casino. Gerhard Kurz, “Kafka zwischen Juden, Deutschen und Tschechen,” in Karl Bosl and Ferdinand Seibt, eds., Kultur und Gesellschaft in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1982), 37–50, on 39.
36. Hillel J. Kieval, “Death and the Nation: Ritual Murder as Political Discourse in the Czech Lands,” 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), 83–99; Michal Frankl, “The Background of the Hilsner Case: Political Antisemitism and Allegations of Ritual Murder 1896–1900,” Judaica Bohemiae 36 (2000): 34–118. On Czech political anti-Semitism, see idem, “ ‘Sonderweg’ of Czech Antisemitism?: Nationalism, National Conflict and Antisemitism in Czech Society in the Late 19th Century,” Bohemia 46, no. 1 (2005): 120–134. On the broader climate of pan-Germanism in Austria, see Andrew G. Whiteside, The Socialism of Fools: Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Austrian Pan-Germanism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).
37. Wilfried Brosche, “Das Ghetto von Prag,” in Die Juden in den böhmischen Ländern: Vorträge der Tagung des Collegium Carolinum in Bad Wiessee vom 27. bis 29. November 1981 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1983), 87–122, on 114; Richard Burton, Prague: A Cultural History (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2009 [2003]), 64–65. On contemporary protests against the asanace, see Reiner Stach, Kafka: Die frühen Jahre (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2014), 125–126.
38. Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, 135–136, 202–203; Hagit Lavsky, Before Catastrophe: The Distinctive Path of German Zionism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), 147–148.
39. Margarita Pazi, “Franz Kafka, Max Brod und der ‘Prager Kreis,’ ” in Grözinger, Mosès, and Zimmermann, Franz Kafka und das Judentum, 71–92, on 77–78.
40. On Bar Kochba, see Kieval, Making of Czech Jewry, ch. 4; Hannelore Rodlauer, “Ein anderer ‘Prager Frühling’: Das Verein ‘Bar Kochba’ in Prag,” Das jüdische Echo 49 (2000): 181–188. On the publication history of Selbstwehr, see Avigdor Dagan, “The Press,” in Jews of Czechoslovakia, 1:523–531, on 525. On the later intellectual history of the Prague Zionists, see Dimitry Shumsky, Zweisprachigkeit und binationale Idee: Der Prager Zionismus 1900–1930, tr. Dafna Mach (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013 [2010]). On Max Brod and Bar Kochba, see Gaëlle Vassogne, “Prague Zionism, the Czechoslovak State, and the Rise of German National Socialism: The Figure of Max Brod, 1914–1933,” in Rebecka Lettevall, Geert Somsen, and Sven Widmalm, eds., Neutrality in Twentieth-Century Europe (New York: Routledge, 2012), 207–225. On numbers, see Cohen, Politics of Ethnic Survival, 166.
41. Max Brod, Franz Kafka: A Biography, tr. G. Humphreys Roberts and Richard Winston (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995 [1960, 1937]), 14. On Bergmann’s biography, see Miriam Sambursky, “Zionist und Philosoph: Das Habilitierungsproblem des jungen Hugo Bergmann,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts, no. 58 (1981): 17–40.
42. Hugo S. Bergman, “Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka,” in Reuben Klingsberg, ed., Exhibition Franz Kafka, 1883–1924: Catalogue (Jerusalem: Berman Hall, Jewish National and University Library, 1969), 5–12, on 5.
43. See Hugo Bergmann to Else Bergmann, 20 July 1911, from Göttingen, reproduced in Schmuel Hugo Bergman, Tagebücher & Briefe, 2 vols., ed. Miriam Sambursky (Königstein: Athenäum, 1985), 1:41.
44. See the letter from Franz Brentano to Hugo Bergmann, 16 December 1907, reproduced in Hugo Bergmann and Franz Brentano, “Briefe Franz Brentanos an Hugo Bergmann,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 7, no. 1 (September 1946): 83–158, on 103.
45. Hugo Bergmann, Das philosophische Werk Bernard Bolzanos (Halle an der Salle: Max Niemeyer, 1909), 145 and 176. See also his earlier perceptive analysis in idem, “Das philosophische Bedürfnis in der modernen Physik,” Philosophische Wochenschrift und Literatur-Zeitung 1 (January–March 1906): 332–338.
