The Man Who Stalked Einstein (21 page)

The Germans had overrun Leuven in Belgium but were having trouble controlling an
unruly populace. Belgian guerrilla fighters attacked without warning, exacted their
damage, and disappeared into the narrow alleyways of the ancient city. Casualties
mounted among the German troops at an alarming rate. The German army adopted a harsh
policy of reprisals toward Belgian civilians that, on the night of August 25, 1914,
culminated in the commission of wholesale atrocities. The invaders evicted as many
as ten thousand Belgians from their homes, looted the Leuven food supplies, and set
fire to two thousand houses. They also set fire to the library of the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, the repository of hundreds of thousands of rare books and irreplaceable medieval
manuscripts.

The torching of Leuven set off a worldwide outcry. In the wake of England having
declared war on Germany just three weeks earlier, a number of well-known British academics
published a brief note in the
Times of London
protesting the destruction. Among the scientists signing the letter were William
Crookes, who had briefly hosted Lenard in his laboratory during Lenard’s years of
peripatetic training, and J. J. Thompson, a Nobel laureate for his work on elucidating
the electron.

The German backlash was immediate and vigorous. England was responsible for the war.
The English were trying to shift the blame for the war onto the shoulders of their
most effective economic competitor. Writers Ludwig Fulda, Hermann Sudermann, and Georg
Reicke drafted the “Manifesto of the Ninety-three German Intellectuals.” The Manifesto,
which received wide publication in newspapers throughout Europe, denied that the destruction
of the Leuven library had been purposeful. Indeed, it was inconceivable that German
soldiers could be responsible for wartime atrocities:

As representatives of German Science and Art, we hereby protest to the civilized world
against the lies and calumnies with which our enemies are endeavoring to stain the
honor of Germany in her hard struggle for existence—in a struggle that has been forced
on her. . . . As heralds of truth we raise our voices against these.

Among the denials that followed were that Germany did not cause the current conflict,
had not injured or killed a single Belgian citizen “without the bitterest defense
having made it necessary,” and had not “without aching hearts” set fire to a portion
of the city. The document concludes,

We cannot wrest the poisonous weapon—the lie—out of the hands of our enemies. All
we can do is to proclaim to the world that our enemies are giving false witness against
us. Have faith in us! Believe that we shall carry on this war to the end as a civilized
nation to whom the legacy of a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a Kant is just as sacred as
its own hearth and home.

Among those signing the Manifesto were the flower of German physics, including Nobel
Prize recipients Wilhelm Wien, Max Planck, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, and Philipp Lenard.
The Manifesto reflected a compromise among widely divergent viewpoints. There were
those who feared that a too strongly worded document would incite a permanent backlash
that would hinder relationships between scientists of different nationalities beyond
the end of the war. In this camp was Max Planck. He was away from Berlin at the time
but decided to lend his name to the Manifesto based on what Wien had told him; he
asked his children to sign in his absence. Several years later, he regretted this
decision and publicly reneged on his signature. A 1921
New York Times
survey revealed that a number of other signatories felt the same way. Sixty of seventy-six
intellectuals who survived the war either regretted their participation or claimed
they had not so much as seen what they had signed.

Others felt that the document fell short of the necessary measures. Wien advocated
a boycott of English journals and establishing rules prohibiting the use of English
words in German scientific papers. Lenard, who donated the money he’d received with
the Royal Society’s Rumford Medal to the families of fallen soldiers, favored a more
strongly worded document. Lenard had by this time severed old ties with J. J. Thompson,
believing that the Cambridge don had given him insufficient credit for his work on
the electron. Lenard’s 1914 booklet, “England and Germany in the Time of the Great
War,” attacked German scientists for too often crediting English investigators for
discoveries made in Germany.

Equating the veracity of Englishmen with that of Jews, Lenard warned that should the
enemy perceive any sign of weakness,

The English gentlemen will smile internally with pleasure over our timidity when they
see the Proclamation. Externally, they will naturally pull some sort of swindle. Should
something really forcefully be done, I will be happy to participate. I think these
liars are not worth the waste of time, except with cannons.

