Einstein (19 page)

Einstein at the time of his most intense scientific work
(
Illustration Credit 3.4
)

Einstein, Paul Ehrenfest, Paul Langevin, Kammerling-Onnes, and Pierre Weiss at Ehrenfest’s home, Leyden, the Netherlands
(
Illustration Credit 4.1
)

Another colleague with whom Einstein became quite intimate was Moritz Winternitz, a professor of Sanskrit. He had five children to whom Einstein became greatly devoted, and he once remarked: “I am interested to see how a number of such commodities produced by the same factory will behave.” Professor Winternitz had a sister-in-law who very often accompanied Einstein at the piano when he played the violin. She was an elderly maiden lady whose life had been spent in giving piano lessons and who had thus acquired a somewhat dictatorial manner. She used to speak to Einstein as if she were addressing a pupil. Einstein often remarked: “She is very strict with me,” or “She is like an army sergeant.”

When Einstein was to leave Prague, he had to promise her that he would recommend as his successor as professor of theoretical physics only someone who could also replace him as her violin partner. When I went to Prague to replace Einstein and was introduced to her, she immediately insisted that I keep this promise by playing the violin. To my regret, I had to tell her I had never in my whole life had a violin in my hands. “So,” she replied, “Einstein has disappointed me.”

The appointment as professor at Prague led Einstein to become a member of the Jewish religious community. Even though this relation was only formal and the contact was only a very loose one at that time, it was in this period of his life that perhaps for the first time since his childhood he came aware of the problems of the Jewish community.

The position of the Jews in Prague was a peculiar one in many respects. More than half of the German-speaking inhabitants in Prague were Jewish, so that their part among the Germans, who comprised only about five per cent of the total population, was extraordinarily important. Since the cultural life of the Germans was almost completely detached from that of the Czech majority, with separate German theaters, concerts, lectures, balls, and so on, it was not surprising that all these organizations and affairs were dependent on Jewish patronage. Consequently, for the great masses of the Czech people, a Jew and a German were
approximately the same. At the time when Einstein came to Prague, the World War I was just in the making and the Czechs felt that they were being driven into a war by the government against their own interests but in the interests of the hated Germans. They looked upon every German and Jew as a representative of a hostile power who had settled in their city to act as a watchman and informer against the Czech enemies of Austria. There is no doubt that there were some Jews, who, aping other Germans, somehow adapted themselves to this role of being policemen and instruments of oppression. But the core of the Jewish population was disgusted.

On the other hand, the relation of the Jews to the other Germans had already begun to assume a problematical character. Formerly the German minority in Prague had befriended the Jews as allies against the upward-striving Czechs, but these good relations were breaking down at the time when Einstein was in Prague. When the racial theories and tendencies that later came to be known there as Nazi creed were still almost unknown in Germany itself, they had already become an important influence among the Sudeten Germans. Hence a somewhat paradoxical situation existed for the Germans in Prague. They tried to live on good terms with the Jews so as to have an ally against the Czechs. But they also wanted to be regarded as thoroughly German by the Sudeten Germans, and therefore manifested hostility against the Jews. This peculiar situation was characterized outwardly by the fact that the Jews and their worst enemies met in the same cafés and had a common social circle.

At this time in Prague there was already a Jewish group who wanted to develop an independent intellectual life among the Jews. They disliked seeing the Jews taking sides in the struggle between Germans and Czech nationalists. This group was strongly influenced by the semi-mystical ideas of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. They were Zionists, but at that period they paid little attention to practical politics and concerned themselves mainly with art, literature, and philosophy. Einstein was introduced to this group, met Franz Kafka, and became particularly friendly with Hugo Bergmann and Max Brod.

Hugo Bergmann was then an official in the university library. He was a blond young man with a gentle, intelligent, and yet energetic personality. He was the center of a youthful group in Prague that attempted to create a Jewish cultural life not based
on orthodox Judaism, which approached the non-Jewish world with sympathetic understanding, not aversion or blind imitation. Bergmann based his theories not only on Jewish authors but also on German philosophers such as Fichte, who preached the cultivation of the national spirit.

Even such an intelligent and ardent Zionist as Bergmann, however, could not interest Einstein in Zionism for the time being. He was still too much concerned with cosmic problems, and the problems of nationality and of the relation of the Jews with the rest of the world appeared to him only as matters of petty significance. For him these tensions were only expressions of human stupidity, a quality that on the whole is natural to man and cannot be eradicated. He did not realize then that these troubles would take on later cosmic dimensions.

At this time Max Brod was a young writer of multifarious interests and talents. He was also very much interested in historical and philosophical problems, and in his novels he described the life of the Czech and other inhabitants of Prague and Bohemia. His novels were characterized by clear, rather rationalistic analyses of psychological processes.

In one of his novels,
The Redemption of Tycho Brahe
, he described the last years of the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, which were spent in Prague. The chief theme of the novel is the antithesis of the character of Tycho and of the young astronomer Kepler, whom the former had invited to work with him so as to have a collaborator who would add his young unprejudiced creative ideas to Tycho’s great experience and powers of observation. It was often asserted in Prague that in his portrayal of Kepler, Brod was greatly influenced by the impression that Einstein’s personality had made on him. Whether Brod did this consciously or unconsciously, it is certain that the figure of Kepler is so vividly portrayed that readers of the book who knew Einstein well recognized him as Kepler. When the famous German chemist W. Nernst read this novel, he said to Einstein: “You are this man Kepler.”

It therefore seems appropriate to quote several passages where Brod characterizes his Kepler and in which we may
perhaps find certain aspects of Einstein’s personality. The words of a poet may be more impressive than the description of a scientist.

Kepler’s calm, quiet nature sometimes aroused a feeling of uneasiness in the passionate Tycho. Brod describes Tycho’s feelings toward Kepler in a way that is probably equally true of the attitudes of Einstein’s scientific colleagues toward him:

“Thus the storm raged in Tycho’s spirit. He took the greatest pains to keep his feelings for Kepler free from alloy.… In actual fact he really did not envy Kepler his success. At the very most, the self-evident and in all respects becoming and worthy manner in which Kepler had achieved renown sometimes excited in him an emotion bordering upon envy. But in general Kepler now inspired him with a feeling of awe. The tranquillity with which he applied himself to his labors and entirely ignored the warblings of flatterers was to Tycho almost superhuman. There was something incomprehensible in its absence of emotion, like a breath from a distant region of ice.… He recalled that popular ballad in which a
Landsknecht
had sold his heart to the Devil and had received in exchange a bullet-proof coat of mail. Of such sort was Kepler. He had no heart and therefore had nothing to fear from the world. He was not capable of emotion or of love. And for that reason he was naturally also secure against the aberrations of feelings. ‘But I must love and err,’ groaned Tycho. ‘I must be flung hither and thither in this hell, beholding him floating above, pure and happy, upon cool clouds of limpid blue. A spotless angel! But is he really? Is he not rather atrocious in his lack of sympathy?’ ”

This appearance of pure happiness, however, which the superficial observer was frequently inclined to ascribe to Einstein likewise, is certainly only an illustion. Tycho, who, as is well known, was the inventor of a cosmic system that represented a kind of compromise between the old Ptolemaic and the new Copernican system, was very curious to hear Kepler’s opinion of this system. He always suspected that in his heart Kepler favored Copernicus and his radically new theory. Kepler, however, avoided the expression of any definite opinion on this subject before Tycho. He discussed only concrete astronomical problems with him, no general theories. Tycho felt that this was an evasion and urged him to talk about it. Finally Kepler answered him:

“ ‘I have little to say.… I am still undecided. I can’t come to a decision. Besides, I don’t think that our technical resources and experience
are yet sufficiently advanced to enable us to give a definite answer to this question.’ ”

There was a pause, during which Kepler sat completely self-absorbed, with a blissful smile on his countenance. But Tycho was already somewhat irritated and interrupted him:

“ ‘And does this satisfy you, Kepler, this state of affairs? I mean this uncertainty regarding the most essential points of our art. Doesn’t the lack of decision sometimes take your breath away? Doesn’t impatience deprive you of all your happiness?’

“ ‘I am not happy,’ Kepler answered simply. ‘I have never been happy.’

“ ‘You not happy?’ Tycho stared at him with wide-open eyes. ‘You — not — what do you lack, then? What more do you want? What would you have in addition to that already bestowed on you? — Oh, fie, how immodest you must be if you don’t reckon yourself happy, you who are the happiest of all men! Yes, must I, then, tell it to you for the first time? Don’t you feel that you — now I will put it in one word, that you are on the right way, on the only right way? … No, now I don’t mean the outward success, the applause surrounding you, which has been accorded you. But inwardly, inwardly, my Kepler — must I really say it to you? — inwardly, in the heart of our science, you are on the right path, the path blessed by God; and that is the noblest, happiest fate that a mortal can encounter.’

“ ‘No, I am not happy, and I have never been happy,’ Kepler repeated, with a dull obstinacy. Then he added quite gently: ‘And I don’t wish to be happy.’

“Tycho was at his wits’ end.… But even while he labored to represent Kepler to himself as a cunning, calculating man, an intriguer, it was fully clear to him that this in no way tallied with the facts, that Kepler was the very opposite of an intriguer; he never pursued a definite aim and in fact transacted all affairs lying outside the bounds of his science in a sort of dream. Why, he did not even realize that he was happy. So far did his mental confusion go that he did not even observe that.… He was not responsible for anything that he did.… With all his happiness, which another man would have had to purchase at the expense of unending suffering on the part of his conscience, Kepler was pure and without guilt; and this absence of guilt was the crown of his happiness; and this happiness — thus the circle closed — did not for a moment weigh upon him, for he was not even conscious of it.… He really had no inkling of his good fortune. There he sat at the table opposite Tycho, and while Tycho was tossed hither and thither by his thoughts, he sat with upright, with somewhat rigid torso, in the attitude of one whose gaze is fixed upon the distance, sat in complete calm and composure, observing nothing of Tycho’s disquiet and — as usual continued calculating.”