56. Frank to Dratvová, 1 September 1938, reproduced in Podaný, “Philipp Frank, Albína Dratvová, Jaroslav Heyrovský,” 136.
57. The controversy is expertly detailed in Chad Bryant, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
58. Theodore Procházka, Sr., The Second Republic: The Disintegration of Post-Munich Czechoslovakia (October 1938–March 1939) (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1981), 53.
59. Einstein to Besso, 10 October 1938, in Albert Einstein and Michele Besso, Correspondance 1903–1955, ed. Pierre Speziali (Paris: Hermann, 1972), 330. Einstein was almost certainly unaware that the Latin phrase he interjected—O sancta simplicitas, meaning “O holy simplicity!” and used to chastise the naïve—is attributed to the Bohemian religious reformer Jan Hus, who uttered it to a peasant woman who was adding wood to the fire consuming him at the stake.
60. Einstein to Solovine, 23 December 1938, in Albert Einstein, Letters to Solovine (New York: Philosophical Library, 1987), 76.
61. Frank to Dratvová, 25 October [1938], reproduced in Podaný, “Philipp Frank, Albína Dratvová, Jaroslav Heyrovský,” 136.
62. Ibid., 137.
63. P. Frank to J. Heyrovský, 31 October 1938, reproduced in Podaný, “Philipp Frank, Albína Dratvová, Jaroslav Heyrovský,” 138–139.
64. Elizabeth Wiskemann, Czechs and Germans: A Study of the Struggle in the Historic Provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, 2nd. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1967 [1938]), 214.
65. Jan Krčmář, The Prague Universities: Compiled According to the Sources and Records (Prague: Orbis, 1934), 12.
66. Konrad Bittner, Deutsche und Tschechen: Zur Geistesgeschichte des böhmischen Raumes (Brno: Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1936), 1:103–104; Gray C. Boyce and William H. Dawson, The University of Prague: Modern Problems of the German University in Czechoslovakia (London: Robert Hale, 1938).
67. Diary entry of 16 March 1939, reproduced in Schmuel Hugo Bergman, Tagebücher & Briefe, 2 vols., ed. Miriam Sambursky (Königstein: Athenäum, 1985), 1:499.
68. Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (New York: Penguin, 2008), 185.
69. Shiela Grant Duff, A German Protectorate: The Czechs under Nazi Rule (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1970 [1942]), 48.
70. Karl Hans Strobl, Prag: Schicksal, Gestalt und Seele einer Stadt (Prague: Buchhandlung Czerny, 1943), 16. The last three sentences were added to the 1939 edition, in celebration of Nazi occupation. The general point was reinforced that same year in Wolfgang Wolfram von Wolmar, Prag und das Reich: 600 Jahre Kampf deutscher Studenten (Dresden: Franz Müller Verlag, 1943), 12, 32, and passim.
71. Peter Demetz, Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939–45 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 35. On the limbo into which Jews fell during the Second Republic, see Heinrich Bodensieck, “Das Dritte Reich und die Lage der Juden in der Tschecho-Slowakei nach München,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 9, no. 3 (July 1961): 249–261.
72. Hans Lemberg, “Universität oder Universitäten in Prag—und der Wandel der Lehrsprache,” in Lemberg, Universitäten in nationaler Konkurrenz, 19–32, on 32.
73. V. Patzak, “The Caroline University of Prague,” Slavonic and East European Review 19, no. 53/54 (1939–1940): 83–95, on 95.
74. Bryant, Prague in Black, 49; Duff, German Protectorate, 190–191; Monika Glettler, “Tschechische, jüdische und deutsche Professoren in Prag: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen biographischer Zugänge,” in Glettler and Míšková, Prager Professoren 1938–1948, 13–26, on 15. On the pressing of the university into wartime service and other scientific projects under the Protectorate, see Alena Míšková, “Německá univerzita za druhé světové války,” in Havránek and Pousta, Dějiny Univerzity Karlovy, 4:213–231; and Miloš Hořejš and Ivana Lorencová, eds., Věda a technika v českých zemích v období 2. světové války (Prague: Národní technické muzeum, 2009).
75. Bryant, Prague in Black, 3; idem, “Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939–1946,” Slavic Review 61, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 683–706. On Jews in postwar Czechoslovakia, see Petr Brod, “Die Juden in der Nachkriegstschechoslowakei,” in Hoensch, Biman, and Lipták, Judenemanzipation–Antisemitismus–Verfolgung, 211–228. Many of those who survived soon emigrated to Palestine and then (after 1948) Israel.
