WEBVTT FILE

1
00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:07.000
Downloaded from
YTS.MX

2
00:00:06.360 --> 00:00:08.943
(mellow music)

3
00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:13.000
Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

4
00:00:13.340 --> 00:00:15.150
I'm not only a pacifist,

5
00:00:17.014 --> 00:00:18.303
but a militant pacifist, militant.

6
00:00:22.990 --> 00:00:26.689
I'm willing to fight, to fight for peace.

7
00:00:26.689 --> 00:00:29.356
(voice echoing)

8
00:00:33.271 --> 00:00:36.188
(static crackling)

9
00:00:45.640 --> 00:00:48.633
I do not know how the Third World War will be fought,

10
00:00:51.010 --> 00:00:53.720
but I can tell you what they'll use in the Fourth:

11
00:00:56.956 --> 00:00:57.789
rocks.

12
00:01:02.777 --> 00:01:06.520
The myth of Einstein was created in 1919.

13
00:01:06.520 --> 00:01:09.337
You can date it very specifically.

14
00:01:09.337 --> 00:01:12.570
(elegant classical music)

15
00:01:12.570 --> 00:01:15.180
The British astronomer Stanley Eddington

16
00:01:15.180 --> 00:01:17.550
confirmed Einstein's general theory of relativity

17
00:01:17.550 --> 00:01:19.753
through observations of a solar eclipse.

18
00:01:36.860 --> 00:01:40.220
He announced them in a very dramatic fashion

19
00:01:40.220 --> 00:01:43.470
in November 1919 to a joint session of the Royal Society

20
00:01:43.470 --> 00:01:45.253
and the Royal Astronomical Society.

21
00:01:47.450 --> 00:01:50.230
And that was then followed by sensational headlines

22
00:01:50.230 --> 00:01:52.987
in "The Times of London" and "New York Times."

23
00:02:00.600 --> 00:02:03.170
There was almost a conspiracy

24
00:02:03.170 --> 00:02:05.020
of the great newspapers

25
00:02:05.020 --> 00:02:07.383
to elevate this man into the firmament.

26
00:02:13.690 --> 00:02:18.690
When Einstein's general theory of relativity was confirmed

27
00:02:18.780 --> 00:02:21.560
by Eddington in 1919,

28
00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:26.560
this really was the start for big public enthusiasm

29
00:02:28.120 --> 00:02:30.470
but also for a big public controversy.

30
00:02:30.470 --> 00:02:33.899
The English-speaking world was quicker to accept him

31
00:02:33.899 --> 00:02:37.270
as this greater-than-life figure.

32
00:02:37.270 --> 00:02:40.063
Much more so, interestingly enough, than in Germany.

33
00:02:40.063 --> 00:02:43.400
They were making jokes about the theory of relativity,

34
00:02:43.400 --> 00:02:48.140
saying when people go dancing, when they dance waltz,

35
00:02:48.140 --> 00:02:49.410
then you will lose weight

36
00:02:49.410 --> 00:02:53.700
when you dance in the direction where the Earth rotates

37
00:02:53.700 --> 00:02:54.790
or you gain weight

38
00:02:54.790 --> 00:02:57.770
when you dance turning in the other direction.

39
00:02:57.770 --> 00:03:00.370
So the theory of relativity was really present

40
00:03:00.370 --> 00:03:02.567
in the public sphere everywhere.

41
00:03:02.567 --> 00:03:05.817
(playful twangy music)

42
00:03:58.837 --> 00:04:02.090
The theory of relativity was really a topic

43
00:04:02.090 --> 00:04:06.183
in all areas in the public that you can think of.

44
00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:09.880
This world is a strange mad house.

45
00:04:09.880 --> 00:04:11.970
Every coachman and every baker

46
00:04:11.970 --> 00:04:15.023
is debating whether relativity theory is correct.

47
00:04:16.080 --> 00:04:16.913
As a consequence

48
00:04:16.913 --> 00:04:19.430
of his celebrity status overnight,

49
00:04:19.430 --> 00:04:21.010
photographers and journalists

50
00:04:21.010 --> 00:04:23.530
started besieging his apartment,

51
00:04:23.530 --> 00:04:25.620
and from that moment on, basically,

52
00:04:25.620 --> 00:04:27.540
every public utterance that he would make

53
00:04:27.540 --> 00:04:29.260
and every trip that he undertook

54
00:04:29.260 --> 00:04:31.083
would be reported in great detail.

55
00:04:32.480 --> 00:04:35.774
With me, every peep becomes a trumpet solo.

56
00:04:35.774 --> 00:04:37.465
(triumphant fanfare)

57
00:04:37.465 --> 00:04:40.048
(bright music)

58
00:04:50.573 --> 00:04:53.240
(choir singing)

59
00:04:56.230 --> 00:04:57.507
Einstein!

60
00:04:57.507 --> 00:05:00.257
(choir chanting)

61
00:05:02.856 --> 00:05:04.297
Einstein!

62
00:05:04.297 --> 00:05:07.047
(crowd cheering)

63
00:05:16.643 --> 00:05:19.020
Professor and Mrs. Einstein,

64
00:05:19.020 --> 00:05:24.020
it is my pleasure to welcome you to the City of San Diego

65
00:05:25.380 --> 00:05:27.823
and to the State of California.

66
00:05:29.960 --> 00:05:33.377
(Albert speaking German)

67
00:05:42.020 --> 00:05:43.930
When Einstein came to America,

68
00:05:43.930 --> 00:05:46.290
there were parades turned out to meet him,

69
00:05:46.290 --> 00:05:48.910
and there were parades in several places,

70
00:05:48.910 --> 00:05:50.910
and he was invited here, there, and everywhere.

71
00:05:50.910 --> 00:05:53.590
He was the first intellectual pop star.

72
00:05:53.590 --> 00:05:55.440
People go out into the streets to greet him.

73
00:05:55.440 --> 00:05:56.810
He's a big celebrity.

74
00:05:56.810 --> 00:05:58.889
Everybody knows what Einstein looks like.

75
00:05:58.889 --> 00:06:02.191
(elegant classical music)

76
00:06:02.191 --> 00:06:04.600
A young Einstein felt encouraged to enter science.

77
00:06:04.600 --> 00:06:07.440
He had a teacher at his home, Max Talmud,

78
00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:10.343
later called Talmey, who was a medical student,

79
00:06:11.690 --> 00:06:13.570
enthusiastic about science,

80
00:06:13.570 --> 00:06:17.870
and who took the younger Einstein as an equal,

81
00:06:17.870 --> 00:06:19.480
discussing with him science.

82
00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:24.470
Science was not the esoteric world to be admired from below.

83
00:06:24.470 --> 00:06:26.460
It was a time of development,

84
00:06:26.460 --> 00:06:29.941
of sophisticated industrialization, of electrotechnology,

85
00:06:29.941 --> 00:06:31.850
of technology conquering the world.

86
00:06:31.850 --> 00:06:34.280
It was a world in which one could enter,

87
00:06:34.280 --> 00:06:37.610
actively contribute, become part of it.

88
00:06:37.610 --> 00:06:39.340
And so, the young Einstein did.

89
00:06:39.340 --> 00:06:41.980
And he went to Italy and experienced the freedom there

90
00:06:41.980 --> 00:06:44.550
and the great culture but also the open mindedness

91
00:06:44.550 --> 00:06:47.110
towards exactly this kind of development.

92
00:06:47.110 --> 00:06:48.000
With his uncle,

93
00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:51.950
he communicated about electrotechnical developments.

94
00:06:51.950 --> 00:06:53.200
My dear uncle,

95
00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:55.700
I'm really very glad that you are still interested

96
00:06:55.700 --> 00:06:57.660
in my humble doings.

97
00:06:57.660 --> 00:06:59.770
It is rather naive and imperfect.

98
00:06:59.770 --> 00:07:03.690
This might be expected from such a young fellow like myself.

99
00:07:03.690 --> 00:07:07.130
And was quite familiar with this growing world,

100
00:07:07.130 --> 00:07:10.470
which really extended from technical equipments

101
00:07:10.470 --> 00:07:12.470
that were changing the daily life,

102
00:07:12.470 --> 00:07:15.440
electric lighting was being spread in the cities,

103
00:07:15.440 --> 00:07:18.050
to the intellectual challenges this implied.

104
00:07:18.050 --> 00:07:20.630
You could have the feeling, as a young person,

105
00:07:20.630 --> 00:07:23.170
of challenging the foundation of your world,

106
00:07:23.170 --> 00:07:26.110
and this gave Einstein a lot of courage

107
00:07:26.110 --> 00:07:28.410
that there was something to be achieved,

108
00:07:28.410 --> 00:07:29.970
you could make a difference.

109
00:07:29.970 --> 00:07:33.020
Even if you were not born into the center of the world

110
00:07:33.020 --> 00:07:34.850
and if you came from the margins,

111
00:07:34.850 --> 00:07:37.410
there was this way of entering the big world.

112
00:07:37.410 --> 00:07:40.510
The class of people that made it,

113
00:07:40.510 --> 00:07:43.510
people who were open-minded, who were believing in progress

114
00:07:43.510 --> 00:07:46.970
and not just in technological but also in social progress,

115
00:07:46.970 --> 00:07:51.463
in a bright, international, communicative world.

116
00:07:52.410 --> 00:07:54.240
And that's the world in which Einstein grew up.

117
00:07:54.240 --> 00:07:57.010
His parents were from a rural Southern German,

118
00:07:57.010 --> 00:07:58.870
more of a egalitarian ethos

119
00:07:58.870 --> 00:08:01.950
than the typical Prussian military ethos

120
00:08:01.950 --> 00:08:04.800
that we're familiar with when we think of German culture.

121
00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:09.570
Part of Einstein's support for social justice

122
00:08:09.570 --> 00:08:13.130
comes from his experiences of anti-Semitism at school

123
00:08:13.130 --> 00:08:14.670
from quite an early age.

124
00:08:14.670 --> 00:08:18.030
He would be bullied on the way to school,

125
00:08:18.030 --> 00:08:20.190
even physically assaulted sometimes.

126
00:08:20.190 --> 00:08:23.410
A Catholic teacher once brought a nail to school

127
00:08:23.410 --> 00:08:26.160
and presented it to the children and said, "This is the nail

128
00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:29.740
with which the Jews killed our Lord and Savior."

129
00:08:29.740 --> 00:08:31.547
And then everybody turned to Einstein,

130
00:08:31.547 --> 00:08:34.343
and he was quite mortified.

131
00:08:35.810 --> 00:08:37.890
Ever since Einstein was very little,

132
00:08:37.890 --> 00:08:39.850
he was a revolutionary.

133
00:08:39.850 --> 00:08:43.110
He revolted against the way German teaching

134
00:08:43.110 --> 00:08:46.570
basically crushed imagination out of young children,

135
00:08:46.570 --> 00:08:48.760
the tedious memorization.

136
00:08:48.760 --> 00:08:50.770
You weren't supposed to question the teacher.

137
00:08:50.770 --> 00:08:53.730
The teacher was god in the classroom.

138
00:08:53.730 --> 00:08:55.000
As a teenager,

139
00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:59.030
Einstein had to confront the issue of war and peace.

140
00:08:59.030 --> 00:09:01.640
Einstein did not want to go into the German Army,

141
00:09:01.640 --> 00:09:04.130
and so, he became a draft dodger.

142
00:09:04.130 --> 00:09:07.490
How many 16-year-old kids have the political maturity

143
00:09:07.490 --> 00:09:10.200
to say to themselves that they are against war

144
00:09:10.200 --> 00:09:13.160
so they're gonna renounce their citizenship?

145
00:09:13.160 --> 00:09:15.360
Young Einstein leaves Germany for Italy

146
00:09:15.360 --> 00:09:17.230
to reunite with his parents

147
00:09:17.230 --> 00:09:19.290
because he cannot stomach the idea

148
00:09:19.290 --> 00:09:21.113
of being part of a war machine.

149
00:09:22.010 --> 00:09:24.120
Einstein had a political learning curve

150
00:09:24.120 --> 00:09:26.240
at the end of the 19th century,

151
00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:29.660
a son of a liberal Jewish family.

152
00:09:29.660 --> 00:09:32.630
So his family went to Italy, he studied in Switzerland.

153
00:09:32.630 --> 00:09:33.859
It was an important place for him, also,

154
00:09:33.859 --> 00:09:37.270
to experience what a democracy is like,

155
00:09:37.270 --> 00:09:39.030
gave him an internationalist outlook

156
00:09:39.030 --> 00:09:41.870
that portrayed to him the model republic.

157
00:09:41.870 --> 00:09:45.870
When he came to Berlin at the eve of the First World War,

158
00:09:45.870 --> 00:09:48.653
most of his colleague were German nationalist,

159
00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:51.850
considered German militarism as a necessity

160
00:09:51.850 --> 00:09:54.090
to defend German culture.

161
00:09:54.090 --> 00:09:57.380
Einstein was taken aback by it, and he had other views

162
00:09:57.380 --> 00:10:01.410
on the basis of this different background that he had.

163
00:10:01.410 --> 00:10:04.120
That vilest offspring of the herd mind,

164
00:10:04.120 --> 00:10:06.470
the odious militia.

165
00:10:06.470 --> 00:10:09.400
He wasn't a political animal at this time

166
00:10:09.400 --> 00:10:12.670
but he mobilized some of the intellectual moral resources

167
00:10:12.670 --> 00:10:16.640
that his education had give him to become more and more

168
00:10:16.640 --> 00:10:19.360
of a politically conscious human being.

169
00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:22.970
And so, his strong sense of justice,

170
00:10:22.970 --> 00:10:25.750
his strong sense of universal and globalism,

171
00:10:25.750 --> 00:10:28.430
and his participation as a Jew

172
00:10:28.430 --> 00:10:31.390
are the foundation of his morality.

173
00:10:31.390 --> 00:10:33.530
Only morality in our actions

174
00:10:33.530 --> 00:10:36.320
can give beauty and dignity to life.

175
00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:39.720
And he, like in physics, is a revolutionary thinker.

176
00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:42.610
He could identify with the underdog.

