Einstein on the Run Read online

  The pseudonym and the attributed opinions were ‘absolute inventions’ by Goebbels, Lessing informed the Manchester Guardian. But they were believed in Germany. So too were the Nazi allegations that Einstein had spread ‘atrocity propaganda’ against Germany abroad.

  A mere week later, on 8 September, came international press announcements that a secret Nazi terror organisation, the Fehme (associated with the murder of Rathenau in 1922), had placed a price on Einstein’s head: £1,000 according to London’s Daily Herald, 20,000 marks said the New York Times. ‘Whether the story is true or not we do not know,’ warned The Sunday Times on 10 September:

  though nothing that the Nazi hotheads might plan in this line would surprise us. But should it be true, let them take fair warning and think twice of this folly before it is too late. If they should commit this crime against humanity the conscience of the whole civilised world will rise against them, and the German Government will find itself execrated and isolated as no German Government has been before or since the war.

  By the time this comment appeared, Einstein was again in London. He and his wife had abruptly abandoned their immediate plan following the press announcements to take a long-distance ‘cruise to “nowhere”’ by ship, as reported in the New York Times on 9 September. Instead, Einstein had reluctantly yielded to his wife’s terrible worries about his safety – and no doubt to the stress of still-closer police protection, which now included a policeman sleeping beside his bed all night long. On 9 September, he packed a few bags with vital books and papers; caught a boat to England in the company of a visiting British journalist from the Sunday Express (at the insistence of Elsa); and went to stay with the suddenly reignited Locker-Lampson.

  LOCKER-LAMPSON TO THE RESCUE

  The dashing commander had received less than a day’s notice of Einstein’s arrival, but he rose to the occasion – by immediately arranging to ‘hide’ Einstein away from London in his thatched holiday hut on a wild heath somewhere in rural Norfolk. Indeed, Einstein’s sojourn in England in September–October 1933 would prove to be, in a way, Locker-Lampson’s version of his friend Churchill’s wartime ‘finest hour’. Not only did Locker-Lampson serve Einstein and England well, he also served himself and his public image well.

  A bizarre mixture of secrecy and publicity surrounded the entire visit. ‘Locker-Lampson liked to pretend he always played a straight bat but he was in fact as slippery as an eel,’ in the perceptive and amusing words of local Norfolk historian Stuart McLaren. (Think of his story of British prisoners of war in Germany playing cricket with Hitler!)

  The first local newspaper report of Einstein’s arrival, published as early as 11 September in the Eastern Daily Press, set the scene well, as Einstein relaxed in his new rural encampment, supervised by his guardian Locker-Lampson:

  It was in a tiny wooden hut, with the sun shining through a window facing the North Sea, that a reporter found Professor Einstein yesterday. Broadly smiling, he seemed not to have a care in the world. No police precautions for his safety had been taken, but Commander Locker-Lampson had arranged for a private guard of friends so that the professor could not be molested.

  His first words were a request for a penknife for his pipe. The famous scientist who had overcome many mathematical difficulties had not been able to make his pipe smoke. Then, when it was puffing well, he settled back in his chair and spoke of the Nazi threat against him and of the price that it is said has been put on his head by the Fehme, the German secret society.

  ‘All I want is peace,’ he said, ‘and could I have found a more peaceful retreat than here in England? At Le Coq I was always guarded. It was a terrible strain and a great responsibility to be put on the Belgian police. It interfered with my work. My friend has invited me here, and I hope to stay in England for a month. No one will know where I am until October, when I go to America to lecture. I can live quietly working out my mathematical problems.’

  Here Commander Locker-Lampson broke in: ‘The professor is modest. He is engaged on a new mathematical theory.’

  The professor smiled. He did not say what the new theory was. He reiterated what had already been stated, that there was no reason why he should be singled out by the Nazis. . . .

  The reporter left him peacefully puffing at his pipe and gazing out over the calm North Sea towards Germany.

  The very next day, national newspapers carried a photograph of Einstein with this ‘private guard of friends’: Locker-Lampson in the foreground (naturally) with a wind-blown Einstein, and a local gamekeeper hovering in the background – the two Englishmen holding guns – plus one of the commander’s two female secretaries, apparently attentive to the mathematics of the professor. The exact location was given only as ‘near Cromer’ in the newspaper reports, but without too much detective work any Nazi agent worth his salt could have worked out where Einstein was hidden: a point that did not escape the satire of the Daily Express’s well-known columnist ‘Beachcomber’. On 14 September, the columnist reported tongue-in-cheek from ‘Cromer, Wednes-day Night’: ‘I was informed, on making enquiries today at the headquarters of the Einstein Defence Force in this town, that it had been decided not to accept the generous offer of the War Office to send two infantry brigades to Fort Lampson.’ As the Observer diarist straightforwardly observed on 17 September: ‘England is not a very good place to hide in. Dr. Einstein, who has come here to escape Nazi persecution, finds his wooden hut photographed in the papers, with full indications of locality, and Cromer Council considers the question of presenting an address. Germany, I suppose, is presumed to be looking the other way.’

  Einstein, genuinely modest about his personal reputation, told his wife in a brief letter from London before reaching Norfolk: ‘I am going to the countryside, where nobody will recognise me. I have a good feeling in anticipation.’ And this proved to be true among the locals on Roughton Heath. Neither the gamekeeper, Herbert Eastoe, nor Philip Colman, the son of the local farmer on whose land Locker-Lampson’s huts stood, knew who Einstein was. More than half a century later, Colman recalled with a laugh that Eastoe appeared on the farm one day and the following conversation ensued:

  Einstein on the front page of the Daily Express, September 1933. The caption reads: ‘Gamekeepers armed with shot-guns are guarding the little log-hut near Cromer, where Professor Einstein has found a refuge from Nazi threats and peace to work at his mathematical problems. With the famous scientist are his host, Commander Locker-Lampson (who has a sporting rifle handy) and the latter’s secretary, Miss B. Howard.’

  ‘Morning, Master Colman,’ he said, touching his hat. ‘I’ve come to tell you we’ve got an ol’ Garman up there on the Heath. Them thar Nazi people hev put a price on his head. They’ll give £1,000 if you tell ’em where he is.’

  ‘Ol’ Locker is a-guardin’ him, along o’ me and his secretaries. They’ve got a rifle and I’ve got my 12-bore. But Locker wants to hire a horse so he can guard him better. I thought you could rent him Tom, your milk pony. . . .’

  Einstein in his Norfolk retreat, September 1933. Most of his time there was spent in solitude, working on mathematical calculations in his hut or occasionally playing his violin outdoors. The photographer is unknown.

  As for the name of the man at the centre of this security operation, ‘I think,’ said Eastoe uncertainly, ‘they called him Einsteen, or somethin’ like that.’ When Colman agreed to the suggestion, the hired milk pony soon appeared in a press photograph with Locker-Lampson astride it, looking manly, and Einstein giving the pony’s head a gentle pat. Ironically, Colman once found himself being chased on the heath by the gun-wielding commander. ‘He was a rich man’s pig of a son, but quite likeable in an eccentric sort of way.’ Yet, Locker-Lampson had at least some reason for concern, other than a prowling Nazi visitor: the fact that Einstein was ‘an ol’ Garman’ was enough to cause several local villagers – servicemen who had suffered at the hands of the Germans in the First World War – to want to claim the price
on his head!