The actions of the “ninety-three” were amplified when, on October 16, 1914, four thousand
university teachers, nearly all of the faculty members of the fifty-three German universities,
signed “The Declaration of University Teachers of the German Empire.” The intent of
the Declaration was to remove any doubt in the minds of Germany’s enemies: German
academics stood foursquare with their national army; there was no philosophical division
between the thinking of German professors and that of the German military.

Perhaps because of his Swiss citizenship, or possibly because his contrary views
were well known, Einstein was not asked to sign either the “Manifesto” or the “Declaration.”
He was the antithesis of a patriotic nationalist, an internationalist who believed
that overweening nationalism—especially as practiced in his native Germany—led to
unchecked militarism. An armed German military bolstered by universal military conscription
was a threat to European stability.

Shocked by the destruction of the Leuven library, angry about the anti-British sentiments
expressed by some of the signers, and outraged by the chauvinistic attitudes of many
of his colleagues, Einstein joined with a physician friend, Georg Friedrich Nicolai,
to write a countermanifesto, “An Appeal to the Europeans.” The purpose of the “Appeal”
was to advocate for peace in Europe and the honoring of existing borders among countries;
it drew only four signatures. The document was never published in Germany. Its publication
outside of Germany was delayed until 1917, and it quickly disappeared from public
consciousness.

The Leuven matter and the prolonged deprivations of the Great War polarized Germany’s
scientists into opposing camps. As Einstein became more active as an internationalist
and pacifist, Lenard grew more reactionary. Amid Germany’s postwar economic deterioration
and the consequent decline in his own finances, Lenard embraced the popular notion
that it was the socialists and Jews who were pulling the strings of government and
laying waste to the German economy. In the aftermath of World War I and over the next
fifteen years, Lenard developed his beliefs about the distinctions between the Aryan
scientific mind and that of the alien “other.”

The 1934 publication of the first volume of
Deutsche Physik
must have been a tremendous catharsis for the seventy-two-year-old scientist. Although
Lenard’s expressed purpose in writing
Deutsche Physik
was to summarize a lifetime of lectures on experimental physics—which by all accounts
were virtuoso performances—he wrote the foreword to the first volume as a crystallization
of his philosophy of Aryan scientific supremacy. Headed by an unattributed epigram—“The
foreword stems from today’s conflict / The work seeks value infinite”—the author,
more explicitly than ever before, communicated his alarm about the threat the “Jewish
spirit” posed to the purity of the natural sciences and, hence, all of German culture.
Deutsche Physik
was based on several principles that Lenard took to be inviolable.

First, all worthy scientific discoveries were attributable to Aryans. Non-Aryan science
might initially be based on the successes of Aryans, but over time, each non-Aryan
culture or ethnicity developed distinctive hallmarks of inferiority:

[No] people ever embarked on scientific research without basing themselves on the
fertile ground of already existing Aryan achievements. . . . The racial characteristics
of these foreign forms only become recognizable after they have developed over a longer
period. Based on the available literature, one could, perhaps, already talk about
Japanese physics. Arabian physics existed in the past. Nothing has yet emerged about
Negro physics. Jewish physics has developed and become prevalent, which has only rarely
been recognized until now.

Second, meaningful science was based on experimentation. Aryan research began and
ended with observation and measurement. Simplicity, grounded in nature, was a hallmark
of
Deutsche Physik
. In contrast, scientific theories based on mathematical representations were antithetical
to Aryan science in that they failed Lenard’s test of “common sense.” They resided
only in the abstract. They contributed nothing new. They baffled rather than illuminated.