177
00:10:42.610 --> 00:10:43.990
Following his studies,

178
00:10:43.990 --> 00:10:48.990
when he was then looking around desperately for a position,

179
00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:51.600
he was the only one in his class who, ironically,

180
00:10:51.600 --> 00:10:54.580
did not secure a position as an assistant,

181
00:10:54.580 --> 00:10:57.670
the first step on the ladder of an academic career.

182
00:10:57.670 --> 00:11:01.460
To some extent, he blamed anti-Semitism for that.

183
00:11:01.460 --> 00:11:03.710
It was also probably to do with his personality

184
00:11:03.710 --> 00:11:08.710
of not really getting on with the powers that be.

185
00:11:08.870 --> 00:11:13.870
In 1914, Einstein came to Berlin, where he discovered,

186
00:11:14.080 --> 00:11:17.480
as he said, for the first time, Jews.

187
00:11:17.480 --> 00:11:21.260
When there was a influx of Eastern European Jews

188
00:11:21.260 --> 00:11:24.590
into Germany as a consequence of the war in the East,

189
00:11:24.590 --> 00:11:26.955
he identified with their plight.

190
00:11:26.955 --> 00:11:29.060
(sorrowful music)

191
00:11:29.060 --> 00:11:31.410
German voices are increasingly heard

192
00:11:31.410 --> 00:11:35.730
that demand legal measures against Eastern European truce.

193
00:11:35.730 --> 00:11:38.710
Measures that devastate so many individuals

194
00:11:38.710 --> 00:11:42.480
must not be triggered by slogan-like assertions.

195
00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:46.903
Agitation by demagogues diverts from the true problems.

196
00:11:46.903 --> 00:11:49.690
The expulsion of the Eastern European Jews,

197
00:11:49.690 --> 00:11:52.690
resulting in unspeakable misery,

198
00:11:52.690 --> 00:11:55.030
would only appear to the whole world

199
00:11:55.030 --> 00:11:57.843
as new evidence of German barbarism.

200
00:12:00.060 --> 00:12:02.040
Because, of course, in his childhood,

201
00:12:02.040 --> 00:12:05.780
he had been one of an outsider minority.

202
00:12:05.780 --> 00:12:08.660
Now in Berlin, he found very large numbers,

203
00:12:08.660 --> 00:12:10.430
especially from Eastern Europe,

204
00:12:10.430 --> 00:12:13.530
who did not have access to higher education.

205
00:12:13.530 --> 00:12:16.020
He was very concerned

206
00:12:16.020 --> 00:12:21.020
that young Eastern European Jewish academic talent

207
00:12:21.650 --> 00:12:22.793
was going to waste.

208
00:12:24.110 --> 00:12:27.890
For him, the most important thing was free,

209
00:12:27.890 --> 00:12:32.300
uninhibited research, scientific research.

210
00:12:32.300 --> 00:12:34.810
His sister later described his sense of justice

211
00:12:34.810 --> 00:12:38.350
to that very thing in founding the Hebrew University,

212
00:12:38.350 --> 00:12:41.280
a place where people like himself, young Jews,

213
00:12:41.280 --> 00:12:43.220
could be educated.

214
00:12:43.220 --> 00:12:46.929
This institution of research and scholarship,

215
00:12:46.929 --> 00:12:49.682
the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,

216
00:12:49.682 --> 00:12:53.013
was founded long before the establishment

217
00:12:53.013 --> 00:12:56.040
of the independent State of Israel.

218
00:12:56.040 --> 00:12:59.030
But Einstein wasn't quite yet the political animal

219
00:12:59.030 --> 00:13:00.000
that he was to become.

220
00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:02.260
That developed only over time.

221
00:13:02.260 --> 00:13:05.390
He early on saw the dangers of the Nazi regime.

222
00:13:05.390 --> 00:13:07.520
He knew his German colleagues,

223
00:13:07.520 --> 00:13:12.490
both their strength in terms of scientific competence

224
00:13:12.490 --> 00:13:16.400
and their weaknesses in terms of willing to cooperate,

225
00:13:16.400 --> 00:13:20.540
to subordinate themselves under the authorities.

226
00:13:20.540 --> 00:13:22.420
I have always found repulsive

227
00:13:22.420 --> 00:13:27.380
the undignified addiction to conformity of many of my peers.

228
00:13:27.380 --> 00:13:28.970
At times like this,

229
00:13:28.970 --> 00:13:32.603
one realizes what a sorry species one belongs to.

230
00:13:34.220 --> 00:13:36.030
He was politically unconventional.

231
00:13:36.030 --> 00:13:38.510
I mean, his taking a stand on the First World War

232
00:13:38.510 --> 00:13:41.370
already was an extremely courageous thing

233
00:13:41.370 --> 00:13:42.920
for someone in his position.

234
00:13:42.920 --> 00:13:45.310
Remember, there are so few Jewish professors

235
00:13:46.200 --> 00:13:48.530
in Germany and Austria at that point

236
00:13:48.530 --> 00:13:49.860
that somebody had to write a letter

237
00:13:49.860 --> 00:13:54.860
claiming he was free of unpleasant Jewish characteristics.

238
00:13:55.660 --> 00:13:58.420
So, he could have retreated,

239
00:13:58.420 --> 00:14:01.300
and it would have been the easiest thing in the world

240
00:14:01.300 --> 00:14:03.690
for him to do, to not be outspoken.

241
00:14:03.690 --> 00:14:06.840
I think we all, as humans, to some extent,

242
00:14:06.840 --> 00:14:11.280
compartmentalize domains of our lives.

243
00:14:11.280 --> 00:14:14.550
We separate work from friendship from family.

244
00:14:14.550 --> 00:14:16.970
So, compartmentalization is just the usual way

245
00:14:16.970 --> 00:14:19.970
of dealing with complex situations one experiences in life.

246
00:14:19.970 --> 00:14:21.850
Haber is just an extreme case.

247
00:14:21.850 --> 00:14:24.690
Haber really was enthusiastically supporting the war

248
00:14:24.690 --> 00:14:27.360
and putting science at its service.

249
00:14:27.360 --> 00:14:31.560
But Einstein certainly felt close to Haber intellectually.

250
00:14:31.560 --> 00:14:35.330
He was one of the leading physical chemists of the time.

251
00:14:35.330 --> 00:14:37.120
Einstein made great contributions

252
00:14:37.120 --> 00:14:39.600
to the foundations of physical chemistry.

253
00:14:39.600 --> 00:14:42.920
Both had Jewish backgrounds, and both problematic marriages.

254
00:14:42.920 --> 00:14:47.920
So these two men certainly were like-minded in many ways

255
00:14:48.260 --> 00:14:52.570
on an intellectual level, but Haber was no exception.

256
00:14:52.570 --> 00:14:55.040
Other close friends of Einstein

257
00:14:55.040 --> 00:14:57.760
also were signing the famous declaration

258
00:14:57.760 --> 00:15:01.910
in favor of German militarism and the occupation of Belgium

259
00:15:02.880 --> 00:15:05.141
and of the cruelties that the German Army committed.

260
00:15:05.141 --> 00:15:06.890
("Es braust ein Ruf wie Donnerhall")

261
00:15:06.890 --> 00:15:08.000
That was the way

262
00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:11.083
that all of Einstein's colleagues were thinking.

263
00:15:36.430 --> 00:15:39.120
Einstein really was the great exception.

264
00:15:39.120 --> 00:15:40.560
How do you deal with the fact

265
00:15:40.560 --> 00:15:45.240
if you are so incredibly lonely in your political position?

266
00:15:45.240 --> 00:15:47.980
You are not there as a political ambassador,

267
00:15:47.980 --> 00:15:49.490
you are called there as a scientist.

268
00:15:49.490 --> 00:15:52.280
Feeling that your colleagues were doing excellent work,

269
00:15:52.280 --> 00:15:54.150
and some of the leading scientists were there.

270
00:15:54.150 --> 00:15:58.070
Most of them were nationalist conservatives,

271
00:15:58.070 --> 00:15:59.340
to say the least.

272
00:15:59.340 --> 00:16:02.420
Some, like Fritz Haber, war criminals.

273
00:16:02.420 --> 00:16:03.670
From our perspective,

274
00:16:03.670 --> 00:16:05.540
Einstein should have broken with Haber,

275
00:16:05.540 --> 00:16:08.530
should have told him to stop his war efforts,

276
00:16:08.530 --> 00:16:13.370
but that was an unthinkable breaching of wars at the time.

277
00:16:13.370 --> 00:16:15.810
If people are working on dubious issues

278
00:16:15.810 --> 00:16:17.480
in the military industry,

279
00:16:17.480 --> 00:16:20.743
and they see consequences, dangerous consequences,

280
00:16:21.660 --> 00:16:23.290
do they have the courage

281
00:16:23.290 --> 00:16:25.570
of becoming what they call whistleblowers?

282
00:16:25.570 --> 00:16:26.650
So, whistleblowing,

283
00:16:26.650 --> 00:16:28.510
that's what we would have expected from Einstein.

284
00:16:28.510 --> 00:16:32.210
But I think it is, again, not just our general way,

285
00:16:32.210 --> 00:16:34.730
and certainly not the specific way of Einstein,

286
00:16:34.730 --> 00:16:36.870
but it's the particular situation of the time

287
00:16:36.870 --> 00:16:39.796
that people were just more compartmentalizing

288
00:16:39.796 --> 00:16:41.670
than we do today.

289
00:16:41.670 --> 00:16:44.410
It's really one of the historical lessons

290
00:16:44.410 --> 00:16:47.040
that Einstein learned, that we have learned,

291
00:16:47.040 --> 00:16:49.813
that there is a danger in such compartmentalization.

292
00:16:50.810 --> 00:16:54.300
To come to the extreme, many Nazis,

293
00:16:54.300 --> 00:16:56.090
it seems we were friendly to their dogs

294
00:16:56.090 --> 00:16:58.170
and even to their family.

295
00:16:58.170 --> 00:17:01.010
Isn't that an extreme form of this compartmentalization,

296
00:17:01.010 --> 00:17:02.890
and don't we despise this today?

297
00:17:02.890 --> 00:17:06.100
Yes, but it's a historical lesson that we have learned

298
00:17:06.100 --> 00:17:09.400
that we should look across such boundaries

299
00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:12.010
and see what the full personality is,

300
00:17:12.010 --> 00:17:15.960
the full implications in the public life

301
00:17:15.960 --> 00:17:17.820
or in the private life are.

302
00:17:17.820 --> 00:17:21.350
I think Einstein wasn't at the point of having drawn

303
00:17:21.350 --> 00:17:23.660
or having taken in all those lessons yet,

304
00:17:23.660 --> 00:17:25.440
but he soon was to do that.

305
00:17:25.440 --> 00:17:29.023
(soothing classical music)

306
00:17:33.090 --> 00:17:35.860
Nationalism is an infantile disease.

307
00:17:35.860 --> 00:17:37.893
It is the measles of mankind.

308
00:17:39.350 --> 00:17:42.410
Anti-Semitism in all of Europe and also in Germany

309
00:17:42.410 --> 00:17:44.170
has a long history, of course.

310
00:17:44.170 --> 00:17:47.740
I saw worthy Jews basely caricatured

311
00:17:47.740 --> 00:17:50.900
and the sight make my heart bleed.

312
00:17:50.900 --> 00:17:54.000
The gentile majority undermines the confidence

313
00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:57.334
even of the best of my fellow Jews,

314
00:17:57.334 --> 00:17:59.993
and I felt this could not be allowed to continue.

315
00:18:01.880 --> 00:18:02.890
And in Germany,

316
00:18:02.890 --> 00:18:07.140
it was accentuated by the spectacular success of some Jews

317
00:18:07.140 --> 00:18:09.520
in the German political and economic system,

318
00:18:09.520 --> 00:18:11.540
which didn't compensate in any way

319
00:18:11.540 --> 00:18:14.180
for the repression that was still ongoing

320
00:18:14.180 --> 00:18:17.210
at other layers of social life,

321
00:18:17.210 --> 00:18:20.300
but it made the Jews so much more visible.

322
00:18:20.300 --> 00:18:23.610
And in the crisis of the First World War

323
00:18:23.610 --> 00:18:24.840
and after the crisis,

324
00:18:24.840 --> 00:18:27.423
after the German defeat in the First World War,

325
00:18:28.470 --> 00:18:30.420
people needed to find scapegoats,

326
00:18:30.420 --> 00:18:33.360
and the Jews were quite appropriate, in a way,

327
00:18:33.360 --> 00:18:37.160
because they were so internationally-minded,

328
00:18:37.160 --> 00:18:39.000
much more than the rest of the German averages

329
00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:40.880
and they were so exposed.

330
00:18:40.880 --> 00:18:42.970
Some of them were highly visible

331
00:18:42.970 --> 00:18:45.690
as part of the political and intellectual elite

332
00:18:45.690 --> 00:18:49.040
of the Weimar Republic, so they were targets, easy targets.

333
00:18:49.040 --> 00:18:52.050
Ever since the abominable murder of Rathenau,

334
00:18:52.050 --> 00:18:55.323
I myself am being constantly warned to be cautious.

335
00:18:56.560 --> 00:18:59.356
Anti-Semitism is very widespread.

336
00:18:59.356 --> 00:19:02.189
(sorrowful music)

337
00:19:09.176 --> 00:19:12.800
By 1922, there are over 300 political murders

338
00:19:12.800 --> 00:19:17.600
by right-wing radical groups, and this was

339
00:19:17.600 --> 00:19:20.100
a particularly dangerous time, also, for Einstein.

340
00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:25.017
Einstein was, in the '20s,

341
00:19:25.017 --> 00:19:27.460
Weimar's prized public intellectual,

342
00:19:27.460 --> 00:19:28.730
one of the very few people

343
00:19:28.730 --> 00:19:31.770
who'd spoken out against the First World War,

344
00:19:31.770 --> 00:19:34.150
and he was very happy to put himself

345
00:19:34.150 --> 00:19:36.520
in the services of the Weimar Republic

346
00:19:36.520 --> 00:19:38.320
and do whatever could be done to strengthen it,

347
00:19:38.320 --> 00:19:43.003
the first democratic republic in Germany.

348
00:19:44.084 --> 00:19:46.630
(scoffs) Funny people, these Germans.

