Fleeing the Nazis After Hitler’s Rise, Einstein Rushes to Save Two of his Closest Scientific Colleagues

Germany as an island of intellectuals is no longer possible, he writes, blaming the fall of his country and exile of his colleagues on poor education, a vestige of Bismarck

 

“I am almost collapsing under all my responsibilities.”

 

A glimpse into the tragic end to the scientific flowering of pre-Nazi Germany, along with Einstein’s explanation for why it all happened

 

A rare letter from a brief but consequential period in Einstein’s life: after he left Germany but before he arrived in America

Einstein had long been a revered scientist and member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and was employed by Berlin University. At the beginning of March 1932 he returned to Germany from a visit to the United States where he had discussed heading the soon-to-open Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He determined to accept, and to spend half the year in Berlin and half the year in Princeton. But that year the Nazis were on the rise. It was becoming increasingly obvious to Einstein that his life was in danger. A Nazi organization published a magazine with Einstein’s picture and the caption “Not Yet Hanged” on the cover. There was even a price on his head.

In December 1932 Einstein again left Germany to be a visiting professor at CalTech in Pasadena, California. When Hitler was appointed German chancellor on January 30, 1933, the physicist had just arrived in New York on his way to California, to lecture on his theory of relativity. Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany was now open, swift and often violent. Prominent Jews were denounced by Nazi officials, attacked in the media, and subjected to violence and arrest. As a vocal opponent of Nazism and a staunch advocate of pacifism, Einstein was a particularly attractive target. Fortunately, at the time Hitler came to power, Einstein was already in the United States. Nonetheless, the Nazis publicly agitated against Einstein as a symbol of “Jewish degeneracy” and accused him of spreading “atrocity propaganda.” In February and March 1933, the Gestapo repeatedly raided his family’s apartment in Berlin.

Despite his own March 15, 1933, declaration of self-imposed exile from Nazi Germany, as well as warnings from friends that it was too dangerous to return, Einstein and his wife decided to travel back to Germany, intending to visit their summer cottage. At the end of March, they arrived in Antwerp on the SS Belgenland, owned by the shipping company Red Star Line. There they learned that Nazis had ransacked their cottage in Caputh, at which point they decided that re-entering Germany was unwise.

In April 1933, Einstein discovered that the new German government had passed laws barring Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities. Thousands of Jewish scientists were suddenly forced to give up their university positions and their names were removed from the rolls of institutions where they were employed. Einstein was now without a permanent home, unsure where he would live and work, and equally worried about the fate of countless other scientists still in Germany. He rented a house in De Haan, Belgium, where he lived for a few months. In late July 1933, he went to England for about six weeks, where he was introduced to Winston Churchill. Einstein asked Churchill to help bring Jewish scientists out of Germany. British historian Martin Gilbert notes that Churchill responded immediately, and sent his friend, physicist Frederick Lindemann, to Germany to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in British universities. In October 1933, Einstein returned to the US and took up his position at the Institute for Advanced Study. He had already revoked his German citizenship in Brussels, and handed in his notice at Berlin University. He would never return to Germany.

Michele Angelo Besso was a Swiss/Italian engineer. A Sephardic Jew by birth, he was a close friend of Einstein during his years at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich and then at the patent office in Bern, where Einstein helped him to get a job. Einstein called Besso “the best sounding board in Europe” for scientific ideas. In Einstein’s original paper on special relativity, he ended the paper stating, “In conclusion, let me note that my friend and colleague M. Besso steadfastly stood by me in my work on the problem here discussed, and that I am indebted to him for many a valuable suggestion.”

After his resignation in 1890, Otto von Bismarck was venerated as unified Germany’s founding father, not only during the remaining twenty-eight years of the monarchy but also, albeit less emphatically, in the Weimar Republic, in Nazi Germany and in the Federal Republic. Throughout Germany, numerous Bismarck statues are testament to the admiration. Hamburg has three. His memorialisation even went beyond Germany; the capital of the US state of North Dakota, for example, is named after him. Einstein was evidently not a proponent of the erstwhile unifier of Germany. As Einstein wrote of Bismarck’s influence, “The characteristic feature of this mentality is that people place the importance of what Bertrand Russell so tellingly terms “naked power” far above all other factors which affect the relations between peoples. The Germans, misled by Bismarck’s successes in particular, underwent just such a transformation of their mentality—in consequence of which they were entirely ruined in less than a hundred years.”

In this letter, he encourages Besso to let him have his suggestions for saving Hermann Weyl from the regime – through substituting him for Einstein on a proposed trip to Spain would seem disastrously tactless. He sends his regards to Anna Besso, with the rueful remark that the German example bodes ill for an intellectual utopia which she had proposed.  Weyl would go on work with him at Princeton.

These two men were among Einstein’s closest friends and colleague – Jewish or closely tied to Jewish relatives.  He is rushing to get them out.

Typed letter signed, in German, Le Coq-sur-mer, Belgium, May 5th 1933, to Besso. “Dear Michele!, I was not affected personally, but just about everybody else who is kind of close to me was. Bismarck’s dismal education policy is wreaking havoc again with the German people.

“I would love to follow your suggestion regarding Weyl, if I saw any possibility at all, especially since I am almost collapsing under all my responsibilities. Even the slightest attempt to replace me with someone else in Spain, would without a doubt be perceived as extremely upsetting. Have you not thought of that?

“Rushed greetings to you, Albert.”

He writes a postscript: “Greetings to Anna from me, and tell her, she can judge herself, based on the current German conditions, what her concept of ‘island of intellectuals’ would look like.”

In July 1933, upon Einstein’s request, a committee of 51 American artists, intellectuals and political leaders came together to form the International Relief Association. Among them were the philosopher John Dewey, the writer John Dos Passos, and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Other prominent citizens, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, soon joined the effort. Its mission, as The New York Times reported on July 24, 1933, was to “assist Germans suffering from the policies of the Hitler regime.”

But Einstein did much more. He tried to persuade political leaders in the United States and Europe to take action to help the Jewish populations at risk, particularly those of his colleagues in Germany’s scientific community, which was very hard hit. He worked tirelessly to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis, and to find them places of refuge and employment. Many immigrants to the United States during the mid to late 1930s were Jewish (between 1939 and 1940, more than half of all immigrants were Jews), most of them refugees fleeing persecution in Europe.