Einstein in Prague. About the book by Michael D. Gordin
Other Western visitors, on the other hand, were attracted by this “exoticism”. For example, the British poet and critic Arthur William Symons found in the Slavic Praguers of the early 20th century “a little of that tender, unconscious wildness of the animals that man has tamed, but which have never forgotten the forest.”
One of the most famous temporary residents of Prague was undoubtedly Albert Einstein. He moved there in 1911 with his first wife Mileva and two sons to work here as a professor of theoretical physics at a German university. But he only lasted sixteen months in Prague.
What his stay was like, what it meant for his future life and how his relations with the Czech lands later developed, the book describes in detail Einstein in Bohemia (translated by Jiří Kasl, Argo 2022), this author is Michael D. GordinSlavologist and professor of the history of science at the Prince’s University, who generally focuses on the history of science in Russia, Central Europe and the USA.
Gordin is the author of several books, including the title Scientific Babel on the history of the use of different languages in the sciences before the global spread of English.
City of barbarians
So how did the man who considers himself the greatest genius of the 20th century feel in Bohemia?
Einstein’s immediate impressions of Prague were apparently not enthusiastic: “There is no water here that one can drink without boiling it. The inhabitants do not speak German for the most part and are hostile towards Germans. Even the students are less intelligent and hardworking than in Switzerland.”
Michael D. Gordin
Photo: Sameer Khan
Although Einstein admitted the beauty of the architecture here, the people were alien to him. In a letter to a colleague, he wrote that he would show him a stunningly beautiful city, “the city of these barbarians.” And he added: “These people really have a backward culture. So far, I have not detected any real scientific interests in my colleagues, only a certain condescension.’
Gordin demanded that it was impossible to simply call Einstein a “German”: although he was born in Germany, for most of his life he tried not to be found as a citizen of the German state, he himself wrote about his “unconcealed internationalism, Swiss citizenship and Jewish nationality”. However, when he came to Prague, he apparently partially adopted the feeling of threat of some local Germans and their prejudicial view of the Czechs, for example that they are “dishonest by nature”.
At the same time, Gordin explains that sarcastic nationalism was more than a rule among the inhabitants of Bohemia, but Einstein “had no way of telling”.
Gordin of our capital also stands up in other respects. He recalls, for example, that when the Einsteins moved to Bern, they had to light kerosene at home; in Zurich they used gas; on the other hand, they already had electricity in Prague: “One would think that the son of a man who made a living by introducing electricity to cities would appreciate more how Prague is in the direction of the height.”
Einstein’s aforementioned Serbian wife Mileva Maričová could have been a link to Slavic Prague, but that did not happen. Czech merchants and townspeople apparently treated her as the German wife of a German professor. Alternatively, an implicit hierarchy could also be at work, which ranked the Western-influenced, “civilized” Slavs (Poles and Czechs) above the politically powerful Slavs (Russians), and only after them followed everyone else, including the Serbs.
In the salons of the other German professors, Mileva apparently met with disdain because of her Slavic origin. After all, it could also be traced to Einstein himself, who justified his later divorce in one letter by saying that his nerves “could no longer bear the years of pressure from that barbaric nature.”
To whom will the corpses ever fall
The marriage with Mileva did not last. On the other hand, Einstein’s relationship with Prague, Bohemia/Czechoslovakia continued to develop, possibly in a positive direction.
According to later testimonies, he remembered his stay in Prague with pleasure, or even with enthusiasm. He also corresponded with President Masaryk, whom he sincerely respected – he even nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was outraged by the conclusion of the Munich Agreement: “It is terrible that France betrayed Spain and Czechoslovakia. The worst part is that it backfires cruelly.’
Albert Einstein in 1950
Photo: CTK
Although Einstein’s stay in Prague was relatively short, according to Gordina, it was important for the genius physicist: Einstein took advantage of the fact that he did not have to meet any fixed expectations in Prague and concentrated on researching the general theory of relativity, so that one of the most important physical theories of all time “had deep roots in the opportunities and limitations of a stay in Prague”.
Also important were Einstein’s contacts with some Jewish personalities (such as the philosopher Hugo Bergmann), whom he met in Prague and who later influenced his ambiguous relationship to Judaism. Although Einstein rarely set foot on the territory of the former Prague Jewish ghetto, when in later life he reflected on his complex and unstable identification with Judaism – whether it is understood as a religious belief, Zionist philosophy, or just a series of interpersonal relationships – “every moment it acquired a Prague flavor “.
However, there are many more different topics that the book opens up. In it, for example, we can find a colorful description of the division of the Prague university into the Czech and German universities: “Both shared the Great Hall, the Germans on even days and the Czechs on odd days, as decided by lot.” In the medical school, there was a debate about who the corpses would fall to on any given day. The students decided to use different entrances according to their nationality.”
One of the chapters approaches the philosophical connections between the theory of relativity and logical positivism, in the next an almost detective investigation is carried out to reveal whether Max Brod’s book can be Tycho Brahe’s Way to God read as a key novel in which the figure of Einstein himself is also hidden. (Gordin claims that, but interprets it not as an attack on the famous satirist Karl Kraus, who did not like Brod.)
The last parts of the book concern the reception of Einstein’s ideas in Bohemia (the later communist ideologue Arnošt Kolman was supposed to be his audience), including how his stay was inscribed on the face of Prague in the form of commemorative plaques and busts.
Jan Lukavec (1977) is a literary publicist.
Photo: archive of Jan Lukavac
Gordin is not writing a biography of Einstein, so he does not even attempt to explain precisely and psychologically justify why his attitudinal reversals took place in Einstein’s mind; he himself admits that Einstein is not always the main character for him in all chapters. Instead, he lets his narrative run in many directions, which can also be read in the fact that the Slavist has no problem with contemporary Czech sources.
He gradually composes and revives the mosaic of Bohemia in the context of pan-European scientific and cultural events of the first half of the 20th century. He portrays Prague as a place wracked by many contradictions and tensions, from which most prominent German-speaking figures left (except those who, in the words of Germanist Peter Demetz, kept prestigious newspaper jobs, “were terminally ill or too old to move”).
Nevertheless, and despite Einstein’s initial dissatisfaction, the image of Prague that emerges from Gordin’s narrative is definitely not as a barbaric periphery, but in a certain sense as one of the dynamic spiritual centers of the world at that time.