349
00:19:46.630 --> 00:19:48.870
To them, I'm a stinking flower,

350
00:19:48.870 --> 00:19:52.560
yet they put me into their lapel time and again.

351
00:19:52.560 --> 00:19:54.240
And it was a brave stand

352
00:19:54.240 --> 00:19:58.240
because the Foreign Minister of Weimar, Walter Rathenau,

353
00:19:58.240 --> 00:20:02.710
was actually murdered as a Jew, and a left-leaning Jew,

354
00:20:02.710 --> 00:20:06.470
and some of the same group who murdered him

355
00:20:06.470 --> 00:20:09.420
offered to pay a reward to anyone who would murder Einstein.

356
00:20:09.420 --> 00:20:11.570
Einstein, he received warnings

357
00:20:11.570 --> 00:20:14.690
that he's on the list of that group

358
00:20:14.690 --> 00:20:17.480
that murdered Walter Rathenau.

359
00:20:17.480 --> 00:20:21.310
And he was withdrawing from all public appearances

360
00:20:21.310 --> 00:20:24.560
at that time, he canceled his lectures.

361
00:20:24.560 --> 00:20:27.160
It seems I belong to that group of people

362
00:20:27.160 --> 00:20:29.853
whom the radical right plan to assassinate.

363
00:20:31.690 --> 00:20:34.180
There was a grand big lecture he was supposed to give

364
00:20:34.180 --> 00:20:35.390
that was a centennial

365
00:20:35.390 --> 00:20:38.610
of the German Society of Natural Sciences and Physicians,

366
00:20:38.610 --> 00:20:42.800
it was their 100th anniversary celebration,

367
00:20:42.800 --> 00:20:45.520
and Einstein's lecture had to be rescheduled, I guess.

368
00:20:45.520 --> 00:20:47.580
It was a big lecture for that celebration,

369
00:20:47.580 --> 00:20:49.340
and he had to cancel that.

370
00:20:49.340 --> 00:20:52.400
Many scientists, like Max Planck and von Laue,

371
00:20:52.400 --> 00:20:55.080
couldn't believe that it was possible

372
00:20:55.080 --> 00:20:58.310
that one of the most important scientists in Germany,

373
00:20:58.310 --> 00:21:02.990
Einstein, that he was somehow forced to withdraw

374
00:21:02.990 --> 00:21:05.710
from giving this lecture by right-wing radicals

375
00:21:05.710 --> 00:21:07.520
who threatened his life.

376
00:21:07.520 --> 00:21:11.270
And it extended, one may be surprised at that,

377
00:21:11.270 --> 00:21:12.700
also to the field of science.

378
00:21:12.700 --> 00:21:16.730
There were different groups of people

379
00:21:16.730 --> 00:21:18.760
opposing the theory of relativity.

380
00:21:18.760 --> 00:21:21.118
There was a political opposition.

381
00:21:21.118 --> 00:21:26.118
Einstein, as a democrat, as a Jew in the Weimar Republic,

382
00:21:26.770 --> 00:21:28.800
he was a target of many people

383
00:21:28.800 --> 00:21:32.830
who had nationalistic motivation, who were anti-Semites,

384
00:21:32.830 --> 00:21:35.457
attacking Einstein as a person.

385
00:21:35.457 --> 00:21:38.800
And there was also an opposition which mainly motivated

386
00:21:38.800 --> 00:21:41.960
by different understandings of science.

387
00:21:41.960 --> 00:21:46.700
It was not Einstein who put the topic of anti-Semitism

388
00:21:46.700 --> 00:21:48.020
on the agenda.

389
00:21:48.020 --> 00:21:51.690
He was responding to a widespread anti-Semitism

390
00:21:51.690 --> 00:21:56.300
in the public area but also among his academic colleagues.

391
00:21:56.300 --> 00:21:59.520
The Einstein opponents established their own academy.

392
00:21:59.520 --> 00:22:02.330
So, an academy of the Einstein opponents.

393
00:22:02.330 --> 00:22:03.730
So, this was a network

394
00:22:03.730 --> 00:22:06.658
mainly between the United States and Germany.

395
00:22:06.658 --> 00:22:10.075
(bright classical music)

396
00:22:14.540 --> 00:22:16.470
Under the pretentious name

397
00:22:16.470 --> 00:22:19.437
Association of German Natural Scientists

398
00:22:19.437 --> 00:22:22.340
for the Preservation of Pure Science,

399
00:22:22.340 --> 00:22:26.160
a society has assembled whose purpose of existence

400
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:29.730
seems to be to degrade the theory of relativity

401
00:22:29.730 --> 00:22:31.843
as well as me as its originator.

402
00:22:34.390 --> 00:22:35.743
He left town,

403
00:22:36.640 --> 00:22:40.630
but it did not deter him from continuing to speak out.

404
00:22:40.630 --> 00:22:43.840
People who survey the situation in Germany well

405
00:22:43.840 --> 00:22:45.400
are indeed of the opinion

406
00:22:45.400 --> 00:22:48.420
that a certain threat to my life does exist.

407
00:22:48.420 --> 00:22:50.240
A yearning for the Far East

408
00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:53.280
led me to accept the invitation to Japan.

409
00:22:53.280 --> 00:22:56.455
Another part was the need to get away for a while

410
00:22:56.455 --> 00:22:59.090
from the tense atmosphere in our homeland

411
00:22:59.090 --> 00:23:01.040
for a period of time.

412
00:23:01.040 --> 00:23:04.300
After the murder of Rathenau, I was certainly relieved

413
00:23:04.300 --> 00:23:08.360
to have an opportunity for a long absence from Germany,

414
00:23:08.360 --> 00:23:11.974
taking me away from the temporarily heightened danger.

415
00:23:11.974 --> 00:23:14.557
(gentle music)

416
00:23:19.020 --> 00:23:23.090
I seek solace in Mozart, but when I am improvising

417
00:23:23.090 --> 00:23:25.530
and it appears that something may come of it,

418
00:23:25.530 --> 00:23:28.063
I require the clear construction of Bach.

419
00:23:29.740 --> 00:23:31.660
The picture of Einstein

420
00:23:31.660 --> 00:23:35.250
that gets presented by so many Einstein specialists

421
00:23:35.250 --> 00:23:37.010
is yes, he was absolutely brilliant,

422
00:23:37.010 --> 00:23:41.033
but he was a sort of childish, sad fool.

423
00:23:41.033 --> 00:23:43.520
The things that were most important to him

424
00:23:43.520 --> 00:23:47.530
are described as being the sort of ideas of a childish fool,

425
00:23:47.530 --> 00:23:48.363
of a luftmensch.

426
00:23:49.303 --> 00:23:52.730
A luftmensch being a Yiddish expression,

427
00:23:52.730 --> 00:23:54.570
not a German expression,

428
00:23:54.570 --> 00:23:58.900
which basically means somebody who has a lot of ideas

429
00:23:58.900 --> 00:24:01.410
but keeps his head in the air, luft,

430
00:24:01.410 --> 00:24:05.640
without keeping his feet on the ground, a naive person.

431
00:24:05.640 --> 00:24:10.640
Is actually a way of undermining, dare I say castrating him.

432
00:24:12.130 --> 00:24:14.600
Einstein, who was often portrayed

433
00:24:14.600 --> 00:24:18.913
as somebody who kept a distance from other people,

434
00:24:19.940 --> 00:24:22.570
which he certainly tried to do and needed to do

435
00:24:22.570 --> 00:24:24.670
in order to be able to keep working,

436
00:24:24.670 --> 00:24:27.033
given that he was such a public celebrity,

437
00:24:28.200 --> 00:24:31.210
but I think he was a realist of a way.

438
00:24:31.210 --> 00:24:35.880
He had experience enough about people and their weaknesses

439
00:24:35.880 --> 00:24:40.620
not just to dream about a utopian, peaceful world.

440
00:24:40.620 --> 00:24:45.100
If you think when he was talking against militarism,

441
00:24:45.100 --> 00:24:50.100
against the wrong way to be a nationalist,

442
00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:53.901
before we knew that there's the First World War,

443
00:24:53.901 --> 00:24:57.611
there will be a second one, there will be the atomic bomb,

444
00:24:57.611 --> 00:24:59.350
(bomb rumbling)

445
00:24:59.350 --> 00:25:01.293
beware of what can happen.

446
00:25:02.410 --> 00:25:05.780
It's a realistic political thinking.

447
00:25:05.780 --> 00:25:09.530
One should be impressed that he could say these things

448
00:25:09.530 --> 00:25:13.317
so early and he was one of the very few people who said,

449
00:25:13.317 --> 00:25:15.340
"Oh, be aware."

450
00:25:15.340 --> 00:25:16.920
It is strange that science,

451
00:25:16.920 --> 00:25:19.660
which in the old days seemed harmless,

452
00:25:19.660 --> 00:25:21.820
should have evolved into a nightmare

453
00:25:21.820 --> 00:25:24.110
that causes everyone to tremble.

454
00:25:24.110 --> 00:25:28.220
He was very distressed by his celebrity status

455
00:25:28.220 --> 00:25:29.420
at the beginning.

456
00:25:29.420 --> 00:25:33.240
It's dangerous, because if you admire someone,

457
00:25:33.240 --> 00:25:36.450
you follow him without thinking about it, really,

458
00:25:36.450 --> 00:25:39.410
without using your own responsibility.

459
00:25:39.410 --> 00:25:42.700
So, without doing what Einstein always did,

460
00:25:42.700 --> 00:25:47.700
thinking himself and thinking in a responsible way,

461
00:25:48.790 --> 00:25:51.130
thinking in a political way, also.

462
00:25:51.130 --> 00:25:55.490
So I think this is the reason why famousness in general

463
00:25:55.490 --> 00:25:59.820
was not something he could admire

464
00:25:59.820 --> 00:26:02.010
or he could tolerate, really.

465
00:26:02.010 --> 00:26:04.990
Einstein really lends himself

466
00:26:04.990 --> 00:26:07.319
to that kind of mythologization

467
00:26:07.319 --> 00:26:12.160
insofar as he was a great ham and the press loved him.

468
00:26:12.160 --> 00:26:15.421
What do you think of prohibition, Professor?

469
00:26:15.421 --> 00:26:18.325
(Albert speaking German)

470
00:26:18.325 --> 00:26:21.170
(all laughing)

471
00:26:21.170 --> 00:26:22.003
He doesn't drink at all,

472
00:26:22.003 --> 00:26:23.577
so he's not interested in this question.

473
00:26:23.577 --> 00:26:24.560
And he would laugh,

474
00:26:24.560 --> 00:26:27.863
and he apparently had a laugh like a barking seal.

475
00:26:28.910 --> 00:26:31.530
He was ideal as a kind of matinee idol.

476
00:26:31.530 --> 00:26:35.517
Mr. George Bernard Shaw in honor of Professor Einstein.

477
00:26:35.517 --> 00:26:38.684
(audience applauding)

478
00:26:43.460 --> 00:26:47.379
There's an order of men who are makers of universes.

479
00:26:47.379 --> 00:26:50.970
(audience applauding)

480
00:26:50.970 --> 00:26:55.633
Ptolemy made a universe which lasted 1,400 years.

481
00:26:57.041 --> 00:27:02.041
Newton also made a universe which has lasted 300 years.

482
00:27:02.570 --> 00:27:04.283
Einstein has made a universe,

483
00:27:05.179 --> 00:27:07.144
and I can't tell you how long that will last.

484
00:27:07.144 --> 00:27:09.180
(all laughing)

485
00:27:09.180 --> 00:27:13.300
He was not naive but he saw very well

486
00:27:13.300 --> 00:27:17.260
it's useful for his goals, for his political goals,

487
00:27:17.260 --> 00:27:19.370
for helping people.

488
00:27:19.370 --> 00:27:22.830
He saw it, basically, as a curse.

489
00:27:22.830 --> 00:27:24.020
Worshiped today,

490
00:27:24.020 --> 00:27:26.293
scorned or even crucified tomorrow,

491
00:27:27.290 --> 00:27:30.510
that is the fate of people whom, God knows why,

492
00:27:30.510 --> 00:27:33.070
the bored public has taken possession of.

493
00:27:33.070 --> 00:27:36.070
He didn't quite understand why, of all the scientists,

494
00:27:36.070 --> 00:27:37.450
he'd kind of been singled out

495
00:27:37.450 --> 00:27:42.140
for this unpleasant development,

496
00:27:42.140 --> 00:27:46.500
but eventually he learned how to use his celebrity status

497
00:27:46.500 --> 00:27:48.891
to promote causes that were important to him.

498
00:27:48.891 --> 00:27:51.641
(singer humming)

499
00:28:03.492 --> 00:28:05.320
As it contradicts the image of him as being naive,

500
00:28:05.320 --> 00:28:08.220
he became quite shrewd in deciding what he would approve.

501
00:28:08.220 --> 00:28:11.310
We scientists who released this immense power

502
00:28:11.310 --> 00:28:13.690
have overwhelming responsibility

503
00:28:13.690 --> 00:28:17.893
in this world life-and-death struggle to harness atom.

504
00:28:19.150 --> 00:28:20.530
I agree.

505
00:28:20.530 --> 00:28:22.340
Which petition he would sign,

506
00:28:22.340 --> 00:28:26.360
which committee he would become the honorary chairman of.

507
00:28:26.360 --> 00:28:30.633
He was pretty discretionary about it and selective.

508
00:28:31.570 --> 00:28:33.610
I have tried to be very economical

509
00:28:33.610 --> 00:28:35.310
with my public utterances.

510
00:28:35.310 --> 00:28:36.590
This is the best way

511
00:28:36.590 --> 00:28:39.390
not to lose the small beneficial influence

512
00:28:39.390 --> 00:28:41.350
one is able to exercise.

513
00:28:41.350 --> 00:28:42.217
He thought,

514
00:28:42.217 --> 00:28:45.530
"Okay, if my famousness is part of my moral capital,

515
00:28:45.530 --> 00:28:50.530
I can use it to help or to have a political influence."

516
00:28:52.200 --> 00:28:56.160
He was a political human being before his American years.

