The Man Who Stalked Einstein Read online

  Lenard espoused that Jews were inherently very different from Aryan Germans in how they thought about science. Science, indeed any endeavor, was subject to unique styles of thinking that were characteristic of different races. In a series of writings formalizing his views with respect to the natural sciences, he touted the superiority of experimentally based German physics and decried theoretical physics as an intentionally fraudulent construct informed by the unwholesome “Jewish spirit.” “The Jew conspicuously lacks any understanding of truth beyond a merely superficial agreement with reality, which is independent of human thought,” he wrote in the introduction to Deutsche Physik, wherein he spelled out the principals that would guide Nazi scientific thought for a generation. “This is in contrast to the Aryan scientist’s drive, which is as obstinate as it is serious in its quest for truth.”

  Lenard doubtlessly believed in the ethos of Aryan supremacy, but to some extent, his rhetoric was calculated to advance his career. As Einstein wrote in 1935, when it came to Hitler’s sycophants, “[Hitler’s] disjointed personality makes it impossible to know to what degree he might actually have believed in the nonsense which he kept on dispensing [but] those, however, who rallied around him or who came to the surface through the Nazi wave were, for the most part, hardened cynics fully aware of the falsehood of their unscrupulous methods.”

  Lenard makes a curious assertion at the outset of his autobiography: “My times are not here. . . . The people, as they are around today, probably would not choose to reinvent someone like me.” In one sense, this is true. Lenard was a typical outsider throughout his life. He wrote in his Faelschungs-Buch, a handwritten account of ideas he believed had been stolen from him,

  I was reminded often by my sensation of not having acquired any friend by my work, which was completely unselfish and which was in fact of benefit to many, of which they all have made use with joy. Some, as the sordid [U.S. physicist Robert] Millikan, have acted systematically as robber-knights with Jewish support. Some even have been Jews. . . . I could not possibly be interested in their frankly impossible friendship (which I did not know at the time, but began to sense gradually).

  However, in other ways, Philipp Lenard was a man curiously well designed to succeed in his place and time. He was a canny opportunist who capitalized on a political gamble he’d placed on the National Socialists and won. He joined the party well before there was a clear political advantage and was a VIP participant at their 1927 annual convention. He was a true believer who pledged himself to the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler well before the times demanded it. His demonization of Einstein established his bona fides as a man who Hitler could count on to promote his agenda. Lenard’s political star rose in concert with Nazi power.

  Chapter 3

  Familiarity Breeds Contempt

  Before all the tumult, Einstein and Lenard’s relationship had a respectful, even friendly, beginning. In fact, Einstein’s first impression of Philipp Lenard was a very positive one. In 1896, at age seventeen, Einstein passed the entry examination for Zurich Polytechnic and began matriculating in the school’s four-year course of study for a diploma in teaching math and physics. It was a small program with only six students. One of them was Mileva Marić. Four years Einstein’s senior, she was the only woman in the class, among the first to study mathematics and science in Central Europe. Despite the fact that Mileva walked with a pronounced limp and was often in pain, a natural attraction developed between the two students, first as study partners, then as lovers.

  During the fall and winter of 1897–1898, perhaps because of her parents’ concern that their Serbian daughter was growing too close to the Jewish Einstein, Mileva spent a semester studying physics at the University of Heidelberg. A letter she wrote to Einstein described a lecture she had recently attended:

  It really was too enjoyable in the lecture of Prof. Lenard, yesterday; now he speaks about the kinetic theory of gases. It seems that the molecules of oxygen move with a speed of 400 m/sec., and after calculating and calculating, the good professor set up equations, differentiated, integrated, substituted and finally showed that the molecules in fact actually do move with this speed but that they only travel the distance of 1/100th of a hair’s breadth.