  ‘L.L. is wonderful and keeps everything away,’ Einstein wrote to his wife in Le Coq. ‘I live here like a hermit, only I do not need to eat roots and herbs.’ To his son, Eduard, he described his ‘admirable solitude’. As he had hoped back in Belgium, he was now able to spend most of his three or so weeks in Norfolk doing mathematical calculations alone in his hut, and sometimes playing music on a grand piano in another hut or on his violin outdoors. (A third hut was used by Locker-Lampson’s two secretaries, plus a cook brought from London, while Locker-Lampson himself occupied a military-style bell-tent.) He also went for country walks. A second armed guard, Albert Thurston, son-in-law of Eastoe, used to follow him to the local post office. ‘He would walk across the heath and I would follow him with a gun,’ recalled Thurston. ‘Mother would wait with the pram on the road and escort him to the post-office while I waited behind the hedge. Then I would escort him back again. I don’t think the post-office knew who he was. He would buy sweets: simple things like a child might buy.’ Once, Thurston showed Einstein his baby son. ‘He loved children. He touched my son on the forehead and said, “Double crown, he’ll go a long way.”’ On another occasion, Einstein invited two local village women to visit him and take tea. But when they discovered his hut full of German newspapers and a chest of drawers full of guns, they took fright and ran away. A contemporary caricature by the political cartoonist David Low captured this unique atmosphere beautifully: it portrayed Einstein as a harmless, diminutive professor with persecuted eyes walking hesitantly beneath a wildly dishevelled halo of hair towards a dark shadow.

  Other than local walks, Einstein seems to have left the encampment only a very few times, such as to call with Locker-Lampson on a near neighbour, the senior Conservative politician and future foreign secretary Sir Samuel Hoare, who was sympathetic to the cause of Jewish refugees. And he received hardly any invited visitors, just as he and Locker-Lampson had intended. Only two visits were of real significance.

  ‘Professor Einstein’. This classic cartoon by David Low appeared in the New Statesman and Nation to illustrate an article on Einstein by John Maynard Keynes published in October 1933, just after Einstein departed Britain for the United States, never to return to Europe.

  The earlier one was that of Walter Adams, a lecturer in history at University College London (and later director of the London School of Economics). He was secretary of the newly formed Academic Assistance Council. Having driven out to Cromer from London, Adams recalled, ‘First we were confronted by one beautiful girl with a gun. Then there was a second one, also with a gun. Finally we saw Einstein who was walking around inside what seemed to be a little hedged compound.’ Adams quickly asked Einstein if he would agree to speak on behalf of academic refugees from Germany at the council’s first public meeting in London planned for 3 October. Einstein almost as quickly agreed. Whereupon Locker-Lampson went away, picked up the telephone and single-handedly hired the Albert Hall, according to Adams.

  VISIT FROM JACOB EPSTEIN

  Einstein’s second visitor, in late September, was very different. ‘Beachcomber’ introduced him weirdly in the Daily Express as follows:

  A suspicious-looking cow waddled up to the hornworks at Fort Lampson yesterday, and miaowed pitifully.

  It was this wrong noise that aroused the sentry’s suspicions. He ordered the animal to give the password, which was ‘Epstein’.

  The cow began to bark.

  The alarm was sounded, the fortifications were lined, and Professor Einstein was hustled down a disused well, for safety.

  The cow was surrounded and searched. In its pocket the searchers found a betting-slip, a beer-label, two empty quart bottles, and an ace with the corner nicked off it. At this point the cow said, ‘It’s only us.’

  The front and hind legs came apart, revealing the well-known features of Nervo and Knox. [An English acrobatic dancing duo, part of the original Crazy Gang.]

  The guards have been doubled.

  Jacob Epstein, the sculptor, came to the not-so-secret encampment on Roughton Heath in the last week of the month, in order to prepare a model for his magnificent bronze bust of Einstein. He left a vivid account of the experience in his autobiography, Let There Be Sculpture, beginning with this personal description: ‘Einstein appeared dressed very comfortably in a pullover with his wild hair floating in the wind. His glance contained a mixture of the humane, the humorous and the profound. This was a combination which delighted me. He resembled the ageing Rembrandt.’

  Working conditions left something to be desired, however. Sittings took place in the hut with the piano, with hardly any space to move. Epstein persuaded Locker-Lampson’s secretaries to remove the door, which they did and then facetiously asked if the sculptor would like the roof off as well. ‘I thought I should have liked that too, but I did not demand it, as the attendant “angels” seemed to resent a little my intrusion into the retreat of their professor.’

  There was also a problem with Einstein himself: not his appearance, but rather his pipe. At the first sitting ‘the professor was so surrounded with tobacco smoke from his pipe that I saw nothing. At the second sitting I asked him to smoke in the interval.’