517
00:28:56.160 --> 00:28:58.630
It would be sad to waste much energy

518
00:28:58.630 --> 00:29:01.614
on the meager soil of politics.

519
00:29:01.614 --> 00:29:03.479
From time to time, however,

520
00:29:03.479 --> 00:29:06.600
the moment arrives when I cannot help myself.

521
00:29:06.600 --> 00:29:11.600
If you read his texts about peace, about human rights,

522
00:29:12.090 --> 00:29:17.090
about human beings in the world, it's easy to think,

523
00:29:17.307 --> 00:29:21.357
"Okay, this is very fundamental."

524
00:29:22.280 --> 00:29:26.550
But it's really a political engagement because, for him,

525
00:29:26.550 --> 00:29:29.163
the point of all things is the human being.

526
00:29:30.010 --> 00:29:34.600
It's not the German one, the American one, the French,

527
00:29:34.600 --> 00:29:37.370
it's the human being's right for freedom,

528
00:29:37.370 --> 00:29:38.803
for his individuality.

529
00:29:40.020 --> 00:29:42.410
He's being besieged all the time

530
00:29:42.410 --> 00:29:46.282
for requests to give a kosher stamp to (chuckling)

531
00:29:46.282 --> 00:29:49.950
or an un-kosher stamp to all kinds of enterprises.

532
00:29:49.950 --> 00:29:52.477
Magnus Hirschfeld had a very important institute in Berlin

533
00:29:52.477 --> 00:29:53.610
in the '20s,

534
00:29:53.610 --> 00:29:56.190
when people were becoming more open about sexuality,

535
00:29:56.190 --> 00:29:58.520
but there was still a lot of pushback,

536
00:29:58.520 --> 00:30:01.730
and Hirschfeld's institute was one of the first things

537
00:30:01.730 --> 00:30:03.030
the Nazis closed.

538
00:30:03.030 --> 00:30:04.770
They described him as decadent.

539
00:30:04.770 --> 00:30:07.740
He was gay, and not simply in favor

540
00:30:07.740 --> 00:30:09.670
of what we came to call gay liberation,

541
00:30:09.670 --> 00:30:13.140
but women's rights to open sexuality

542
00:30:13.140 --> 00:30:15.850
and a whole host of other things

543
00:30:15.850 --> 00:30:18.270
that were quite controversial at the time.

544
00:30:18.270 --> 00:30:23.270
When asked to support Hirschfeld's institute, Einstein said:

545
00:30:24.760 --> 00:30:27.840
Abortion up till a certain stage of pregnancy

546
00:30:27.840 --> 00:30:30.882
should be permissible at the request of the woman.

547
00:30:30.882 --> 00:30:33.060
(jazzy music)

548
00:30:33.060 --> 00:30:36.483
Homosexuality should be exempt from punishment.

549
00:30:41.410 --> 00:30:45.313
In regard to sex education, no secretiveness.

550
00:30:46.650 --> 00:30:49.777
Exactly the right things that are as valid, I think,

551
00:30:49.777 --> 00:30:53.840
and important today as they were in 1929.

552
00:30:53.840 --> 00:30:55.580
Einstein is often criticized,

553
00:30:55.580 --> 00:30:58.060
and I'm sometimes asked how can I, as a woman,

554
00:30:58.060 --> 00:31:02.520
defend Einstein's relationship toward women and his wives.

555
00:31:02.520 --> 00:31:07.273
Einstein's first wife, Mileva, was older than him,

556
00:31:08.320 --> 00:31:13.320
partly crippled, not Jewish, and anathema to his parents.

557
00:31:16.110 --> 00:31:21.110
She was the only woman physics student in Zurich.

558
00:31:21.200 --> 00:31:23.820
Einstein fell in love with a woman

559
00:31:23.820 --> 00:31:26.390
who could share his intellectual passions,

560
00:31:26.390 --> 00:31:29.510
and he only got permission to marry her

561
00:31:29.510 --> 00:31:31.860
on his father's deathbed.

562
00:31:31.860 --> 00:31:34.080
They had a daughter out of wedlock

563
00:31:34.080 --> 00:31:37.480
before his parents would permit them to marry.

564
00:31:37.480 --> 00:31:39.300
My dearest sweetheart,

565
00:31:39.300 --> 00:31:41.550
it's such a shame that our dear Lieserl

566
00:31:41.550 --> 00:31:44.620
must be introduced to the world in this way.

567
00:31:44.620 --> 00:31:48.300
I love her so much and don't even know her yet.

568
00:31:48.300 --> 00:31:51.060
She probably gave the daughter,

569
00:31:51.060 --> 00:31:53.830
all we really know about her is that she was named Lieserl,

570
00:31:53.830 --> 00:31:58.830
up for adoption, and not only did they never see her again,

571
00:31:58.980 --> 00:32:01.860
no one, and many Einstein researchers

572
00:32:01.860 --> 00:32:04.883
have tried to find out what happened to Lieserl, no one has.

573
00:32:05.870 --> 00:32:08.810
Diagnoses at a distance are always a problem,

574
00:32:08.810 --> 00:32:13.810
but that was probably a trigger for Mileva's depressions,

575
00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:18.570
which continued and became more serious

576
00:32:18.570 --> 00:32:22.340
and more tinged with rage as the marriage went on.

577
00:32:22.340 --> 00:32:25.990
She wound up failing her PhD exam in physics,

578
00:32:25.990 --> 00:32:29.140
which cannot have been easy for her

579
00:32:29.140 --> 00:32:30.990
to be living with someone

580
00:32:30.990 --> 00:32:34.493
who was writing world historical physics papers.

581
00:32:35.620 --> 00:32:38.700
And the marriage fell apart.

582
00:32:38.700 --> 00:32:40.800
There's a letter that he wrote for Mileva

583
00:32:40.800 --> 00:32:43.490
in which he tells her to keep her distance

584
00:32:43.490 --> 00:32:45.740
and it is harsh and it is hostile.

585
00:32:45.740 --> 00:32:49.050
You will renounce all personal relations with me

586
00:32:49.050 --> 00:32:50.720
as far as maintaining them

587
00:32:50.720 --> 00:32:54.420
is not absolutely required for social reasons.

588
00:32:54.420 --> 00:32:59.420
And all that I would say to that,

589
00:32:59.720 --> 00:33:02.043
he did take care of her financially.

590
00:33:02.931 --> 00:33:05.700
He knew he was gonna get the Nobel Prize eventually.

591
00:33:05.700 --> 00:33:09.270
He gave it almost in its entirety to her.

592
00:33:09.270 --> 00:33:10.967
So then, people say,

593
00:33:10.967 --> 00:33:14.120
"Ah, well, what do you say about his marriage to Elsa?"

594
00:33:14.120 --> 00:33:15.730
Elsa was his cousin.

595
00:33:15.730 --> 00:33:19.270
I suppose they had some kind of familial bond.

596
00:33:19.270 --> 00:33:22.180
She was a divorced woman with two daughters

597
00:33:22.180 --> 00:33:24.050
whom Einstein treated as his own.

598
00:33:24.050 --> 00:33:29.050
She cared for him when he nearly died in Berlin.

599
00:33:29.290 --> 00:33:32.010
I have to have someone to love.

600
00:33:32.010 --> 00:33:33.643
Otherwise, life is miserable.

601
00:33:34.490 --> 00:33:36.353
And this someone is you.

602
00:33:37.240 --> 00:33:38.470
He was just in the process

603
00:33:38.470 --> 00:33:41.690
of getting out of a really crazy marriage,

604
00:33:41.690 --> 00:33:44.410
so it seemed like stability

605
00:33:44.410 --> 00:33:49.410
and something that he could feel happy and comfortable in.

606
00:33:49.720 --> 00:33:51.510
She also does, in those pictures,

607
00:33:51.510 --> 00:33:54.310
really look more like his mother than his lover,

608
00:33:54.310 --> 00:33:57.500
and Einstein was a man on fire all his life,

609
00:33:57.500 --> 00:34:00.630
and he needed to connect with other women

610
00:34:00.630 --> 00:34:02.903
in ways that he simply couldn't with Elsa.

611
00:34:04.490 --> 00:34:07.970
He made two completely different bad marriages.

612
00:34:07.970 --> 00:34:09.433
He was sad about that.

613
00:34:10.520 --> 00:34:13.440
What I admired in him the most as a person

614
00:34:13.440 --> 00:34:17.280
is that he succeeded in living for many years,

615
00:34:17.280 --> 00:34:18.620
not just in peace,

616
00:34:18.620 --> 00:34:22.430
but in constant consonance with one woman,

617
00:34:22.430 --> 00:34:27.143
an endeavor in which I failed twice, quite ignominiously.

618
00:34:28.710 --> 00:34:30.560
For his 50th birthday,

619
00:34:30.560 --> 00:34:35.560
the City of Berlin decided to give him as a gift

620
00:34:35.680 --> 00:34:38.400
a house in the woods where he could go sailing,

621
00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:42.210
which everybody knew was his favorite way of relaxing,

622
00:34:42.210 --> 00:34:44.580
and a group of right-wing people

623
00:34:44.580 --> 00:34:48.560
highly objected to the City of Berlin

624
00:34:48.560 --> 00:34:52.690
giving a birthday gift to that socialist Jew.

625
00:34:52.690 --> 00:34:56.755
Einstein said, "Okay, I'll buy it myself."

626
00:34:56.755 --> 00:35:00.005
(playful twangy music)

627
00:35:07.040 --> 00:35:11.300
What attracted and appealed to Elsa about Einstein's life

628
00:35:11.300 --> 00:35:14.010
was exactly what Einstein did not want,

629
00:35:14.010 --> 00:35:17.160
the social celebrity, the being invited to aristocrat's,

630
00:35:17.160 --> 00:35:18.550
and so on.

631
00:35:18.550 --> 00:35:21.970
She had no pretension of trying to understand his physics,

632
00:35:21.970 --> 00:35:26.970
but she really wanted to be a sort of high bourgeois wife.

633
00:35:27.080 --> 00:35:30.910
The house was not only used for him to get away from Berlin.

634
00:35:30.910 --> 00:35:33.900
It was a place where, really,

635
00:35:33.900 --> 00:35:37.600
some of the great minds of his generation came to.

636
00:35:37.600 --> 00:35:41.040
Rabindranath Tagore came from India,

637
00:35:41.040 --> 00:35:45.143
Heinrich Mann, Chaim Weizmann, Max Planck,

638
00:35:46.590 --> 00:35:50.530
just a whole row of people came out to discuss,

639
00:35:50.530 --> 00:35:53.350
as they say in German, God and the world,

640
00:35:53.350 --> 00:35:57.360
or sometimes to play string quartets on the terrace.

641
00:35:57.360 --> 00:36:00.480
Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful

642
00:36:00.480 --> 00:36:02.460
that I see it as a reflection

643
00:36:02.460 --> 00:36:05.193
of the inner beauty of the universe.

644
00:36:06.310 --> 00:36:11.310
There is a rumor that describes Einstein as antisocial.

645
00:36:11.380 --> 00:36:14.460
I've even seen him described as autistic.

646
00:36:14.460 --> 00:36:15.533
This is nuts.

647
00:36:16.440 --> 00:36:21.440
Einstein was an extremely socially engaged person

648
00:36:22.260 --> 00:36:26.263
when he wanted to be, but he did not like formalities.

649
00:36:27.230 --> 00:36:30.320
A delegation of ministers was coming out to visit him

650
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:34.067
from Berlin, and Elsa said,

651
00:36:34.067 --> 00:36:35.540
"Albert, the ministers are coming.

652
00:36:35.540 --> 00:36:38.710
It's time to put on your suit."

653
00:36:38.710 --> 00:36:43.220
And Einstein said, "If they wanna see me, I'm here.

654
00:36:43.220 --> 00:36:45.983
If they wanna see my clothes, you can open the closet."

655
00:36:45.983 --> 00:36:49.390
(chuckling) So, that says something

656
00:36:49.390 --> 00:36:52.590
about the way that he dealt with people.

657
00:36:52.590 --> 00:36:55.960
Einstein preferred to spend as much time as possible

658
00:36:55.960 --> 00:36:57.810
in the house in Caputh

659
00:36:57.810 --> 00:37:00.363
in those four years before he left Germany.

660
00:37:02.628 --> 00:37:05.461
(patriotic music)

661
00:37:12.553 --> 00:37:15.303
(crowd cheering)

662
00:37:21.347 --> 00:37:24.930
(Adolf shouting in German)

663
00:37:28.162 --> 00:37:30.374
(crowd cheering)

664
00:37:30.374 --> 00:37:31.820
I cannot understand

665
00:37:31.820 --> 00:37:35.110
the passive response of the whole civilized world

666
00:37:35.110 --> 00:37:37.010
to this modern barbarism.

667
00:37:37.010 --> 00:37:40.497
Doesn't the world see that Hitler is aiming for war?

668
00:37:42.811 --> 00:37:45.644
(crowd clamoring)

669
00:38:00.626 --> 00:38:03.376
(dramatic music)

670
00:38:05.483 --> 00:38:08.233
(woman laughing)

671
00:38:13.634 --> 00:38:16.141
(woman laughing)

672
00:38:16.141 --> 00:38:19.224
(train bell ringing)

673
00:38:25.028 --> 00:38:27.945
(crowd chattering)

674
00:38:36.918 --> 00:38:39.918
(suspenseful music)

675
00:38:47.302 --> 00:38:50.263
(gentle music)

676
00:38:50.263 --> 00:38:54.870
In all these years, I have only enhanced Germany's prestige

677
00:38:54.870 --> 00:38:57.540
and never allowed myself to be alienated

678
00:38:57.540 --> 00:39:01.113
by the systematic attacks on me in the rightist press,

679
00:39:04.750 --> 00:39:06.850
especially those in recent years

680
00:39:06.850 --> 00:39:10.083
in which no one took the trouble to stand up for me.

681
00:39:13.940 --> 00:39:16.780
Is not the destruction of German truce by starvation

682
00:39:16.780 --> 00:39:20.163
the official program of the present German government?

