Einstein on the Run Read online

  Einstein was immediately tempted – not least because of the disastrous economic and political situation in Germany, with banks at risk of collapse, escalating unemployment and the rising popular appeal of the Nazi Party. ‘Your kind letter has filled me with great pleasure and brought back to me the memory of the wonderful weeks in Oxford,’ he wrote to Lindemann on 6 July. However, he went on to advise Lindemann of a difficulty that had put him ‘on the horns of a dilemma’: whether to accept Christ Church’s offer or a parallel offer from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, since he was unable to fulfil both obligations given his commitments in Berlin. He therefore proposed the following course of action: that Lindemann write immediately to the dean of Christ Church asking him not to send his invitation to Einstein yet. ‘I should not like either to delay replying to him or to have to answer in the negative.’ Better, he said, first to await the answer from Pasadena and then he would take a decision on what he should do.

  By mid-July, it became clear that Einstein was ready to accept Christ Church’s offer. But in a letter to the dean he did not clarify whether he accepted all of the terms of the studentship, in particular its annual residence requirement. Lindemann persuaded the college to give Einstein the benefit of the doubt: although he might spend less than a month at Christ Church in any one year, he would make up for this during another year. On 21 October, the governing body elected Einstein unanimously to a research studentship. Einstein accepted the offer on 29 October with a warm letter to the dean referring to the college’s ‘harmonious community life’.

  In the interval, however, Dean White received a stern letter of protest at the college’s decision. Dated 24 October, it came from a former tutor and student of Christ Church who had taught classical history there from 1900 to 1927, before migrating to Brasenose College when he became Camden Professor of Ancient History: John George Clark Anderson. He began:

  Dear Dean, I was amazed to read the announcement of your latest election to a research studentship, and I hope that, in view of my long connection with Christ Church, to which I gave the best years of my life, and my part in framing the new statutes, particularly those relating to research, you will not resent my writing a line to you about it. My only concern is that Christ Church should always appear to do the right thing.

  According to Anderson, ‘I am sure it never occurred to the mind of anyone concerned with the new statutes that there was any possibility of emoluments being bestowed on people of non-British nationality. The old statutes were, I think, explicit about British nationality as a qualification for election to studentships . . .’. He continued: ‘I cannot help thinking that it is unfortunate that an Oxford college should send money out of the country in the present financial situation and at a time when the university is receiving a large government grant at the expense of the taxpayers for educational purposes. The more I think of it, the more strange does this new development appear to me . . .’. And he concluded: ‘Forgive me if I intrude: I have no wish to do that. I have written only as a loyal member of the House [Christ Church], who has its welfare at heart.’

  At no point in Anderson’s letter did he mention Einstein by name or give even the merest hint that he was aware of Einstein’s eminence. The dean took up this point in his reply:

  I think that in electing Einstein we are securing for our society perhaps the greatest authority in the world on physical science; his attainments and reputation are so high that they transcend national boundaries, and any university in the world ought to be proud of having him. Then in spite of his scientific position he is a poor man, and this quite moderate pecuniary help will enable him to carry on his work better.

  In answer to Anderson’s other points, the dean wrote:

  I do not quite follow your argument about our statutes, and persons of non-British nationality; and of course I was never here under the old statutes. But it seems to me that the only possible reason for deleting the restriction must have been the wish to widen the area of selection. If the college wished to exclude foreigners, why did it not say so?

  It is quite true that we are paying money out of England; but I think we are getting more than our money’s worth.

  A further letter from Anderson expanded at length on his arguments about funding, some of which were reasonable, especially in a time of serious economic depression. Yet, the emotions underlying the arguments were clear from two comments: that a research studentship should not go to ‘a German who has no connection with the university (beyond being the recipient of an honorary degree)’; and that ‘it does not seem to me to be patriotic, especially in such times as the present, to use college revenues to endow foreigners. Charity should always begin at home.’ Anti-German feeling and Oxford academic parochialism were still, sadly, alive and well in 1931. To the credit of Christ Church, its governing body rose above such attitudes with Einstein, well before he became a target of Nazi attacks in 1933.