46. Oskar Kraus, “Bolzano,” Bohemia 83, no. 308 (8 November 1910): 1–2.
47. Hugo Bergmann to Carl Stumpf, [1914], quoted in Sambursky, “Zionist und Philosoph,” 36.
48. Hugo Bergmann, “Bemerkungen zur arabischen Frage,” Palästina 7 (1911): 190–195, on 190. On Bar Kochba’s sponsorship of discussion about Palestine, see Kateřina Čapková, “ ‘Ich akzeptiere den Komplex, der ich bin’: Zionisten um Franz Kafka,” in Peter Becher, Steffen Höhne, and Marek Nekula, eds., Kafka und Prag: Literatur-, kultur-, sozial- und sprachhistorische Kontexte (Köln: Böhlau, 2012), 81–95, on 86.
49. Bergmann, “Bemerkungen zur arabischen Frage,” 195.
50. G. Kowalewski, Bestand und Wandel: Meine Lebenserinnerungen zugleich ein Beitrag zur neueren Geschichte der Mathematik (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1950), 245–246.
51. See especially Rosenkranz, Einstein Before Israel, and references therein.
52. Einstein, “Wie ich Zionist wurde,” Jüdische Rundschau (21 June 1921): 351–352, reproduced in CPAE 7:57, on 428.
53. Kurt Blumenfeld, Erlebte Judenfrage: Ein Vierteljahrhundert deutscher Zionismus (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1962), 126.
54. H. Bergman, “Personal Remembrances of Albert Einstein,” in Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, eds., Logical and Epistemological Studies in Contemporary Physics (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974), 388–394, on 390–391.
55. On the symbolic opposition of Ostjuden—romanticized and demonized by so-called Westernized Jews—see the excellent account in Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). Thomas Levenson (Einstein in Berlin, 172) claims that Einstein first encountered Ostjuden in Prague, but to my mind this mischaracterizes the Jewish community with which he interacted in Bohemia, who were just as Westernized as the Berliners. As discussed in earlier chapters, the understanding of Prague as part of “Eastern Europe” is often a retrospective projection by scholars who emphasize the Slavic aspects of the city, which were not the parts Einstein most noticed.
56. Einstein to Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, 5 April 1920, CPAE 9:368, on 495. See also his comments in Einstein, “Assimilation und Antisemitismus,” [3 April 1920], reproduced in CPAE 7:34, on 290; and Einstein to Ehrenfest, 22 March 1919, CPAE 9:10, on 16.
57. Ofer Ashkenazi, “Reframing the Interwar Peace Movement: The Curious Case of Albert Einstein,” Journal of Contemporary History 46, no. 4 (2011): 741–766, on 750, 760.
58. Hugo Bergmann to Einstein, 22 October 1919, CPAE 9:147, on 211. See also Rosenkranz, Einstein Before Israel, 61–62.
59. Einstein to Bergmann, 5 November 1919, CPAE 9:155, on 222.
60. Einstein to Ehrenfest, 12 January 1920, CPAE 9:254, on 352.
61. Quoted in Blumenfeld, Erlebte Judenfrage, 127–128.
62. Maja Winteler-Einstein, “Albert Einstein—Beitrag für sein Lebensbild,” CPAE 1:lx.
63. Einstein to Born, 9 November 1919, in Albert Einstein, Hedwig Born, and Max Born, Briefwechsel, 1916–1955 (Frankfurt am Main: Edition Erbrich, 1982 [1969]), 36.
64. Michael Berkowitz, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 48–54. Einstein commented in astonishment on his global appeal to Jews in Einstein to Besso, 5 June 1925, CPAE 15:2, on 50.
65. Yfaat Weiss, “Central European Ethnonationalism and Zionist Binationalism,” Jewish Social Studies 11, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 93–117; Lavsky, Before Catastrophe, ch. 9; Shumsky, Zweisprachigkeit und binationale Idee; and Ofer Ashkenazi, “ ‘Tsioni aval lo yehudi leumi’: Albert Ainshtayin u‘Brit Shalom’ nokhah meoraot tarpat,” in Adi Gordon, ed., “Berit Shalom” veha-Tsiyonut ha-du-le’umit: “Ha-She’elah ha-‘Arvit” ki-shee’lah Yehudit (Jerusalem: Merkaz Minervah, 2008), 123–148.
66. Viktor G. Ehrenberg to Einstein, 23 November 1919, CPAE 9:173, on 243.
; 67. Georg Schlesinger to Einstein, 20 December 1921, CPAE 12:334, on 389.