683
00:39:20.163 --> 00:39:22.913
(dramatic music)

684
00:40:08.230 --> 00:40:10.127
Einstein definitely was a realist,

685
00:40:10.127 --> 00:40:13.280
and he moved from pacifism to militant pacifism

686
00:40:13.280 --> 00:40:14.890
and then he abandoned it, of course,

687
00:40:14.890 --> 00:40:18.280
when confronted with Hitlerism.

688
00:40:18.280 --> 00:40:22.360
It was pacifism that, when confronted with odds

689
00:40:22.360 --> 00:40:26.460
that were overwhelming, would make concessions.

690
00:40:26.460 --> 00:40:30.330
I'm not only a pacifist, but a militant pacifist.

691
00:40:30.330 --> 00:40:32.483
I am willing to fight for peace.

692
00:40:33.520 --> 00:40:35.400
He felt that the danger,

693
00:40:35.400 --> 00:40:37.720
after the discovery of nuclear fission,

694
00:40:37.720 --> 00:40:40.100
of building atomic bombs, was a real one.

695
00:40:40.100 --> 00:40:42.590
He was right that there was such a danger,

696
00:40:42.590 --> 00:40:44.660
and it was hard to assess how realistic

697
00:40:44.660 --> 00:40:48.940
and how long it would take, actually, to build such a bomb.

698
00:40:48.940 --> 00:40:52.720
So that he supported it by the famous letter to Roosevelt,

699
00:40:52.720 --> 00:40:54.240
which he signed.

700
00:40:54.240 --> 00:40:55.360
In the letter itself,

701
00:40:55.360 --> 00:40:57.020
it talks about the bomb being so heavy

702
00:40:57.020 --> 00:41:00.230
that it would have to be delivered by ship

703
00:41:00.230 --> 00:41:01.973
and exploded in the harbor,

704
00:41:03.370 --> 00:41:06.250
so there was no concept of feasibility, then,

705
00:41:06.250 --> 00:41:08.640
of transporting it by plane.

706
00:41:08.640 --> 00:41:10.990
The American engagement in building the bomb

707
00:41:10.990 --> 00:41:14.240
was quite understandable, given the situation.

708
00:41:14.240 --> 00:41:16.720
Therefore, I'm saying Einstein had become,

709
00:41:16.720 --> 00:41:19.020
I think he didn't change his fundamental positions,

710
00:41:19.020 --> 00:41:22.010
but he was becoming more and more of a realist.

711
00:41:22.010 --> 00:41:25.160
And so, he found that this was an important move to take

712
00:41:25.160 --> 00:41:26.040
at the time.

713
00:41:26.040 --> 00:41:28.150
Organized power can be opposed

714
00:41:28.150 --> 00:41:30.290
only by organized power.

715
00:41:30.290 --> 00:41:33.920
Much as I regret this, there is no other way.

716
00:41:33.920 --> 00:41:35.880
Einstein deeply regretted, eventually,

717
00:41:35.880 --> 00:41:38.150
writing the famous letter to FDR.

718
00:41:38.150 --> 00:41:40.690
He thought that it was very instrumental

719
00:41:40.690 --> 00:41:43.760
in setting up the Manhattan Project.

720
00:41:43.760 --> 00:41:47.192
He thought that that was his major contribution

721
00:41:47.192 --> 00:41:51.640
to the dawning of the atomic era.

722
00:41:51.640 --> 00:41:53.580
He didn't think that his formula

723
00:41:53.580 --> 00:41:55.758
had played any role in that.

724
00:41:55.758 --> 00:41:59.341
(dramatic classical music)

725
00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:09.930
Albert Einstein felt very much his responsibility

726
00:42:09.930 --> 00:42:14.930
for young scientists who want to came to America

727
00:42:14.930 --> 00:42:19.930
or didn't have an affidavit or any help to get a job there,

728
00:42:20.900 --> 00:42:25.900
and he tried whatever he could to help other emigres,

729
00:42:27.450 --> 00:42:32.450
other scientists, and a lot of time, a lot of power,

730
00:42:32.950 --> 00:42:37.030
a lot of money, he gave to these people,

731
00:42:37.030 --> 00:42:41.450
and he tried nearly to help all he could help.

732
00:42:41.450 --> 00:42:45.930
He had something like a little grove for emigres.

733
00:42:45.930 --> 00:42:47.570
I think it's a very important part

734
00:42:47.570 --> 00:42:50.260
of the man Albert Einstein,

735
00:42:50.260 --> 00:42:55.260
of the immigrant Albert Einstein, of the exiled,

736
00:42:58.356 --> 00:43:02.240
and of the political human being Albert Einstein too

737
00:43:02.240 --> 00:43:06.550
because I think this engagement for other emigres

738
00:43:06.550 --> 00:43:10.030
is part of his responsibility, of course,

739
00:43:10.030 --> 00:43:13.289
because he was a famous one and he could help them, really.

740
00:43:13.289 --> 00:43:16.830
But it's also part of his political thinking

741
00:43:16.830 --> 00:43:19.150
that this is now what one should do

742
00:43:20.684 --> 00:43:24.860
to make it possible for them to come to America,

743
00:43:24.860 --> 00:43:27.370
to get a chance to get a job there.

744
00:43:27.370 --> 00:43:31.220
My dad had left Germany in December '35

745
00:43:31.220 --> 00:43:32.250
to come to the United States.

746
00:43:32.250 --> 00:43:34.000
The idea was the family would follow.

747
00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:37.520
In May of '36, we all went to the American consulate.

748
00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:39.920
My mother and my brother each got their visa,

749
00:43:39.920 --> 00:43:44.420
but I was turned down, allegedly for having tuberculosis.

750
00:43:44.420 --> 00:43:45.960
My dad was a physician.

751
00:43:45.960 --> 00:43:49.790
The likelihood that I had tuberculosis was just very remote.

752
00:43:49.790 --> 00:43:53.210
My mother had me examined by German physicians,

753
00:43:53.210 --> 00:43:56.170
colleagues of my dad, and they all said,

754
00:43:56.170 --> 00:43:59.040
"There's no evidence of tuberculosis.

755
00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:00.230
This must be a mistake."

756
00:44:00.230 --> 00:44:03.260
My mother and my brother left to come to the United States

757
00:44:03.260 --> 00:44:04.210
and join my dad.

758
00:44:04.210 --> 00:44:09.210
The idea was that you could reapply after three months

759
00:44:10.440 --> 00:44:15.270
for a visa, and since this obviously was a mistake,

760
00:44:15.270 --> 00:44:16.720
I would get the visa then.

761
00:44:16.720 --> 00:44:17.690
After three months,

762
00:44:17.690 --> 00:44:22.040
my grandmother now took me to the American consulate again,

763
00:44:22.040 --> 00:44:24.240
and I even had some medical statements

764
00:44:24.240 --> 00:44:26.920
that there was no evidence of tuberculosis

765
00:44:26.920 --> 00:44:30.960
but, much to everybody's surprise, I was turned down again.

766
00:44:30.960 --> 00:44:33.270
This went on for a total of four times.

767
00:44:33.270 --> 00:44:35.090
Each time I was turned down

768
00:44:35.090 --> 00:44:36.970
by a physician from the American consulate.

769
00:44:36.970 --> 00:44:39.220
My parents, of course, were in the United States,

770
00:44:39.220 --> 00:44:42.410
they were getting frantic about all this.

771
00:44:42.410 --> 00:44:44.220
They enlisted all kinds of help.

772
00:44:44.220 --> 00:44:48.330
Finally, Albert Einstein got interested in this.

773
00:44:48.330 --> 00:44:52.330
Einstein then wrote two letters, very strong letters,

774
00:44:52.330 --> 00:44:55.956
one to the Surgeon General Thomas Parran.

775
00:44:55.956 --> 00:44:59.456
(elegant classical music)

776
00:45:05.330 --> 00:45:07.080
I shall spare no effort

777
00:45:07.080 --> 00:45:08.853
to straighten out this matter.

778
00:45:11.650 --> 00:45:14.770
And one to an assistant secretary of state

779
00:45:14.770 --> 00:45:16.320
by the name of Messersmith.

780
00:45:16.320 --> 00:45:19.456
And he wrote them himself because in one case, at least,

781
00:45:19.456 --> 00:45:22.903
I have the handwritten original draft.

782
00:45:23.780 --> 00:45:27.400
My dad was able to get the consul in Zurich

783
00:45:27.400 --> 00:45:28.410
to make an exception.

784
00:45:28.410 --> 00:45:31.535
An aunt of mine brought me to Switzerland.

785
00:45:31.535 --> 00:45:34.370
I got my physical examination, I passed it,

786
00:45:34.370 --> 00:45:38.973
and I arrived in the United States on March 4th, 1938.

787
00:45:40.070 --> 00:45:44.710
I finally had an opportunity to visit him in Princeton.

788
00:45:44.710 --> 00:45:47.830
He had never met me before but he remembered the case.

789
00:45:47.830 --> 00:45:48.970
The way we talked

790
00:45:48.970 --> 00:45:53.970
was the way I might talk to just a nice elderly gentleman,

791
00:45:55.290 --> 00:45:57.900
I mean, to my grandfather.

792
00:45:57.900 --> 00:46:00.820
I was already working in industry at that time,

793
00:46:00.820 --> 00:46:03.130
and he wanted to know exactly what I was doing.

794
00:46:03.130 --> 00:46:04.810
He was very interested in it

795
00:46:04.810 --> 00:46:07.932
and we sorta discussed technical details.

796
00:46:07.932 --> 00:46:11.820
We talked just like we were colleagues, I mean,

797
00:46:11.820 --> 00:46:16.820
in a very warm and simple kind of friendly way.

798
00:46:18.750 --> 00:46:20.230
Einstein apparently worked very hard

799
00:46:20.230 --> 00:46:23.030
on behalf of German Jewish immigrants all along,

800
00:46:23.030 --> 00:46:25.420
so my case was not that unusual.

801
00:46:25.420 --> 00:46:26.770
There's a little anecdote

802
00:46:26.770 --> 00:46:31.770
that four young men came to a hospital to get a job there

803
00:46:32.850 --> 00:46:37.020
and each of them had a letter of Albert Einstein (chuckling)

804
00:46:37.020 --> 00:46:39.840
telling, "Yes, you should give him this job."

805
00:46:39.840 --> 00:46:41.360
Of course, this is an anecdote.

806
00:46:41.360 --> 00:46:45.140
I think it's not true because he knew very well

807
00:46:45.140 --> 00:46:48.360
if you do it like this, it won't help anybody.

808
00:46:48.360 --> 00:46:52.220
His recommendations are serious.

809
00:46:52.220 --> 00:46:53.670
They did try and actively save

810
00:46:53.670 --> 00:46:56.770
and did actively save individuals

811
00:46:56.770 --> 00:47:00.440
from the claws of Hitler and of Nazism.

812
00:47:00.440 --> 00:47:02.900
So he knows that Jews have to go some place,

813
00:47:02.900 --> 00:47:05.410
he sees the great tragedy.

814
00:47:05.410 --> 00:47:07.990
With respect to his political attitudes

815
00:47:07.990 --> 00:47:11.260
toward Israel and the Palestinian problem,

816
00:47:11.260 --> 00:47:15.820
some of his ideas of how to solve the problem

817
00:47:15.820 --> 00:47:18.690
seem unrealistic to our modern ear,

818
00:47:18.690 --> 00:47:21.500
given the intransigence of both sides.

819
00:47:21.500 --> 00:47:26.270
He was opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state.

820
00:47:26.270 --> 00:47:29.950
He had advocated vociferously against it for decades,

821
00:47:29.950 --> 00:47:32.170
even after the Holocaust.

822
00:47:32.170 --> 00:47:37.170
By '33, Einstein can see the disaster that's unfolding

823
00:47:37.550 --> 00:47:38.910
because of nationalism.

824
00:47:38.910 --> 00:47:40.973
And even in the First World War,

825
00:47:41.876 --> 00:47:44.610
he can see the great conflict of it.

826
00:47:44.610 --> 00:47:46.470
So, in that context,

827
00:47:46.470 --> 00:47:50.160
why support a national expression for the Jews?

828
00:47:50.160 --> 00:47:52.620
He had been very concerned already,

829
00:47:52.620 --> 00:47:57.010
even from his first visit to Palestine in 1923,

830
00:47:57.010 --> 00:48:00.980
of tendencies towards narrow nationalism

831
00:48:00.980 --> 00:48:04.370
and what he termed to be chauvinism.

832
00:48:04.370 --> 00:48:06.150
And he saw that being played out

833
00:48:06.150 --> 00:48:07.560
even in the early years of the state,

834
00:48:07.560 --> 00:48:12.450
and even in pre-state Jewish community in Palestine.

835
00:48:12.450 --> 00:48:16.010
He was in favor of more of a binational solution.

836
00:48:16.010 --> 00:48:18.593
I should much rather see a reasonable agreement

837
00:48:18.593 --> 00:48:21.463
with the Arabs on living together in peace

838
00:48:21.463 --> 00:48:24.240
than the creation of a Jewish state.

839
00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:26.270
He was in favor of a Jewish homeland

840
00:48:26.270 --> 00:48:29.940
and he was in favor of joint institutions and, basically,

841
00:48:29.940 --> 00:48:32.970
of the formation of a committee of technocrats.

842
00:48:32.970 --> 00:48:34.830
He wanted the politicians out of the picture

843
00:48:34.830 --> 00:48:36.866
and he wanted technocrats from both sides

844
00:48:36.866 --> 00:48:41.680
to make the important decisions in a most objective,

845
00:48:41.680 --> 00:48:45.160
neutral, unbiased, unemotional manner.

846
00:48:45.160 --> 00:48:48.550
The state idea is not according to my heart.

847
00:48:48.550 --> 00:48:51.210
It is connected with many difficulties

848
00:48:51.210 --> 00:48:53.453
and a narrow mindedness.

849
00:48:53.453 --> 00:48:55.640
I believe it is bad.

850
00:48:55.640 --> 00:48:58.590
After the establishment of the state, he resigned himself

851
00:48:59.660 --> 00:49:01.763
to, basically, to the fait accompli.

852
00:49:02.770 --> 00:49:07.770
Wasn't happy with it, to lend the state his support,

853
00:49:08.020 --> 00:49:12.223
but became very critical of certain policies,

854
00:49:13.430 --> 00:49:14.710
even in the early years.

855
00:49:14.710 --> 00:49:15.760
He cosigned a letter

856
00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:20.030
together with other prominent Jewish intellectuals in 1948

857
00:49:20.030 --> 00:49:20.863
to "The New York Times,"

858
00:49:20.863 --> 00:49:23.330
in which he protested the visit of Menachem Begin

859
00:49:23.330 --> 00:49:26.070
to the U.S. and called him a terrorist leader.

860
00:49:26.070 --> 00:49:29.647
At the time he was here, he was the head of the Irgun.

861
00:49:31.870 --> 00:49:34.330
It only plays into the more conflict

862
00:49:34.330 --> 00:49:38.330
and, of course, if you look at the current sadness

863
00:49:38.330 --> 00:49:39.480
about the State of Israel,

864
00:49:39.480 --> 00:49:41.767
you could congratulate Einstein, you could say,

865
00:49:41.767 --> 00:49:43.350
"Yes, look at it, you were right."

866
00:49:43.350 --> 00:49:46.010
Nationalism is, no matter what kind of nationalism,

867
00:49:46.010 --> 00:49:47.000
is gonna be difficult.

868
00:49:47.000 --> 00:49:50.850
The absolute disaster of not having a Jewish state

869
00:49:50.850 --> 00:49:52.620
is in front of his eyes.

870
00:49:52.620 --> 00:49:56.030
My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism

871
00:49:56.030 --> 00:50:00.090
resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army,

872
00:50:00.090 --> 00:50:02.170
and a measure of temporal power.

873
00:50:02.170 --> 00:50:04.010
Einstein is the poster child

874
00:50:04.010 --> 00:50:05.340
for everything in the universe

875
00:50:05.340 --> 00:50:07.670
but also for Jewish peoplehood.

876
00:50:07.670 --> 00:50:10.550
He needs a nation to back up the people.

877
00:50:10.550 --> 00:50:11.383
I really believe

878
00:50:11.383 --> 00:50:13.570
he thought that all the nations would get together

879
00:50:13.570 --> 00:50:15.900
and just start to dissolve nationalism.

880
00:50:15.900 --> 00:50:17.590
The United Nations General Assembly,

881
00:50:17.590 --> 00:50:19.580
which helped to create the State of Israel,

882
00:50:19.580 --> 00:50:21.740
now elects her a member nation.

883
00:50:21.740 --> 00:50:24.340
Assembly President Evatt announces.

884
00:50:24.340 --> 00:50:26.610
Formally declare Israel admitted to membership

885
00:50:26.610 --> 00:50:28.490
in the United Nations.
(crowd cheering)

886
00:50:28.490 --> 00:50:29.890
The young republic, born of war,

887
00:50:29.890 --> 00:50:31.950
now joins the Council of Peace.

888
00:50:31.950 --> 00:50:33.820
The blue and white Star of David.

889
00:50:33.820 --> 00:50:37.130
So, once we participated in it, we could understand it,

890
00:50:37.130 --> 00:50:39.041
we could be a complete people.

891
00:50:39.041 --> 00:50:41.610
Complete peoples have a land, a language,

892
00:50:41.610 --> 00:50:42.690
a history, a culture.

893
00:50:42.690 --> 00:50:44.370
And then we could,

894
00:50:44.370 --> 00:50:46.930
as Jewish participants in the human family,

895
00:50:46.930 --> 00:50:49.550
to begin to reduce nationalism

896
00:50:49.550 --> 00:50:52.020
and bring more global harmony.

897
00:50:52.020 --> 00:50:53.760
Prime Minister Ben-Gurion of Israel

898
00:50:53.760 --> 00:50:55.220
arrives at Princeton, New Jersey

899
00:50:55.220 --> 00:50:56.967
to call on Dr. Albert Einstein.

900
00:50:56.967 --> 00:50:58.780
The man whose physics formula

901
00:50:58.780 --> 00:51:01.030
led the way to the atomic explosion

902
00:51:01.030 --> 00:51:03.270
plays host to the leader who played a great part

903
00:51:03.270 --> 00:51:05.111
in the creation of the Israeli nation.

904
00:51:05.111 --> 00:51:08.528
(bright classical music)

905
00:51:17.590 --> 00:51:18.840
I am deeply moved

906
00:51:18.840 --> 00:51:21.470
by the offer from our State of Israel,

907
00:51:21.470 --> 00:51:23.311
and at once sad and abashed

908
00:51:23.311 --> 00:51:26.490
that it is impossible for me to accept it.

909
00:51:26.490 --> 00:51:29.465
All my life, I have dealt with objective matters.

910
00:51:29.465 --> 00:51:33.380
Hence, I lack the natural aptitude and the experience

911
00:51:33.380 --> 00:51:35.420
to deal properly with people

912
00:51:35.420 --> 00:51:38.320
and to exercise official functions.

913
00:51:38.320 --> 00:51:39.230
For these reasons,

914
00:51:39.230 --> 00:51:42.210
I do not feel able to fulfill the requirements

915
00:51:42.210 --> 00:51:43.603
of this great task.

916
00:51:44.640 --> 00:51:47.770
I am the more distressed over these circumstances

917
00:51:47.770 --> 00:51:50.490
because my relationship to the Jewish people

918
00:51:50.490 --> 00:51:52.793
has become my strongest human bond.

919
00:51:55.530 --> 00:51:57.200
If I were to be president,

920
00:51:57.200 --> 00:52:00.160
sometimes I would have to say to the Israeli people

921
00:52:00.160 --> 00:52:01.913
things they would not like to hear.

922
00:52:04.350 --> 00:52:07.330
He saw the humor in situations,

923
00:52:07.330 --> 00:52:09.620
he saw the irony in situations,

924
00:52:09.620 --> 00:52:12.190
and it ties in partly with his playfulness.

925
00:52:12.190 --> 00:52:16.154
He had a very playful, childlike appreciation of things.

926
00:52:16.154 --> 00:52:19.987
(interviewer speaking German)

927
00:52:25.064 --> 00:52:28.647
(Einstein speaking German)

928
00:52:40.878 --> 00:52:44.128
(Elsa speaking German)

929
00:52:53.240 --> 00:52:55.810
One of the things that makes him very appealing,

930
00:52:55.810 --> 00:52:57.980
aside from his great sense of humor,

931
00:52:57.980 --> 00:53:01.083
is that he was genuinely a modest human being.

932
00:53:01.940 --> 00:53:05.970
You can tell just by looking at his eyes,

933
00:53:05.970 --> 00:53:10.570
this is a man with incredible spark.

934
00:53:10.570 --> 00:53:13.210
I like to call it a sense of being alive,

935
00:53:13.210 --> 00:53:18.030
a sense of intense curiosity about the real world.

936
00:53:18.030 --> 00:53:22.010
The ability to relate to all kinds of different people,

937
00:53:22.010 --> 00:53:25.860
from kings and queens to small children, when he wanted to.

938
00:53:25.860 --> 00:53:29.820
He hated hierarchy, hated class distinctions,

939
00:53:29.820 --> 00:53:32.770
and that was obvious, also, then, in America,

940
00:53:32.770 --> 00:53:35.510
where he was outraged by racism.

941
00:53:35.510 --> 00:53:36.740
The distinctions

942
00:53:36.740 --> 00:53:40.030
separating the social classes are false.

943
00:53:40.030 --> 00:53:43.360
In the last analysis, they rest on force.

944
00:53:43.360 --> 00:53:44.670
Many people don't realize

945
00:53:44.670 --> 00:53:46.590
that Albert Einstein was at the forefront

946
00:53:46.590 --> 00:53:50.010
of the struggle for racial equality in the United States.

947
00:53:50.010 --> 00:53:53.687
It pained him to see the plight of African Americans.

948
00:53:53.687 --> 00:53:58.687
âª When Israel was in Egypt's land âª

949
00:54:00.099 --> 00:54:03.016
âª Let my people go âª

950
00:54:04.030 --> 00:54:05.520
He was right there,

951
00:54:05.520 --> 00:54:07.480
right there with W. E. B. Du Bois,

952
00:54:07.480 --> 00:54:11.780
right there with Paul Robeson, right there with the struggle

953
00:54:11.780 --> 00:54:14.354
of African Americans for equality.

954
00:54:14.354 --> 00:54:15.520
âª Let my people âª

955
00:54:15.520 --> 00:54:17.400
In order for the American people

956
00:54:17.400 --> 00:54:20.840
to wake up to the plight of discrimination

957
00:54:20.840 --> 00:54:25.840
here in our own backyard.
âª Moses âª

958
00:54:27.207 --> 00:54:28.552
The race problem

959
00:54:28.552 --> 00:54:30.750
is a disease of the white people.

960
00:54:30.750 --> 00:54:35.750
âª In Egypt's land âª

961
00:54:36.053 --> 00:54:38.970
âª Tell old Pharaoh âª

962
00:54:44.229 --> 00:54:46.814
I say segregation now,
âª Let my people âª

963
00:54:46.814 --> 00:54:48.442
segregation tomorrow,

964
00:54:48.442 --> 00:54:52.765
and segregation forever!
(crowd clamoring)

965
00:54:52.765 --> 00:54:54.515
âª Go âª

966
00:54:57.820 --> 00:54:59.310
There is a somber point

967
00:54:59.310 --> 00:55:01.870
in the social outlook of Americans.

968
00:55:01.870 --> 00:55:04.840
Their sense of equality and human dignity

969
00:55:04.840 --> 00:55:08.390
is mainly limited to men of white skins.

970
00:55:08.390 --> 00:55:10.390
The more I feel an American,

971
00:55:10.390 --> 00:55:13.240
the more the situation pains me.

972
00:55:13.240 --> 00:55:15.760
I can escape the feeling of complicity in it

973
00:55:15.760 --> 00:55:17.233
only by speaking out.

974
00:55:20.120 --> 00:55:23.360
Albert Einstein not only pioneered new strategies,

975
00:55:23.360 --> 00:55:25.500
new ways of looking at the heavens,

976
00:55:25.500 --> 00:55:27.440
not only did he open up new pathways

977
00:55:27.440 --> 00:55:30.840
by which we can oppose fascism, he also was at the forefront

978
00:55:30.840 --> 00:55:34.460
for the struggle for racial equality in the United States.

979
00:55:34.460 --> 00:55:37.523
When he moved to Princeton,

980
00:55:38.550 --> 00:55:42.923
Marian Anderson was playing a sold-out concert in Princeton

981
00:55:44.480 --> 00:55:48.014
but the Nassau Inn would not allow her to stay there.

982
00:55:48.014 --> 00:55:51.264
(Marian singing opera)

983
00:55:56.883 --> 00:55:59.670
(audience applauding)

984
00:55:59.670 --> 00:56:01.210
When Einstein found out about it,

985
00:56:01.210 --> 00:56:03.480
he invited her to stay at his place

986
00:56:03.480 --> 00:56:05.993
and they became friends for the rest of his life.

987
00:56:07.130 --> 00:56:10.580
Similar stories with Paul Robeson.

988
00:56:10.580 --> 00:56:14.220
There's a story the first time Robeson came to meet him

989
00:56:14.220 --> 00:56:15.960
at his house in Princeton,

990
00:56:15.960 --> 00:56:20.960
the man accompanying Robeson, whose name I now forget, said,

991
00:56:21.137 --> 00:56:23.330
"Oh, Mr. Einstein, it's such a privilege

992
00:56:23.330 --> 00:56:25.380
to meet a great man."

993
00:56:25.380 --> 00:56:28.140
And Einstein said, "You just came with a great man."

994
00:56:28.140 --> 00:56:32.560
So, enormous respect for Robeson

995
00:56:32.560 --> 00:56:37.560
and enormous commitment to civil rights as human rights.

996
00:56:38.160 --> 00:56:42.230
He accommodated to the realities of the situation,

997
00:56:42.230 --> 00:56:44.330
and he was not an ideologue.

998
00:56:44.330 --> 00:56:49.330
Most important for Einstein in the political sphere

999
00:56:49.530 --> 00:56:51.483
was the need for human beings

1000
00:56:51.483 --> 00:56:53.350
to have peace with one another.

1001
00:56:53.350 --> 00:56:57.780
And this comes, really, from Einstein's own background

1002
00:56:57.780 --> 00:56:59.170
and his physics career.

1003
00:56:59.170 --> 00:57:03.050
He is someone who realizes that scientific progress

1004
00:57:03.050 --> 00:57:05.360
can only be made through cooperation,

1005
00:57:05.360 --> 00:57:09.130
can only be made through the sharing of information,

1006
00:57:09.130 --> 00:57:11.260
through the sharing of sensibilities

1007
00:57:11.260 --> 00:57:13.640
and the taking into account

1008
00:57:13.640 --> 00:57:16.870
what the wishes and the views of others are.

1009
00:57:16.870 --> 00:57:21.260
He was, of course, not a man of the people,

1010
00:57:21.260 --> 00:57:24.550
although he certainly was presented as such,

1011
00:57:24.550 --> 00:57:26.590
but he was an elitist.

1012
00:57:26.590 --> 00:57:28.900
And for him, the elite that mattered

1013
00:57:28.900 --> 00:57:31.430
was the elite of intellectuals

1014
00:57:31.430 --> 00:57:35.730
who live in a society in which the exchange of information,

1015
00:57:35.730 --> 00:57:37.780
the exchange of knowledge, is everything.

1016
00:57:37.780 --> 00:57:40.260
Don't think it was anything peculiar

1017
00:57:40.260 --> 00:57:41.960
about Einstein's character

1018
00:57:41.960 --> 00:57:46.230
that made him reject any membership of German institutions

1019
00:57:46.230 --> 00:57:47.250
after the war.

1020
00:57:47.250 --> 00:57:49.730
It has to more to do with Germany that with Einstein.

1021
00:57:49.730 --> 00:57:51.340
All the scientific institutions,

1022
00:57:51.340 --> 00:57:53.200
the academic institutions in Germany

1023
00:57:53.200 --> 00:57:55.470
have gotten deeply involved,

1024
00:57:55.470 --> 00:57:58.590
and not necessarily under external force

1025
00:57:58.590 --> 00:58:03.590
but most often also voluntarily, with the Nazi regime,

1026
00:58:04.240 --> 00:58:07.400
and at the time when Einstein, after the war,

1027
00:58:07.400 --> 00:58:10.880
had interactions with them, hadn't cleansed themselves

1028
00:58:10.880 --> 00:58:14.090
from these interactions, hadn't worked up their own history.

