Customer Reviews

Einstein's German World

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This book commands interest at several points, but in the end doesn't come together as an integrated whole. It is a collection of former essays loosely linked by overlapping content, specifically the experience and achievement of German Jewish intellectuals and scientists during the first part of the century. The centerpiece is a description of the friendship between Albert Einstein and Fritz Haber, and the manner in which each attempted to come to terms with the rise of fascism in Germany. Also interesting are Stern's essay on the experience since reunification of former residents of East Germany, and the fate of Max Planck under the Nazis. Worth reading if you're a specialist, but in the end not biographical or focused enough.

The title of the review applies more clearly to the first part of the book: chapters 1-4 and, especially, chapter 3--the centerpiece and gem of the book--where the fascinating discussion of Einstein is central. The essays in the second part of the book are well done but less interesting. The book's title says a great deal about what one finds in the first four chapters, and one learns a lot about Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whether the focus is on science, culture, religion, the politics and economics of science, or the intricate ties that bound government, business, the universities, and both the applied and theoretical scientists. All of these strands are discussed in a writing style that can only be described as masterful. I remember a class wth Fritz Stern many years ago where, among many things, two virtues in particular stood out: clarity and honesty. Some things do not change.

The book's cover shows a photo of a happy Albert Einstein on board the German ship Deutschland, as he heads home for Germany from a trip abroad. On the back cover it is entitled "Heimreise nach Deutschland," meaning the journey home to Germany. The last essay of the book concludes with Professor Stern--who is German by birth--explaining how it feels to be "heimatlos," meaning to be without a home. The word "Heimat," carries a special meaning of warmth and comfort associated with one's homeland. It requires a good insight into German culture to understand the emotions it evokes for Germans who find themselves away from home.

Between "Heimreise" and "heimatlos," lies the book's theme that recounts the poignant experiences of several world renown German scientists, who were Jews. This is not a book about scientists and their accomplishments, but about accomplished Germans who were ostracized by their country for being Jews.

Contrary to some recent writings, these men and their families were well integrated and accepted by their colleagues and German society. They were Germans who could trace their ancestry in Germany for many generations. They were patriots just as any other German. Like any other German they contributed to the war effort during WW1. They distinguished themselves as soldiers. They prospered and enjoyed their German culture and lifestyle. They commanded respect and were held in esteem for their accomplishments. Then came the Nazis.

The common theme of the biographical sketches of each of the personalities is a reflection on the sense of loss, the profound disillusionment, which these men felt as they came to accept the stark reality that their country of birth, their beloved fatherland, was turning against them. It is hard to imagine the deep sense of betrayal these men, and others like them, must have felt when the Nazis deprived them of their citizenship and drove them out of their "Heimat." The book tells a sad story, not of death and destruction, not of material dispossession, but of the loss of civil rights, disillusionment, and of the bitter sense of rejection felt by some of Germany's best and finest.

Other than that, Fritz Stern's style makes the book a real joy to read.

Brief is this existence, as a fleeting visit in a strange house. The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness, the center of which is the limiting and separating self.

The great Mr.Einstein said this at the funeral of a colleague in Princeton in 1954.

To overcome the limiting and separating self towards a We, he had stayed in Berlin longer than his inclinations would normally have made him. He cherished the scientific companionship with people like Planck, Laue, Born, Haber, while he despised German nationalism and militarism. He also had little understanding for the servility of many German Jews towards the German authorities.

Where did this 'servility' come from? Stern's thesis: the belief in the propriety of state authority was so deeply ingrained in people like Haber that they just could not imagine the state as an agent of crime.

A long biographical essay on the parallel and divergent careers of Einstein and Haber is the strong center piece of this otherwise a little uneven essay collection. One would have wished a monography on the subject, rather than this loose assembly of good stuff mixed with too much chaff.

What is the subject? Stern wants to illuminate the 'scientific-political-milieu' in Germany during Einstein's time, that is from the Kaiserzeit through Weimar to Nazi rule. Was the NS terror the culmination of Germanity or was it an aberration? Both extreme interpretations are inadmissable ideological simplifications.

Haber was a captain of science and science management. He contributed major inventions (mainly the fixation of nitrogen, which allowed the industrial production of ammonia for fertilizer and explosives, which made BASF big and which enabled Germany's WW1 effort). He also contributed the development of the gas weapon, for which achievement he is loathed by many. He furthered the building of strong scientific institutions with state and industrial as well as bank backing. He remained a close friend of Einstein's despite their strong political disagreements. He was discarded by the NS regime and died quickly in exile, deeply disappointed.

Other essays are about Rathenau, captain of industry from a Jewish family, who accepted political positions in Weimar and was assassinated by furious nationalists who pinned the blame for the war defeat on him, as a representative of the traitor class.

One on Paul Ehrlich, Nobel winning immunologist (sponsored by my former employer Hoechst, who later decided to disintegrate in order to enrich investment bankers), who found the cure for syphilis (for which he was condemned by the good Christians.)

One on Max Planck, non-Jewish doyen of German science, with a curiously ambiguous behaviour during the dark ages, but essentially a decent man.

Conclusion: worth while, but not entirely satisfactory due to lack of focus and too many redundancies.

A very good read about the advances in German science and culture before the Nazi's. Not too often I read a book that I can't put down. Fritz Stern has simply nailed it with this book.

Fritz Stern has filled an important void around those times in which the promising figure of Albert Einstein has to face against that opprobrious regime; through a progressive cracking of the noble values which reigned in Germany, as well as all that state of things that surrounded, permeated and allowed the unthinkable happened.

A revealing, poignant and incisive portrait.

This book provides some good background information on some of the key people who went into making modern chemistry and physics from the 1870 German unification to just before WWII. It is similar (although much weaker than) the background provided by Michael White in "Issac Newton, the Last Sorcerer" - for the times in which Newton lived. While Fritz Stern is well qualified to comment on how German scientists conducted themselves in response to WWI and Hitler, (unlike White's treatment of Issac Newton's era) Stern never really seems to impart enough of a multi dimensional background so we can better understand the views and driving forces of "Einsteins German World".

Max Planck comes out as a decent German, doing the best for his Jewish colleagues -- but upon reading Stern's account you get the impression that the whole Hitler atmosphere can be explained by anti-semitism leveraged to advance Dilbert-style rampant careerism.

Stern takes pains to state that Goldhagen's book (on ordinary Germans under Hitler, which covers much the same era) is a gross simplification, and he advances high level arguments against Goldhagen's view that there was a ubiquitous inherent German anti-semitism at work. While Stern mentions (things such as) German Catholic-Protestant disharmony being equal German Jewish-Christian disharmony around WWI, he does not elaborate.

Stern was there (or at least knew the people personally) -- and given this, he could have done a better job describing "Einstein's German World". You never come to understand anything beyond top German Jewish scientists working hard, struggling against a view of their work as being somehow Jewish (Stern never mentions how Freud was viewed in this regard - which was too bad), and that eliminating Jewish colleagues was a way of advancing one's career up a competitive government scientist ladder under Hitler.