Some artists tried to protest. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, as he was forced out of the Prussian Academy, insisted that he was ‘neither a Jew nor a social democrat’. ‘For thirty years I have struggled for a new, strong, and true German art and will continue to do so for as long as I live.’11 Max Pechstein could not believe what was happening to him, and reminded the Gestapo that he had fought for Germany on the western front in World War I, that one of his sons was a member of the SA, and another was in the Hitler Youth. Emil Nolde, an enthusiastic supporter of the party from the early 1920s, criticised the ‘daubings’ of some of his colleagues, whom he described as ‘half-breeds, bastards and mulattoes’ in his autobiography, Years of Struggle, published in 1934.12 That year he wrote directly to Goebbels, insisting that his own art was ‘vigorous, durable, ardent and German.’ Goebbels wasn’t listening; in June 1937, 1,052 of Nolde’s works were confiscated.13 Oskar Schlemmer stood up for artists when they were attacked by Gottfried Benn in The New State and the Intellectuals, which was a highly charged defence of the Nazis and an intemperate attack on their perceived enemies. Schlemmer’s argument was that the artists identified by Benn as ‘decadent’ were nothing of the sort and that the real decadence lay in the ‘second-raters’ who were replacing their betters with, as he put it, ‘kitsch.’14 Such protests went nowhere. Hitler’s mind had been made up long ago, and he wasn’t about to change it. Indeed, these artists were lucky not to have provoked reprisals. All that was left for them was to protest in their art. Otto Dix was one of those who led the way, portraying Hitler as ‘Envy’ in his 1933 picture The Seven Deadly Sins. (He meant, of course, that Hitler, the failed artist, envied real ones.) Max Beckmann caricatured the chancellor as a ‘Verführer,’ a seducer. When informed that he had been expelled from the Prussian Academy, Max Liebermann, the most popular living painter in pre-World War I Germany, remarked tartly, ‘I couldn’t possibly eat as much as I would like to puke.’15
Many artists eventually took the option of emigration and exile.16 Kurt Schwitters went to Norway, Paul Klee to Switzerland, Lyonel Feininger to the United States, Max Beckmann to the Netherlands, Heinrich Campendonck to Belgium and then to Holland, Ludwig Meidner to England, and Max Liebermann to Palestine. Liebermann had loved Germany; it had been good to him before World War I, and he had met, and painted, some of its most illustrious figures. And yet, shortly before his death in 1935, he sadly concluded that there was only one choice for young German artists who were Jewish: ‘There is no other salvation than emigration to Palestine, where they can grow up as free people and escape the dangers of remaining refugees.’17
For the most part, one would think that science – especially the ‘hard’ sciences of physics, chemistry, mathematics and geology – would be unaffected by political regimes. It is, after all, generally agreed that research into the fundamental building blocks of nature is as free from political overtones as intellectual work can be. But in Nazi Germany nothing could be taken for granted.
The persecution of Albert Einstein began early. He came under attack largely because of the international acclaim he received after Arthur Eddington’s announcement, in November 1919, that he had obtained experimental confirmation for the predictions of general relativity theory. The venom came from both political and scientific extremists. He had some support – for example, the German ambassador in London in 1920 warned his Foreign Office privately in a report that ‘Professor Einstein is just at this time a cultural factor of first rank…. We should not drive such a man out of Germany with whom we can carry on real cultural propaganda.’ Yet two years later, following the political assassination of Walther Rathenau, the foreign minister, unconfirmed reports leaked out that Einstein was also on the list of intended victims.18
When the Nazis finally achieved power, ten years later, action was not long delayed. In January 1933 Einstein was away from Berlin on a visit to the United States. He was then fifty-four, and although he found his fame burdensome, preferring to bury himself in his work on general relativity theory and cosmology, he also realised that he couldn’t altogether avoid being a public figure. So he made a point of announcing that he would not return to his positions at the university in Berlin and the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft as long as the Nazis were in charge.19 The Nazis repaid the compliment by freezing his bank account, searching his house for weapons allegedly hidden there by Communists, and publicly burning copies of a popular book of his on relativity. Later in the spring, the regime issued a catalogue of ‘state enemies.’ It had been carefully edited to show the most unflattering photographs of the Nazis’ opponents, with a brief text underneath each one. Einstein’s picture headed the list, and below his photograph was the text, ‘Not yet hanged.’20
In September Einstein was in Oxford, shortly before he was scheduled to return to the teaching position he had at Caltech, the California Institute of Technology. It was by no means clear then where he would settle. He told a reporter that he felt he was European and that, whatever might happen in the short term, he would eventually return. Meanwhile, ‘in a fit of absent mindedness,’ he had accepted professorships in Spain, France, Belgium, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and at the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton. In Britain there were plans to give him an appointment at Oxford, and a bill was before the House of Commons to give him the status of a naturalised citizen.21 By the early 1930s, however, America was no longer a backwater in physics. It was beginning to generate its own Ph.D.s (1,300 in the 1920s), who were carrying on Einstein’s work. Also, he liked America, and he needed no further inducements to leave after Hitler became chancellor. He didn’t go to Caltech, however, but to Princeton. In 1929 the American educationalist Abraham Flexner had succeeded in raising money to build an advanced research institute at Princeton, New Jersey. Five million dollars had been pledged by Louis Bamberger and his sister Caroline Fuld, a successful business family from New Jersey.22 The basic idea was to establish a centre for the advanced study of science where eminent figures could work in a peaceful and productive environment, free of any teaching burden. Flexner had stayed with Einstein at Caputh, his home, and there, as they walked by the lake, Einstein’s enthusiasm for Princeton grew still more. They even got as far as talking money. Asked what he wished to be paid, Einstein hesitated: ‘Three thousand dollars a year? Could I live on less?’ ‘You couldn’t live on that,’ Flexner said promptly, and suggested he should sort it out with Mrs Einstein. In no time, Flexner and Elsa had arrived at a figure of $16,000 per annum.23 This was a notable coup for Flexner. When the news was released, at a stroke he had dramatically increased the profile of his project. Inside Germany, reactions were somewhat different. One newspaper ran the headline: ‘GOOD NEWS FROM EINSTEIN – HE IS NOT COMING BACK.’ Not everyone in America wanted Einstein. The National Patriotic Council complained he was a Bolshevik who espoused ‘worthless theories.’ The American Women’s League also branded him a Communist, clamouring for the State Department to refuse Einstein an entry permit. They were ignored.24 Einstein might be the most famous physicist to leave Germany, but he was by no means the only one. Roughly one hundred world-class colleagues found refuge in the United States between 1933 and 1941.25