DR. Otto Juliusburger, a friend of Einstein, was by profession a psychiatrist with a practice in Berlin. He was also something of an expert on Spinoza and Schopenhauer. As a Jew he was aware of increasing danger. In 1937 he was able to send his two children, one at a time, to the United States, and almost at the last moment before the advent of the infamous gas chambers, the parents succeeded in following their children. Below are excerpts, on various topics, from letters from Einstein to Juliusburger, and one from a letter from Juliusburger to Einstein.
On 28 September 1937 Einstein wrote from Princeton to Juliusburger, who was still in Berlin, telling of his pleasure that the son had already arrived in the United States and saying that he had heard encouraging words as to the possible admission of the daughter. After speaking of other matters, he ended by talking about his current research endeavors, which had to do with his long search for a unified field theory that would link gravitation and electromagnetism. Here are the closing paragraphs of the letter:
I still struggle with the same problems as ten years ago. I succeed in small matters but the real goal remains unattainable, even though it sometimes seems palpably close. It is hard and yet rewarding: hard because the goal is beyond my powers, but rewarding because it makes one immune to the distractions of everyday life.
I can no longer accommodate myself to the people here and their way of life. I was already too old to do so when I came over, and to tell the truth it was no different in Berlin, and before that in Switzerland. One is born a loner, as you will understand, being one yourself.
Here is a letter that Einstein wrote to Juliusburger on 2 August 1941. The Juliusburgers were now safely in the United States:
I count myself fortunate to be able to greet you here after all these years. I had imposed silence on myself because any note from me to a person in Barbaria would have exposed him to danger. Your beloved Schopenhauer once said that people in their misery are unable to achieve tragedy but are condemned to remain stuck in tragi-comedy. How true it is, and how often I have felt this impression. Yesterday idolized, today hated and spit upon, tomorrow forgotten, and the day after tomorrow promoted to Sainthood. The only salvation is a sense of humor, and we will keep that as long as we still draw breath.
On 30 September 1942 Einstein wrote to Juliusburger as follows, the greetings mentioned in the first paragraph probably being for the Jewish New Year:
I was greatly moved by your kind words and I send you belated greetings. I know that I do not in the least deserve so much praise, but I enjoyed the cordial feelings that glow from your words.
I believe that we can now at last hope to see the day when the unspeakable wrong may be somewhat expiated. But all the misery, all the desperation, all the senseless annihilations of human lives—nothing can make up for that. And yet we may hope that now even the dullest creature can be made to realize that, in the long run, lies and tyranny cannot triumph.
One sees in you the unshakable fortitude that the search for truth can bestow. I, too, owe to such an attitude my only true satisfactions. One feels that in the timeless community of people of this sort one finds a sort of refuge that fends off desperation and feelings of hopeless isolation.
In a letter to Einstein in Princeton written in September 1942, Juliusburger spoke of the funeral services, some fifteen years earlier, for Einstein’s mother-in-law, and recalled that as they were leaving the grave Einstein had said to him:
The closing words of the beautiful prayer, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” signify the abundance of life that always gives and always takes back—in order to give again.
On 11 April 1946 Einstein wrote to Juliusburger as follows:
You take a definite stand about Hitler’s responsibility. I myself have never really believed in the subtler distinctions that lawyers foist upon physicians. Objectively, there is, after all, no free will. I think that we have to safeguard ourselves against people who are a menace to others, quite apart from what may have motivated their deeds. What need is there for a criterion of responsibility? I believe that the horrifying deterioration in the ethical conduct of people today stems primarily from the mechanization and dehumanization of our lives—a disastrous byproduct of the development of the scientific and technical mentality. Nostra culpa! I don’t see any way to tackle this disastrous short-coming. Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits.
And on 29 September 1947 Einstein wrote to Juliusburger as follows:
I hear from several friends that these days you are celebrating—I can hardly believe it possible!—your eightieth birthday. People like you and me, though mortal, of course, like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live. What I mean is that we never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we are born. This interposes a distance between us and all that is unsatisfactory in the human sphere—and this is no small matter. When, in the mornings, I become nauseated by the news that the New York Times sets before us, I always reflect that it is anyway better than the Hitlerism that we only barely managed to finish off.
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The letter of 29 September 1947 that Einstein wrote to Juliusburger is reminiscent of a much earlier item. Professor Federigo Enriques had arranged a scientific congress in Bologna that Einstein attended, and there he met the professor’s daughter, Adriana. She may have asked him for an autographed note. Whether she did or not, he wrote her the following signed handwritten message in October of 1921:
Study and in general the pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
To Adrianna Enriques, a memento of our acquaintanceship of October 1921.
