The Man Who Stalked Einstein (9 page)

Albert Einstein was in the auditorium that evening, sitting in a box seat alongside
his stepdaughter, Margot. To those around him, he appeared in a jocular mood, sometimes
laughing and applauding outrageous indictments. He seemed unruffled even during an
uncomfortable fifteen-minute intermission during which Weyland halted his diatribe
to encourage attendees to purchase
On the Principle of
Relativity, Ether, and Gravitation
at the reduced rate of six marks. Einstein also calmly listened to the succeeding
lecture by Ernst Gehrcke, who charged the theory of relativity and its progenitor
with having performed “scientific mass hypnosis.”

Despite his demeanor, however, Einstein was not unaffected. He was well aware of
the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Although there had been no explicit slurs against
Jews, he understood that the evening’s real agenda was not scientific, but political.
The charge that he was “un-German” was code for what was really intended. As perhaps
the most prominent Jew in all of Germany, a liberal, an internationalist who had once
famously referred to nationalism as “the measles of humanity,” and an avowed pacifist
and supporter of the Weimar government, he recognized the inevitability of his being
targeted by reactionary activists. Nonetheless, the sophistication of planning and
organizing the evening’s activities, as well as the rancor implicit in Weyland’s accusatory
tone, must have surprised him.

On August 27, Einstein fought back by publishing a response in the
Berliner
Tageblatt
with the ironic title “My Answer to the Anti-Relativistic Corporation, Ltd.” First
targeting Weyland and Gehrcke as the principal participants in the events at the Philharmonic,
he wrote,

“A motley group has come together to form a company under the pretentious name, the
Working Society of German Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science, with the
single purpose of denigrating the theory of relativity, as well as me, as its originator,
in the eyes of non-scientists. . . . I am fully aware that both speakers are unworthy
of a reply from my pen, for I have good reason to believe that motives other than
striving for the truth are at the bottom of this business. . . . I only respond because
I have received repeated requests from well-meaning quarters to have my views made
known. . . .”

The article further castigated Weyland, “. . . who does not seem to be a specialist
at all (Is he a doctor? Engineer? Politician? . . .),” before chiding Gehrcke for
his naiveté and accusing him of selecting statements made by Einstein out of context
in an effort to make him seem foolish.

Einstein next defended the accuracy of his theories. He named a number of prominent
German scientists who he believed fundamentally supported him—the great Max Planck
and Arnold Sommerfeld among them—before singling out Philipp Lenard as one of the
evening’s conspirators. “From among physicists of international repute,” he continued,
“I can name only Lenard as an outspoken critic of relativity theory.”

Perhaps if Einstein had stopped there, much of the unpleasantness to come could have
been avoided. However, he could not restrain himself. “Though I admire Lenard as a
master of experimental physics,” Einstein wrote, “. . . He has yet to accomplish anything
in theoretical physics, and his objections to the theory of general relativity are
so superficial that I had not deemed it necessary until now to reply to them in detail.”

Near the end of his article, he specifically called out Lenard as having been complicit
in the events of that evening: “The personal attack launched against me by Mssrs.
Gehrcke and Lenard, based on these circumstances, has been generally regarded as unfair
by real specialists in the field. I had considered it beneath my dignity to waste
a word on it.”

Responses to the events of August 1920 were heated on both sides. A letter from Gehrcke,
folded around the Einstein rebuttal, welcomed Lenard home to Heidelberg from a holiday
in the Black Forest. In the same day’s packet had come a letter from Stark revealing
what had transpired: “Surely you will have read about the Einstein scandal, which
has been replayed recently in Berlin and in the local press. Einstein has thrown out
every theoretical achievement of yours and adjudicated in favor of superficiality.”

Although Einstein’s charge of complicity in the evening’s events was true enough,
Lenard very much resented being accused of involvement when he painstakingly had sought
to conceal his role. In a September 8 letter to Stark, Lenard wrote,

I am astonished by this personal element that Mr. Einstein and Mr. von Laue [a friend
of Einstein and a 1914 Nobel Laureate who also published a critique of the Philharmonic
events] hold in the matter and that they believe that they can turn against me. .
. . My purely factual objections are to refute the generalized theory of relativity
so that Einstein must precisely demonstrate it, instead of being naughty. . . . In
short, I do not have the slightest desire to be in the company of Einstein unless.
. . . I am a part of the whole that either passes or fails [his theories].

