Einstein (5 page)

Einstein’s mother, born Pauline Koch, was of a more serious and artistic nature, with a fine sense of humor. But the rather meager material conditions under which she lived led her to be satisfied with a tolerably secure existence for herself and her children. She found much happiness and consolation in her music, and when engineers from the factory dropped in for an evening visit, they accompanied her on the piano. Above all she loved German classical music, especially Beethoven’s piano sonatas.

The uncle who lived with the family was a man whose interest in the more refined aspects of intellectual life was greater than that of the father. He was a trained engineer, and it was from him that Albert received his first impulsions in mathematics.

There can be no doubt that this origin in a provincial, semi-rural milieu was of the greatest significance for Albert Einstein’s entire psychological development. He has never become a completely urban person. He was always somewhat afraid of Berlin and later also of New York. Connected with this attitude is a certain trait that characterizes his artistic taste and that certainly appeared old-fashioned to modern Berliners. Einstein’s preference for the German classics in literature as well as in music was expressed at a time when the intellectual circles of Berlin declared that such tastes had long since been superseded. His
predilection for Schiller is a particularly characteristic feature, by which one recognizes a member of a culture not that of twentieth-century Berlin.

On the whole, little Albert was no child prodigy. Indeed, it was a very long time before he learned to speak, and his parents began to be afraid that he was abnormal. Finally the child did begin to speak, but he was always taciturn and never inclined to enter into the games that nursemaids play with children in order to keep both the children and themselves in good humor. A governess entrusted with Albert’s childhood training even dubbed him
Pater Langweil
(Father Bore). He did not like any strenuous physical exertions such as running and jumping, perhaps for the reason that he considered himself too weak for such activities. From the very beginning he was inclined to separate himself from children of his own age and to engage in daydreaming and meditative musing.

He disliked particularly playing at being a soldier, which the children of most countries engage in with the greatest delight, and which especially in the Germany of Bismarck and Moltke was imbued with an almost mythical splendor. When the soldiers marched through the streets of Munich accompanied by the roll of drums and the shrill of fifes, a combination, characteristic of the German army, that gives the music an exciting, compelling rhythm and a wild tonal quality, and when the pavements and the windowpanes rattled from the pawing of the horses’ hoofs, the children enthusiastically joined the parade and tried to keep in step with the soldiers. But when little Albert, accompanied by his parents, passed such a parade, he began to cry. In Munich parents would often tell their children: “Some day, when you grow big, you, too, can march in the parade,” and most boys were spurred to greater and more ambitious efforts by this prospect. Albert, however, said to his parents: “When I grow up I don’t want to be one of those poor people.” When the majority saw the rhythm of a happy movement, he observed the coercion imposed upon the soldiers; he saw the parade as a movement of people compelled to be machines.

At this time Einstein apparently already revealed one of his most characteristic traits: his intractable hatred of any form of coercion arbitrarily imposed by one group of people on another. He detested the idea of the oppressor preventing the oppressed from following their inclinations and developing their natural talents, and turning them into automatons. On the other hand Albert was also conscious of the natural laws of the universe; he
felt that there are great eternal laws of nature. As a child he was able to understand them only in the form of traditional religion, and felt attracted toward it and its ritual precepts, which symbolized a feeling for the laws of the universe. He was offended by the fact that his father always scoffed at religion, and he regarded this derision as resulting from a type of thought that is in a certain sense disharmonious and refuses to submit to the eternal laws of nature. This dual attitude — hatred for the arbitrary laws of man and devotion to the laws of nature — has accompanied Einstein throughout his life and explains many of his actions that have been considered peculiar and inconsistent.

At that time the German elementary schools were conducted on a denominational basis, the clergy of each religious group controlling its schools. Since Munich was for the most part Catholic, most of the schools were naturally of that denomination. Nominally Einstein’s parents probably adhered to the Jewish religion, but they were not sufficiently interested in a Jewish education to send their children to a Jewish school since there was none near their home and it would have been expensive. His parents may even have felt that by sending their boy to a Catholic school he would come into more intimate contact with non-Jewish children. At any rate, Albert attended the Catholic elementary school, where he was the only Jew in his class.

