Two important and unpleasant events occurred in Albert Einstein's life in 1920: That August an antirelativity rally was held in the large auditorium of the Berlin Philharmonic, and a few weeks later Einstein was drawn into a tense and highly publicized debate with Philipp Lenard on the merits of relativity at a meeting in Bad Nauheim, Germany. I review these events and discuss how they affected Einstein in light of new documentary evidence that has become available through the publication of Volume 10 of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein.
On August 27, 1920, the front page of the Berliner Tageblatt, a widely-read Berlin daily newspaper, carried a statement by Albert Einstein (1879-1955):
Under the pretentious name “Arbeitsgemeinschaft deutscher Naturforscher” [“Working Society of German Scientists”], a variegated society has assembled whose provisional purpose of existence seems to be to degrade, in the eyes of nonscientists, the theory of relativity, as well as me as its originator…. I have good reason to believe that motives other than the striving for truth are at the bottom of this business. (If I were a German nationalist with or without a swastika instead of a Jew with liberal international views, then…). 1 Just one year earlier, Einstein had been celebrated as the Newton of his age for his greatest scientific triumph, the confirmation of his prediction, based upon his general theory of relativity, that light would be bent by the gravitational field of the sun. This observation by the British solar eclipse expedition under Arthur S. Eddington (1882-1944) had caught the imagination of the public through extensive coverage by newspapers around the world, instantly propelling Einstein to international fame. 2 The huge public acclaim and adulation that was accorded Einstein–a democrat, pacifist and Jew–upset the reactionary circles of the Weimar Republic. It also vexed conservative academics, notably the Nobel Laureate Philipp Lenard (1862-1947), who may have felt that the theoretical physicist Einstein had captured too much of the limelight, while other, experimental physicists such as himself were not appreciated enough. 3 Figure 1: Paul Weyland (1888-1972). Source: Andreas Kleinert, Halle, private copy.
Einstein experienced the harsh consequences of his newly acquired world-wide fame in the summer of 1920: In August, in the large auditorium of the Berlin Philharmonic (which had a capacity of over 1600 people), a series of lectures was staged that denounced him as a fraud and a propagandist, and in September, at a meeting of the Society of German Scientists and Physicians (Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte) in Bad Nauheim, Germany, he became embroiled in an intense debate with Lenard on the merits of his theory of relativity. 4 I will review these events, emphasizing Einstein’s reactions and emotions as revealed in his correspondence of the period through the publication of Volume 10 of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. 5 The Anti-Einstein Rally at the Berlin Philharmonic The anti-Einstein campaign kicked off on August 6, 1920, with an inflammatory article in the Tägliche Rundschau, a Berlin daily newspaper: “Herr Albertus Magnus has been resurrected”; 6 he has stolen the work of others and has mathematized physics to such an extent that fellow physicists have been left clueless. Furthermore, the article continued, Einstein had undertaken a propaganda campaign by which he had cast a spell both over the public and over academic circles–but in reality relativity was nothing but fraud and fantasy. The author of the piece was Paul Weyland (1888-1972, figure 1), an obscure right-wing publicist and talented rabble-rouser-one of the shadier products of postwar Berlin. 7 Most of Weyland’s accusations were not new. His charges of plagiarism and propaganda had been leveled earlier by Ernst Gehrcke (1878-1960), a prominent spectroscopist at the prestigious Imperial Physical-Technical Institute (Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt) in Berlin-Charlottenburg. 8 Weyland also drew heavily on Lenard’s more substantive objections to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which Lenard had published in 1918. 9 Einstein had responded immediately to Lenard’s criticisms, 10 but Weyland contended that they had remained undisputed.
Weyland’s shrill tone in his newspaper article and the highly public character of his accusations were indeed new, however. Also new was their thinly concealed anti-Semitic character: Weyland claimed that Einstein had “a particular press, a particular community [Gemeinde]” that kept feeding pro-Einstein stories to the public. enough: The widely circulating, liberal Berliner Tageblatt was published by Rudolph Mosse (1843-1932), a prominent Jew, and was known in anti-Semitic circles as the Judenblatt–the Jew paper. 12 In 1919 it had carried an article announcing the results of the British solar eclipse expedition that rose to laudatory hyperbole, not shying away from declaring that “a highest truth, beyond Galileo and Newton, beyond Kant” had been unveiled by “an oracular saying from the depth of the skies.” 13 Its author, Alexander Moszkowski (1851-1934), was a close acquaintance of Einstein’s–and also Jewish. 14 Further, Einstein himself had published a short note on the results of the British eclipse expedition in Die Naturwissenschaften, 15 a highly visible journal whose editor-in-chief was Arnold Berliner (1862-1942)–another Jew. 16 Finally, on December 14, 1919, the front page of the Berliner Illustrir
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