1029
00:58:14.090 --> 00:58:19.050
It was the most natural and understandable position

1030
00:58:19.050 --> 00:58:20.369
that Einstein took.

1031
00:58:20.369 --> 00:58:23.786
(bright classical music)

1032
00:59:28.185 --> 00:59:31.602
(gentle classical music)

1033
01:00:44.980 --> 01:00:48.350
So I don't think he didn't even need to be

1034
01:00:48.350 --> 01:00:50.970
a particularly upright man, which, of course, he was,

1035
01:00:50.970 --> 01:00:52.270
in order to take that position.

1036
01:00:52.270 --> 01:00:57.270
It was just a position of good common sense that he took.

1037
01:00:57.460 --> 01:00:59.450
Einstein was prescient

1038
01:00:59.450 --> 01:01:02.910
on every political issue he ever engaged with,

1039
01:01:02.910 --> 01:01:05.660
with one exception: he thought Germany was irredeemable.

1040
01:01:05.660 --> 01:01:07.610
Germany had started two world wars

1041
01:01:07.610 --> 01:01:12.610
and there was no way to atone for that sin.

1042
01:01:13.740 --> 01:01:16.343
He never wanted to set foot there again.

1043
01:01:18.000 --> 01:01:20.920
But about the mid-'60s,

1044
01:01:20.920 --> 01:01:24.320
the Germans did a look at their history.

1045
01:01:24.320 --> 01:01:28.340
People were outraged, as they came of age

1046
01:01:28.340 --> 01:01:32.470
and saw the Auschwitz trials or the Eichmann trial,

1047
01:01:32.470 --> 01:01:36.190
that their parents had, at the very least, been bystanders,

1048
01:01:36.190 --> 01:01:38.360
and at the very worst, been Nazis.

1049
01:01:38.360 --> 01:01:42.897
To the point where the government would actually say,

1050
01:01:42.897 --> 01:01:46.530
"This is our identity, we do not forget."

1051
01:01:46.530 --> 01:01:51.210
And the slogan is not collective guilt

1052
01:01:51.210 --> 01:01:54.090
but collective responsibility for the future

1053
01:01:54.090 --> 01:01:56.560
by continuing to look at the past.

1054
01:01:56.560 --> 01:01:59.273
Einstein could not have seen that coming.

1055
01:02:01.658 --> 01:02:05.075
(gentle classical music)

1056
01:02:12.720 --> 01:02:16.530
And so, I don't see him there as a dreamy scientist

1057
01:02:16.530 --> 01:02:18.450
who didn't see the realities.

1058
01:02:18.450 --> 01:02:19.910
He saw the dangers

1059
01:02:19.910 --> 01:02:22.450
that were connected with nuclear armaments,

1060
01:02:22.450 --> 01:02:24.870
and he could foresee such dangers

1061
01:02:24.870 --> 01:02:27.570
as they come with the uncontrolled spreading

1062
01:02:27.570 --> 01:02:29.203
of radioactive materials.

1063
01:02:30.040 --> 01:02:33.060
This is the "CBS Evening News," Dan Rather reporting.

1064
01:02:33.060 --> 01:02:37.080
Every indication is that it was a serious nuclear accident.

1065
01:02:37.080 --> 01:02:39.640
Chernobyl is a string of four nuclear reactors

1066
01:02:39.640 --> 01:02:43.290
some 80 miles north of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev,

1067
01:02:43.290 --> 01:02:44.310
an urbanized region

1068
01:02:44.310 --> 01:02:47.650
believed populated by 2 1/2 million people.

1069
01:02:47.650 --> 01:02:48.483
Several hours

1070
01:02:48.483 --> 01:02:50.680
before the Soviets admitted the accident,

1071
01:02:50.680 --> 01:02:52.750
increased radiation was first detected

1072
01:02:52.750 --> 01:02:55.170
at this nuclear power plant North of Stockholm.

1073
01:02:55.170 --> 01:02:56.930
600 workers were evacuated

1074
01:02:56.930 --> 01:02:58.720
after one of them set off an alarm

1075
01:02:58.720 --> 01:03:01.380
while passing through a routine radiation check.

1076
01:03:01.380 --> 01:03:03.390
Soon, there were reports of higher than usual

1077
01:03:03.390 --> 01:03:05.950
radiation levels throughout Scandinavia.

1078
01:03:05.950 --> 01:03:08.030
Winds blowing in a northwesterly direction

1079
01:03:08.030 --> 01:03:09.980
apparently carried the radioactive pollution

1080
01:03:09.980 --> 01:03:12.477
nearly 1,000 miles from the Ukraine.

1081
01:03:12.477 --> 01:03:13.407
"That," say experts,

1082
01:03:13.407 --> 01:03:16.217
"indicates the accident was extremely serious."

1083
01:03:17.120 --> 01:03:19.350
And the danger that small conflicts

1084
01:03:19.350 --> 01:03:21.620
might escalate into larger ones,

1085
01:03:21.620 --> 01:03:26.620
and so, his only hope, his only perspective was control,

1086
01:03:28.230 --> 01:03:33.230
was understanding communication on a global scale.

1087
01:03:33.680 --> 01:03:35.670
Human beings are not condemned

1088
01:03:35.670 --> 01:03:38.300
because of their biological constitution

1089
01:03:38.300 --> 01:03:40.030
to annihilate each other

1090
01:03:40.030 --> 01:03:43.733
or to be at the mercy of our cruel self-inflicted fate.

1091
01:03:43.733 --> 01:03:46.566
(sorrowful music)

1092
01:03:47.710 --> 01:03:49.550
He was one of the first intellectuals

1093
01:03:49.550 --> 01:03:53.390
to clearly see the full dimension of a globalized world

1094
01:03:53.390 --> 01:03:55.810
because the world became globalized

1095
01:03:55.810 --> 01:04:00.810
once these arms had the potential of destroying the planet.

1096
01:04:01.610 --> 01:04:04.920
However, later, when he saw what the consequences were,

1097
01:04:04.920 --> 01:04:08.140
he felt, first of all, even more compelled

1098
01:04:08.140 --> 01:04:11.720
to take an explicit public stance

1099
01:04:11.720 --> 01:04:13.680
in regard to political measures

1100
01:04:14.770 --> 01:04:17.540
in terms of nuclear armaments.

1101
01:04:17.540 --> 01:04:20.780
The war is won, but the peace is not.

1102
01:04:20.780 --> 01:04:23.980
The great powers, united in fighting,

1103
01:04:23.980 --> 01:04:27.120
are now divided over the peace settlements.

1104
01:04:27.120 --> 01:04:29.850
He took it on as a deep moral obligation

1105
01:04:29.850 --> 01:04:33.100
and he saw it as a moral obligation for all scientists

1106
01:04:33.100 --> 01:04:36.430
to become responsible for their deeds, for the knowledge,

1107
01:04:36.430 --> 01:04:37.950
for the use of their knowledge.

1108
01:04:37.950 --> 01:04:39.780
This is the political learning curve

1109
01:04:39.780 --> 01:04:40.960
that Einstein had undergone.

1110
01:04:40.960 --> 01:04:43.290
His capacity to take up challenges,

1111
01:04:43.290 --> 01:04:44.630
to deal with those challenges,

1112
01:04:44.630 --> 01:04:49.120
to intellectually digest them, and to draw consequence.

1113
01:04:49.120 --> 01:04:52.020
He is known as a proponent of a world government

1114
01:04:52.020 --> 01:04:54.890
that one needed to establish a peaceful world order.

1115
01:04:54.890 --> 01:04:57.410
And this in the midst of the period of the Cold War

1116
01:04:57.410 --> 01:05:00.240
when he became engaged with these issues

1117
01:05:00.240 --> 01:05:02.130
in a very strong way,

1118
01:05:02.130 --> 01:05:06.053
arguing against nuclear armament and against the arms race.

1119
01:05:08.430 --> 01:05:12.850
Mr. Welch talks about this being cruel and reckless.

1120
01:05:12.850 --> 01:05:14.050
He was just baiting.

1121
01:05:14.050 --> 01:05:16.763
He has been baiting Mr. Cohn here for hours,

1122
01:05:18.217 --> 01:05:20.960
requesting that Mr. Cohn before sundown

1123
01:05:22.000 --> 01:05:24.740
get out of any department of the government

1124
01:05:25.780 --> 01:05:27.880
anyone who is serving the Communist cause.

1125
01:05:29.780 --> 01:05:34.170
Now, I just give this man's record,

1126
01:05:34.170 --> 01:05:39.170
and I want to say, Mr. Welch, that it has been labeled

1127
01:05:40.900 --> 01:05:45.260
long before he became a member, as early as 1944-

1128
01:05:46.944 --> 01:05:48.845
Senator, may we not drop this?

1129
01:05:48.845 --> 01:05:50.868
We know he belongs to the Lawyers Guild.

1130
01:05:50.868 --> 01:05:52.515
Let me finish-
Let us not

1131
01:05:52.515 --> 01:05:55.420
assassinate this man further, Senator.

1132
01:05:55.420 --> 01:05:57.400
Let's, let's-
You've done enough.

1133
01:05:57.400 --> 01:06:01.400
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?

1134
01:06:02.897 --> 01:06:05.730
Have you left no sense of decency?

1135
01:06:07.448 --> 01:06:10.531
(gentle piano music)

1136
01:06:23.400 --> 01:06:25.910
Because of the alleged external danger

1137
01:06:25.910 --> 01:06:29.530
to our country, freedom of the press is obstructed.

1138
01:06:29.530 --> 01:06:32.070
This is done by creating a situation

1139
01:06:32.070 --> 01:06:35.560
in which people fear their economic positions endangered.

1140
01:06:35.560 --> 01:06:37.510
This is a state of affairs

1141
01:06:37.510 --> 01:06:40.900
which a democratic government cannot survive.

1142
01:06:40.900 --> 01:06:43.690
The U.S. is no longer a free country.

1143
01:06:43.690 --> 01:06:48.520
My house is closely watched.
(sorrowful music)

1144
01:06:48.520 --> 01:06:51.460
He not only spoke out against the blacklist,

1145
01:06:51.460 --> 01:06:55.460
but encouraged younger people to do the same.

1146
01:06:55.460 --> 01:06:57.100
You may appear with flowers

1147
01:06:57.100 --> 01:07:00.820
on the day when the last witch hunter has been silenced,

1148
01:07:00.820 --> 01:07:01.863
but not before.

1149
01:07:02.922 --> 01:07:04.730
And the beautiful thing about it is,

1150
01:07:04.730 --> 01:07:08.140
he didn't just encourage people to refuse to testify,

1151
01:07:08.140 --> 01:07:10.660
he tried to help them find jobs afterwards

1152
01:07:10.660 --> 01:07:13.183
and did what he could to leverage his name.

1153
01:07:16.880 --> 01:07:18.460
Reactionary politicians

1154
01:07:18.460 --> 01:07:20.730
have managed to instill suspicion

1155
01:07:20.730 --> 01:07:23.800
of all intellectual efforts into the public.

1156
01:07:23.800 --> 01:07:27.400
They are now proceeding to suppress the freedom of teaching

1157
01:07:27.400 --> 01:07:29.300
and to deprive of their positions

1158
01:07:29.300 --> 01:07:32.290
all of those who do not prove submissive,

1159
01:07:32.290 --> 01:07:34.383
in effect, to starve them.

1160
01:07:35.516 --> 01:07:38.210
What to do against this evil?

1161
01:07:38.210 --> 01:07:40.447
Frankly, I can only see

1162
01:07:40.447 --> 01:07:43.640
the revolutionary way of non-cooperation

1163
01:07:43.640 --> 01:07:46.863
in the sense of Gandhi's refuse to testify.

1164
01:07:48.170 --> 01:07:52.360
He must be prepared for jail and economic ruin,

1165
01:07:52.360 --> 01:07:54.940
for the sacrifice of his personal welfare

1166
01:07:54.940 --> 01:07:57.793
in the interest of the welfare of his country.

1167
01:07:59.500 --> 01:08:02.000
It is shameful for a blameless citizen

1168
01:08:02.000 --> 01:08:04.420
to submit to such an inquisition

1169
01:08:04.420 --> 01:08:07.740
that violates the spirit of the Constitution.

1170
01:08:07.740 --> 01:08:09.530
I believe that older people

1171
01:08:09.530 --> 01:08:11.810
who have scarcely anything to lose

1172
01:08:11.810 --> 01:08:13.540
ought to be willing to speak out

1173
01:08:13.540 --> 01:08:15.690
on behalf of those who are young

1174
01:08:15.690 --> 01:08:18.910
and who are subject to much greater restraint.

1175
01:08:18.910 --> 01:08:21.920
We're really talking about the character feature

1176
01:08:21.920 --> 01:08:25.440
of Einstein, and I don't think it's so much the loneliness

1177
01:08:25.440 --> 01:08:27.693
or the aloofness of Einstein.

1178
01:08:28.930 --> 01:08:31.990
If you see pictures, movies of the '20s,

1179
01:08:31.990 --> 01:08:34.420
Einstein was quite a party animal.

1180
01:08:34.420 --> 01:08:36.940
He was talkative, communicative.

1181
01:08:36.940 --> 01:08:40.810
He had, from his early days, an incredible self-confidence,

1182
01:08:40.810 --> 01:08:42.880
and I think that is the self-confidence

1183
01:08:42.880 --> 01:08:44.723
that gave him so much inner freedom.

1184
01:08:45.610 --> 01:08:48.390
And it was, of course, confirmed by his life's achievement,

1185
01:08:48.390 --> 01:08:52.870
which gave him even greater freedom, and it made him capable

1186
01:08:52.870 --> 01:08:57.313
of sustaining contradictions, rejections.

1187
01:08:58.490 --> 01:09:00.200
The loneliness that he experienced

1188
01:09:00.200 --> 01:09:02.960
in his political positions in the First World War

1189
01:09:02.960 --> 01:09:05.490
was a loneliness that he didn't choose.