76. The literature on the expulsions is vast. For a survey of the major debates, and for statistics, see Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution Against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Wolfgang Benz, ed., Die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten: Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1985); Tomáš Staněk, Tábory v českých zemích, 1945–1948 (Ostrava: Nakl. Tilia, 1996); idem, Německá menšina v českých zemích, 1948–1989 (Prague: Institut pro středoevropskou kulturu a politiku, 1993); Eagle Glassheim, Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands: Migration, Environment, and Health in the Former Sudetenland (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016); Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace, tr. John A. Koehler (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993 [1986]); and idem, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans: Background, Execution, Consequences, rev. ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979 [1977]). On the terminological issues, see Ronald M. Smelser, “The Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans: 1945–1952,” Nationalities Papers 24, no. 1 (1996): 79–92, on 79; and Bradley F. Abrams, “Morality, Wisdom and Revision: The Czech Opposition of the 1970s and the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans,” East European Politics and Societies 9, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 234–255, on 244–245.
77. For a contemporary justification of the closure of the German University, see Otakar Odložilík, The Caroline University: 1348–1948 (Prague: [Orbis], 1948).
78. H. Gordon Skilling, “The Formation of a Communist Party in Czechoslovakia,” American Slavic and East European Review 14, no. 3 (October 1955): 346–358.
79. Paul E. Zinner, “Problems of Communist Rule in Czechoslovakia,” World Politics 4, no. 1 (October 1951): 112–129, on 119; Bradley F. Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 57. See also Paul E. Zinner, Communist Strategy and Tactics in Czechoslovakia, 1918–48 (New York: Praeger, 1963).
80. Bryant, Prague in Black, 259.
81. Arnošt Kolman, Die verirrte Generation: So hätten wir nicht leben sollen. Eine Autobiographie, 2nd. exp. ed., ed. Hanswilhelm Haefs and František Janouch, tr. Elisabeth Mahler-Berger (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1982 [1979]), 265.
82. Martin Buber, Tři řeči o židovství, tr. A. Kollmann (sic) (Prague: Nákl. Spolku židovských akademiků Theodor Herzl, 1912). On the milieu of Czech-speaking Zionist leaders of this era, including Kolman, see S. Goshen, “Zionist Students’ Organizations,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia: Historical Studies and Surveys, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968–1984), 2:173–184, on 178.
83. On various editions of the memoirs, see Arnošt Kolman, Die verirrte Generation: So hätten wir nicht leben sollen. Eine Biographie, tr. Elisabeth Mahler-Berger (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1979); Kolman, Die verirrte Generation (1982 ed.); E. Kol’man, My ne dolzhny byli tak zhit’ (New York: Chalidze, 1982); and Arnošt Kolman, Zaslepená generace: Paměti starého bolševika (Brno: Host, 2005). Also useful are the recollections of Kolman’s daughter—which are principally about her mother—though they rely extensively on the same memoirs for important events. Ada Kol’man, “Pamiat’ ne stynet … (Vospominaniia docheri o pisatel’nitse Ekaterine Kontsevoi),” Metsenat i mir, no. 49–52 (2011), http://www.mecenat-and-world.ru/49-52/kolman.htm.
84. Kolman, Die verirrte Generation (1979 ed.), 34–36.
85. Kurt Marko, “No Juvenal of Bolshevism,” tr. T. J. Blakeley, Studies in Soviet Thought 22, no. 2 (May 1981): 147–149, on 147.
86. For secondary accounts of Ko
lman’s career, see Michael D. Gordin, “The Trials of Arnošt K.: The Dark Angel of Dialectical Materialism,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 47, no. 3 (2017): 320–348; Pavel Kovaly, “Arnošt Kolman: Portrait of a Marxist-Leninist Philosopher,” Studies in Soviet Thought 12, no. 4 (December 1972): 337–366; idem, Rehumanization or Dehumanization?: Philosophical Essays on Current Issues of Marxist Humanism in Arnost Kolman, György Lukács, Adam Schaff, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Boston: Branden Press, 1974), ch. 2; Yakov M. Rabkin, “On the Origins of Political Control over the Content of Science in the Soviet Union,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 21, no. 2 (June 1979): 225–237; and Eugene Seneta, “Mathematics, Religion, and Marxism in the Soviet Union in the 1930s,” Historia Mathematica 31 (2004): 337–367.
87. Kolman, Die verirrte Generation (1979 ed.), 74. This account is confirmed by the memoirs of Dutch-American mathematician Dirk Struik, who had heard it when he met Kolman in the 1920s when both were doing underground work in Germany. Struik, “[Personal Recollections],” [1973?], Struik Papers, MC 418, Box 1, Folder “Personal Recollections, 1973?,” pp. 24–25.
88. Kolman, Die verirrte Generation (1979 ed.), 117.
89. Michal V. Simunek and Uwe Hossfeld, “Trofim D. Lysenko in Prague 1960: A Historical Note,” Istoriko-biologicheskie issledovaniia 5, no. 2 (2013): 84–88, on 85.
90. Einstein, “Opinion on Engels’ ‘Dialectics of Nature,’ ” 30 June 1924, CPAE 14:277, on 414.
91. On dialectical materialism in this period, see Helena Sheehan, Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History: The First Hundred Years (London: Verso, 2017 [1985]); and David Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, 1917–1932 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961).
92. Alexander Vucinich, Einstein and Soviet Ideology (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 62–63, 80–81, 120; A. S. Sonin, “Fizicheskii idealizm”: Istoriia odnoi ideologicheskoi kampanii (Moscow: Fiziko-Matematicheskaia Literatura, 1994), 41.
93. E. Kol’man, “K vystupleniiu Einshteina po voprosu o sovremennoi fizike,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 12 (1940): 100–105, on 100. This article was a direct response to a Soviet reprint and translation of the physicist’s lecture at the 8th Panamerican Congress in Washington, DC, on 5 May 1940: A. Einstein, “Soobrazheniia k obosnovaniiu teoreticheskoi fiziki,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 12 (1940): 106–113. For similar statements, see E. Kol’man, “Vozrozhdenie pifagoreizma v sovremennoi fizike,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 8 (1938): 138–160, on 151; and idem, “Teoriia kvant i dialekticheskii materializm,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 10 (1939): 129–145, on 138.
94. Idem, “Khod zadom filosofii Einshteina,” Nauchnoe slovo (1931): 11–15, on 13.
95. Reproduced in idem, Die verirrte Generation (1982 ed.), 355. The fullest exposition of this view is idem, “Teoriia otnositel’nosti i dialekticheskii materializm,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 6 (1939): 106–120.
96. On the situation in mathematics, see Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor, Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009); and Aleksey E. Levin, “Anatomy of a Public Campaign: ‘Academician Luzin’s Case’ in Soviet Political History,” Slavic Review 49, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 90–108.
97. E. Kol’man, “Vreditel’stvo v nauke,” Bol’shevik, no. 2 (1931): 73–81; and idem, “Pis’mo tov. Stalina i zadachi fronta estestvoznaniia i meditsiny,” Pod znamenem marksizma, no. 9–10 (1931): 163–172.
98. Zdeněk Dittrich, “Die Prager Tschechische Universität 1945–1948 in meiner Erinnerung,” in Glettler and Míšková, Prager Professoren 1938–1948, 657–661, on 658; Antonín Kostlán, “Die Prager Professoren in den Jahren 1945 bis 1950: Versuch einer prosopographischen Analyse,” in Glettler and Míšková, Prager Professoren 1938–1948, 605–655, on 612; N. Lobkowicz, Marksismus-Leninismus in der ČSR: Die tschechoslowakische Philosophie seit 1945 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1961), 19; John Connelly, Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945–1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 33; František Janouch, “Portrét Arnošta Kolmana,” in Janouch and Arnošt Kolman, Jak jste tak mohli žit?: Dialog generací (Prague: Novela bohemica, 2011), 17; Abrams, Struggle for the Soul, 59, 192; Peter Hruby, Fools and Heroes: The Changing Role of Communist Intellectuals in Czechoslovakia (Oxford: Pergamon, 1980), 207 (see also 187); Zinner, Communist Strategy and Tactics, 128.
99. Arnošt Kolman, Diskuse s univ. prof. dr. Arnoštem Kolmanem (Prague: Orbis, 1946); idem, Ideologie německého fašismu (Prague: Svoboda, 1946).
100. Kolman, Die verirrte Generation (1979 ed.), 191–192.
101. Zinner, “Problems of Communist Rule,” 122; D. E. Viney, “Czech Culture and the ‘New Spirit,’ 1948–52,” Slavonic and East European Review 31, no. 77 (June 1953): 466–494, on 467n2, 480n40.
102. S. S. Ilizarov, “Ernest Kol’man, Nikita Khrushchev i IIET,” in 80 let Institutu istorii nauki i tekhniki: 1932–2012 (Moscow: Izd. RTSoft, 2012), 198–205; I. R. Grinina and S. S. Ilizarov, eds., “Dokumenty o prebyvanii Ernesta Kol’mana v Institute istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki AN SSSR,” Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki, no. 1 (1998): 156–161.