  His conversation was ‘full of charm and bonhomie’, wrote Epstein. ‘He enjoyed a joke and had many a jibe at the Nazi professors, one hundred of whom in a book had condemned his theory. “Were I wrong,” he said, “one professor would have been quite enough.” Also, in speaking of Nazis he once said, “I thought I was a physicist, I did not bother about being non-Aryan until Hitler made me conscious of it.”’

  After the morning sittings, Einstein sat down at the piano to play. Once he took his violin and scraped away outside. ‘He looked altogether like a wandering gypsy, but the sea air was damp, the violin execrable, and he gave up. The Nazis had taken his own good violin when they confiscated his property in Germany.’ He also watched Epstein at work ‘with a kind of naïve wonder and seemed to sense that I was doing something good of him’.

  Unfortunately, there was too little time for Epstein to complete the model, because Einstein was due in London for his speech in the Albert Hall and subsequent departure for America; he and Epstein left Cromer for London on the same train with Locker-Lampson. Yet the final bust, created and exhibited later that year in a London gallery, with its gentle smile, philosophical gaze and blazing aureole of hair, is generally regarded as a triumph. (It was, however, mysteriously knocked onto the floor during the exhibition, when the gallery attendants happened to be out of the room, provoking some speculation about a deliberate attack.)

  REJECTION OF COMMUNISM

  If visitors to Einstein in Norfolk were a rarity, so too were public statements from him while he was ‘in hiding’. He turned down all invitations to write articles for British and American newspapers. The only real exception, written on 15 September, concerned his attitude to Communism, rather than Nazism. Provoked by a Labour Party pamphlet, The Communist Solar System, sent to him in Norfolk by friends – and probably encouraged by the strongly anti-Communist Locker-Lampson – the statement was Einstein’s attempt to clear his name in both Britain and continental Europe, following its close association with the Communist-inspired Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and its misuse by some other Communist-dominated bodies. His statement was published in the Manchester Guardian as follows: ‘Like other intellectuals who feel it their duty to serve the cause of human progress to the best of their ability, I have been the victim of a misunderstanding as to the true objects of certain organisations which are in truth nothing less than camouflaged propaganda in the service of Russian despotism.’ He singled out two organisations that had misused his name, which he had lent to them because he was unaware of their real purpose: the Workers’ International Relief and the Anti-War Movement. But here, said Einstein, he would like to make clear that ‘I have never favoured Communism and do not favour it now’. In explanation, he concluded: ‘any power must be the enemy of mankind which enslaves the indivi
dual by terror and force, whether it arises under a Fascist or Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.’

  Einstein stands beside an unfinished bronze bust of him and its sculptor Jacob Epstein, Roughton Heath, Norfolk, October 1933. The finished bust was eventually placed in the Tate Gallery in London.

  Unmentioned in his statement was the fact that Einstein had consistently refused to accept invitations to visit Russia, beginning in 1914 – initially because of its history of anti-Jewish pogroms, later because of his doubts about Soviet Communism under Stalin. Such a mention would surely have helped to persuade sceptical readers.

  Little was announced in advance about his forthcoming address in the Albert Hall on 3 October, which was to be Einstein’s first-ever speech to a general audience on a general subject in English. On 24 September, two Sunday newspapers carried a brief report about the event, yet gave different titles for the address. According to The Sunday Times, ‘He does not speak really good English, and his conversation is not easy, but he is writing a speech in German on “England as a sanctuary”, and this is being translated for the meeting.’ Whereas according to the Observer the speech was entitled ‘Fair play for the Oppressed’, and its report quoted ‘one of the organisers’ (probably Locker-Lampson) as saying: ‘It is not a protest meeting; it is not a political meeting. The professor’s speech will be just an appeal from the heart.’ But by 27 September, the title had been altered to the more neutral ‘Science and Civilisation’, according to the Manchester Guardian. Its report quoted Locker-Lampson by name. The lecture would be ‘purely scientific’, he said. ‘The fact that Professor Einstein has been driven from Germany and that his savings have been taken should be no reason for the assumption when he speaks here that he intends an attack upon the German Government.’ Then the commander added his own twist: