The Man Who Stalked Einstein (18 page)

Resentful of his treatment at the hands of the mob and chastened by near death, he
immersed himself in the speeches of Adolf Hitler and the writings of Houston Stewart
Chamberlain exalting the Aryan race. Lenard was fully radicalized. He expressed his
new worldview in a 1922 address at the University of Heidelberg, wherein he likened
the activities of the Weimar government to the superstitious practices of the Middle
Ages:

What is not consistent with reality can never affect people other than negatively.
We should not be fooled to think that back then was the dark Middle Ages and now we
live in enlightened, bright modern times. Today it is exactly as dark and dangerous,
in fact darker and more dangerous, to announce a new knowledge and again precisely
that knowledge, which is most important for men to know, as this knowledge provides
the highest enlightenment in regard to the things around us and how these affect us.
Today there are other powers, which prevent us from saying what is good for men and
what not; however, it is exactly as dark as at the time of the witch trials or witch
belief. Or is it more reasonable than witch processes, if you govern a people from
a perspective, that this people bears the guilt for a war, which it has not caused?
That is even darker than any witch belief; thus, there is no great difference between
those times and today.

Professionally, Lenard became further entrenched in the science of the past. In his
opposition to theoretical physics, he gave no quarter to any aspect of relativity.
He gave no more credence to special relativity, the tenets of which he formerly had
accepted, than he did general relativity. All that was needed was a proper venue for
him to publicly express his philosophy. A perfectly suitable one was fast approaching.
He began his preparations for the hundredth anniversary meeting of the same Society
of German Scientists and Physicians that had met in Bad Nauheim two years earlier.
The upcoming conference was scheduled for Leipzig in the fall of 1922. The meeting
was an especially important one because German scientists were still not welcomed
at conferences elsewhere in Europe and some were actively dissuaded from attending.

Still hoping to sway his colleagues away from Einstein’s theories, Lenard reconsidered
his thoughts on ether, setting down his views in his 1922 edition of
Ether and Urether
. He proposed the existence of two ethers, both derived from previous models, to explain
the observed physical phenomena. In this construct, every atom had its own ether,
the amount of which varied according to the state of the atom. Lenard referred to
this ether as “the ether of matter,” because each particle of matter could emit or
absorb portions of its surrounding ether. The other ether, which Lenard termed “the
urether,” he considered “the ether of space.” The urether was the medium that facilitated
the passage of electromagnetic radiation at the speed of light, free of the burden
of matter.

In the introduction to this revised edition of
Ether and Urether
, entitled “Exhortation to German Naturalists,” Lenard revisited a gripe he had leveled
at Einstein in the past. He claimed that Einstein’s false promotion of his unproven
theories was indicative of his poor character, and he charged the Society of German
Scientists and Physicians with complicity. “It makes a difference,” he wrote, “whether
mischief carries on only in the newspapers, or whether the Society, from which one
expects a clear, elegantly balanced opinion, participated in this nonsense. . . .
Much more disastrous still . . . [is] the concealed conceptual confusion which floats
about Einstein as a ‘German’ scientist.”

In a remarkable demonstration of psychological projection, Lenard continued,

It is a well-known Jewish feature to quite immediately bring factual matters into
the realm of personal disputes. . . .” The healthy German spirit . . . must deflect
from itself the foreign spirit [of Judaism] which arises as a dark power everywhere
and which is so clearly designated in everything that belongs to the theory of relativity.
We live in no less a dark age than the Inquisition. . . . I want the German naturalists
to make clearer sense, proving their worth to me by bringing the enlightenment to
break the power of the dark spirit everywhere possible.

In this regard, Lenard was perpetually disappointed. Not only did his colleagues ignore
the looming threat but also they objected strongly to his racial references. Years
later, he wrote in the margins of the introduction to his copy of
Ether and Urether
, “The German naturalists of that time, indeed all of the university professors, were
not of assistance. Only Adolf Hitler gave a basis eleven years later for breaking
the power of the dark spirit even in science through his Third Reich.”

