Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set: Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Einstein

by Isaacson, Walter

  When Einstein said that leaving Berlin had proved liberating, Elsa defended the city that she had loved for so long. “You often said to me after coming home from the physics colloquium that such a gathering of outstanding physicists is not to be found anywhere else.”

  “Yes,” Einstein replied, “from a purely scientific point of view life in Berlin was often very nice. Nevertheless, I always had a feeling that something was pressing on me, and I always had a premonition that the end would not be good.”43

  With Einstein a free agent, offers flowed in from all over Europe. “I now have more professorships than rational ideas in my head,” he told Solovine.44 Although he had committed to spend at least a few months each year in Princeton, he began accepting these invitations somewhat promiscuously. He was never very good at declining requests.

  Partly it was because the offers were enticing and he was flattered. Partly it was because he was still trying to leverage a better deal for his assistant, Walther Mayer. In addition, the offers became a way for him and the various universities to show their defiance of what the Nazis were doing to German academies. “You may feel that it would have been my duty not to accept the Spanish and French offers,” he confessed to Paul Langevin in Paris, “however, such a refusal might have been misinterpreted since both invitations were, at least to some extent, political demonstrations that I considered important and did not want to spoil.”45

  His acceptance of a post at the University of Madrid made headlines in April. “Spanish Minister Announces Physicist Has Accepted Professorship,” said the New York Times. “News Received with Joy.” The paper pointed out that this should not affect his annual stints in Princeton, but Einstein warned Flexner that it could if Mayer was not given a full rather than an associate professorship at the new Institute. “You will by now have learned through the press that I have accepted a chair at Madrid University,” he wrote. “The Spanish government has given me the right to recommend to them a mathematician to be appointed as a full professor ...I therefore find myself in a difficult position: either to recommend him for Spain or to ask you whether you could possibly extend his appointment to a full professorship.” In case the threat was not clear enough, Einstein added, “His absence from the Institute might even create some difficulties for my own work.”46

  Flexner compromised. In a four-page letter, he cautioned Einstein about the perils of becoming too attached to one assistant, told tales of how that had worked out badly in other cases, but then relented. Although Mayer’s title remained associate professor, he was given tenure, which was enough to secure the deal.47

  Einstein also accepted or expressed interest in lectureships in Brussels, Paris, and Oxford. He was particularly eager to spend some time at the latter. “Do you think that Christ Church could find a small room for me?” he wrote his friend Professor Frederick Lindemann, a physicist there who would become an important adviser to Winston Churchill. “It need not be so grand as in the two previous years.” At the end of the letter, he added a wistful little note: “I shall never see the land of my birth again.”48

  This raised one obvious question: Why did he not consider spending some time at Hebrew University in Jerusalem? After all, it was partly his baby. Einstein spent the spring of 1933 actively talking about starting up a new university, perhaps in England, that could serve as a refuge for displaced Jewish academics. Why wasn’t he instead recruiting them for, and committing himself personally to, Hebrew University?

  The problem was that for the previous five years, Einstein had been doing battle with administrators there, and it came to an untimely showdown in 1933, just as he and other professors were fleeing the Nazis. The target of his ire was the university’s president, Judah Magnes, a former rabbi from New York who felt a duty to please his wealthy American backers, including on faculty appointments, even if this meant compromising on scholarly distinction. Einstein wanted the university to operate more in the European tradition, with the academic departments given great power over curriculum and tenured faculty decisions.49

  While he was in Le Coq sur Mer, his frustrations with Magnes boiled over. “This ambitious and weak person surrounded himself with other morally inferior men,” he wrote Haber in cautioning him about going to Hebrew University. He described it to Born as “a pigsty, complete charlatanism.”50

  Einstein’s complaints put him at odds with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. When Weizmann and Magnes sent him a formal invitation to join the Hebrew University faculty, he allowed his distaste to pour forth publicly. He told the press that the university was “unable to satisfy intellectual needs” and declared that he had thus rejected the invitation.51