All the well-verified knowledge of inorganic nature can be found here [in
Deutsche Physik
] in a uniform and totally coherent text. . . . The unspoiled German national spirit
[Volksgeist] seeks depth; it seeks theoretical foundations consistent with nature
and irrefutable knowledge of the cosmos. . . . Thinking along with nature—following
its processes systematically—is very seldom done correctly. Usually you are confronted
with formulae instead. It is peculiar to see physics texts filled with mathematical
derivations that offer absolutely nothing about the origin, value, and significance
of the topic.

A third tenet was that it was the encroachment of Jews, who secretly and maliciously
had hidden their physics, which now posed a threat to German culture. “At the end
of the Great War,” Lenard wrote, “when Jews in Germany began to dominate and set the
tone, the full force of its [Jewish physics] characteristics suddenly burst forth
like a flood. It then promptly found avid supporters even among many authors of non-Jewish
or not really pure Jewish blood.”

In the world of
Deutsche Physik
, Aryan scientists’ sole motivation for their research was the elucidation of truth.
Others, particularly Jews, had more nefarious motives and were not above lying and
self-promotion:

The characteristic haste of the Jewish mentality to come up with untested ideas was
actually contagious; though it provides personal advantages (Jewish applause, primarily),
it has a negative effect on the whole. In Jewish physics, every assumption that proves
not to be completely false is celebrated as a milestone.

Explaining how the Jews cunningly gained ascendency in physics, Lenard revived past
complaints about Einstein, who, despite his having immigrated to the United States,
was still “the unquestionably full-blooded Jew.” He wrote,

[The Jew’s science] is only an illusion and a degenerate manifestation of fundamental
Aryan science [that treats truth and lies as] equivalent to any one of the many different
theoretical options available. . . . This fact was concealed through computational
tricks. . . . The characteristic audacity of the uninhibited Jew, together with the
deft collaboration of his fellow Jews, [which] enabled the construction of Jewish
physics.

Finally, Lenard concluded that, even allowing for the sorry state of the natural sciences,
Aryan science would inevitably prevail:

But a people that has produced the likes of [among others] Copernicus, Kepler . .
. Leibnitz, Mendel, and [one of his own mentors] Bunsen will know how to find itself
again, just as it has found a Fuehrer of its own blood in politics as heir to Frederick
the Great and Bismarck, who saved it from the chaos of Marxism, which is equally alien,
racially.

Deutsche Physik
was a crystallization of Lenard’s thoughts and experiences during two decades of
rising nationalism among German scientists during and following World War I. He had,
for more than a decade, included bits and pieces of similar content in his speeches
and writings of what he now comprehensively published in
Deutsche Physik
. Despite having done so, he had managed to convince only a handful of acolytes, while
many Aryans had flocked to the theoretical physics of Einstein.

Now, however,
Deutsche Physik
was an idea whose time had come. The publication of the foreword to
Deutsche Physik
coincided nearly perfectly with Hitler becoming Fuehrer, and its content was convergent
with the beliefs of Germany’s new leadership. Suddenly, there were receptive ears
at the highest level of government. Born out of envy, bitterness, and prejudice,
Deutsche Physik
appeared at exactly the right time to provide the philosophical underpinnings for
the self-destructive scientific policies of the Third Reich.

Immediately upon Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, Lenard and Stark sought to impress
their views upon the Nazi hierarchy. The biggest problem in their minds was that the
Jews had gained ascendancy in the German universities and, for years, had been fostering
the careers of their own kind. There was a paucity of capable, well-trained Aryans
who could reasonably fill the openings that would develop under
Deutsche Physik
. Even so, Lenard would do his best to ensure the start of what would become a renewal
of Aryan leadership in German universities.

At seventy-one, Lenard was not particularly interested in new titles or responsibilities.
His goal was to see completed what he had imagined—the complete vanquishing of Einstein
and the extinction of his work, followed by a renewal of German academe along the
lines of
Deutsche Physik
. This was not the case for his younger protégé, Johannes Stark. Stark sought more
concrete authority from a personal acquaintance, Minister of the Interior Wilhelm
Frick. His goal was to be appointed to several high positions where he could control
virtually all appointments to university professorships and government research funding
throughout Germany.