68. In the phone conversation logs of Hanna Fantova (whom we will meet properly in the conclusion to this book) from January 1954, Einstein is noted as saying: “The Israelis ought to have selected the English language instead of Hebrew; that would have been much better, but the Jews were too fanatical.” Entry for 2 January 1954 in Hanna Fantova, “Gespräche mit Einstein,” undated, HFC, Box 1, Folder 6, p. 14.
69. Einstein, “Travel Diary Japan, Palestine, Spain,” 3 February 1923, CPAE 13:379, on 558.
70. Hugo Bergmann, Der Kampf um das Kausalgesetz in der jüngsten Physik (Braunschweig: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, 1929). Interestingly, on page 3 Bergmann disputed the notion that quantum theory was reasoning about “fictions,” thus implicitly critiquing Oskar Kraus’s contemporary attacks on relativity. For a discussion of Einstein’s views on causality in quantum physics, see Arthur Fine, The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
71. Einstein to Hugo Bergmann, 27 September 1929, AEDA 45–553, Box 65, Folder “1927–31 B Folder II.”
72. Hugo Bergmann to Einstein, 8 October 1929, AEDA 45–555, Box 65, Folder “1927–31 B Folder II.”
73. Ofer Ashkenazi, “Zionism and Violence in Albert Einstein’s Political Outlook,” Journal of Jewish Studies 63, no. 2 (Autumn 2012): 331–355.
74. Einstein to Hugo Bergmann, 19 June 1930, AEDA 45–571, Box 65, Folder “1927–31 B Folder II.” Emphasis in original.
75. Hugo Bergmann to Einstein, 14 January 1947, AEDA 59–211, Box 84, Folder “1947–49 B”; and Einstein to Bergmann, 25 January 1947, AEDA 59–211, Box 84, Folder “1947–49 B.”
76. Bergmann to Einstein, 6 March 1950, reproduced in Bergman, Tagebücher & Briefe, 2:44. On the offer of the presidency, see Yitzhak Navon, “Einstein and the Presidency of Israel,” in Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkana, eds., Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 293–296.
77. On the recognition of Jewish nationality in Czechoslovakia, see Tatjana Lichtenstein, “ ‘Making’ Jews at Home: Zionism and the Construction of Jewish Nationality in Inter-war Czechoslovakia,” East European Jewish Affairs 36, no. 1 (June 2006): 49–71; Elizabeth Wiskemann, Czechs and Germans: A Study of the Struggle in the Historic Provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, 2nd. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1967 [1938]), 226. On Masaryk and Jewish nationalism, see Felix Weltsch, “Masaryk and Zionism,” in Ernst Rychnovsky, ed., Thomas G. Masaryk and the Jews: A Collection of Essays, tr. Benjamin R. Epstein (New York: B. Pollak, 1941), 74–114; and Hugo Bergmann, “Masaryk in Palestine,” in Rychnovsky, Thomas G. Masaryk and the Jews, 259–271. As noted in Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 83, Masaryk’s support of Jewish causes was double-edged: his belief that Jews were a separate nation also indicated limitations on their capacity to assimilate into a Czechoslovak ethnos. On Masaryk’s political thought leading up to his presidency, see H. Gordon Skilling, T. G. Masaryk: Against the Current, 1882–1914 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).
78. Einstein to the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament, 19 January 1921, CPAE 12:22, on 44. See also Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden, Einstein on Peace (New York: Schocken, 1968 [1960]), 41.
79. Reproduced in Nathan and Norden, Einstein on Peace, 130.
80. Reproduced in ibid., 130–131. See discussion in Roman Kotecký, “Korespondence Einsteina s Masarykem: Domněle ztracený dopis a pozapomenutá historie jedné intervence,” Vesmír 72 (1993): 566–568.
81. Reproduced in Kotecký, “Korespondence Einsteina s Masarykem,” 567. The italicized words represent English terms in the original; the underlining is Masaryk’s.
82. Reproduced in Nathan and Norden, Einstein on Peace, 131.
83. The complex saga is described in detail in ibid., 265–267.
84. Einstein to Besso, 9 June 1937, in Albert Einstein and Michele Besso, Correspondance 1903–1955, ed. and tr. Pierre Speziali (Paris: Hermann, 1972), 313.
