17 October
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Author: Katharina Hübel
Speaker: Irina Wanka
Editor: Frank Halbach
What do CRT televisions, GPS trackers, barcodes on supermarket goods, the CD player, light barriers, solar modules and nuclear power have in common? None of them would exist without the one scientist who is often portrayed with messy white hair, who pops up at us in Andi Warhol pictures, who is the model for Yoda in “Star Wars”, supposedly didn’t like socks and was always barefoot He was walking around in shoes, carrying his violin
“Lina” and told jokes to cheer up his depressed parrot, who supposedly never learned to swim and yet was an enthusiastic sailor, whose Nobel Prize financed his divorce from his first wife, who was friends with Charlie Chaplin and who cheekily told a reporter on his 72nd birthday His tongue stuck out, creating an iconic image for eternity.
Hate and mass
The Ulm physicist: Albert Einstein. E equals M times C squared. 1905 is considered the year in which he turned the world upside down with his theories. And 1933 was the year in which he did not return to Germany. He had felt the hatred of the Nazis many years before they came to power because his theories seemed too revolutionary. However, he was highly respected in professional circles: in 1929 the German Physical Society honored him together with Max Planck. Not without a bitter aftertaste: Albert Einstein, who came from a Jewish family, was confronted with almost a thousand shouting National Socialist students on the way to the institute. They weren’t shouting because of him – but because of the ten-year Treaty of Versailles, but in view of the chanting crowd, Einstein suspected that he wouldn’t be able to live in Germany for much longer.
He had always openly supported freedom of expression and taken a position against fascism. After the events of 1933, he didn’t wait much longer.
New home
He had been a visiting professor at Princeton for a few years and was regularly in the USA. He discussed the mysteries of the universe with Edwin Hubble, the discoverer of the Big Bang. There was nothing left to keep him in Germany: on October 17, 1933, he arrived in New York to stay. He let his return ticket expire. Princeton University became not only Albert Einstein’s refuge, but also an important place of scientific exile for others over the years. Albert Einstein supported many of his colleagues in escaping to the USA, sponsored them financially, wrote letters of recommendation and provided them with bread and work in their new homeland. In 1938 he described himself as a “placement office for the persecuted and for intellectual eccentrics” and he could assure “that the business was extremely booming.” Just a few streets away from him lived another prominent exile from Germany: Thomas Mann. But unlike the Manns, Albert Einstein never wanted to return to Germany, the country that had killed many of his companions and relatives.