Leading up to the conference, Lenard and others attempted to provide experimental
proof of ether, with its new duality, but their efforts were in vain. Regardless,
Lenard was not dissuaded. His Heidelberg speech foreshadowed the arguments he planned
for Einstein at Leipzig:

Now, Einstein says: I assume, that ether does not exist at all. If we don’t wish to
see ether, space and heaven must be empty. Nothing should be between heaven and earth,
only sordid matter, nothing else for natural scientists to encounter. This is assumed
by the very same man [Einstein]. I have to present him here as a whole, because I
consider it not right that one can and should distinguish between the man and the
researcher, as both are coming from the same depth.

Lenard’s tone here is mocking. How is it even remotely possible that the universe
could operate in the absence of at least one ether? Ridiculous, but especially so
coming from a man who lives on the edge of sedition.

Thus I talk of this Mr. Einstein, who brings us [his concern for] Eastern Jews in
the tens of thousands . . . while the same man, who has a very special relationship
with those people who had been recognized in war times as traitors of the patrimony
and who had been thrown out of the country or had been hanged. So, with this man the
spaces of the sky are empty.

In the same presentation, Lenard reestablished one of his earlier objections to Einstein’s
theories:

I am a friend of simple thinking, which has led to the greatest successes of natural
scientists at all times. From the most simple thoughts have always arisen the greatest
successes, in the most varied areas. Has Bismarck’s thinking been any different from
simple? . . . The simple mind is a great German characteristic.

Thus, as he had asserted two years earlier at Bad Nauheim, the theory of relativity
had an “exaggerated nature.” It failed the test of common sense. It was nothing more
than a “hypothesis heap.”

Lenard expected to confront Einstein directly at Leipzig, as he had at Bad Nauheim
during the 1920 conference. In this, he was disappointed. Einstein had been scheduled
to present his latest considerations on relativity, but anxious colleagues convinced
him to withdraw. The spread of open anti-Semitism among elements of the gathering,
the threat that Lenard might be distributing his anti-relativity pamphlets, and that
Einstein’s name had recently begun to appear on “death lists” offering a bounty for
his assassination all spoke to the wisdom of canceling. It was too bad, in a way.
Had he been there, he would have had the satisfaction of seeing Lenard’s consternation
upon the announcement of Einstein having been selected to receive the 1921 Nobel Prize,
which the Nobel Academy had reserved from the previous year. Instead, Einstein was
on a steamship making its way toward a lecture tour he had hastily arranged in Japan.

For Lenard, Einstein’s Nobel Prize was the final straw. Sixty years of age, seemingly
outmaneuvered by Einstein at every turn, and feeling increasingly isolated, with his
most creative years as a scientist behind him and his colleagues deserting experimental
physics for the empty promise of relativity, there was nothing for him to do but to
support the National Socialist German Workers Party. Nazi rhetoric promised a new
world order, one that would not tolerate the dark ravings of the relativity Jew.

Following the Leipzig conference, Lenard mostly stepped away from serious science,
dedicating himself to reactionary politics. He further personalized his anti-Jewish
fervor. Einstein was the living personification of the depraved Jewish spirit that
had insinuated itself into German science. At his Heidelberg presentation in the spring
of 1922, Lenard had declaimed, “At the end I want to tell you that I hope that you
will not think of me as an adversary of Einstein, as sometimes is stated. I am far
from it, as this would be much too little. It would be too low a goal.”

What Lenard wished for was not simply the defeat of his old foe but the complete erasure
of Einstein’s ideas, writings, and pronouncements—a blank slate, as though Einstein
had never been born.

On the afternoon of March 23, 1933, less than two months after President Paul von
Hindenberg had appointed him Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, Adolf Hitler sat amid
the members of Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. He appeared to listen thoughtfully
as the Social Democrat leader Otto Wel implored the Reichstag to vote down the Enabling
Act proposed by Hitler’s right-wing coalition.

