Einstein on the Run Read online

  Recall Einstein’s visit a week or two ago. He was acclaimed as the greatest mind of our age; his simplicity of demeanour, his ability to produce sweet music were favourably commented upon. But not once did I see it stated that Einstein is a Jew. I do not think that this point needs stressing. Jews may sometimes produce a great genius: other peoples may sometimes do no less. But when (in breach of the ninth commandment) the mass of the public is informed in season and out of season that Jews are revolutionaries, that they are a disruptive element in modern society, that the British Empire itself is in danger of their secret machinations, it is only fair surely to expect that when a popular hero who is a Jew appears on the horizon, his Jewishness should be pointed out. Why is it that this small point is overlooked?

  In 1922, Jewishness was certainly a factor in triggering Einstein’s visit to faraway Japan. On 24 June, his friend Rathenau was gunned down in a Berlin street. Immediately, Einstein realised that he too, as a prominent Jewish liberal in Germany’s public life like Rathenau, was at risk. At first he considered leaving the country for good, as he had considered doing in 1920 at the time of the ‘Anti-relativity Company’ event. Four days later, however, after the initial panic had subsided, Einstein decided to stay in Germany, but resign from his public offices and avoid public appearances, such as the centenary celebration conference of the Society of German Scientists and Physicians, scheduled for September. ‘For, I am supposedly among the group of persons being targeted by nationalist assassins,’ he informed Planck, one of the conference organisers, in a letter from Kiel on 6 July. ‘I have no secure proof, of course; but the prevailing situation now makes it appear thoroughly credible.’ After disappearing from view in Berlin as far as possible, at the beginning of October Einstein and his wife were able to get away from Germany for almost six months, during which Einstein lectured to large and respectful audiences in Japan, at the invitation of a Japanese publisher that had first been extended to him in 1921.

  While the Einsteins were there in December 1922, the trial of the would-be assassins of Rathenau took place in Berlin. One of the witnesses, a German-Jewish journalist, Maximilian Harden, testified in court that ‘The great scholar Albert Einstein is now in Japan because he does not feel safe in Germany.’ This comment was picked up from a news agency report by the Japan Advertiser, causing embarrassment to the German ambassador to Japan, Wilhelm Solf. He requested Einstein by cable to allow him to deny the story by cable publicly. But as Einstein conveyed to Solf in a letter, the true situation was somewhat more complicated than it appeared. He explained: ‘Harden’s statement is certainly awkward for me, in that it aggravates my situation in Germany; nor is it completely correct, but neither is it completely wrong. Because people who know the situation in Germany well are indeed of the opinion that a certain threat to my life does exist.’ He then admitted that his own assessment of the threat had changed as a result of the murder of Rathenau. Before the murder, ‘A yearning for the Far East led me, in large part, to accept the invitation to Japan’; after the murder, ‘I was certainly very relieved to have an opportunity for a long absence from Germany, taking me away from the temporarily heightened danger without my having to do anything that could have been unpleasant for my German friends and colleagues.’

  VISIT TO PALESTINE

  Even more complicated was Einstein’s relationship with Palestine, which he visited on the way back to Germany from the Far East, over twelve days in February 1923. For it involved both his fellow Jews – German and otherwise – and the British colonial servants running the political affairs of the Mandate founded in 1920. Although Einstein had formed a positive impression of what he saw as British ‘enlightened colonialism’ and its ‘civilising mission’ in the places he visited on his way to and from Japan, such as Ceylon and Hong Kong, their application to Palestine was clearly a more sensitive matter, about which Einstein would express neither a positive nor a negative view in 1923.

  On arrival by train in Jerusalem, the Einsteins were met by a British army officer, who took them by car up the Mount of Olives to Government House on the summit, the official residence of Sir Herbert Samuel, a British Jew who was the first High Commissioner of Palestine, where they were to be his guests for a few days. Einstein thought the building enormously pretentious and dubbed it ‘Samuel’s Castle’. Originally conceived as a hospice for German pilgrims in Jerusalem by Kaiser Wilhelm II on his visit to Jerusalem in 1899, its chapel boasted a mosaic mural depicting the Kaiser, accompanied by his wife, holding a replica of the building: ‘very Wilhelminian’, noted Einstein laconically in his diary.