  Amusingly, even though the British tax authorities agreed with Anderson’s argument about money going out of England, they did not accept the negative conclusion he drew from it. In 1932, a zealous Oxford tax inspector suggested that Einstein’s Christ Church stipend should be liable for income tax. A concerned Lindemann discussed the matter with the chairman of the board of the Inland Revenue, Sir James Grigg, and the Revenue’s special expert on the subject, a certain W. G. E. Burnett. According to Burnett, Einstein’s annual stipend from Christ Church should be exempt from British tax. Einstein did not live or work in Oxford, he wrote, and thus ‘The world at large, and not Christ Church in particular, gets the benefit of his work.’ Although England would get its money’s worth from Einstein’s visits to Oxford, his true value would have no national boundaries.

  Experience can of course guide us in our choice of serviceable mathematical concepts; it cannot possibly be the source from which they are derived; experience of course remains the sole criterion of the serviceability of a mathematical construction for physics, but the truly creative principle resides in mathematics.

  Lecture by Einstein, ‘On the Method of Theoretical Physics’, in Oxford, June 1933

  Einstein’s second stay in Oxford, from late April to late May 1932, was less eventful as compared with his busy and much-publicised visit exactly a year earlier. This time he avoided giving lectures in England, except for the Rouse Ball lecture on mathematics on 5 May in Cambridge, which provided him with a welcome opportunity to meet Eddington. (But he did agree at this time to give the Herbert Spencer lecture during Oxford’s Trinity term in mid-1933.) He also kept largely clear of politics, giving only one press interview, to the Jewish Chronicle. Asked by its reporter in his college rooms at Christ Church whether or not ‘Jews as a race make good scientists’ and ‘possess peculiar gifts in the sphere of music’, Einstein replied that while Jews had always taken an interest in intellectual problems, they had excelled more in science. But, he said, ‘I do not believe in any special gifts among the Jews. It is more an inclination towards a particular occupation.’ Pressed on his view of Palestine and Jewish–Arab relations, he added that the Jewish situation there would remain a problem. ‘The coexistence of human beings with different traditions always constitutes a problem.’ Most of his time in Oxford seems to have been spent quietly working on physics and mathematics in his new college, taking walks about the city and playing music with amateurs and professionals, including Marie Soldat, at the Denekes’ house, Gunfield. On one occasion, they finished the last note of the Brahms Piano Quintet at 11.20 p.m. Einstein called out: ‘The gate at Christ Church is locked at eleven – what am I to do now?’ Having rushed to the telephone and called the porters’ lodge, they discovered the college would remain open until midnight (perhaps in Einstein’s honour?). Before hurrying into the Denekes’ car, Einstein scribbled a postcard to Sir Donald Tovey thanking their musicologist friend for the gift of his book on the art of the fugue. ‘Marie Soldat felt our evening had been merrier than any were last year,’ noted
Margaret Deneke happily. ‘The professor was more sans gêne and we others had overcome the shyness of having him as our guest.’

  THE COMING TO POWER OF THE NAZIS

  In Germany, however, May 1932 had been an eventful month. When Einstein returned to Berlin, he found a city that was ominously different from the one he had left a month earlier. Political events in his absence had involved a secret deal on 8 May between an influential military leader, General Kurt von Schleicher, and Adolf Hitler, head of the Nazi Party. This was followed on 30 May by the official removal of the chancellor, Heinrich Brüning, and the appointment of a new, ultra-right-wing chancellor, Franz von Papen, with Schleicher as his minister of defence – all at the behest of the aged president, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. On 2 June, a German Christian leader and Nazi deputy, Wilhelm Kube, announced to the Prussian Diet that ‘when we clean house the exodus of the Children of Israel will be a child’s game in comparison’, adding that ‘a people that possesses a Kant will not permit an Einstein to be tacked onto it’. Thus began the slide towards the Nazi seizure of power less than a year later and the subsequent exile of Einstein from his native country, which would propel him back to Oxford for his final stay in May–June 1933.