Young Albert experienced no unpleasantness because of this situation. There was only a slight feeling of strangeness resulting naturally from the different religious traditions, and this factor was definitely of secondary significance and did not increase to any marked degree his difficulty in forming intimate friendships with his fellow pupils. The difficulty was due fundamentally to his character.

Albert received regular instruction in the Catholic religion and he derived a great deal of pleasure from it. He learned this subject so well that he was able to help his Catholic classmates when they could not answer the teacher’s questions immediately. Einstein has no recollection of any objection having arisen to the participation of a Jewish pupil in Catholic religious instruction. On one occasion the teacher attempted a somewhat strange kind of object lesson by bringing a large nail to the class and telling the pupils: “The nails with which Christ was nailed to the cross looked like this.” But he did not add, as sometimes happens, that the Crucifixion was the work of the Jews. Nor did the idea enter the minds of the students that because of this they must change their relations with their classmate Albert. Nevertheless Einstein
found this kind of teaching rather uncongenial, but only because it recalled the brutal act connected with it and because he sensed correctly that the vivid portrayal of brutality does not usually intensify any sentiments of antagonism to it but rather awakens latent sadistic tendencies.

It was very characteristic of young Einstein’s religious feeling that he saw no noticeable difference between what he learned of the Catholic religion at school and the rather vaguely remembered remnants of the Jewish tradition with which he was familiar at home. These elements merged in him into a sense of the existence of lawfulness in the universe and in the representation of this harmony by means of different kinds of symbols, which he judged rather on the basis of their æsthetic value than as symbols of the “truth.”

On the whole, however, Einstein felt that school was not very different from his conception of barracks — that is, a place where one was subject to the power of an organization that exercised a mechanical pressure on the individual, leaving no area open within which he might carry on some activity suited to his nature. The students were required to learn mechanically the material presented to them, and the main emphasis was placed on the inculcation of obedience and discipline. The pupils were required to stand at attention when addressed by the teacher and were not supposed to speak unless asked a question. Independent questions addressed by students to the teacher and informal conversations between them were rare.

Even when Albert was nine years old and in the highest grade of the elementary school, he still lacked fluency of speech, and everything he said was expressed only after thorough consideration and reflection. Because of his conscientiousness in not making any false statements or telling lies he was called
Biedermeier
(Honest John) by his classmates. He was regarded as an amiable dreamer. As yet no evidence of any special talent could be discovered, and his mother remarked occasionally: “Maybe he will become a great professor some day.” But perhaps she meant only that he might develop into some sort of eccentric.

At the age of ten, young Einstein left the elementary school and entered the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. In Germany
the period between the ages of ten and eighteen, the years that are of decisive importance in the intellectual development of adolescents, are spent in the gymnasium. The aim of these institutions was to give the young people a general education based upon the acquisition of ancient Greek and Roman culture, and for this purpose most of the time was devoted to learning Latin and Greek grammar. Because of the complications of these subjects, and since the students were required to learn all the rules pedantically, little time was left to acquire a real understanding of the culture of antiquity. Furthermore, it would have been a much more difficult task for the majority of the teachers. It was claimed that the process of learning the grammar of one or two complicated languages is an indispensable training for the mind and a disciplining of the intellect hardly attainable otherwise. For Einstein, however, aspiring to learn the laws of the universe, this mechanical learning of languages was particularly irksome, and this kind of education seemed very much akin to the methods of the Prussian army, where a mechanical discipline was achieved by repeated execution of meaningless orders.

