Table Of ContentEINSTEIN'S GERMAN WORLD
FRITZ STERN
Einstein's
German World
New edition
With a new preface by the author
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 1999 by Princeton University Press
New Preface, Copyright © 2016 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey, 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, OX20 1TR
All Rights Reserved
Fifth printing, and first paperback printing, 2001
First new edition paperback printing, with a new preface by the author, 2016
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-17130-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016932645
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Palatino
Printed on acid-free paper. °°
press.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
13579 10 8642
To Elisabeth
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE NEW PAPERBACK EDITION ix
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR XV
INTRODUCTION 3
PART ONE: The Promise of German Life
CHAPTER 1. Paul Ehrlich: The Founder of Chemotherapy 13
CHAPTER 2. Max Planck and the Trials of His Times 35
CHAPTER 3. Together and Apart: Fritz Haber and
Albert Einstein 59
CHAPTER 4. Walther Rathenau and the Vision of Modernity 165
PART TWO: The Great War and Consequent Terrors
CHAPTER 5. Historians and the Great War: Private Experience
and Public Explication 199
CHAPTER 6. Chaim Weizmann and Liberal Nationalism 223
CHAPTER 7. Freedom and Its Discontents: The Travails of
the New Germany 253
CHAPTER 8. The Past Distorted: The Goldhagen Controversy 272
CHAPTER 9. Lost Homelands: German-Polish Reconciliation 289
NOTES 303
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 325
INDEX 329
PREFACE TO THE NEW PAPERBACK EDITION
IN POLITICS, a week is a long time, as we know; in history, six-
teen years can be revolutionary. In 1999, when this book first
appeared, I could still write in the glow of what had happened
in 1989: the peaceful self-liberation of the peoples of Eastern
Europe—a grand process, a kind of benevolent contagion that
had begun in Poland with the founding of Solidarnosc and had
aroused East Germans to march peacefully in the streets de-
manding their freedom. And the demise of the East German
regime made the unification of Germany possible.
It is a very different world today: better in some respects,
bleaker in many others; and for me, infirmities of age may add
a further melancholy note. The murder in Paris in Novem-
ber 2015, committed by men allied with the self-proclaimed
"Islamic State of Syria," has changed everything: this new bar-
barism of Isis is armed with ancient hatreds, aims at universal
destruction, and employs the most modern means of organiz-
ing evil. As the American president did after September 11,
2001, the French president now speaks of "war" and orders the
bombing of the presumed Isis headquarters. Isis can reach Eu-
rope most easily, but no country, no citizen, is safe anywhere.
Even before the tragedy in Paris, the European Union—that
gigantic achievement of the post-World War II era, which for
more than a half-century ensured peace and granted Europeans
full freedom of mobility within its borders—was in crisis. Euro-
peans had begun to take the EU for granted: its benefits assimi-
lated, its deficiencies the sport of discontents. And indeed, the
reality of Brussels, with its bloated bureaucracy and its dem-
ocratic deficit, seems like a mere shadow of the EU's original
promise. And now the EU must cope with a world-historical
challenge: the multitudes of migrants from war-torn Syria and
elsewhere desperately seeking a new home in Europe, most
especially in northern Europe. Brussels dithers and national
x PREFACE TO THE NEW PAPERBACK EDITION
policies diverge as the migrants seek stability and unwittingly
threaten it. The chaotic influx of newcomers creates immense
and immediate problems in finding food and shelter for people
who, because of their faith or simply because they are foreign,
face suspicions. Radical right-wing political parties exploit the
collective miseries, hoping to gut the EU, which seems caught
in its own incapacity. Nationalists clamor to reassert the sover-
eign rights of their countries; their resentments of the EU over-
shadow all reason, and they seem willing to sacrifice the prog-
ress the EU has actually achieved. These multiple assaults may
well usher in a new era of right-wing authoritarianism. Where
are the statesmen or philosophers who might suggest ways to
provide safety without sacrificing freedom?
The Federal Republic of Germany has become the most pow-
erful and probably the most prosperous country in Europe.
The old economic and political differences between West and
East Germany have been largely attenuated although remnants
persist: wages are still lower in the eastern provinces, while
Euro-skepticism and xenophobia are greater. During the Euro-
pean crisis of 2014-15 over economic policies affecting Greece,
Angela Merkel's government insisted that the EU enforce a pro-
gram of enfeebling austerity on the country; yet Merkel is now
championing a humane, hospitable European policy toward
the unprecedented migrations from Syria and other places of
hunger and despair. Perhaps this is in accordance with her own
past as the child of a left-leaning pastor living under the repres-
sive East German regime, remembering too that twenty-five
years ago millions of East Germans rejoiced when the Berlin
Wall fell and they themselves streamed west, if only for a breath
of fresh air or something exotic like an orange.
Today most Germans have ambivalent feelings about these
issues and are divided on the question of migration: individu-
ally, mostly kind and hospitable; collectively, fearful that they
have lost control of the situation and certain that "the boat is
full." The influx of tens of thousands of strangers has put an
enormous strain on local communities, which face impossibly