85. Emil Nohel’s birth certificate, 3 January 1886, AEA 91–747.
86. See Emil Nohel’s curriculum vitae, [undated but around 1913], AEA 91–748; and his transcript from 1904–1905 to 1908–1909, AEA 91–752. For Pick’s report on Nohel’s dissertation, dated 11 December 1913, see AEA 91–749. The doctoral committee consisted of Pick, Gerhard Kowalewski, and Philipp Frank. Interestingly, Nohel did take a one-hour rigorous examination in philosophy on 19 February 1914 from Oskar Kraus and Christian von Ehrenfels, receiving an “excellent” mark from both of them. Jan Havránek, “Materiály k Einsteinovu Pražskému působení z Archivu Univerzity Karlovy,” Acta universitatis Carolinae—Historia universitatis Carolinae Pragensis 22, no. 1 (1980): 109–134, on 132.
87. There is very little secondary literature on Nohel; much of what exists consists of asides in Einstein biographies. For useful accounts, see Emilie Těšínská, “Profilování teoretické fyziky na pražské univerzitě a vazby s pražským působením A. Einsteina před 100 lety,” Pokroky matematiky, fyziky a astronomie 57, no. 2 (2012): 146–168, on 152; Havránek, “Materiály k Einsteinovu Pražskému působení z Archivu Univerzity Karlovy,” 110–111, 128ff; Abraham Pais, “Subtle Is the Lord …”: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 485–486; Armin Hermann, Einstein: Der Weltweise und sein Jahrhundert (Munich: Piper, 1994), 170; and Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times, 82–83. Frank personally knew Nohel, and it is difficult to determine—as always with his book—how much of the account was derived from conversations with Einstein and how much from Frank’s own experiences of the man.
88. Quoted in Pais, “Subtle Is the Lord …”, 486.
89. Yeshayahu Nohel, “My Family,” undated typescript, AEA 85–569.
90. On Stern as Einstein’s assistant, see Emilio Segrè, Otto Stern, 1888–1969: A Biographical Memoir (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1973), 216. On Hopf, see Lewis Pyenson, “Einstein’s Early Scientific Collaboration,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 7 (1976): 83–123. Fölsing’s assessment of Nohel is characteristically blunt, but it is hard to see it as entirely unjustified: “However, Nohel does not seem to have been much of a replacement for Hopf. Einstein never published anything with Nohel and never mentioned Nohel in his letters. Nor is anything known about any contributions Nohel might have made to science.” Fölsing, Albert Einstein, 280.
91. Yeshayahu Nohel, “My Family,” undated typescript, AEA 85–569.
92. Walter Kohn, “Mein verehrter Wiener Lehrer, Professor Doktor Emil Nohel,” in Friedrich Stadler, ed., Österreichs Umgang mit dem Nationalsozialismus: Die Folgen für die naturwissenschaftliche und humanistische Lehre (Vienna: Springer, 2004), 43–50. On Kohn’s time in Vienna with Nohel, see Andrew Zangwill, “The Education of Walter Kohn and the Creation of Density Functional Theory,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 68 (2014): 775–848, on 778–779.
93. Einstein to Emil Nohel, 9 May 1939, AEDA 54–127, Box 78, Folder “1937–39 N.”
94. Einstein to Arthur E. Ruark, 16 July 1939, AEDA 54–129, Box 78, Folder “1937–39 N.” This was in response to Ruark to Einstein, 6 July 1939, AEDA 54–128, Box 78, Folder “1937–39 N.”
95. Einstein to Isidor Rabinovitz, 16 July 1939, AEDA 54–131; this was in response to Rabinovitz to Einstein, 8 July 1939, AEDA 54–130, Box 78, Folder “1937–39 N.”
96. H. H. Higbie to Einstein, 1 August 1939, AEDA 54–132; Einstein to Higbie, August 1939, AEDA 54–133; Louis Margolis to Einstein, 31 August 1939, AEDA 54–135, Box 78, Folder “1937–39 N.”
97. Emil Nohel to Yeshayahu Nohel, 20 June 1941 and 12 October 1941, YVS, Record Group O.7.cz, Collection on the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, File 352, p. 1.
98. Emil Nohel to Yeshayahu Nohel, 20 June 1941 and 12 October 1941, YVS, Record Group O.7.cz, Collection on
the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, File 352, p. 3.
99. Emil Nohel to Yeshayahu Nohel, 26 December 1941, YVS, Record Group O.7.cz, Collection on the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, File 352, p. 10. The most important secondary source on this camp remains H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945: Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft, 2nd. ed. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005 [1960]). Adler was himself a member of the generation of Germanophone Prague writers surrounding Max Brod.
100. Emil Nohel to Yeshayahu Nohel, 26 December 1941, YVS, Record Group O.7.cz, Collection on the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, File 352, p. 14.
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