Walter Isaacson - Einstein - His Life and Universe

Actually, Millikan did want him, and they agreed that Einstein would come back again in January, before the Institute would be open in Princeton. Millikan was upset, however, that he had not finalized a long-term deal, and he realized that Einstein would end up being, at best, an occasional visitor to Caltech. As it turned out, the upcoming January 1933 trip that Elsa helped arrange would end up being his last trip to California.

Millikan vented his anger at Flexner. Einstein’s connection with Caltech “has been laboriously built up during the past ten years,” he wrote. As a result of Flexner’s pernicious raid, Einstein would be spending his time at some new haven rather than a great center of experimental as well as theoretical physics. “Whether the progress of science in the U.S. will be advanced by such a move, or whether Professor Einstein’s productivity will be increased by such a transfer, is at least debatable.” He proposed, as a compromise, that Einstein split his time in America between the Institute and Caltech.

Flexner was not magnanimous in victory. He protested, falsely, that it was “altogether by accident” that he ended up in Oxford and speaking to Einstein, a tale that even his own memoirs later contradicted. As for sharing Einstein, Flexner declined. He claimed that he was looking after Einstein’s interests. “I cannot believe that annual residence for brief periods at several places is sound or wholesome,” he wrote. “Looking at the entire matter from Professor Einstein’s point of view, I believe that you and all of his friends will rejoice that it has been possible to create for him a permanent post.” 11

For his part, Einstein was unsure how he would divide his time. He thought that he might be able to juggle visiting professorships in Princeton, Pasadena, and Oxford. In fact, he even hoped that he could keep his position in the Prussian Academy and his beloved cottage in Caputh, if things did not worsen in Germany. “I am not abandoning Germany,” he announced when the Princeton post became public in August. “My permanent home will still be in Berlin.”

Flexner spun the relationship the other way, telling the New York Times that Princeton would be Einstein’s primary home. “Einstein will devote his time to the Institute,” Flexner said, “and his trips abroad will be vacation periods for rest and meditation at his summer home outside of Berlin.” 12

As it turned out, the issue would be settled by events out of either man’s control. Throughout the summer of 1932, the political situation in Germany darkened. As the Nazis continued to lose national elections but increase their share of the vote, the octogenarian president, Paul von Hindenburg, selected as chancellor the bumbling Franz von Papen, who tried to rule through martial authority. When Philipp Frank came to visit him in Caputh that summer, Einstein lamented, “I am convinced that a military regime will not prevent the imminent National Socialist [Nazi] revolution.” 13

As Einstein was preparing to leave for his third visit to Caltech in December 1932, he had to suffer one more indignity. The headlines about his future post in Princeton had aroused the indignation of the Woman Patriot Corporation, a once powerful but fading group of American self-styled guardians against socialists, pacifists, communists, feminists, and undesirable aliens. Although Einstein fit into only the first two of these categories, the women patriots felt sure that he fit into them all, with the possible exception of feminists.

The leader of the group, Mrs. Randolph Frothingham (who, given this context, seemed as if her distinguished family name had been conjured up by Dickens), submitted a sixteen-page typed memo to the U.S. State Department detailing reasons to “refuse and withhold such passport visa to Professor Einstein.” He was a militant pacifist and communist who advocated doctrines that “would allow anarchy to stalk in unmolested,” the memo charged. “ Not even Stalin himself is affiliated with so many anarcho-communist international groups to promote this ‘preliminary condition’ of world revolution and ultimate anarchy as albert einstein.” (Emphasis and capitalization are in the original.) 14

State Department officials could have ignored the memo. Instead, they put it into a file that would grow over the next twenty-three years into an FBI dossier of 1,427 pages of documents. In addition, they sent the memo to the U.S. consulate in Berlin so that officers there could interview Einstein and see if the charges were true before granting him another visa.

Initially, Einstein was quite amused when he read newspaper accounts of the women’s allegations. He called up the Berlin bureau chief of United Press, Louis Lochner, who had become a friend, and gave him a statement that not only ridiculed the charges but also proved conclusively that he could not be accused of feminism:

Never yet have I experienced from the fair sex such energetic rejection of all advances, or if I have, never from so many at once. But are they not right, these watchful citizenesses? Why should one open one’s doors to a person who devours hard-boiled capitalists with as much appetite and gusto as the ogre Minotaur in Crete once devoured luscious Greek maidens—a person who is also so vulgar as to oppose every sort of war, except the inevitable one with his own wife? Therefore, give heed to your clever and patriotic women folk and remember that the capital of mighty Rome was once saved by the cackling of its faithful geese.

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The New York Times ran the story on its front page with the headline, “Einstein Ridicules Women’s Fight on Him Here / Remarks Cackling Geese Once Saved Rome.” 16But Einstein was far less amused two days later when, as he and Elsa were packing to leave, he received a telephone call from the U.S. consular office in Berlin asking him to come by for an interview that afternoon.

The consul general was on vacation, so his hapless deputy conducted the interview, which Elsa promptly recounted to reporters. 17According to the New York Times, which ran three stories the next day on the incident, the session started well enough but then degenerated.

“What is your political creed?” he was asked. Einstein gave a blank stare and then burst out laughing. “Well, I don’t know,” he replied. “I can’t answer that question.”

“Are you a member of any organization?” Einstein ran his hand through “his ample hair” and turned to Elsa. “Oh yes!” he exclaimed. “I am a War Resister.”

The interview dragged on for forty-five minutes, and Einstein became increasingly impatient. When he was asked whether he was a sympathizer of any communist or anarchist parties, Einstein lost his temper. “Your countrymen invited me,” he said. “Yes, begged me. If I am to enter your country as a suspect, I don’t want to go at all. If you don’t want to give me a visa, please say so.”

Then he reached for his coat and hat. “Are you doing this to please yourselves,” he asked, “or are you acting on orders from above?” Without waiting for an answer, he left with Elsa in tow.

Elsa let the papers know that Einstein had quit packing and had left Berlin for his cottage in Caputh. If he did not have a visa by noon the next day, he would cancel his trip to America. By late that night, the consulate issued a statement saying that it had reviewed the case and would issue a visa immediately.

As the Times correctly reported, “He is not a Communist and has declined invitations to lecture in Russia because he did not want to give the impression that he was in sympathy with the Moscow regime.” What none of the papers reported, however, was that Einstein did agree to sign a declaration, requested by the consulate, that he was not a member of the Communist Party or any organization intent on overthrowing the U.S. government. 18