Einstein's German World (Allen Lane History S.) - Hardcover

Stern, Fritz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713994304 ISBN 13: 9780713994308

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2000

Synopsis

Raymond Aron once observed that the twentieth century 'could have been Germany's century'. In EINSTEIN'S GERMAN WORLD, the eminent historian Fritz Stern explores the ambiguous promise of Germany before Hitler, and its horrifying decline into moral nihilism under Nazi rule, and aspects of its remarkable recovery since the Second World War. He does so by gracefully blending history and biography in a sequence of finely drawn studies of Germany's great scientists and politicians and through subtlestudies of European history writing in a century whose monstrous events have all but dwarfed our efforts to understand.

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Review:

Albert Einstein was, it has seemed to some scholars, a genius sui generis; a man who transcended his own time and native country to become a citizen of the world. Fritz Stern is not among their ranks. A retired professor of history at Columbia University, Stern here offers a set of essays on the cultural milieu of late 19th- and early 20th-century Germany, and more specifically of the brilliant culture of German Jews, many of whom had, like Einstein, been largely assimilated into the surrounding culture in what Stern calls "an astounding ascendancy" but who were forced by separatist laws to accept second-class status. Chaim Weizmann, a chemist of Einstein's generation who founded modern Zionism, knew this well; when one of his teachers assured him that Germans would give up their anti-Semitism once they realised how much Jews had contributed to their prosperity and their rich culture, Weizmann replied, "Herr Doktor, if a man has a piece of something in his eye, he doesn't want to know whether it's a piece of mud or a piece of gold. He just wants to get it out."

The intellectuals of Albert Einstein's generation spun gold, Stern shows. Their number included Paul Ehrlich, the inventor of chemotherapy; Walther Rathenau, a captain of industry with an informed love of literature and music; and Fritz Haber, a physicist who discovered a means of fixing nitrogen from the air. All were swept away, murdered or sent into exile, by the events of the 1920s and 30s.

Surveying the ruins of World War II, the French philosopher Raymond Aron remarked to Stern, "It could have been Germany's century"--if only, that is, Germany had not succumbed to the madness of national socialism. Fritz Stern's careful essays show just how much Germany, and the world, lost when it did. --Gregory McNamee

Synopsis:

The French political philosopher Raymond Aron once observed that the 20th century "could have been Germany's century". In 1900, the country was continental Europe's leading power, its material strength and strident militaristic ethos apparently balanced by a vital culture and extraordinary scientific achievement. It was poised to achieve greatness. In this work, the eminent historian Fritz Stern explores the ambiguous promise of Germany before Hitler, as well as its horrifying decline into moral nihilism under Nazi rule, and aspects of its remarkable recovery since World War II. He does so by gracefully blending history and biography in a sequence of finely drawn studies of Germany's great scientists and of German-Jewish relations before and during Hitler's regime. Stern's central chapter traces the complex friendship of Albert Einstein and the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber, contrasting their responses to German life and to their Jewish heritage. Haber, a convert to Christianity and a firm German patriot until the rise of the Nazis; Einstein, a committed internationalist and pacifist, and a proud though secular Jew.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0713994304
• ISBN 13: 9780713994308
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352