Hitler realized that being in this place, at this time, put him on the cusp of a
historic moment. He had begun his political ascent as the head of propaganda of the
ultra-nationalist German Workers Party. In 1920, he assumed leadership and renamed
the organization the National Socialist German Workers Party. For much of the next
decade, the party’s fortunes rose and fell inversely with the economy. But as the
icy grip of the worldwide depression took hold in 1929, and unemployment became epidemic,
the Nazis’ scapegoating of socialists, communists, and Jews for the general misery
gained currency among the populace. Party membership soared.

Despite his apparent calm, Hitler’s brain was racing ahead to when he would take
the podium. He had thoroughly prepared himself for what he expected would be the defining
speech of his political career. In effect, the passage of the Enabling Act would give
Chancellor Hitler and his cabinet absolute dictatorial powers to pass decrees without
Reichstag approval or the meddling of the aged president.

Wel finished with an impassioned plea for German honor. German honor! If only the
Social Democrats had thought about German honor during the past fifteen years of kowtowing
to the crippling demands of the armistice. If only they had rejected the myth foisted
upon the public that Germany had been responsible for the Great War. They’d had their
day, one that had lasted far too long. The time was ripe for revolution. Hitler was
confident that he had just listened to the last embarrassingly mewling Reichstag speech
he would ever have to hear.

When the crowd quieted, Hitler rose and made his way to the podium. Attired in a
dark khaki combat uniform, a white armband bearing the Nazi swastika prominently encircling
his left arm, he paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. Germany’s parliament
had assembled that day in the main chamber of Berlin’s Kroll Opera House, because
a month earlier the Reichstag building had mysteriously burned to the ground. It had
clearly been arson, but the persons who set the fire remained at large. For the Nazis,
the crime had been a godsend. The razing of the Reichstag had provided Chancellor
Hitler with a pretext for his subsequent actions. Characterizing the fire as a communist
plot, Hitler declared emergency powers, suspending individual rights in the name of
public safety. To many, it all seemed too neat, as though it had been the Nazis who
actually had ignited the blaze.

With new elections scheduled for March 5, Hitler unleashed his SA storm troopers
into the streets to disrupt the activities of competing political factions. The brief
campaign was among the most brutal in history. Nationalist reactionary factions, communists,
and centrists battled openly in the streets while police looked the other way. Despite
the rampant violence and unprecedented voter intimidation, the elections left the
Nazis and their coalition of like-minded parties just short of a clear majority.

Hitler was not concerned about the electoral shortfall. He had thoroughly prepared
for this moment. Nothing had been left to chance. Surveying the members of the Reichstag
who were present that afternoon, he felt good about the Enabling Act’s chances for
success. There was more than the usual number of empty seats. His storm troopers,
who now surrounded the Opera to ensure there would be no interruptions, had rounded
up the worker-backed communist members and many of the more outspoken Social Democrats.
Many of these individuals would soon become guests of the Reich. They were destined
to experience the grim hospitality of the newly built Dachau concentration camp. It
would be the first of a number of such facilities intended to silence Nazi opposition.

Starting slowly and calmly, Hitler began his address:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the German Reichstag! By agreement with the Reich Government,
today the National Socialist German Workers Party and the German National Peoples
Party have presented to you for resolution a notice of motion concerning a “Law for
Removing the Distress of Volk and Reich (the Enabling Act).” The reasons for this
extraordinary measure are as follows: In November 1918, the Marxist organizations
seized the executive power by means of a Revolution. Thus a breach of the Constitution
was committed. . . . They sought moral justification by asserting that Germany or
its government bore the guilt for the outbreak of the War.

His voice grew stronger and more emphatic as he denied Germany’s culpability for the
Great War. He reeled off the crimes of the Weimar government, which he noted had caused
“the severest oppression of the entire German
Volk
.” Spittle flew from his lips. His hands ticked off the reasons why the Reichstag
must pass the Enabling Act, among them the mistreatment of ethnically German peoples
living beyond Germany’s armistice-constricted borders and the impact of the egregious
reparations demanded by the Allies as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Near the end,
Hitler got to his “ask”: