Einstein writes to his old friend a month after Born was suspended from his Göttingen professorship. Adolf Hitler had become Germany’s chancellor on 30 January. Einstein had left the country two months before the Nazi accession, presciently telling his wife Elsa that they’d never see their Berlin home again 2 (see Born’s comment below). The letter is written from England, where Einstein is giving a series of lectures at a time when the expulsion of Jewish physicists from the German universities and institutes is well under way. Einstein complains of the Rockefeller travel-grant program, which requires that applicants have a home institution to which they can return. For the expelled scientists, of course, that’s impossible.
Oxford, 30 May 1933
Dear Born,
… I am glad that [you and James Franck] have resigned your positions. Thank God there is no risk involved for either of you. But my heart aches at the thought of the young ones…. I hear that the establishment of a good Institute of Physics in Palestine (Jerusalem) is at present being considered. There has been a nasty mess there up to now, complete charlatanism. But if I get the impression that this business could be taken seriously, I shall write to you at once with further details. For it would be splendid if something good were to be created there….
Two years ago I tried to appeal to Rockefeller’s conscience about the absurd method of allocating grants, unfortunately without success. Bohr has now gone to see him in an attempt to persuade him to take some action on behalf of the exiled German scientists…. I am firmly convinced that those who have made a name already will be taken care of. But the others, the young ones, will not have the chance to develop.
You know, I think, that I have never had a particularly favorable opinion of the Germans (morally and politically speaking). But I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise to me.
I originally intended to create a university for exiles. But it soon became apparent that there are insurmountable obstacles, and that any effort in this direction would impede the exertions of individual countries….
Yours,
Einstein
I have been promoted to an “evil monster” in Germany, and all my money has been taken away from me. I console myself with the thought that the latter would soon be gone anyway.
Part of Born’s 1969 comment 1 on this letter: “Einstein’s severe judgment of the Germans would no doubt have been subscribed to by all of us who had been expelled by Hitler, as well as our friends in other countries. But what we expected then was child’s play in comparison with what would happen later. And yet I am now living in Germany again…. Einstein himself never again set foot on German soil.”