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Einstein’s letter of 11 April 1946 to Juliusburger ties in with the second of the following two letters that deal with the death penalty.
In a letter to a publisher in Berlin that Einstein wrote on 3 November 1927 with regard to an earlier statement on the subject, he said:
I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable.
Reasons:
(1) Irreparability in the event of an error of justice,
(2) Detrimental moral influence of the execution procedure on those who, whether directly or indirectly, have to do with the procedure.
Einstein returned to the subject in a letter dated 4 November 1931 in answer to a letter from a troubled young man in Prague. Here is an excerpt:
You ask me what I think about war and the death penalty. The latter question is simpler. I am not for punishment at all, but only for measures that serve society and its protection. In principle I would not be opposed to killing individuals who are worthless or dangerous in that sense. I am against it only because I do not trust people, i.e. the courts. What I value in life is quality rather than quantity, just as in Nature the overall principles represent a higher reality than does the single object.
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On 1 February 1954 a correspondent cited Einstein’s urgings that people be prepared to go to prison if necessary in order to preserve free speech and to oppose war. The correspondent went on to say that his wife, seeing what Einstein had written, pointed out that he had not wasted any time in leaving Germany when the Nazis came to power instead of staying on to speak out and risk being jailed. She contrasted this with the behavior of Socrates, who refused to leave his country but stayed to “fight it out.” She also remarked that it was easier for well-known people to speak out than it was for lesser men.
On 6 February 1954 Einstein replied in English as follows (For some reason he omitted in the English version a remark in the German draft, a translation of which is added here enclosed in square brackets.):
Thank you for your letter of February 1st. I think what your wife has said is pretty well to the point. It is true that a man who enjoys some popularity is in a less precarious situation than someone unknown to the public. But what better use could a person make of his “name” than to speak out publicly from time to time if he believes it necessary?
The comparison with Sokrates is not quite to the point. For Sokrates Athens meant the World. I, however, never identified myself with any particular country, least of all with the German state with which my only connection was my position as member of the Prussion Academy of Sciences [and the language, which I learned as a child].
Although I am a convinced democrat I know well that the human community would stagnate and even degenerate without a minority of socially conscious and upright men and women willing to make sacrifices for their convictions. Under present circumstances this holds true to a higher degree than in normal times. You will understand this without explanation.
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Einstein held Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis in the highest esteem. Here is part of a brief statement that he sent from Caputh on 19 October 1931 to the Boston journal The Jewish Advocate, which was celebrating Brandeis’s seventy-fifth birthday:
True human progress is based less on the inventive mind than on the conscience of men such as Brandeis.
On 10 November 1936 Einstein, in Princeton, sent him directly the following letter (the handwritten original is among the Brandeis papers at the Law School of the University of Louisville):
With deepest veneration and fellow feeling, I clasp your hand on the occasion of your eightieth birthday. I know of no other person who combines such profound intellectual gifts with such self-renunciation while finding the whole meaning of his life in quiet service to the community. We—all of us—thank you not only for what you have accomplished and brought about, but also because we feel happy that such a man should exist at all in this time of ours, which is so lacking in genuine personalities.
With reverent greetings. …
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Walter White, who was secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was white not only in name but also in skin color. Had he wished to pass as a white he could certainly have done so, and thereby avoided all the troubles and persecutions that then even more than now were the lot of the Negro in our society. But he chose instead to fight for the rights of his black brethren, knowing full well what the price would be in personal suffering. In 1947 he wrote a moving article entitled “Why I remain a Negro” that was published in The Saturday Review of Literature in the issue of 11 October. It prompted the following comment from Einstein to the editors. Here is the official translation:
On reading the White article one is struck with the deep meaning of the saying: There is only one road to true human greatness—the road through suffering. If the suffering springs from the blindness and dullness of a tradition-bound society, it usually degrades the weak to a state of blind hate, but exalts the strong to a moral superiority and magnanimity which would otherwise be almost beyond the reach of man.
I believe that every sensitive reader will, as I did myself, put down Walter White’s article with a feeling of true thankfulness. He has allowed us to accompany him on the painful road to human greatness by giving us a simple biographical story which is irresistible in its convincing power.
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The following letter was sent in English by Einstein on 4 November 1942 to a correspondent in Brazil. It is self-explanatory:
Your proposition seems to me reasonable in principle: organization of the economy through a small number of people who have proved themselves as productive and as intensely and unselfishly interested in the improvement of the prevailing conditions. I do not believe, however, in your method of selection by “tests.” This is a typical engineer-idea which does not correspond with your own statement that “man is not a machine.”