  During that summer of 1932, when a professor visiting Einstein at his lakeside villa at Caputh near Berlin expressed the hope that the army might curb the Nazis, Einstein responded firmly: ‘I am convinced that a military regime will not prevent the imminent National Socialist revolution. The military dictatorship will suppress the popular will and the people will seek protection against the rule of the Junkers [the Prussian landed nobility] and the officers in a right-radical revolution.’ When he and his wife Elsa locked up their Caputh house in early December 1932, to board a ship in Antwerp heading for California, he told her: ‘Before you leave our villa this time, take a good look at it.’ ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘You will never see it again,’ Einstein quietly replied. His wife thought he was being rather foolish, because they had made plans to return to Berlin in March. Yet it turned out that he was being prescient.

  On 10 March 1933, Einstein made his first public statement about the newly arrived power of Nazi Germany, as a major earthquake shook him at the California Institute of Technology. ‘As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance and equality of all citizens before the law prevail,’ he told a New York newspaper reporter. ‘Civil liberty implies freedom to express one’s political convictions, in speech and in writing; tolerance implies respect for the convictions of others whatever they may be. These conditions do not exist in Germany at the present time.’ The truth of this analysis was soon forthcoming: Einstein’s house at Caputh was reported to have been broken into, allegedly in search of concealed arms. ‘The raid,’ said Einstein in a statement issued from on board ship to Europe, ‘is but one example of the arbitrary acts of violence now taking place throughout Germany. These acts are the result of the government’s overnight transfer of police powers to a raw and rabid mob of the Nazi militia.’

  On arrival in Antwerp on 28 March, the Einsteins decided to stay in Belgium, where Einstein had friends, including the royal family. (He and Elisabeth, the unconventional and artistic Queen of Belgium, enjoyed playing violin together.) That very day, he resigned by letter from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, just before the Nazis held their first national day boycotting German Jews on 1 April.

  In response, a German newspaper published an anti-Semitic cartoon on 1 April. It showed a sharp-nosed Einstein on his hands and knees being kicked out of a German consulate by a large boot. According to its satirical caption: ‘The concierge of the German embassy in Brussels is authorised to cure an Asiatic [i.e. an East European Jew] of the delusion that he is a Prussian.’ After Einstein formally applied for release from German citizenship on 4 April, the irritated Nazi regime took almost a year to enact his expatriation.

  A Nazi view of Einstein. This anti-Semitic cartoon published in the Deutsche Tageszeitung, 1 April 1933, the day of Germany’s first national day boycotting its Jews, shows Einstein being booted out of the German embassy in Brussels. (See text above the cartoon for a translation of the German caption.) Shortly after the cartoon’s publication, Einstein applied for release from German citizenship, having relocated his residence from Germany to Belgium.

  As for the Prussian Academy, it immediately bowed cravenly to what the majority of its members assumed their furious government expected from them – by publicly accusing Einstein of ‘atrocity propaganda’ against Germany. A horrified Max Planck informed the acting secretary of the academy on 31 March: ‘Even though in political matters a deep gulf divides me from him, I am, on the other hand, absolutely certain that in the history of centuries to come Einstein’s name will be celebrated as one of the brightest stars that ever shone in our Academy.’ In a personal response to Planck, Einstein, while denying the allegation of ‘atrocity propaganda’, added prophetically: ‘But now the war of extermination against my Jewish brethren has compelled me to throw the influence I have in the world into the balance of their favour.’ Planck, ever the social conservative, replied equat-ing such persecution of the Jews with Einstein’s pacifism and refusal of military service: ‘Two ideologies, which cannot coexist, have clashed here. I have no sympathy with the one or the other.’ It was a sad and very bitter way to end the long and loyal friendship between these two great physicists. When Planck died in 1947, Einstein wrote to his widow: ‘The hours which I was permitted to spend at your house, and the many conversations which I conducted face to face with that wonderful man, will remain among my most beautiful memories for the rest of my life. This cannot be altered by the fact that a tragic fate tore us apart.’