Beginning shortly after the time Lenard became aware of Einstein’s newspaper speculations
on his role in the Berlin Philharmonic episode, he became even more hostile toward
Einstein, and his words and writings more openly anti-Semitic. What had been primarily
a conflict of scientific positions had transformed into something pointedly personal.

Among the pro-Einstein faction, there was concern that Einstein had incautiously
let his emotions get the better of him, charging Lenard with actions he could not
substantiate. Many of his friends and admirers worried that, out of either fear for
his safety or a feeling of being unappreciated, Einstein might emigrate to any number
of countries that would welcome him with open arms. It was common knowledge that Einstein’s
friend, Paul Ehrenfest of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, was particularly
interested in bringing Einstein to Holland and had offered the likelihood of a professorship.
Few doubted that there would be other bidders should Einstein express an interest
in emigrating.

It had been no easy matter six years previous to recruit Einstein to Berlin from
his professorship in Zurich, where he had landed after a brief tenure at the Charles-Ferdinand
University in Prague. Einstein’s star was rising on a meteoric trajectory. He had
demanded and received unheard-of considerations to immigrate to Germany—the directorship
of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, professorship at Humboldt University,
and agreement that he would have only minimal teaching obligations. Now those who
had invested so much in his recruitment feared the undoing of their efforts. Why,
they wondered, should he put up with such grief when he had so many other choices?

Despite the growing anti-Jewish sentiment in Berlin, Einstein probably did not seriously
consider leaving Germany at this time. However, this fact may not have been apparent
to his contemporaries. In an open letter to a number of Berlin newspapers, Max von
Laue, Heinrich Rubens, and Walther Nernst implored him to continue in his current
posts. Nobel laureate Max Planck, and president of the German Physical Society Arnold
Sommerfeld, wrote personal letters emphasizing their support for Einstein’s continued
presence in the capital. Sommerfeld, in particular, made an effort at reconciliation
between the two scientists as a way of heading off open conflict at the upcoming Bad
Nauheim meeting, to which Lenard had alluded in his August 2 letter to Stark.

Sommerfeld was encouraged that a truce might be enacted when Einstein’s friend, physicist
Max Born, shared a letter he had received from Einstein. The letter acknowledged,
“Everyone needs to offer up his sacrifice at the altar of stupidity . . . and I did
so in my article.” Sommerfeld asked Einstein to write a letter of apology to Lenard
and to recant his accusations publicly if Lenard requested it. In return, he promised
that he would ask Friedrich von Mueller, the chairman of the Bad Nauheim meeting,
to feature as part of his opening address a warning against the kind of polemics in
which Weyland had engaged. At the same time, Sommerfeld wrote a letter to Lenard informing
him of the request he had made of Einstein.

However, any hope of civility between the two scientists became moot when Lenard wrote
back,

The thought of an apology by Mr. Einstein to me, moreover the assumption of a suitable
response to him on my part, to remain satisfactory, I must refuse with indignation.
The comments by Mr. Einstein represent the characteristics which must belittle me
in the eyes of the reader. They are a sign of personal contempt for me by Mr. Einstein,
whose transformation into the required esteem based on some assurance by me would
be very astonishing.

In his stilted, overly formal style, Lenard revealed the stress imposed upon him over
what he doubtlessly viewed as a public humiliation. Despite the fact that he actually
did conspire with Weyland and others in organizing the evening’s events, he apparently
felt that Einstein had unfairly singled him out:

Mr. Einstein finds his words shameful and probably incorrect, as he has publicly withdrawn
his statements. Otherwise he could not make up the wrong done to me to the extent
that is even possible. The public release of such value judgments about a colleague,
such as those made by Einstein . . . is, in my feeling, an improper arrogance and
reveals an all time low of nobleness.

