Walter Isaacson - Einstein - His Life and Universe

His acceptance of a post at the University of Madrid made headlines in April. “Spanish Minister Announces Physicist Has Accepted Professorship,” said the New York Times. “News Received with Joy.” The paper pointed out that this should not affect his annual stints in Princeton, but Einstein warned Flexner that it could if Mayer was not given a full rather than an associate professorship at the new Institute. “You will by now have learned through the press that I have accepted a chair at Madrid University,” he wrote. “The Spanish government has given me the right to recommend to them a mathematician to be appointed as a full professor ...I therefore find myself in a difficult position: either to recommend him for Spain or to ask you whether you could possibly extend his appointment to a full professorship.” In case the threat was not clear enough, Einstein added, “His absence from the Institute might even create some difficulties for my own work.” 46

Flexner compromised. In a four-page letter, he cautioned Einstein about the perils of becoming too attached to one assistant, told tales of how that had worked out badly in other cases, but then relented. Although Mayer’s title remained associate professor, he was given tenure, which was enough to secure the deal. 47

Einstein also accepted or expressed interest in lectureships in Brussels, Paris, and Oxford. He was particularly eager to spend some time at the latter. “Do you think that Christ Church could find a small room for me?” he wrote his friend Professor Frederick Lindemann, a physicist there who would become an important adviser to Winston Churchill. “It need not be so grand as in the two previous years.” At the end of the letter, he added a wistful little note: “I shall never see the land of my birth again.” 48

This raised one obvious question: Why did he not consider spending some time at Hebrew University in Jerusalem? After all, it was partly his baby. Einstein spent the spring of 1933 actively talking about starting up a new university, perhaps in England, that could serve as a refuge for displaced Jewish academics. Why wasn’t he instead recruiting them for, and committing himself personally to, Hebrew University?

The problem was that for the previous five years, Einstein had been doing battle with administrators there, and it came to an untimely showdown in 1933, just as he and other professors were fleeing the Nazis. The target of his ire was the university’s president, Judah Magnes, a former rabbi from New York who felt a duty to please his wealthy American backers, including on faculty appointments, even if this meant compromising on scholarly distinction. Einstein wanted the university to operate more in the European tradition, with the academic departments given great power over curriculum and tenured faculty decisions. 49

While he was in Le Coq sur Mer, his frustrations with Magnes boiled over. “This ambitious and weak person surrounded himself with other morally inferior men,” he wrote Haber in cautioning him about going to Hebrew University. He described it to Born as “a pigsty, complete charlatanism.” 50

Einstein’s complaints put him at odds with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. When Weizmann and Magnes sent him a formal invitation to join the Hebrew University faculty, he allowed his distaste to pour forth publicly. He told the press that the university was “unable to satisfy intellectual needs” and declared that he had thus rejected the invitation. 51

Magnes must go, Einstein declared. He wrote Sir Herbert Samuel, the British high commissioner, who had been appointed to a committee to propose reforms, that Magnes had wrought “enormous damage” and that “if ever people want my collaboration, his immediate resignation is my condition.” In June he said the same to Weizmann: “Only a decisive change of personnel would alter things.” 52

Weizmann was an adroit broken-field runner. He decided to turn Einstein’s challenge into an opportunity to lessen Magnes’s power. If he succeeded, then Einstein should feel compelled to join the faculty. On a trip to America later in June, he was asked why Einstein was not going to Jerusalem, where he surely belonged. He should indeed go there, Weizmann agreed, and he had been invited to do so. If he went to Jerusalem, Weizmann added, “he would cease to be a wanderer among the universities of the world.” 53

Einstein was furious. His reasons for not going to Jerusalem were well known to Weizmann, he said, “and he also knows under what circumstances I would be prepared to undertake work for the Hebrew University.”That led Weizmann to appoint a committee that, he knew, would remove Magnes from direct control of the academic side of the university. He then announced, during a visit to Chicago, that Einstein’s conditions had been met and therefore he should be coming to Hebrew University after all. “Albert Einstein has definitely decided to accept direction of the physics institute at the Hebrew University,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, based on information from Weizmann.

It was a ruse by Weizmann that was not true and would never come to pass. But in addition to frightening Flexner in Princeton, it allowed the Hebrew University controversy to simmer down and for reforms to be made at the university. 54

The End of Pacifism

Like a good scientist, Einstein could change his attitudes when confronted with new evidence. Among his deepest personal principles was his pacifism. But in early 1933, with Hitler’s ascension, the facts had changed.

So Einstein forthrightly declared that he had come to the conclusion that absolute pacifism and military resistance were, at least for the moment, not warranted. “The time seems inauspicious for further advocacy of certain propositions of the radical pacifist movement,” he wrote to a Dutch minister who wanted his support for a peace organization. “For example, is one justified in advising a Frenchman or a Belgian to refuse military service in the face of German rearmament?” Einstein felt the answer was now clear. “Frankly, I do not believe so.”

Instead of pushing pacifism, he redoubled his commitment to a world federalist organization, like a League of Nations with real teeth, that would have its own professional army to enforce its decisions. “It seems to me that in the present situation we must support a supranational organization of force rather than advocate the abolition of all forces,” he said. “Recent events have taught me a lesson in this respect.” 55

This met resistance from the War Resisters’ International, an organization that he had long supported. Its leader, Lord Arthur Ponsonby, denounced the idea, calling it “undesirable because it is an admission that force is the factor that can resolve international disputes.” Einstein disagreed. In the wake of the new threat arising in Germany, his new philosophy, he wrote, was “no disarmament without security.” 56

Four years earlier, while visiting Antwerp, Einstein had been invited to the Belgian royal palace by Queen Elisabeth, 57the daughter of a Bavarian duke who was married to King Albert I. The queen loved music, and Einstein spent the afternoon playing Mozart with her, drinking tea, and attempting to explain relativity. Invited back the following year, he met her husband, the king, and became charmed by the least regal of all royals. “These two simple people are of a purity and goodness that is seldom to be found,” he wrote Elsa. Once again he and the queen played Mozart, then Einstein was invited to stay and dine alone with the couple. “No servants, vegetarian, spinach with fried egg and potatoes,” he recounted. “I liked it enormously, and I am sure that the feeling is mutual.” 58

Thus began a lifelong friendship with the Belgian queen. Later, his relationship with her would play a minor role in Einstein’s involvement with the atomic bomb. But in July 1933, the issue at stake was pacifism and military resistance.