  It was months before Einstein responded. When he finally wrote, he used the formal German “Sie” in addressing Mileva, rather than the familiar “du” reserved for close friends. He implores Mileva to return, citing a concern for her academic progress rather than any personal interest:

  The desire to write you has finally conquered the guilty conscience I’ve had about not responding to your letter for such a long time and which has allowed me to avoid your critical eye. But now, even though you are understandably angry with me, you must at least give me credit for not adding to my offense by hiding behind feeble excuses, and for asking you simply and directly for forgiveness and—for an answer as soon as possible.

  At the time of Mileva’s study abroad, Lenard was serving a temporary associate professorship in Heidelberg, one of a number of itinerant appointments he held while seeking permanent employment. It was during that year at Heidelberg that Lenard decided he had sufficiently advanced in his career and had acquired the financial and social standing he believed necessary for him to take a wife. With all the romance of a banking transaction, he noted in his autobiography that “[I] quickly set up my laboratory and got my experiments going . . . There was an abundance of daughters of professors who were waiting to be married, but it soon became clear how I had to choose.” He chose Katharina Schlehner, known as Katty, the stepdaughter of the Egyptologist August Elsenlohr. The marriage would bear two children, Ruth in 1898 and Werner in 1900.

  Lenard finally achieved a permanent appointment in 1896 as professor of physics at the University of Kiel, and he became director of its Institute of Physics. By that time, he already had a number of scientific accomplishments to his credit, including his work with cathode ray tubes that six years later would earn him a Nobel Prize. Despite his long academic pilgrimage, Lenard’s success was assured. In 1907, his achievements would lead him back to Heidelberg as a professor and director of the Institute of Physics.

  There was nothing during his initial one-year appointment at Heidelberg, nor upon his return, that would signal his later animosity toward Einstein. Similarly, he did not betray any overt anti-Semitism. In fact, in his autobiography, Lenard credits the Jewish mathematician Leo Koenigsberger with helping him to cut through the red tape that at first hindered his permanent Heidelberg appointment. “This pure-blooded Jew has always demonstrated more wit and intelligence than most of the Aryan members of the faculty,” he wrote, “and since he was smart enough not to want to seem to be of too Jewish a mind, he often was a blessing for me in his cause against the narrow-mindedness and bigotry of the faculty.”

  At the same time that Lenard was making headway in academia, the much younger Einstein was a complete unknown. He graduated with his teaching diploma in 1900, but Mileva failed her first attempt to pass her final examinations. She failed again in 1901 with a poor score in math. By then, Mileva was three months’ pregnant with Einstein’s child. She returned to her parents’ home in Novi Sad to deliver a girl she named Lieserl. The birth of the child was kept a secret and only became known when a letter written by Einstein at the time was discovered long after his and Mileva’s deaths. What became of Lieserl? Had she died as an infant, or was she put up for adoption? Mileva returned to Zurich without her in 1903. She and Einstein married soon after, but despite their having two subsequent children together—Hans Albert in 1904 and Eduard in 1910—the episode with Lieserl, whatever became of her, sowed a seed of permanent discord in their relationship.

  In addition to Einstein’s marital difficulties, an even more significant problem confronted him. He needed a job to support himself and his wife. Two years following his graduation, the father of a friend helped him get hired into a civil service position after he had unsuccessfully searched for a teaching job. H
e was appointed a third-class technical expert in the Office for Intellectual Property in Bern, a patent officer charged with judging the originality of electrical and magnetic devices. The position became permanent about the time of his wedding.

  Einstein might well have spent a fulfilling life as a patent officer. He enjoyed what he did and was paid nearly twice the amount he could have expected to earn as a newly appointed assistant professor. Moreover, the work was not particularly challenging, so he had time to work on his own thoughts.

  And, as it turned out, he was having many thoughts. Indeed, his brain was fairly bursting at the seams waiting for some outlet of expression. While waiting for the patent office job to come through, Einstein organized a small philosophical club he grandiosely named the Olympic Academy. As an undergraduate, he had become bored with the prosaic teaching curriculum and branched off with Mileva into reading science and philosophy. At this time, he returned to those interests along with two like-minded Polytechnic students, Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habicht. The Olympic Academy met regularly, often in Einstein’s apartment, to drink schnapps and read Plato, John Stuart Mill, David Hume, and others.

  Einstein also scoured physics journals to keep au courant and familiarize himself with emerging theoretical concepts in science. Among the publications Einstein read in 1902 and 1903 were Philipp Lenard’s investigations of the photoelectric effect. Einstein referenced Lenard when, in 1905, he broached the same subject from the perspective of Max Planck’s quantum hypothesis. Einstein derived new insights into the nature of energy emitted when light strikes a metal object. Most gratifying to Lenard, Einstein’s publication referenced Lenard’s work with the respect the elder man felt befitted his station as an accomplished scientist. Having read the part of Einstein’s article that described his experiments as “groundbreaking,” Lenard was sufficiently flattered as to have a very positive impression of Einstein.

  Suddenly, in 1905, without having given any earlier sign of what he had been doing, Einstein revealed in a letter to his fellow Olympic Academy member, Conrad Habicht, that he had been working on some novel ideas. On first glance, Einstein’s reason for writing the letter was to express interest in reading Habicht’s doctoral dissertation, but on closer inspection, it is clear that was something of a ruse. The letter is much more about the overwhelming excitement he felt concerning his own frenzy of creativity than his curiosity over what had occupied Habicht. Einstein adopts a self-congratulatory tone in writing this letter to his friend:

  Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble. So, what are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul? Why have you still not sent me your dissertation? Don’t you know that I am one of the 1.5 fellows who would read it with interest and pleasure, you wretched man? I promise you four papers in return. The first deals with radiation and the energy properties of light and is very revolutionary, as you will see if you send me your work first. The second paper is a determination of the true sizes of atoms. The third proves that bodies on the order of magnitude 1/1000 mm, suspended in liquids, must already perform an observable random motion that is produced by thermal motion. The fourth paper is only a rough draft at this point, and is an electrodynamics of moving bodies which employs a modification of the theory of space and time.

  At about the same time as Einstein wrote his letter to Habicht, Lenard sent Einstein an example of his recent work. What precipitated Lenard to send this publication to Einstein? Most likely, Lenard was responding to Einstein’s referencing his earlier publication on the photoelectric effect. Einstein wrote back, “Esteemed Professor! I thank you very much for the work you have sent me, which I have studied with the same feeling of admiration as your earlier works.” In addition, Einstein commented on the conclusions of Lenard’s investigations, which dealt with the generation of spectral lines by atoms at different states of energy.

  It was four years before Lenard responded to Einstein’s letter, a long enough duration that Einstein may well have forgotten that he had first written to Lenard. Indeed, he probably wondered why Lenard had bothered writing at all. Perhaps, Einstein’s growing reputation as a scientist on the rise had piqued Lenard’s interest, and he wished to establish contact. Addressing Einstein as “highly esteemed colleague,” Lenard began with an apology for having taken so long to reply, then continued,

  Let me thank you for your friendly words on the occasion of my last writing. What could be more exciting for me than when a profound comprehensive thinker finds favor with some points from my work. . . . I am having more and more thoughts about our different opinions on electrical speeds and related things. I think, namely, that we are in some sense both correct; however, I will not be satisfied until I see the comprehensive and prodigious connections found by you to everything remaining, which I imagine fit into the whole picture. . . . With excellent regard, your loyal P. Lenard.

  By the time Einstein received Lenard’s letter, he had attracted the attention of a number of major academic centers. In 1908, he was appointed a Privatdozent at the University of Bern. A year later, he became an associate professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich.