Despite Lenard’s harsh assessment of his character and the failure of Sommerfeld’s
efforts to negotiate a détente, Einstein privately celebrated what seemed to him a
settling down of the uproar surrounding a series of unfortunate events. The embarrassing
episode had passed, and with it the worry it had caused. The promised twenty lectures
at the Berlin Philharmonic were aborted after the second installment, a lackluster
and poorly attended presentation by the engineer, Ludwig Glaser. The other scheduled
lecturer for the evening failed to appear. Weyland, a potentially dangerous antagonist,
had lost face with his former allies. Gehrcke wrote to Lenard that Weyland was simply
“one of the many dubious types that had been generated by the revolutionary, warlike
city.” Lenard responded, “Weyland, unfortunately, has proven to be a fraud.”

Reassured by the outpouring of support by his German colleagues and the retrenchment
of the Working Society, it must have seemed to Einstein that the storm had passed.
Einstein exulted to friends that perhaps the Working Society did not have the following
it claimed. As it turned out, Einstein reckoned wrong. There was much more to come.
What he took for fair weather was actually the eye of the storm.

Less than a month after the Working Group lectures at the Berlin Philharmonic, on
the morning of September 19, 1920, the eighty-sixth meeting of the German Society
of Natural Scientists and Physicians kicked off an ambitious, weeklong schedule of
more than three hundred sessions. Held jointly with the meetings of the German Mathematical
Society, the German Physical Society, and the Society of Technical Physics, a late
change in venue to Bad Nauheim had presented logistical challenges. Violent political
unrest, rampant at the time in the original choice of Frankfurt am Main, convinced
the organizers to distance their conference to a more bucolic setting where unsavory
elements were less likely to infringe on the business of science.

Bad Nauheim was a very attractive alternative. The small spa town lies at the edge
of the Taunus Mountains, only thirty-five kilometers from Frankfurt. Famous for its
carbon dioxide–infused effervescent baths, sworn to be effective in treating heart
and nervous conditions, patrons had enjoyed the restorative powers of the town’s briny
waters for centuries. The red-roofed, “new baroque”–style main building, named the
Sprudelhof, and eight similarly designed bath houses had been commissioned by the
Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hessen and by Rhine in 1904. Completed in 1912, the interiors
were an art nouveau marvel of sea-themed, ornamental detail, featuring marine creatures,
water nymphs, mermaids, and ocean waves. Numerous fountains and outdoor pools graced
extensive parklike grounds. In sum, the facilities promised a positive environment
that offered both sufficient space for formal events and informality conducive to
more intimate conversation.

Because the conference was the first major scientific meeting in Germany after the
end of the war, interest was even greater than usual. As retribution for the war,
German scientists were excluded from participation in scientific congresses throughout
the rest of Europe. Many were concerned that their isolation disadvantaged them in
the competition that exists at the highest levels of science. These fears doubtlessly
contributed to the strong turnout of more than 2600 scientists. Those attending knew
that the eyes of the scientific world would be watching.

In the audience for Chairman Mueller’s opening address were seventeen physicists,
chemists, and mathematicians who already had been awarded or would eventually receive
a Nobel Prize for their innovative research. Among them were Philipp Lenard and Johannes
Stark, who applauded vigorously as the chair gave scant nod to his promise of condemning
demagoguery before exhorting the gathered scientists to prove their German patriotism
in word and deed. As the session progressed, a series of speakers followed suit. The
tone of the conference was going Lenard’s way. It was time for him to step from the
shadows and strike a second blow against the theory of relativity—one that he had
reason to hope would make a large impact on the direction that German science might
take in the future.

For some time, Einstein had been proposing to the organizers of the conference that
there be a session devoted to a general discussion of his theory of relativity. In
the passion of the moment following the Berlin Philharmonic lectures, he raised the
stakes by proposing a debate with his antagonists in open session: “Anyone willing
to confront a professional forum can present his objections [to the theory of relativity]
there.” The assembled academics expected Lenard and his supporters to take Einstein
up on his challenge. As Lenard’s objections to relativity were well known, the expectations
were that the critics of relativity would base their arguments on several frequently
stated concerns, namely that the theory of relativity: