Albert Einstein (1879–1955) sits oddly in the historiography of Central Europe. Of course, he is a single person, and by far the dominant tendency in histories of this region has been to study groups (nations, cities, armies) or — if the biographical impulse strikes — individual elites or artists. Although biography has been a prolific genre in the history of science (especially dominant with respect to Einstein), one finds surprisingly little cross-fertilization between these scholarly literatures, despite the noted impact Central Europe has played in the development of certain sciences.
Einstein is especially tricky because he was perhaps the most famous celebrity of the twentieth century, his visage (or just his haircut) instantly recognizable even today. People so exceptional run the risk of being outliers no matter which societal or cultural trend you link them with, and with Einstein there are quite a few with particular purchase in Central Europe (e.g., Zionism and pacifism.)
Just how Central European was Einstein, anyway? True, he was born in Ulm, grew up in Munich, spent his education and important swaths of his early career in Switzerland, worked for almost twenty years (including the years of the Great War) in Berlin, and even taught for eighteen months in Habsburg Prague — all venerable Central European locales. Yet he fled Europe in the early 1930s and lived out the rest of his life in Princeton, New Jersey. Even while based in Central Europe, he was a frequent traveler to France, Holland, and elsewhere in the west of the continent (never the east), and made highly publicized trips to East Asia, Mandate Palestine, South America, and the United States (with his first stop in England on the final voyage). The very mobility that exemplified even Central European Einstein seems to unmoor him.
It thus might seem odd that this journal is reviewing Andrew Robinson's highly readable and informative book, Einstein on the Run, given that it is principally a history of Einstein's relationship with the United Kingdom (Palestine is generously included as “British” here). Although Robinson does provide accurate though brief biographical accounts of Einstein's time in German-speaking Europe as well as serviceable explanations of some of his key scientific achievements — even, in the case of quantum theory, when it does not quite fit with the general narrative — the book really comes alive with its greatest contributions when recounting the British engagement with Einstein and vice versa.
There are three main strands to Robinson's story. The first concerns the British expedition to measure the bending of starlight during a total eclipse of the sun in May 1919, led by Cambridge astronomer (and Quaker) Arthur Stanley Eddington and Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson. One of the central predictions of Einstein's 1915 theory of gravity, general relativity, was that space-time would experience significant curvature around massive bodies like the Sun and that an eclipse would enable astronomers to measure it quantitatively. The results persuaded Eddington and Dyson that they had, in fact, confirmed Einstein's theory, and a huge press campaign erupted, declaring Einstein the victor over Isaac Newton and catapulting Einstein to the global celebrity he has retained ever since. As Robinson indicates, much of the motivation for the pacifist Eddington was to repair the scientific contacts disrupted during World War I by having the British investigate (and confirm) a German theory. (That the German in question was a vocal opponent of the war helped, of course.) Complementing more detailed studies of this event published almost simultaneously on the centenary of the expedition by Matthew Stanley and Daniel Kennefick, Robinson thus situates a pivotal moment of Einstein's biography into the great rupture of Central Europe.
Robinson's second thread of Einstein's British connection is the repeated efforts by British institutions, especially Oxford, to hire Einstein in the early 1930s. Attempting to lure Einstein away from Berlin was a common practice for international institutions in the post-eclipse decade, but Oxford got closer than any other ever had before the physicist decided to flee the continent. Perceiving the threat in the rise of political antisemitism and especially National Socialism, Einstein found himself a target of paramilitary thugs similar to those who assassinated his friend Walther Rathenau in 1922. He proved a shrewd negotiator and spent quite some time as a fellow at Christ Church, before ultimately opting for the newborn Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Einstein thus traced a course that would play out repeatedly with the Nazi assumption of power and the mass firings of Jewish scientists after April 1933, many of whom ended up in the British Isles.
Finally, and most vividly, the British proved instrumental in getting Einstein safely off the continent and protecting him from hit squads. Robinson breaks new ground here, and his reconstruction of the central role of the exceptionally colorful Commander Oliver Stillingfleet Locker-Lampson is particularly fascinating. Einstein told reporters he intended to become a naturalized British subject (which the home secretary refused), and stopped by Chartwell for a chat and photo opportunity with Winston Churchill in July 1933. While in the United Kingdom before departing across the Atlantic, Einstein became an icon of the refugee crisis that was unfolding across Central Europe. His speeches and activism on this front would shape the course of the next decade, and his archive contains reams of evidence about his importance in helping many escape a terrible fate. These sections of Robinson's book will keep scholars returning to it.
Each of these stories highlights one of the important features of Einstein as a subject for historical research: his fame meant not only that he served as a highly visible target for propaganda (both positive and negative) as well as physical threats, so that he shows up in the archival record seemingly everywhere; but his massive personal papers serve as a gravitational well of sorts, still insufficiently plumbed for Central European history. In a symbolic, microcosmic, but nonetheless very real way, Einstein provides an important entry point into the crisis of Central Europe in the interwar years, and Robinson's account is exemplary in illustrating the topic's potential.