Furthermore, I want you to consider one thing: It is not enough to find the ten best suited persons—one must also get the nations to submit to their decisions and decrees. How this should be achieved I have no idea. This problem is far more difficult than the choice of suitable personalities. Even rather mediocre people would be able to achieve the goal in a passable way compared with the conditions as they exist at present and have existed up to now. Hitherto the leaders came to their power mainly not by their ability to think and to make decisions but by their faculty to impress, to persuade and to use the shortcomings of their fellow-beings.
The old problem: what should be done to give the power into the hands of capable and well-meaning persons has so far resisted all efforts. Unfortunately as far as I can see you too have not found a way to solve it.
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On 6 December 1917, during World War I, Einstein wrote the following from Berlin to Heinrich Zangger in Zurich. The words have not become dated:
How is it at all possible that this culture-loving era could be so monstrously amoral? More and more I come to value charity and love of one’s fellow being above everything else. … All our lauded technological progress—our very civilization—is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.
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In 1934 Einstein wrote an article on the subject of Tolerance for a magazine in America. When the editors wanted to make changes that were not to his liking, he withdrew the article and it was not published. Here are excerpts from it:
As I now ask myself what tolerance really is, there comes to mind the amusing definition that the humorous Wilhelm Busch gave of “abstinence”:
Abstinence is the pleasure we net
From various things we do not get.
I could say analogously that tolerance is the affable appreciation of qualities, views, and actions of other individuals which are foreign to one’s own habits, beliefs, and tastes. Thus being tolerant does not mean being indifferent towards the actions and feelings of others. Understanding and empathy must also be present. …
Whether it be a work of art or a significant scientific achievement, that which is great and noble comes from the solitary personality. European culture made its most important break away from stifling stagnation when the Renaissance offered the individual the possibility of unfettered development.
The most important kind of tolerance, therefore, is tolerance of the individual by society and the state. The state is certainly necessary, in order to give the individual the security he needs for his development. But when the state becomes the main thing and the individual becomes its weak-willed tool, then all finer values are lost. Just as the rock must first crumble for trees to grow on it, and just as the soil must first be loosened for its fruitfulness to develop, so too can valuable achievement sprout from human society only when it is sufficiently loosened so as to make possible to the individual the free development of his abilities.
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Sometimes Einstein’s own tolerance was sorely strained. In the following we see him seeking relief in biting satire.
It is extraordinary that something so highly technical and abstruse as Einstein’s theory of relativity should become the target of political attacks. The attacks were often virulent. In Germany, the Nazis condemned the theory as being Jewish and Communistic, and said that it poisoned the well-springs of German science. And, of course, they forbade scientists to teach it. Only a few brave souls dared to defy the order, and even they resorted to stratagems such as presenting the ideas without mentioning Einstein or using the word “relativity.”
As for the Soviet Union, that country was not at all as sure as the Nazis were that Einstein’s theory was Communistic. Indeed, the official Russian attitude toward the theory was complicated by debate as to whether it was in accord with Dialectical Materialism, the philosophical basis of Marxism. As a result, it was not always safe for a Soviet scientist to espouse the theory. The situation is better now, but even as late as April 1952 a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences charged that Einstein had dragged physics into “the swamp of idealism,” that Einstein was guilty of “subjectivism,” and that, in contrast, Dialectical Materialism was based on “the objectivity of material nature.” Moreover, the Academician publicly criticized by name two Russian scientists whom he accused of favoring the theory. The attack was reported widely by the Associated Press, and a longtime friend in London sent Einstein an account of it that had appeared in Berlin.
The following unpublished satirical comment was found among Einstein’s papers. It is believed to belong to the early 1950’s and was almost certainly inspired by the Soviet attitude in general and by the above incident in particular.
When Almighty God was laying down His eternal laws of Nature, He became troubled by the following doubt, which He was unable to overcome even afterwards: How awkward a situation would result if, later on, the High Authorities of Dialectical Materialism were to declare some, or even all of His laws unlawful.
Later, when He went on to create the Prophets and Wise Men of Dialectical Materialism, a somewhat analogous doubt sneaked into His soul. He quickly regained His composure, however, when He realized that He could be confident that those Prophets and Wise Men would never come to the conclusion that the tenets of Dialectical Materialism could be in contradiction with Reason and Truth.
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A correspondent in England wrote to Einstein in Germany asking him a question that had originally been posed by Edison. It asked: If, on your death bed, you looked back on your life, by what facts would you determine whether it was a success or failure? On 12 November 1930, Einstein replied as follows:
Neither on my death bed nor before will I ask myself such a question. Nature is not an engineer or contractor, and I myself am a part of Nature.
