In a book that is both biography and the most exciting form of
history, here are eighteen years in the life of a man, Albert
Einstein, and a city, Berlin, that were in many ways the defining
years of the twentieth century.
Einstein in Berlin
In the spring of 1913 two of the giants of modern science
traveled to Zurich. Their mission: to offer the most prestigious
position in the very center of European scientific life to a man
who had just six years before been a mere patent clerk. Albert
Einstein accepted, arriving in Berlin in March 1914 to take up his
new post. In December 1932 he left Berlin forever. “Take a good
look,” he said to his wife as they walked away from their house.
“You will never see it again.”
In between, Einstein’s Berlin years capture in microcosm the
odyssey of the twentieth century. It is a century that opens with
extravagant hopes--and climaxes in unparalleled calamity. These are
tumultuous times, seen through the life of one man who is at once
witness to and architect of his day--and ours. He is present at the
events that will shape the journey from the commencement of the
Great War to the rumblings of the next one.
We begin with the eminent scientist, already widely recognized for
his special theory of relativity. His personal life is in turmoil,
with his marriage collapsing, an affair under way. Within two years
of his arrival in Berlin he makes one of the landmark discoveries
of all time: a new theory of gravity--and before long is
transformed into the first international pop star of science. He
flourishes during a war he hates, and serves as an instrument of
reconciliation in the early months of the peace; he becomes first a
symbol of the hope of reason, then a focus for the rage and madness
of the right.
And throughout these years Berlin is an equal character, with its
astonishing eruption of revolutionary pathways in art and
architecture, in music, theater, and literature. Its wild street
life and sexual excesses are notorious. But with the debacle of the
depression and Hitler’s growing power, Berlin will be transformed,
until by the end of 1932 it is no longer a safe home for Einstein.
Once a hero, now vilified not only as the perpetrator of “Jewish
physics” but as the preeminent symbol of all that the Nazis loathe,
he knows it is time to leave.
From the Hardcover edition.
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