  During 1933–35, the German government officially seized all of the Einsteins’ assets in Germany. First to go were their bank deposits, ‘in order to maintain public security and order and also to prevent future anticipated subversive Communist activities’, according to an official letter sent to Einstein by the Office of the Secret State Police on 10 May. Then it was the turn of their villa in Caputh and Einstein’s beloved sailboat, Tümmler (Porpoise). Happily, the boat was sold in error not to a Nazi Party member, as intended by the Prussian prime minister, but to a man who forbade his son from joining the Hitler Youth and would support five orphans of an anti-Fascist executed by the People’s Court in Berlin in 1944. But attempts by Einstein, as a long-time Swiss citizen, his relatives and their lawyers, to enlist the help of the Swiss government in rescuing his German assets during 1933, failed completely, because the Swiss did not want to upset the Nazis.

  Some Belgian colleagues had offered the Einsteins temporary accommodation in an old country house near Antwerp. Since they were likely to be staying in Belgium for some time, they decided to rent a holiday house, the Villa Savoyard, in Le Coq sur Mer, a small seaside resort near Ostend, without servants and without a telephone. Though less spacious than their house in Caputh, its magnificent situation among coastal sand dunes appealed to Einstein. Not only was it isolated enough to discourage unwanted callers, it was also fine for solitary walking and reflection – both on science and on politics. In due course, it would also prove practical for the protection of Einstein by an armed contingent of Belgian police.

  INTRODUCING OLIVER LOCKER-LAMPSON

  Around the time he moved to Le Coq, Einstein received a surprising letter in German from an Englishman, a complete stranger based in London. Dated 28 March 1933, it was sent from the House of Commons. Prompted by the press coverage of Einstein’s homeless predicament, Commander Oliver Stillingfleet Locker-Lampson, a Conservative member of parliament since 1910, wished to offer Einstein his private residence in London as a refuge from the Nazis for a year, at any time that suited his guest. He put it like this:

  Highly Esteemed Professor,

  It was at the time of your presence in Oxford – when Lord Haldane was still with us – that I had the honour to make your acquaintance –
and that is what I would like to refer to now.

  My letter today is, above all, inspired by the wish to assure you, dear Professor, how sincerely a large number of my countrymen take part in the suffering that your fellow-believers in Germany have to endure.

  The fact that ‘Einstein is without a home’ has deeply moved me, and perhaps this may serve as a justification for daring to approach you with a suggestion that, as a modest member of the public, would otherwise not be appropriate to the greatest scholar of our time. And I hope, therefore, that you, dear Professor, will see in my little offer nothing but a genuine sign of my unreserved respect and desire to serve you in my own way.

  Coming down to brass tacks, Locker-Lampson explained that his London house consisted of a hallway, dining-room, living-room and lounge, two or three bedrooms, three bedrooms for employees and well-equipped kitchen facilities. Both running costs and servants would naturally be included in his offer. Then he concluded: ‘My house may not be as comfortable as yours, of course, but who knows, whether the “Ether-Atmosphere” of our English love of “Fair Play” might not help you to penetrate even deeper into the “Relativity-Mysteries”.’ (‘Ether-Atmosphere’, ‘Fair Play’ and ‘Relativity-Mysteries’ appear in English in the German original.)

  Locker-Lampson, though largely forgotten today, was a well-known politician in Britain in 1933. The antithesis of Einstein in almost every respect, he was the son of a Victorian man of letters and poet who had been friendly with Alfred Lord Tennyson and Oscar Wilde; a wealthy landowner with properties in London, Norfolk and Surrey; and a decorated war veteran, who had commanded a British armoured column on the Russian front fighting on behalf of Tsar Nicholas II, with the political backing of his family’s friend, Churchill. Tall, lean, dashing, maverick, mercurial – and, when crossed, vindictive – the strongly anti-Bolshevist commander had previously praised the up-and-coming Nazis, in common with a wide variety of upper-class Englishmen during this pre-war decade. They ‘despatched their children to Nazi Germany in droves’ and ‘many openly admired Hitler – for the way he had pulled his country up by its bootstraps and particularly for his determination to defeat Bolshevism’, according to a recent historical study, Travellers in the Third Reich. But now that Hitler was actually in power, Einstein had apparently become Locker-Lampson’s hero.