  But he got on well with Samuel and his small family, and formed a friendship that would last for many years; when Einstein visited London in 1930 to speak at a Jewish fundraising dinner, he again stayed with Samuel. He appreciated Samuel’s ‘English formality’, his ‘superior, multifaceted education’ and his ‘lofty view of life tempered by humour’. Samuel, for his part, described Einstein in his memoirs as ‘a man of kindly disposition and simple ways. Recognised everywhere as the greatest scientist of our age, he carries his immense fame without the smallest self-consciousness, without either pride or diffidence. . . . His sense of humour is keen, and laughter comes readily.’

  On the first day, which happened to be the Sabbath, Einstein and Samuel walked together on a footpath past the city walls to an ancient gate into the old city of Jerusalem, where they were joined by a Zionist thinker, Asher Ginsberg. According to Einstein’s diary:

  Continue on into the city with Ginsberg. Through bazaar alleyways and other narrow streets to the large mosque on a splendid wide raised square, where Solomon’s temple stood. Similar to Byzantine church, polygonal with central dome supported by pillars [the Dome of the Rock]. On the other side of the square, a basilica-like mosque of mediocre taste [the Al-Aqsa Mosque]. Then downward to the temple wall (Wailing Wall), where obtuse ethnic brethren [Stammesbrüder] pray loudly, with their faces turned to the wall, bend their bodies to and fro in a swaying motion. Pitiful sight of people with a past but without a present. Then diagonally through the (very dirty) city swarming with the most disparate assortment of holy men and races, noisy and Oriental-exotic.

  After this distinctly mixed introduction to Jerusalem, most of Einstein’s visit was chiefly concerned with introducing the world’s most celebrated Jew to a wide range of local Jews (very few Arabs) in various places, including Tel Aviv, at the behest of the Palestinian Zionist organisation, which was determined to give him as favourable an impression as possible of Jewish Palestine. For example, three days after his arrival, Einstein spent the morning at two Jewish settlements west of Jerusalem with a workers’ cooperative dedicated to training newly arrived settlers without any experience of the construction trades. In the afternoon, he met another philosopher, Hugo Bergmann from Prague, who was trying to establish the Hebrew University’s library, followed by a local Jewish high-school teacher of mathematics, who showed him some interesting investigations in matrix algebra. The evening was then free for Einstein to accept the invitation of an English couple and their guests, where he made music for a long time, because he had become starved of western music in the Far East.

  Norman Bentwich was an army officer stationed in Palestine who was attorney general in the British administration. His wife, Helen, left a lively account of their Einsteinian evening in a letter to her mother in England, mentioning her musical husband and his two musical sisters, Margery and Thelma. ‘The great event has been Einstein,’ she wrote.

  He is very simple and rather bored by the people but very interested in the music provided for him. Mrs Einstein is a mixture between a Hausfrau and a Madonna. Tuesday evening they came to dine, and there was music. Margery, Thelma, Norman, a man Feingold and Einstein played a Mozart quintet. Norman on the viola and Einstein on Norman’s violin. He looked very happy whilst he was playing, and played extraordinarily well. He told some interesting things about Japan and his visit there, and talked of music, but not
of his theories. He said of some man – ‘he is not worth reading, he writes just like a professor’ – which was rather nice. He only talks French and German, but his wife talks English. She said they got so tired of continual receptions and lectures, and longed to see the interesting places they visit alone and simply.

  The general truth of this picture, especially the last comment, is borne out by Einstein’s none-too-enthusiastic reaction in his diary to perhaps his most important formal engagement in Palestine: the first lecture of the nascent Hebrew University on 7 February. It took place in a hall of the British police academy on Mount Scopus, which had been hung with Zionist flags for the occasion, alongside the Union Jack, a portrait of the high commissioner, Samuel, and a portrait of Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism. The audience of about 250 people consisted of government officials (including Samuel and the Bentwiches), Dominican Fathers, missionaries and of course many Jews. Einstein was introduced by the local president of the Zionist organisation, Menachem Ussishkin, with this concluding flourish: ‘Mount the platform which has been waiting for you for 2,000 years.’ Einstein then began lecturing on relativity with a single sentence in Hebrew, a language that was ‘evidently unfamiliar’, noted Samuel (Einstein never learned Hebrew as a child), immediately switched to French and concluded in German. After he had finished, he was formally thanked, quite wittily, by Samuel, who then strolled back and forth with Einstein on the hill road, engaging in philosophical conversation. Later, there was a banquet in his honour at Government House, attended by a range of British Mandate officials including the chief justice and the head of education, the Arab mayor of Jerusalem and a well-known American archaeologist, William F. Albright, and his wife. ‘That evening, well and truly satisfied with all these comedies!’ noted Einstein.

  Einstein and his wife Elsa at Government House, Jerusalem, February 1923, during his first, and only, visit to Palestine, which was then under British administration. Between the Einsteins in the front row stand the high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, and his wife Beatrice. Behind Sir Herbert is the attorney general, Norman Bentwich, who invited Einstein to his house, where he relished playing his violin after a long gap in the Far East.

  On the last day of his visit, the diary included Einstein’s most insightful comment on his attitude to Palestine, at the end of a busy day with yet another lecture:

  Drive from terraced, very scenic Nazareth across the Jezreel Valley, Nablus, to Jerusalem. Quite hot at departure, then severe cold with pelting rain. En route, road blocked by a truck sunk in the mud. People and car take separate detours over ditch and field. Cars get heavily battered about in this country. In the evening, lecture in German in Jerusalem in a packed hall with inevitable speeches and presentation of diploma by Jewish medical doctors, the speaker scared stiff and froze. Thank heavens that there are also some with less self-assurance among us Jews. I am wanted in Jerusalem at all costs and am being assailed on all fronts in this regard. My heart says yes but my mind says no.

  Einstein left Jerusalem on 14 February 1923. He would never return to Palestine. In 1952, he declined the presidency of Israel offered to him on the death of Weizmann. Instead, he worked assi-duously for Jewish causes internationally from the 1920s through the Nazi period and the post-war impact of the Holocaust right up to his death. Indeed, his very last piece of writing is an unfinished draft of his proposed address for Israel’s Independence Day in 1955, petering out with these cautionary words: ‘Political passions, once they have been fanned into flame, exact their victims . . .’.

  PACIFISM AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

  No doubt from the beginning of his involvement with the Jewish cause Einstein had sensed that Zionism – like all forms of nationalism – carried within it the seeds of armed conflict. He had lived through the German nationalism that led to the First World War, Germany’s military defeat and the fierce international sanctions that followed it, which nourished the nationalist myth that Germany’s collapse was the result of being ‘stabbed in the back’ by internal enemies, represented by Jews such as the soon-to-be-murdered Rathenau. From 1921 onwards, therefore, along with his support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, Einstein was simultaneously active in trying to promote world peace.

  To begin with, his efforts focused on encouraging international understanding between scientists divided by war. In late 1921, he wrote a statement on ‘The International Character of Science’, intended for publication in German in a pacifist handbook. He commented that during the recent war, when nationalist delusions were at their zenith, Emil Fischer (the Nobel laureate in chemistry for 1902) had made an emphatic statement to a Prussian Academy meeting: ‘You can do nothing, gentlemen, science is – and shall remain – international!’ Then Einstein noted that scientific conferences were still being organised with the deliberate exclusion of professional scientists from former enemy countries. ‘Solemnly argued political considerations stand in the way of the supremacy of purely factual considerations so essential in fostering the great causes.’ What could well-intentioned people do to counteract this policy of exclusion? The most effective policy for them would be to maintain close contacts with ‘like-minded fellows’ from all the other countries and to advocate persistently the cause of internationalism within their own national spheres of influence. No doubt the success of such efforts would take time, but they were sure to bear fruit. ‘I would not like to let this opportunity pass without pointing out with admiration that, particularly among a large number of our English fellow professionals, the effort to uphold the intellectual community has remained alive throughout all these difficult years.’

  Soon after this, the League of Nations – founded in 1920 – decided to establish an advisory International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, to promote international exchange between scientists, researchers, teachers, artists and intellectuals. The committee would formally exist until 1946, when it was dissolved and succeeded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

  Einstein, along with Marie Curie, the Dutch physicist Lorentz, the French philosopher Henri Bergson, the British classical scholar Gilbert Murray and other thinkers of international renown, were mooted as potential committee members. Since this was four years before Germany’s admission to the League of Nations, when German scientists were still boycotted by scientific conferences organised by the former Allies (as noted above by Einstein), his name inevitably provoked some controversy. Murray – who was chairman of the committee from 1928 to 1939, following Bergson and Lorentz – recalled these early arguments at the end of his life in the 1950s, as follows:

  I was naturally eager to get Doctor Einstein made a member of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, partly because he would, in a sense, count as a German, and partly for his eminence, but there were two or three obstacles – some of my French colleagues objected to having a German so soon while some Germans argued that he was not a German at all but a Swiss Jew. Another difficulty was Einstein’s own mistrust of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation as merely a committee formed by the victors. A conversation with some leading members of the committee very soon satisfied him as to our real international and peaceful spirit. The German objection was not one that could be maintained; if he was a Swiss, the Germans had no ground for objecting to him.

  In mid-May 1922, Sir Eric Drummond, the British secretary general of the League, formally invited Einstein to join the committee. He promptly accepted, if with a note of doubt: ‘Although I am not clear at all as to the character of the work to be done by the committee, I consider it my duty to accept your invitation. In my opinion, no one, in times such as these, should refuse to take part in any effort made to bring about international cooperation.’

  But soon he had second thoughts and decided to withdraw. The principal reason was probably Rathenau’s assassination on 24 June and Einstein’s wish to withdraw from German public life. He advised a French League of Nations official whom h
e knew personally: ‘the situation here is such that a Jew would do well to exercise restraint as regards his participation in political affairs. In addition, I must say that I have no desire to represent people who certainly would not choose me as their representative, and with whom I find myself in disagreement on the questions to be dealt with.’

  Murray pleaded with Einstein not to withdraw. So did Curie. She wrote to him:

  I have received your letter, which has caused me a great deal of disappointment. It seems to me that the reason you give for your abstention is not convincing. It is precisely because dangerous and prejudicial currents of opinion do exist that it is necessary to fight them and you are able to exercise, to this extent, an excellent influence, if only by your personal reputation which enables you to fight for toleration. I think that your friend Rathenau, whom I judge to have been an honest man, would have encouraged you to make at least an effort at peaceful, intellectual international collaboration. Surely you can change your mind. Your friends here have kind memories of you.

  For whatever reason, Einstein did again change his mind and accept membership of the committee. However, he still felt unable to attend its first meeting in Geneva in August 1922. Instead he sent a telegram of support, before departing for the Far East in early October.

  It turned out that a pattern had been set. Einstein truly believed in fostering internationalism among thinkers, yet he was uncomfortable to be seen as a representative of Germany; and by nature he disliked committees.

  In March 1923, soon after returning from his Far Eastern trip, and without having attended any meeting of the Interna-tional Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, Einstein once again resigned from it. This time he was provoked by the French government’s unilateral decision to send occupation troops into the Ruhr district of Germany in January 1923, as a reprisal against Germany’s failure to fulfil its obligations to pay war reparations, agreed at the post-war Versailles peace conference. For once, Einstein found himself on the side of German nationalists. But his reasons were different from theirs, as he explained to the League: ‘I have become convinced that the League possesses neither the strength nor the sincere desire which it needs to accomplish its aims. As a convinced pacifist, I feel obliged to sever all relations with the League.’ He therefore requested that his name be removed from the roster of committee members.