The Man Who Stalked Einstein (27 page)

Heisenberg
: Since a good theory must be based on directly observable magnitudes, I thought it
more fitting to restrict myself to these [observations of emitted radiation], treating
them, as it were, as representatives of electron orbits.

Einstein
: But you don’t seriously believe that none but observable magnitudes must go into
a physical theory?

Heisenberg
: Isn’t that precisely what you have done with relativity?

Einstein
: Possibly I did use this kind of reasoning, but it is nonsense all the same. . .
. It is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. . . .
It is the theory which decides what we can observe.

In essence, Heisenberg was drawing his arguments from the experimentalists, albeit
in a much more civilized manner than Lenard or Stark, neither of whom was prone to
mannerly subtleties.

In taking stock of what had transpired between Stark and Heisenberg, it was clear
to Himmler that Stark had not progressed with the times. Stark presented several specific
liabilities that he could no longer abide. First, he was an unrepentant ideologue
who unfailingly seemed to make enemies. An internal SS report commissioned by Himmler
found that although Stark was philosophically aligned with the National Socialist
movement, he was politically inept. His insistence on fostering only research that
met his own tightly circumscribed criteria too often ran afoul of the pragmatic needs
of the state. To Himmler, good research was research that served the interests of
the Reich.

Moreover, Stark failed to recognize the importance to Himmler of his own special
interest in research. Himmler was a devotee of the occult. He had been pursuing evidence
in support of the “world ice theory,” which hypothesized that modern-day Aryans were
descendants of an ancient Aryan culture that had ruled the world. Himmler had incorporated
into the SS a research division known as
Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe
, which had commissioned several expeditions to Germany, Finland, and Sweden to conduct
archeological and anthropological investigations that Himmler felt would support his
contentions.

Karl Weigel, a member of Himmler’s
Ahnenerbe
research group, requested funding from Stark’s German Research Fund for an
Ahnenerbe
project. Stark rejected the proposal, arguing that
Ahnenerbe
was “unscientific.” The ensuing SS report was forwarded to Himmler. Himmler interpreted
Stark’s failure to demonstrate any understanding of, take an interest in, or have
his research fund sponsor projects dealing with Himmler’s theories as a rejection
of Himmler’s beliefs.

Stark also had other failings that now made him a target. He had never enjoyed the
support of German scientists, to whom he appeared power hungry and overbearing. Several
years previously, the responsibility for overseeing scientific research had been transferred
from the highly supportive Reichminister Wilhelm Frick to Bernhard Rust, with whom
Stark had previously scuffled. Perhaps for some inadvertent slight or simply for the
thrill of the intrigue at the highest levels of German government, Rust claimed that
Stark had made derogatory comments about the Reich’s scientific policies to outsiders,
and as punishment halved his research budget.

Perhaps most significantly, Stark had a way of sticking his nose where it didn’t
belong. He had gotten himself into considerable trouble by calling for the punishment
of a local National Socialist official who had been convicted of embezzlement, which
ran afoul of a powerful regional party official. Unwittingly, Stark had violated a
party rule concerning jurisdiction. The Nazi Party took him to court, calling for
his dismissal. Although ultimately an appeals court refused to progress to trial in
recognition of Stark’s early support of Adolf Hitler, Stark was humiliated.

In the end, even his friends in the party turned on him. Alfred Rosenberg no longer
published his articles in
Voelkischer Beobachter
, nor were his opinions welcome in
Das Schwarze Korps
. A major pet project failed miserably. He had invested a great deal of the Reich’s
money in a misguided scheme to alchemically turn peat hewn from the swamps of southern
Germany into gold. To avoid this chicanery coming to light, he was required to “voluntarily”
step down from his post with the German Research Fund. In Stark’s mind, the concatenation
of events proved what he had known all along: there was a conspiracy against him.

