Divine Fury (68 page)

42
. Hans F. K. Günther,
The Racial Elements of European History
, trans. G. C. Wheeler (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1927), 56. On Hitler’s interest in Günther, see Timothy Ryback,
Hitler’s Private Library
(New York: Knopf, 2008), 69, 111. See also Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, 489, 412.

43
. Sander L. Gilman,
Smart Jews: The Construction of the Image of Superior Jewish Intelligence
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). On Jewish genius, see, in addition to the works by Eliyahu Stern cited in other chapters, Noah B. Strote, “The Birth of the ‘Psychological Jew’ in an Age of Ethnic Pride,”
New German Critique
39, no. 1 (2012): 199–224; John Efron,
Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 47–55, 71–73; Francis Galton,
Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences
(New York: Prometheus Books, [1869] 2006), 13. And yet, at the same time, Galton could write to Alphonse de Candole, observing, “It strikes me that the Jews are specialized for a parasitical existence upon other nations.” Cited in Jennifer Patai and Raphael Patai,
The Myth of the Jewish Race
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 146. See also Cesare Lombroso,
The Man of Genius
, rev. ed. (London: Walter Scott, 1917), 136; Joseph Jacobs,
Studies in Jewish Statistics
(London: D. Nutt, 1891), esp. Appendix B, “The Comparative Distribution of Jewish Ability.” On Jewish performance on intelligence tests and percentage of Nobel prizes, see the discussion in Patai and Patai,
Myth of the Jewish Race
, 146–149, 158. See also Lewis M. Terman, ed.,
Genetic Studies of Genius
, 5 vols. (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1922–1956), 1:56.

44
. Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, 489; Chamberlain,
Foundations
, 1:488, 1:269–270.

45
. The allusion to the “comet path of genius” is from the title of a work by the high-ranking Nazi official Philipp Bouhler,
Napoleon: Kometenbahn eines Genies
(Munich: Georg D. W. Callwey, 1942), which was one of Hitler’s “favorite bedtime reading books,” according to Robert S. Wistrich, “Philipp Bouhler,”
Who’s Who in Nazi Germany
(New York: Routledge, 2011), 11.

46
. Adolf Hitler, speech of July 10, 1938, in
Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945
, trans. Chris Wilcox and Mary Fran Gilbert, ed. Max Domarus, 4 vols. (Waucanda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1990–2004), 2:1126. Hitler on genius is cited in Michaud,
Cult of Art
, 37. See also Jon A. Mjöen, “Genius as a Biological Problem,”
Eugenics Review
17, no. 4 (1926): 242–257. The genius’s tendency to sterility was a point emphasized particularly (although not exclusively) by degeneration theorists. On Nazi brain research, see Hagner,
Geniale Gehirne
, 276–282; Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Hirnforschung und Krankenmord: Das Kaiser-Wilhelm-Intitut für Hirnforschung, 1937–1945” (2000), a report of the findings of the Max-Planck Institute Forschungsprogramm, “Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus,” available at
www.mpiwgberlin.mpg.de/KWG/Ergebnisse/Ergebnisse1.pdf
.

47
. Hitler on “dictatorship of genius” and Hans Schemm are cited in Michaud,
Cult of Art
, 38, 104. See also Robert Scholz, “Kunst als Grundlage politischer Schöpferkraft: Die Aquarelle des Führers,”
Völkischer Beobachter
, April 24, 1936; Joseph Goebbels, “Der Führer als Staatsmann,” in
Adolf Hitler, Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers
(Leipzig: Altona/Bahrenfeld, 1936), 44–55.

48
. Bonhoeffer is cited in Fritz Stern,
Dreams and Delusions: The Drama of German History
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 163. On the Nazis’ extensive use of Christian symbolism, imagery, and rhetoric, see Michaud,
Cult of Art
, 52–64, 75–84. For Goebbels, see his “Der Führer als Staatsmann,” 44. Nietzsche is cited in Mason,
Value of Creativity
, 217. See also Ryback,
Hitler’s Private Library
, 126–131; Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, 669. Goebbels is also cited in Schmidt,
Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens
, 2:207.

49
. Hermann Heller, “Genie und Funktionär in der Politik,”
Politische Wissenschaft
(Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Hochschule für Politik in Berlin und des Instituts für Auswärtige Politik in Hamburg), no. 10,
Probleme der Demokratie
, vol. 2 (Berlin: Rothschild, 1931), 57–68 (citations on 62, 65).

50
. Thomas Mann, “That Man Is My Brother,”
Esquire
, March 1939, 31, 132–133; Thomas Mann,
The Beloved Returns: Lotte in Weimar
, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), 82–83.

51
. The phrase “organized contempt of the mind” is that of Joachim Fest in his
The Face of the Third Reich
, trans. Michael Bullock (New York: Pantheon, 1970), 250.

