einstein

cards were confiscated. And the Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard, Einstein’s longtime antagonist, declared in a Nazi newspaper, “The most important
example of the dangerous influence of Jewish circles on the study of nature has been provided by Herr Einstein.” 35
The exchanges between Einstein and the Academy descended into petulance. An official wrote Einstein that, even if he had not actively spread
slanders, he had failed to join “the side of the defenders of our nation against the flood of lies that has been let loose upon it ...A good word from
you in particular might have produced a great effect abroad.” Einstein thought that absurd. “By giving such testimony in the present circumstances I
would have been contributing, if only indirectly, to moral corruption and the destruction of all existing cultural values,” he replied. 36
The entire dispute was becoming moot. Early in April 1933, the German government passed a law declaring that Jews (defined as anyone with a
Jewish grandparent) could not hold an official position, including at the Academy or at the universities. Among those forced to flee were fourteen
Nobel laureates and twenty-six of the sixty professors of theoretical physics in the country. Fittingly, such refugees from fascism who left Germany or
the other countries it came to dominate—Einstein, Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf, Hans Bethe, Lise Meitner, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Otto
Stern, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd, and others—helped to assure that the Allies rather than the Nazis first developed the atom bomb.
Planck tried to temper the anti-Jewish policies, even to the extent of appealing to Hitler personally. “Our national policies will not be revoked or
modified, even for scientists,” Hitler thundered back. “If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science,
then we shall do without science for a few years!” After that, Planck quietly went along and cautioned other scientists that it was not their role to
challenge the political leadership.
Einstein could not bring himself to be angry at Planck, who was like an uncle as well as a patron. Even amid his angry exchanges with the
Academy, he agreed to Planck’s request that they keep their personal respect intact. “In spite of everything, I am happy that you greet me in old
friendship and that even the greatest stresses have failed to cloud our mutual relations,” he wrote, using the formal and respectful style he always
used when writing to Planck. “These continue in their ancient beauty and purity, regardless of what, in a manner of speaking, is happening further
below.” 37
Among those fleeing the Nazi purge was Max Born, who with his tart-tongued wife, Hedwig, ended up in England. “I have never had a particularly
favorable opinion of the Germans,” Einstein wrote when he received the news. “But I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice
came as something of a surprise.”
Born took it all rather well, and he developed, like Einstein, a deeper appreciation for his heritage. “As regards my wife and children, they have
only become conscious of being Jews or ‘non-Aryans’ (to use the delightful technical term) during the last few months, and I myself have never felt
particularly Jewish,” he wrote in his letter back to Einstein. “Now, of course, I am extremely conscious of it, not only because we are considered to
be so, but because oppression and injustice provoke me to anger and resistance.” 38
Even more poignant was the case of Fritz Haber, friend to both Einstein and Mari , who thought that he had become German by converting to
Christianity, affecting a Prussian air, and pioneering gas warfare for his Fatherland in the First World War. But with the new laws, even he was
forced from his position at Berlin University and in the Academy, at age 64, just before he would have been eligible for a pension.
As if to atone for forsaking his heritage, Haber threw himself into organizing Jews who suddenly needed to find jobs outside of Germany. Einstein
could not resist gigging him, in the bantering manner they had often used in their letters, about the failure of his theory of assimilation. “I can
understand your inner conflicts,” he wrote. “It is somewhat like having to give up a theory on which one has worked one’s whole life. It is not the
same for me because I never believed it in the least.” 39
In the process of helping his newfound tribal companions to emigrate, Haber became friends with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. He even
tried to mend a rift that had come between Weizmann and Einstein over Jewish treatment of the Arabs and the management of Hebrew University.
“In my whole life I have never felt so Jewish as now!” he exulted, though that was not actually saying much.
Einstein replied by saying how pleased he was that “your former love for the blond beast has cooled off a bit.” The Germans were all a bad
breed, Einstein insisted, “except a few fine personalities (Planck 60% noble, and Laue 100%).” Now, in this time of adversity, they could at least
take comfort that they were thrown together with their true kinsmen. “For me the most beautiful thing is to be in contact with a few fine Jews—a few
millennia of a civilized past do mean something after all.” 40
Einstein would never again see Haber, who decided that he would try to make a new life at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which Einstein had
helped to launch. But in Basel, on his way there, Haber’s heart gave out and he died.
Close to forty thousand Germans gathered in front of Berlin’s opera house on May 10, 1933, as a parade of swastika-wearing students and
beer-hall thugs carrying torches tossed books into a huge bonfire. Ordinary citizens poured forth carrying volumes looted from libraries and private
homes. “Jewish intellectualism is dead,” propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, his face fiery, yelled from the podium. “The German soul can
again express itself.”
What happened in Germany in 1933 was not just a brutality perpetrated by thuggish leaders and abetted by ignorant mobs. It was also, as
Einstein described, “the utter failure of the so-called intellectual aristocracy.” Einstein and other Jews were ousted from what had been among the
world’s greatest citadels of open-minded inquiry, and those who remained did little to resist. It represented the triumph of the ilk of Philipp Lenard,
Einstein’s longtime anti-Semitic baiter, who was named by Hitler to be the new chief of Aryan science.“We must recognize that it is unworthy of a
German to be the intellectual follower of a Jew,” Lenard exulted that May. “Heil Hitler!” It would be a dozen years before Allied troops would fight
their way in and oust him from that role. 41
Le Coq sur Mer, 1933
Having found himself deposited in Belgium, more by the happen-stance of ocean liner routes than by conscious choice, Einstein and his
entourage—Elsa, Helen Dukas, Walther Mayer—set up household there for the time being. He was not, he realized after a little consideration, quite
up for the emotional energy it would take to relocate his new family in Zurich alongside his old one. Nor was he ready to commit to Leiden or Oxford
while he awaited his scheduled visit, or perhaps move, to Princeton. So he rented a house on the dunes of Le Coq sur Mer, a resort near Ostend,
where he could contemplate, and Mayer could calculate, the universe and its waves in peace.
Peace, however, was elusive. Even by the sea he could not completely escape the threats of the Nazis. The newspapers reported that his name
was on a list of assassination targets, and one rumor had it that there was a $5,000 bounty on his head. Upon hearing this, Einstein touched that
head and cheerfully proclaimed, “I didn’t know it was worth that much!” The Belgians took the danger more seriously and, much to his annoyance,
assigned two beefy police officers to stand guard at the house. 42
Philipp Frank, who still had Einstein’s old job and office in Prague, happened to be passing through Ostend that summer and decided to pay a
surprise visit. He asked local residents how to find Einstein and, despite all the security injunctions about giving out such information, was promptly