Most of Germany’s natural scientists watched the demise of Stark and Lenard’s influence
with satisfaction. The pair had made few friends during their time lording over the
natural sciences, and Stark’s interpretation of the Fuehrer Principle had quashed
debate.
Deutsche Physik
became a terminal footnote to what, before the civil service law, had been a remarkable
flowering of German science. The few remaining advocates of
Deutsche Physik
were silenced. In 1940, National Socialist leadership called for the recognition
of relativity theory and quantum mechanics as acceptable bases for scientific work.
Lenard’s twenty-year fight against Einstein, the man, and his far-reaching theories
finally was over. His influence at an end, the long-retired professor faded into obscurity.
War was coming. War demanded a more pragmatic approach to scientific investigation.

Stark returned to his family estate in rural Bavaria, where he suffered the aftereffects
of his disillusionment with the Nazi bureaucracy. Still a target of retribution for
his many enemies, Stark’s son Hans was arrested by the Gestapo on a trumped-up charge
of being too kind to a Polish slave laborer and was sent to the Eastern front. When
Stark tried to resign from the National Socialist Party, local officials forced him
to remain a Nazi by making further threats upon his son’s life. Toward the end of
the war, Stark’s rural estate was taken over by an SS officer who eventually gave
way to the occupation of the American military.

In 1945, Stark was arrested by the Allied authorities. He faced trial for war crimes.
In court, old enmities came home to roost. Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg, and Arnold
Sommerfeld all testified against him. From the other side of the Atlantic, Einstein
submitted written testimony that Stark had been “a highly egocentric person with an
unusually high craving for recognition . . . [and a] paranoid personality.” On June
20, 1947, a tribunal found Johannes Stark guilty, and classified him as bearing major
guilt (
Hauptschuldiger
). Despite being over seventy years old, he was sentenced to four years at hard labor.

The appeals process reversed the initial verdict, downgrading his offenses to those
of a “follower.” According to the appeals court, Stark had “never acted unilaterally
to cause damage to non-National Socialists among his colleagues” and that “his ideological
advocacy for National Socialism had never led to condemnable actions.” He paid a fine
of 1,000 marks and was freed.

In their prime, Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark had experienced something close
to absolute power over the German scientific community. They had held in their hands
the lives of tens of thousands and almost without exception had used their authority
for ill. Their decline was abrupt and painful, all the more so because they failed
to see their own complicity in the factors that had led to their fall. They had been
active participants in the era of Nazism. By their mindless adherence to a philosophical
belief in the superiority of one race over another, they caused irreparable harm to
countless lives and, ultimately, had much to do with the decimation of their own country.

Gingerly grasping the nail between his right thumb and forefinger, Philipp Lenard
tapped his hammer tentatively at first, then with a bit more vigor. He tested the
nail to be certain that it held firmly in the whitewashed plaster. Bent with age,
his arms restricted by the tight-fitting dark suit he had donned for his birthday
portrait earlier in the day, he turned to lift from his desk a framed photograph.
His hands shook as he raised it high and looped the frame’s braided wire hanger over
the nail. He took a step backward to improve his perspective before alternately sliding
the dark wood frame left and right until it was perfectly aligned, top and bottom
parallel with the ceiling.

Lenard gazed at the image, soaking in every detail as though he feared it might vanish.
The portrait depicted a powerful visage caught, seemingly unaware, in a serious contemplative
moment. The Fuehrer’s eyes stared intently from the base of a high, smooth brow. Lenard
knew, firsthand, the eyes to be a brilliant piercing blue and how unnerving it could
be to stare into their unblinking intensity. Beneath the distinctive nose sat the
small swath of hair that had become so recognizable as to become fodder for caricature.
The professor smiled his old man’s smile, further deepening the furrows that lined
his face. He was eighty years old that day. What a remarkable surprise. He could not
have imagined a better gift.

Lenard seated himself at his desk, but only for an instant. Unable to contain his
excitement, he grasped his cane and pushed himself halfway out of his chair to scrutinize
once more the signature in the lower corner of the portrait. The Fuehrer, himself,
had signed it. He glanced again at the image. To Lenard, the pathos in the Fuehrer’s
expression expressed all that need be said. He had sacrificed everything, even gone
to prison, to restore the Fatherland to its rightful place, chief among nations. Lenard
experienced a frisson of pleasure, imagining that at this very moment, perhaps, the
Fuehrer’s armies were exacting harsh retribution upon those who had unfairly humbled
the German people following the Great War.

