EINSTEIN'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