Later, when speaking about his impressions of school, Einstein frequently said: “The teachers in the elementary school appeared to me like sergeants, and the gymnasium teachers like lieutenants.” The sergeants in the German army of Wilhelm II were notorious for their coarse and often brutal behavior toward the common soldiers, and it was well known that, with the troops completely at their mercy, sadistic instincts developed in them. The lieutenants, on the other hand, being members of the upper class, did not come into direct contact with the men, but they exerted their desire for power in an indirect manner. Thus when Einstein compared his teachers to sergeants and lieutenants, he regarded their tasks to be the inculcation of a certain body of knowledge and the enforcing of mechanical order upon the students. The pupils did not view the teachers as older, more experienced friends who could be of assistance to them in dealing with various problems of life, but rather as superiors whom they feared and tried to predispose favorably to themselves by behaving as submissively as possible.

There was one teacher in the gymnasium, named Ruess, who really tried to introduce the students to the spirit of ancient culture. He also showed them the influence of these ancient ideas in the classical German poets and in modern German culture. Einstein, with his strong feeling for everything artistic and for all ideas that brought him closer to the hidden harmony of the
world, could hardly have enough of this teacher. He aroused in him a strong interest in the German classical writers, Schiller and Goethe, as well as in Shakspere. The periods devoted to the reading and discussion of
Hermann und Dorothea
, Goethe’s half-romantic, half-sentimental love story written in a period of the greatest political unrest, remained deeply engraved in Einstein’s memory. In the gymnasium the students who had not completed their assignments were punished by being made to stay after school under the supervision of one of the teachers. In view of the tedious and boring character of the ordinary instruction, these extra periods were regarded as a real torture. But when Ruess conducted the extra period, Einstein was happy to be punished.

The fact that in the midst of all the mechanical drilling he was sometimes able to spend an hour in an artistic atmosphere made a great impression on him. The recollection of this class remained very vivid in his mind, but he never stopped to consider what sort of impression he had made on the teacher. Many years later, when he was already a young professor at Zurich, Einstein passed through Munich and, overcome by his memories of the only man who had really been a teacher to him, decided to pay him a visit. It seemed obvious to him that the teacher would be happy to learn that one of his students had become a professor. But when Einstein arrived at Ruess’s quarters dressed in the careless manner that was characteristic of him then as well as later, Ruess had no recollection of any student named Einstein and could not comprehend what the poorly dressed young man wanted of him. The teacher could only imagine that by claiming to be one of his former pupils the young man thought he could borrow money from him. Apparently it never entered Ruess’s mind that a student could pay him a visit to express a feeling of gratitude for his teaching. It is possible that his teaching had not been so good as it appeared in Einstein’s memory and perhaps he had only imagined it. But in any case the visit was very embarrassing for Einstein and he departed as quickly as possible.

When Einstein was five years old his father showed him a pocket compass. The mysterious property of the iron needle that always pointed in the same direction no matter how
the compass case was turned made a very great impression on the young child. Although there was nothing visible to make the needle move, he concluded that something that attracts and turns bodies in a particular direction must exist in space that is considered empty. This was one of the impressions which later led Einstein to reflect on the mysterious properties of empty space.

As he grew up, his interest in natural science was further aroused by the reading of popular scientific books. A Russian Jewish student who ate at Einstein’s home on Thursdays called his attention to Aaron Bernstein’s
Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbücher
(
Popular Books on Natural Science
), which were widely read by laymen interested in science about that time. These books discussed animals, plants, their mutual interdependence, and the hypotheses concerning their origin; they dealt with stars, meteors, volcanoes, earthquakes, climate, and many other topics, never leaving out of sight the greater interrelation of nature. Soon Einstein was also an enthusiastic reader of such books as Büchner’s
Kraft und Stoff
(
Force and Matter
), which attempted to gather together the scientific knowledge of the time and to organize it into a sort of complete philosophical conception of the universe. The advocates of this view, frequently called “materialism” although it should rather be called “naturalism,” wanted to understand and explain all celestial and terrestrial occurrences by analogy with the natural sciences and were particularly opposed to any religious conception of the nature of the universe.