103. E. Kol’man, Velikii russkii myslitel’ N. I. Lobachevskii, 2nd. ed. (Moscow: Gos. izd. politicheskoi literatury, 1956); idem, Bernard Bolzano, ed. Alfred Händel and Günther Höpfner (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963); idem, “Chto takoe kibernetika?,” Voprosy filosofii, no. 4 (1955): 148–159; idem, Kibernetika (O mashinakh, vypolniaiushchikh nekotorye psikhicheskie funktsii cheloveka) (Moscow: Znanie, 1956); idem, “The Adventures of Cybernetics in the Soviet Union,” Minerva 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1978): 416–424.
104. Idem, “Kuda vedet fizikov sub”ektivizm,” Voprosy filosofii, no. 6 (1953): 173–189; idem, “K sporam o teorii otnositel’nosti,” Voprosy filosofii, no. 5 (1954): 178–189; idem, Lenin i noveishaia fizika (Moscow: Gos. izd. politicheskoi literatury, 1959), 23, 44–48, 117; idem, Filosofskie problemy sovremennoi fiziki (Moscow: Znanie, 1957), 9.
105. See Josef Zeman, “Ještě k problémům rozpornosti pohybu,” Filosofický časopis 8 (1960): 240–243, on 242; and Zdeněk Mlynář, “Filosofie a praxe,” Nová mysl 3 (March 1960): 287–299.
106. Arnošt Kolman, speech at the plenary session of Czechoslovak writers, 10 December 1962, MÚA AV ČR, fond Drobné fondy, karton 5, složka Kolman Arnošt, p. 8.
107. H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 577n51.
108. Kolman, Die verirrte Generation (1979 ed.), 247.
109. Arnošt Kolman, “Proti dogmatismu v naší filosofii,” Filosofický časopis 11, no. 2 (1963): 222–227, on 223.
110. Milan Šimečka, The Restoration of Order: The Normalization of Czechoslovakia, 1969–1976 (London: Verso, 1984).
111. E. Kolman to Struik, postcard of 28 May 1971, Struik Papers, MC 418, Box 7, Folder “K–M”; Kol’man, My ne dolzhny byli tak zhit’, 357–358.
112. Ada Kolman-Janouch to Struik, 11 December 1974, Struik Papers, MC 418, Box 7, Folder “K–M.”
113. E. Kolman, “The Philosophical Interpretation of Contemporary Physics,” tr. E. M. Swiderski, Studies in Soviet Thought 21, no. 1 (February 1980): 1–14, on 14.
114. Arnosht Kolman, “Is Marching On,” New York Times (13 October 1976): 38.
115. “I also do not belong to those who, from the fact that socialism has never so far been implemented anywhere except through being foisted by an oligarchy, draw the false conclusion that it could never be implemented. I very much want to hope that it will work out with the Eurocommunists.” Kolman to Struik, 31 May 1977, Struik Papers, MC 418, Box 7, Folder “K–M.”
116. See the letters from Kolman to Struik dated 30 October 1974 and 4 September 1975, Struik Papers, MC 418, Box 7, Folder “K–M”; and that from 4 September [1978] in Folder “K.” For Cohen, see Kolman to Cohen, letters of 5 September and 18 October 1977, Cohen Papers, #16
66, Box 29, Folder 18, “Kolman, Arnost.” There are many other such letters in Struik’s and Cohen’s archives.
117. Robert S. Cohen to Arnost Kolman, 17 November 1976, Cohen Papers, #1666, Box 29, Folder 18, “Kolman, Arnost.” See also Cohen to Kolman, 12 December 1975, Cohen Papers, #1666, Box 29, Folder 18, “Kolman, Arnost.”
118. Katya Coleman to Cohen, 1 August 1978, Cohen Papers, #1666, Box 29, Folder 18, “Kolman, Arnost.”
119. “Prof. Ernst [sic] Kolman, a Confidant of Lenin, Dies in Sweden at 85,” New York Times (26 January 1979): A23. See also the biographical description in Kolman’s posthumous “Gelehrter und Freiheitskämpfer,” Europäische Ideen 48 (1980): 6–8. Earlier Western news stories, by contrast, did not mention any connection with Einstein: “Soviet Communist, Disillusioned at 84, Resigns from Party,” New York Times (7 October 1976): 4.
120. Vladimir V. Kusin, From Dubček to Charter 77: A Study of “Normalisation” in Czechoslovakia, 1968–1978 (Edinburgh: Q Press, 1978), 202.
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