Lenard turned his attention to the large, khaki-colored envelope that had arrived
by courier earlier in the day. If the Fuehrer had sent only the photograph, that would
have been ecstasy. But, in fact, there had been a letter too. A personal letter from
the Fuehrer. He wiped his fingers on his fine wool trousers before laying his hands
on the letter. Skimming the contents, Lenard came quickly to the words that, despite
his having read them several times, still dizzied him with their praise. “With you,
the National Socialists’ thoughts have had a courageous supporter and brave fighter
since the beginning, who effectively curtailed the Jewish influence on science and
who always has been my faithful and appreciated colleague. This shall never be forgotten.”

Lenard nodded. He had supported the National Socialist’s cause long before the politics
of the times demanded it. In retrospect, he had been impetuous. But when the Nazis
came to power, the gamble paid off. The party awarded Lenard its highest honors. After
his retirement in 1932, the Reich had immortalized him by naming for him the Institute
of Physics at the University of Heidelberg, where he had been the director for most
of his career. The Philipp Lenard Institute, he thought, and nearly spoke the words
aloud.

Grand as these accolades were, the professor felt there had been something lacking.
The public had not loved him in the same way it had favored other scientists, even
those of lesser accomplishment. He had never escaped his deep disappointment in the
scant public recognition his discoveries had garnered. Receiving the Nobel Prize for
his work describing the emanations of cathode ray tubes had been the zenith. But even
then, neither his colleagues nor the masses had properly acknowledged the importance
of his contributions. He had been in the thick of
so many
discoveries. Without so much as a nod in his direction, covetous charlatans and fame
seekers had stolen the credit that rightfully was his.

He picked up his pen, writing on the inner leaf of the 1935 program for the inauguration
of the Philipp Lenard Institute of Physics in Heidelberg, “I was repeatedly honored;
my thinking, however, was not observed. I have rebelled against such nonsense for
six years. Now, as I am eighty years old, I have become too old to further come into
action, as has already been the case with my writings.”

How had he become so old? Even the exertion of writing discomfited him. He stretched
his neck against the constricting dark tie and starch-stiff collar that bit into his
thin, old man’s skin. The Fuehrer had put his finger on the problem—“the Jewish influence.”
The Jews had duped his Aryan colleagues into believing their degenerate theories.
Together, they had cheated him of his proper place in the pantheon of great scientists.
The misplaced public fuss over the white Jew, Roentgen, had been a prime example.
Roentgen, the famous Wuerzburg professor. Lenard well knew that Roentgen was not a
Jew, but it was as though he were. He had been a friend of Jews, and he had thought
like one. Roentgen had somehow blundered into perceiving the existence of X-rays.
He had blithely accepted the credit as though his discovery had leapt from some wellspring
of scientific sorcery, as though Lenard had not spent years laying out the fundamental
groundwork. The world was so unfair. Without Lenard’s signal contributions, the world
would never have heard the name of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. It still rankled that
Roentgen died never having acknowledged Lenard’s role as the true “mother of the X-ray.”
The Reich corrected that oversight, belatedly crediting Lenard with the discovery,
but it had held little meaning. It came too late. Consumed by war, the world took
little notice.

Lenard returned his attention to the letter. The business with Roentgen had been
largely a private matter. Hitler was thinking of something entirely different when
he penned his reference to “the Jewish influence.”
Einstein.
The charlatan and his great Jewish fraud, the theory of relativity. Einstein had
posed a much greater threat. The Jew and his claims for his theories of relativity
stood in opposition to the essence of Lenard’s
Deutsche Physik
, to the superiority of Aryan physics. The ludicrous public comparisons of Einstein’s
theories to the works of the greatest scientific thinkers of the past mocked the Aryan
spirit. Lenard’s dealings with Einstein had been his greatest trial. In testament,
he had written, “If I had known that mankind would run itself down so badly during
my lifetime, that man would degrade from Friedrich the Great to Friedrich Ebert, from
Newton to Einstein, I would have never resolved in my youth to serve the best men
of my time.”