  Mileva was instrumental in her husband’s advancement. She vetted his publications, looked up references, checked his computations, and copied notes, but their romantic relationship had deteriorated. The decline of Einstein’s marriage was helped along by the incursion of another woman. A young Basel housewife named Anna Meyer-Schmid had met Einstein a decade earlier at a resort hotel when she was just seventeen. Having read about his academic appointment at Zurich, she contacted him. Einstein sent her a flirtatious letter that included his office address, suggesting she visit him if she got to Zurich. Meyer-Schmid wrote back in kind, but Mileva intercepted the letter and reacted vindictively. She sent Meyer-Schmid’s husband a letter claiming that Einstein had been offended by the exchange. Einstein had to intercede. He apologized to Herr Schmid for his wife’s jealousy.

  Their relationship suffered another blow in 1911, when Einstein accepted an appointment in Prague and then, almost immediately, moved his family back to Switzerland in 1912 for a faculty position at the University of Zurich, where he had done the work for his doctoral degree. While traveling alone to Berlin that year, Einstein reconnected with his recently divorced cousin and childhood playmate, Elsa Lowenthal. Elsa was almost the same age as Mileva but the exact opposite in temperament. Cheerful, bourgeois, and engaging, she was a breath of freedom from the dark moods of his bohemian wife. Upon his return home, he wrote Elsa, “I have to have someone to love, otherwise life is miserable. And this someone is you.” He had second thoughts and broke off their secret correspondence for a time, but the romance resumed a year later and took off in 1914 upon his assuming his professorship in Berlin. Immediately upon agreeing to the Berlin appointment, he wrote Elsa, “I already rejoice at the wonderful times we will spend together.”

  The Meyer-Schmid episode and the new relationship with Elsa were symptomatic of the deep rift that had developed between husband and wife. Einstein’s letters tell the sad tale. In 1900, he’d stopped addressing Mileva as “Sie” and moved on to the informal “du.” He’d called her endearing nicknames, like “Dollie” and “sweetheart,” and written her bits of doggerel like this 1900 quartet:

  Oh my! That Johnnie boy!

  So crazy with desire,

  While thinking of his Dollie,

  His pillow catches fire.

  In 1914, after he had begun the affair with his cousin that eventually would lead to his divorce from Mileva and his second marriage, he wrote down his conditions for continuing their cohabitation:

  A. You will see to it (1) that my clothes and linen are kept in order, (2) that I am served three regular meals a day in my room. B. You will renounce all personal relations with me, except when these are required to keep up social appearances. And: You will expect no
affection from me. . . . You must leave my bedroom or study at once without protesting when I ask you to.

  Mileva’s role had regressed from lover to spouse to servant. The cruel tone of this note speaks volumes and reflects a bitterness that went far beyond simple alienation of affection. Einstein may have so wearied of Mileva’s company that he could rationalize even cruelty.

  For her part, Mileva hated Berlin. In that most Prussian of German cities, she bridled at a rigid caste system that viewed Slavs as being on the same social plane as Jews. She also was much closer than she wanted to be to Einstein’s mother, who had a trenchant dislike of her daughter-in-law. Einstein had written to Mileva about the day in 1900 when he had first intimated his seriousness about her to his mother. Things hadn’t gone well then, and the relationship between mother- and daughter-in-law had grown worse with time:

  So we arrive home and I go into Mama’s room (only the two of us). First I must tell her about the [final] exam, and then she asks me quite innocently, “So what will become of your Dollie now?” “My wife,” I said, just as innocently, prepared for the proper scene that immediately followed. Mama threw herself on the bed, buried her head in the pillow, and wept like a child. After regaining her composure, she immediately shifted to a desperate attack. “You are ruining your future and destroying your opportunities. No decent family will have her. If she gets pregnant, you really will be in a mess.”

  Shortly after their arrival in the German capital, Mileva separated from Einstein and returned to Zurich, taking her sons Hans Albert and Eduard with her. The loss of his children was a severe blow to Einstein. Despite his visiting his sons frequently, Hans Albert, in particular, took his mother’s side. It was only over years that Einstein was able to repair the rent in their relationship.