52
. On the numerous “genius films” produced by the Nazis, see Linda Schulte-Sasse,
Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), esp. Part II, “Aestheticized Genius”; David Welch,
Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945
(London: I. B. Taurus, 2001). On representations of the German genius, see Michaud,
Cult of Art
, 74–181. For Hitler’s quotations, see
Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944
, ed. and intro. Hugh Trevor Roper (New York: Enigma Books, 2002), 250–251 (entry for night of January 25–26, 1942).

53
.
Time
, July 1, 1946. On Einstein as Prometheus, see Alan J. Friedman and Carol C. Donley,
Einstein as Myth and Muse
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 154–156.

54
.
New York Times
, November 10, 1919. Thomson, speaking on November 6, 1919, is cited in Walter Isaacson,
Einstein: His Life and Universe
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 261.

55
. Isaacson,
Einstein
, 261–283. English and Palestinian receptions are cited in Jürgen Neffe,
Einstein: A Biography
, trans. Shelley Frisch (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005), 310. The eyewitness report from Austria is cited in Hans C. Ohanian,
Einstein’s Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 266.

56
. Einstein on the public’s incomprehension is cited in Ohanian,
Einstein’s Mistakes
, 259. See also Einstein, “My First Impression of the U.S.A,”
Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant
, July 4, 1921, cited in Isaacson,
Einstein
, 273.

57
. On the way in which Newton was described in keeping with broader conceptions of genius, see Richard Yeo, “Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain, 1760–1860,”
Science in Context
2 (1988): 257–284. On Davy, see Jan Golinski,
Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), esp. chap. 6; Christopher Lawrence, “Humphry Davy and Romanticism,” in
Romanticism and the Sciences
, eds. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 213–227. On mathematicians in the nineteenth century, see Amir Alexander,
Duel at Dawn: Heroes, Martyrs, and the Rise of Modern Mathematics
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

58
. On both the eighteenth-century “genius of observation” and the nineteenth-century “scientific self,” see Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison,
Objectivity
(New York: Zone Books, 2007), esp. 229–233, 238.

59
. On Einstein’s “mystical, intuitive” approach to problem-solving, see Ohanian,
Einstein’s Mistakes
, 215, 332. Planck is cited in Fritz Stern,
Einstein’s German World
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 40. On Einstein and the spirit of the age, see David Cassidy,
Einstein and Our World
(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995). On Einstein’s “deep religious vein,” see Stern,
Einstein’s German World
, 163.

60
. Einstein on Hitler is cited in Neffe,
Einstein
, 287. Einstein on faith in authority is cited in Stern,
Einstein’s German World
, 91. On relativity as a “Jewish fraud,” see Alan D. Beyerchen,
Politics in the Physics Community in the Third Reich
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 93. The most prestigious leveler of this charge was the Nobel Laureate and “Aryan physicist” Phillip Lenard. Hitler is cited in Beyerchen,
Politics in the Physics Community
, 10.

61
. The Nazi condemnation of Einstein appears in Armin Hermann,
Einstein: Der Weltweise und sein Jahrhundert. Eine Biographie
(Munich: Piper, 1994), 395–412. Einstein is cited in Neffe,
Einstein
, 285.

62
. Hermann,
Einstein
, 407 (“Einstein war einer der grossen Gegen-spieler Hitlers”). The line about Einstein as a “maker of universes” is George Bernard Shaw’s, from a banquet speech in 1930, and is cited in Friedman and Donley,
Einstein as Myth and Muse
, 173. For the Hitler and Einstein poll, see Isaacson,
Einstein
, 445, 624n60. The results of the poll were reported in the
New York Times
, November 28, 1939. The line on heroes is attributed to Einstein in
The Ultimate Quotable Einstein
, ed. Alice Calaprice, foreword Freeman Dyson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 480.

63
. Fred Jerome,
The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret War Against the World’s Most Famous Scientist
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

CONCLUSION

1
. My account of Thomas Harvey draws heavily on Carolyn Abraham,
Possessing Genius: The True Account of the Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein’s Brain
(New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 2001).

2
. Haymaker’s comments to the press are cited in ibid., 88.

3
. Michael Paterniti,
Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain
(New York: Random House, 2000); M. Diamond, A. Scheibel, G. Murphy, and T. Harvey, “On the Brain of a Scientist: Albert Einstein,”
Experimental Neurology
88 (1985):198–204; Sandra F. Wittelson, Debra L. Kigar, and Thomas Harvey, “The Exceptional Brain of Albert Einstein,”
Lancet
353 (1999): 2149–2153.

4
. Frederic Golden, “Albert Einstein,”
Time
, December 31, 1999.

5
. Roland Barthes, “Einstein’s Brain,” in
Mythologies
, selected and trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 68–70.

6
. Hannah Arendt,
The Human Condition
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 210–211; Robert Musil,
The Man Without Qualities
, ed. Burton Pike, trans. Sophie Wilkins, 2 vols. (New York: Vintage International, 1995), 1:41. The lines are from the famous chap. 13, “A Racehorse of Genius Crystallizes the Recognition of Being a Man Without Qualities.”