  Magnes must go, Einstein declared. He wrote Sir Herbert Samuel, the British high commissioner, who had been appointed to a committee to propose reforms, that Magnes had wrought “enormous damage” and that “if ever people want my collaboration, his immediate resignation is my condition.” In June he said the same to Weizmann: “Only a decisive change of personnel would alter things.”52

  Weizmann was an adroit broken-field runner. He decided to turn Einstein’s challenge into an opportunity to lessen Magnes’s power. If he succeeded, then Einstein should feel compelled to join the faculty. On a trip to America later in June, he was asked why Einstein was not going to Jerusalem, where he surely belonged. He should indeed go there, Weizmann agreed, and he had been invited to do so. If he went to Jerusalem, Weizmann added, “he would cease to be a wanderer among the universities of the world.”53

  Einstein was furious. His reasons for not going to Jerusalem were well known to Weizmann, he said, “and he also knows under what circumstances I would be prepared to undertake work for the Hebrew University.”That led Weizmann to appoint a committee that, he knew, would remove Magnes from direct control of the academic side of the university. He then announced, during a visit to Chicago, that Einstein’s conditions had been met and therefore he should be coming to Hebrew University after all. “Albert Einstein has definitely decided to accept direction of the physics institute at the Hebrew University,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, based on information from Weizmann.

  It was a ruse by Weizmann that was not true and would never come to pass. But in addition to frightening Flexner in Princeton, it allowed the Hebrew University controversy to simmer down and for reforms to be made at the university.54

  The End of Pacifism

  Like a good scientist, Einstein could change his attitudes when confronted with new evidence. Among his deepest personal principles was his pacifism. But in early 1933, with Hitler’s ascension, the facts had changed.

  So Einstein forthrightly declared that he had come to the conclusion that absolute pacifism and military resistance were, at least for the moment, not warranted. “The time seems inauspicious for further advocacy of certain propositions of the radical pacifist movement,” he wrote to a Dutch minister who wanted his support for a peace organization. “For example, is one justified in advising a Frenchman or a Belgian to refuse military service in the face of German rearmament?” Einstein felt the answer was now clear. “Frankly, I do not believe so.”

  Instead of pushing pacifism, he redoubled his commitment to a world federalist organization, like a League of Nations with real teeth, that would have its own professional army to enforce its decisions. “It seems to me that in the present situation we must support a supranational organization of force rather than advocate the abolition of all forces,” he said. “Recent events have taught me a lesson in this respect.”55

  This met resistance from the War Resisters’ International, an organization that he had long supported. Its leader, Lord Arthur Ponsonby, denounced the idea, calling it “undesirable because it is an admission that force is the factor that can resolve international disputes.” Einstein disagreed. In the wake of the new threat arising in Germany, his new philosophy, he wrote, was “no disarmament without security.”56

  Four years earlier, while visiting Antwerp, Einste
in had been invited to the Belgian royal palace by Queen Elisabeth,57 the daughter of a Bavarian duke who was married to King Albert I. The queen loved music, and Einstein spent the afternoon playing Mozart with her, drinking tea, and attempting to explain relativity. Invited back the following year, he met her husband, the king, and became charmed by the least regal of all royals. “These two simple people are of a purity and goodness that is seldom to be found,” he wrote Elsa. Once again he and the queen played Mozart, then Einstein was invited to stay and dine alone with the couple. “No servants, vegetarian, spinach with fried egg and potatoes,” he recounted. “I liked it enormously, and I am sure that the feeling is mutual.”58

  Thus began a lifelong friendship with the Belgian queen. Later, his relationship with her would play a minor role in Einstein’s involvement with the atomic bomb. But in July 1933, the issue at stake was pacifism and military resistance.

  “The husband of the second violinist would like to talk to you on an urgent matter.” It was a cryptic way for King Albert to identify himself that Einstein, but few others, would recognize. Einstein headed to the palace. On the king’s mind was a case that was roiling his country. Two conscientious objectors were being held in jail for refusing service in the Belgian army, and international pacifists were pressuring Einstein to speak out on their behalf. This, of course, would cause problems.

  The king hoped that Einstein would refrain from getting involved. Out of friendship, out of respect for the leader of a country that was hosting him, and also out of his new and sincere beliefs, Einstein agreed. He even went so far as to write a letter that he allowed to be made public.

  “In the present threatening situation, created by the events in Germany, Belgium’s armed forces can be regarded only as a means of defense, not an instrument of aggression,” he declared. “And now, of all times, such defense forces are urgently needed.”

  Being Einstein, however, he felt compelled to add a few additional thoughts. “Men who, by their religious and moral convictions, are constrained to refuse military service should not be treated as criminals,” he argued. “They should be offered the alternative of accepting more onerous and hazardous work than military service.” For example, they could be put to work as low-paid conscripts doing “mine labor, stoking furnaces aboard ships, hospital service in infectious disease wards or in certain sections of mental institutions.”59 King Albert sent back a warm note of gratitude, which politely avoided any discussions of alternative service.

  When Einstein changed his mind, he did not try to hide the fact. So he also wrote a public letter to the leader of the pacifist group that was encouraging him to intervene in the Belgian case. “Until recently, we in Europe could assume that personal war resistance constituted an effective attack on militarism,” he said. “Today we face an altogether different situation. In the heart of Europe lies a power, Germany, that is obviously pushing to war with all available means.”

  He even went so far as to proclaim the unthinkable: he himself would join the army if he were a young man.

  I must tell you candidly: Under today’s conditions, if I were a Belgian, I would not refuse military service, but gladly take it upon me in the knowledge of serving European civilization. This does not mean that I am surrendering the principle for which I have stood heretofore. I have no greater hope than that the time may not be far off when refusal of military service will once again be an effective method of serving the cause of human progress.60

  For weeks the story reverberated around the world.“Einstein Alters His Pacifist Views / Advises the Belgians to Arm Themselves Against the Threat of Germany,” headlined the New York Times.61 Einstein not only held firm, but explained himself more passionately in response to each successive attack.

  To the French secretary of the War Resisters’ International: “My views have not changed, but the European situation has ... So long as Germany persists in rearming and systematically indoctrinating its citizens for a war of revenge, the nations of western Europe depend, unfortunately, on military defense. Indeed, I will go so far as to assert that if they are prudent, they will not wait, unarmed, to be attacked...I cannot shut my eyes to realities.”62

  To Lord Ponsonby, his pacifist partner from England: “Can you possibly be unaware of the fact that Germany is feverishly rearming and that the whole population is being indoctrinated with nationalism and drilled for war? ... What protection, other than organized power, would you suggest?”63

  To the Belgian War Resisters’ Committee: “As long as no international police force exists, these countries must undertake the defense of culture. The situation in Europe has changed sharply within the past year; we should be playing into the hands of our bitterest enemies were we to close our eyes to this fact.”64

  To an American professor: “To prevent the greater evil, it is necessary that the lesser evil—the hated military—be accepted for the time being.”65

  And even a year later, to an upset rabbi from Rochester: “I am the same ardent pacifist I was before. But I believe that we can advocate refusing military service only when the military threat from aggressive dictatorships toward democratic countries has ceased to exist.”66

  After years of being called naïve by his conservative friends, now it was those on the left who felt that his grasp of politics was shaky. “Einstein, a genius in his scientific field, is weak, indecisive and inconsistent outside it,” the dedicated pacifist Romain Rolland wrote in his diary.67 The charge of inconsistency would have amused Einstein. For a scientist, altering your doctrines when the facts change is not a sign of weakness.

  Farewell

  The previous fall, Einstein had gotten a long, rambling, and, as often was the case, intensely personal letter from Michele Besso, one of his oldest friends. Most of it was about poor Eduard, Einstein’s younger son, who had continued to succumb to his mental illness and was now confined to an asylum near Zurich. Einstein was pictured so often with his stepdaughters, but never with his sons, Besso noted. Why didn’t he travel with them? Perhaps he could take Eduard on one of his trips to America and get to know him better.

  Einstein loved Eduard. Elsa told a friend, “This sorrow is eating up Albert.” But he felt that Eduard’s schizophrenia was inherited from his mother’s side, as to some extent it probably was, and there was little that he could do about it. That was also the reason he resisted psychoanalysis for Eduard. He considered it ineffective, especially in cases of severe mental illness that seemed to have hereditary causes.

  Besso, on the other hand, had gone through psychoanalysis, and in his letter he was expansive and disarming, just as he had been back when they used to walk home from the patent office together more than a quarter-century earlier. He had his own problems in marriage, Besso said, referring to Anna Winteler, whom Einstein had introduced him to. But by forging a better relationship with his own son, he had made his marriage work and his life more meaningful.

  Einstein replied that he hoped to take Eduard with him to visit Princeton. “Unfortunately, everything indicates that strong heredity manifests itself very definitely,” he lamented. “I have seen that coming slowly but inexorably since Tete’s youth. Outside influences play only a small part in such cases, compared to internal secretions, about which nobody can do anything.”68

  The tug was there, and Einstein knew that he had to, and wanted to, see Eduard. He was supposed to visit Oxford in late May, but he decided to delay the trip for a week so that he could go to Zurich and be with his son. “I could not wait six weeks before going to see him,” he wrote Lindemann, asking his indulgence. “You are not a father, but I know you will understand.”69

  His relationship with Mari had improved so much that, when she heard he could not go back to Germany, she invited both him and Elsa to come to Zurich and live in her apartment building. He was pleasantly surprised, and he stayed with her when he came alone that May. But his visit with Eduard turned out to be more wrenching than he had anticipated.

  Eins
tein had brought with him his violin. Often he and Eduard had played together, expressing emotions with their music in ways they could not with words. The photograph of them on that visit is particularly poignant. They are sitting awkwardly next to each other, wearing suits, in what seems to be the visiting room of the asylum. Einstein is holding his violin and bow, looking away. Eduard is staring down intensely at a pile of papers, the pain seeming to contort his now fleshy face.

  When Einstein left Zurich for Oxford, he was still assuming that he would be spending half of each ensuing year in Europe. What he did not know was that, as things would turn out, this would be the last time he would see his first wife and their younger son.

  While at Oxford, Einstein gave his Herbert Spencer Lecture, in which he explained his philosophy of science, and then went to Glasgow, where he gave an account of his path toward the discovery of general relativity. He enjoyed the trip so much that, soon after his return to Le Coq sur Mer, he decided to go back to England in late July, this time at the invitation of one of his unlikeliest acquaintances.

  British Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson was most things that Einstein was not. The adventurous son of a Victorian poet, he became a World War I aviator, leader of an armored division in Lapland and Russia, an adviser to Grand Duke Nicholas, and potential plotter in the murder of Rasputin. Now he was a barrister, journalist, and member of Parliament. He had studied in Germany, knew the language and the people, and had become, perhaps as a consequence, an early advocate for preparing to fight the Nazis. With an appetite for the interesting, he began writing Einstein, whom he had met only in passing once at Oxford, asking him to be his guest in England.

  When Einstein accepted his offer, the dashing commander made the most of it. He took Einstein to see Winston Churchill, then suffering through his wilderness years as an opposition member of Parliament. At lunch in the gardens of Churchill’s home, Chartwell, they discussed Germany’s rearmament. “He is an eminently wise man,” Einstein wrote Elsa that day. “It became clear to me that these people have made preparations and are determined to act resolutely and soon.”70 It sounded like an assessment from someone who had just eaten lunch with Churchill.