1190
01:09:05.490 --> 01:09:09.490
How vile and despicable war seems to me.

1191
01:09:09.490 --> 01:09:11.930
I would rather be hacked into pieces

1192
01:09:11.930 --> 01:09:14.763
than take part in such an abominable business.

1193
01:09:15.780 --> 01:09:16.890
But this self-confidence

1194
01:09:16.890 --> 01:09:18.952
into his intellectual capabilities,

1195
01:09:18.952 --> 01:09:21.770
into his own moral autonomy,

1196
01:09:21.770 --> 01:09:25.520
gave him the strength to sustain those differences.

1197
01:09:25.520 --> 01:09:27.820
One needs courage not to go with the crowd,

1198
01:09:27.820 --> 01:09:29.550
but to stay different.

1199
01:09:29.550 --> 01:09:32.230
One is, and I think that's very important,

1200
01:09:32.230 --> 01:09:34.100
never quite alone in these things

1201
01:09:34.100 --> 01:09:38.320
because there is, on the one hand, an intellectual community

1202
01:09:38.320 --> 01:09:41.000
of the great people with whom one communicates,

1203
01:09:41.000 --> 01:09:44.493
the people one reads and one identifies with,

1204
01:09:45.330 --> 01:09:47.070
the great scientists of the past

1205
01:09:47.070 --> 01:09:50.200
but also the great moral thinkers of the past.

1206
01:09:50.200 --> 01:09:52.161
Einstein loved Spinoza.

1207
01:09:52.161 --> 01:09:55.790
He had this world of philosophical and intellectual thinking

1208
01:09:55.790 --> 01:09:57.660
with which he communicated,

1209
01:09:57.660 --> 01:09:59.810
but there were also the real friends

1210
01:09:59.810 --> 01:10:02.130
that were not necessarily the famous scientists

1211
01:10:02.130 --> 01:10:04.580
but people like Michele Besso,

1212
01:10:04.580 --> 01:10:06.880
with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship,

1213
01:10:07.750 --> 01:10:11.880
with whom he shared many views about life and science.

1214
01:10:11.880 --> 01:10:13.420
And from the early days on,

1215
01:10:13.420 --> 01:10:17.050
from the famous Olympia Academy youth club,

1216
01:10:17.050 --> 01:10:20.620
Akademie Olympia, the friends, the Habicht, the Solovine,

1217
01:10:20.620 --> 01:10:23.260
Einstein had a group of people that actually,

1218
01:10:23.260 --> 01:10:24.700
in certain occasions of his life,

1219
01:10:24.700 --> 01:10:27.233
also helped him to stay stubborn.

1220
01:10:28.380 --> 01:10:30.350
Einstein thinks about the world

1221
01:10:30.350 --> 01:10:32.260
from Spinoza's perspective,

1222
01:10:32.260 --> 01:10:36.030
which is that the world is radically one because God is one

1223
01:10:36.030 --> 01:10:39.100
and, therefore, he has to be able to come up with a theory

1224
01:10:39.100 --> 01:10:40.793
to explain everything.

1225
01:10:41.840 --> 01:10:45.830
Spinoza believed that the universe was God

1226
01:10:45.830 --> 01:10:49.420
and, therefore, he believed that every part of the universe

1227
01:10:49.420 --> 01:10:52.410
had the impact of God.

1228
01:10:52.410 --> 01:10:54.050
This is different than atheism.

1229
01:10:54.050 --> 01:10:56.480
This would be called pantheism.

1230
01:10:56.480 --> 01:10:58.820
All the aspects of the world are determined

1231
01:10:58.820 --> 01:11:01.900
and all of them are God.

1232
01:11:01.900 --> 01:11:03.650
You think about Spinoza,

1233
01:11:03.650 --> 01:11:07.570
he is a completely independent thinker,

1234
01:11:07.570 --> 01:11:10.590
he's a Jew without community, he's a Jew without constraint,

1235
01:11:10.590 --> 01:11:14.350
he's a Jew without tradition, he's a Jew without ritual.

1236
01:11:14.350 --> 01:11:16.040
And Einstein also.

1237
01:11:16.040 --> 01:11:17.840
Albert Einstein is a Jew,

1238
01:11:17.840 --> 01:11:20.430
he's called that in a consistent way.

1239
01:11:20.430 --> 01:11:23.240
And so, Albert Einstein sees himself very much

1240
01:11:23.240 --> 01:11:26.077
as a secular Jew, of the Jewish people,

1241
01:11:26.077 --> 01:11:29.460
and this is an understanding of his that's indelible.

1242
01:11:29.460 --> 01:11:30.940
I will never not be a Jew.

1243
01:11:30.940 --> 01:11:31.773
And he's happy,

1244
01:11:31.773 --> 01:11:34.900
eventually becoming more and more happy to be a Jew.

1245
01:11:34.900 --> 01:11:37.090
From a philosophical or religious

1246
01:11:37.090 --> 01:11:39.530
or, in particularly, physics perspective,

1247
01:11:39.530 --> 01:11:44.230
think about Spinoza and the idea that the universe is God.

1248
01:11:44.230 --> 01:11:47.160
There can be no random action in the universe.

1249
01:11:47.160 --> 01:11:49.380
Einstein is reading Spinoza

1250
01:11:49.380 --> 01:11:51.920
and he's saying nothing can be random.

1251
01:11:51.920 --> 01:11:55.250
If I have a theory, it has to explain everything.

1252
01:11:55.250 --> 01:11:58.700
And it has to be the most simple explanation

1253
01:11:58.700 --> 01:11:59.890
that you can come up with.

1254
01:11:59.890 --> 01:12:03.220
Einstein believes if you can figure out the cause,

1255
01:12:03.220 --> 01:12:04.890
you can figure out the effect.

1256
01:12:04.890 --> 01:12:07.630
His morality is based on that.

1257
01:12:07.630 --> 01:12:10.420
We have to be a cause for good.

1258
01:12:10.420 --> 01:12:11.300
He doesn't believe

1259
01:12:11.300 --> 01:12:13.650
that following Jewish tradition and rituals

1260
01:12:13.650 --> 01:12:16.830
is going to be the heart of his morality.

1261
01:12:16.830 --> 01:12:19.310
I myself am non-observant,

1262
01:12:19.310 --> 01:12:21.433
yet consider myself a loyal Jew.

1263
01:12:22.300 --> 01:12:25.480
He thinks that the Jewish tradition and rituals

1264
01:12:25.480 --> 01:12:29.970
were for the theocracy that existed in the land of Israel

1265
01:12:29.970 --> 01:12:31.590
thousands of years before,

1266
01:12:31.590 --> 01:12:34.500
and they're no longer relevant in their details,

1267
01:12:34.500 --> 01:12:38.240
but they are relevant in their impact.

1268
01:12:38.240 --> 01:12:41.380
So if we are going to be citizens of the world,

1269
01:12:41.380 --> 01:12:45.610
part of the people who are thinking rigorously for justice,

1270
01:12:45.610 --> 01:12:48.370
then that justice has to be worked on.

1271
01:12:48.370 --> 01:12:52.870
And Einstein worked hard on that justice.

1272
01:12:52.870 --> 01:12:55.990
He can make, and does make, lots of moral pronouncements

1273
01:12:55.990 --> 01:12:58.530
because he thinks they're for the betterment of the world.

1274
01:12:58.530 --> 01:13:00.780
The most important human endeavor

1275
01:13:00.780 --> 01:13:04.400
is the striving for morality in our actions.

1276
01:13:04.400 --> 01:13:08.960
Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it.

1277
01:13:08.960 --> 01:13:11.200
Only morality in our actions

1278
01:13:11.200 --> 01:13:13.910
can give beauty and dignity to life.

1279
01:13:13.910 --> 01:13:15.440
And he does live

1280
01:13:15.440 --> 01:13:18.710
at one of the most extraordinary times of change,

1281
01:13:18.710 --> 01:13:22.480
both disaster and creation, in Jewish history.

1282
01:13:22.480 --> 01:13:26.240
Einstein says, and I quote, "I believe in Spinoza's God,

1283
01:13:26.240 --> 01:13:29.950
who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world,

1284
01:13:29.950 --> 01:13:32.310
not in a God who concerns himself

1285
01:13:32.310 --> 01:13:34.830
with the faith and the doings of mankind."

1286
01:13:34.830 --> 01:13:37.930
It's a beautiful sentence, it's an elegant sentence.

1287
01:13:37.930 --> 01:13:40.160
We don't have a God sitting on cloud.

1288
01:13:40.160 --> 01:13:43.100
We don't have a God that's making for human progress.

1289
01:13:43.100 --> 01:13:45.750
We don't have a God that's going to stop evil.

1290
01:13:45.750 --> 01:13:49.130
And in Einstein's life, there's plenty of evil in the world.

1291
01:13:49.130 --> 01:13:51.280
He's alive during some of the greatest evil

1292
01:13:51.280 --> 01:13:52.800
in the history of humankind.

1293
01:13:52.800 --> 01:13:56.560
Einstein knows the terrible disasters of the world,

1294
01:13:56.560 --> 01:13:58.690
of the 20th century.

1295
01:13:58.690 --> 01:14:00.850
But he also thinks that the God that he believes in

1296
01:14:00.850 --> 01:14:04.100
is Spinoza's God, which is about the harmony of the world,

1297
01:14:04.100 --> 01:14:07.940
and it's his job, both in physics and morality

1298
01:14:07.940 --> 01:14:10.400
and even in politics, to build a world

1299
01:14:10.400 --> 01:14:14.230
which is more harmonious, and that is God.

1300
01:14:14.230 --> 01:14:15.640
If something is in me

1301
01:14:15.640 --> 01:14:17.010
that can be called religious,

1302
01:14:17.010 --> 01:14:19.610
then it is the unbounded admiration

1303
01:14:19.610 --> 01:14:21.470
for the structure of the world,

1304
01:14:21.470 --> 01:14:23.890
as far as science can reveal it.

1305
01:14:23.890 --> 01:14:25.900
It's very empowering to humanity,

1306
01:14:25.900 --> 01:14:27.190
it doesn't give you the sense

1307
01:14:27.190 --> 01:14:28.970
that God will intervene at the last minute.

1308
01:14:28.970 --> 01:14:33.030
After all, in the '30s and the early '40s,

1309
01:14:33.030 --> 01:14:35.280
if God could've, He really should've.

1310
01:14:35.280 --> 01:14:40.040
For you to pray for the change of some kind of physical law

1311
01:14:40.040 --> 01:14:44.690
or that the gas or bullets don't kill the people,

1312
01:14:44.690 --> 01:14:45.990
this is worthless.

1313
01:14:45.990 --> 01:14:48.011
You have to stop the war.

1314
01:14:48.011 --> 01:14:50.760
There is no other salvation for civilization

1315
01:14:50.760 --> 01:14:52.870
and even for the human race

1316
01:14:52.870 --> 01:14:56.160
than in the creation of a world government.

1317
01:14:56.160 --> 01:15:00.010
And for Einstein, this is a very significant,

1318
01:15:00.010 --> 01:15:03.210
and I think one could say, significant religious belief.

1319
01:15:03.210 --> 01:15:06.970
I think that Einstein has the most benevolent image

1320
01:15:06.970 --> 01:15:11.710
of any philosopher, theologian, or physicist

1321
01:15:11.710 --> 01:15:13.210
of the 20th century.

1322
01:15:13.210 --> 01:15:18.210
He was, in some ways, fearless, he was deep, he was active.

1323
01:15:19.630 --> 01:15:21.600
He believed that his imagination

1324
01:15:21.600 --> 01:15:23.880
was the most important of all of his tools.

1325
01:15:23.880 --> 01:15:27.130
Not his reason, not his learned intellect,

1326
01:15:27.130 --> 01:15:29.203
not his schooling, not his degrees.

1327
01:15:30.540 --> 01:15:34.570
Imagination is more important than knowledge.

1328
01:15:34.570 --> 01:15:39.153
Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world.

1329
01:15:40.007 --> 01:15:44.990
Einstein was described much later

1330
01:15:44.990 --> 01:15:49.990
by the last woman in his life as a revolutionary to the end.

1331
01:15:51.610 --> 01:15:54.560
There was so much more to Einstein besides physics.

1332
01:15:54.560 --> 01:15:59.560
There were his humanitarian endeavors, his love of music,

1333
01:15:59.870 --> 01:16:04.440
his love of children and animals and ice cream

1334
01:16:04.440 --> 01:16:06.950
and just talking to everybody

1335
01:16:06.950 --> 01:16:10.410
who was not necessarily on the faculty or higher up.

1336
01:16:10.410 --> 01:16:13.390
He made himself available to all kinds of people.

1337
01:16:13.390 --> 01:16:17.200
He is, in some ways, the victorious child.

1338
01:16:17.200 --> 01:16:19.530
A lucky boy, oh he was a lucky boy, yeah.

1339
01:16:19.530 --> 01:16:21.403
Eventually, in the final years,

1340
01:16:22.240 --> 01:16:24.779
mellowing to a certain extent

1341
01:16:24.779 --> 01:16:28.580
and then he becomes that kind of chubby teddy bear figure

1342
01:16:28.580 --> 01:16:31.670
that we all like and love.

1343
01:16:31.670 --> 01:16:33.487
Not the real Einstein, but (chuckling),

1344
01:16:35.060 --> 01:16:36.653
but a nice mythical figure.

1345
01:16:42.080 --> 01:16:45.150
Abortion, up till a certain stage of pregnancy,

1346
01:16:45.150 --> 01:16:48.550
should be permissible at the request of the woman.

1347
01:16:48.550 --> 01:16:52.093
Homosexuality should be exempt from punishment.

1348
01:16:52.970 --> 01:16:54.470
It is strange that science,

1349
01:16:54.470 --> 01:16:56.805
which in the old days seemed harmless,

1350
01:16:56.805 --> 01:16:59.370
should have evolved into a nightmare

1351
01:16:59.370 --> 01:17:01.690
that causes everyone to tremble.

1352
01:17:03.193 --> 01:17:06.552
The race problem is a disease of the white people.

1353
01:17:06.552 --> 01:17:09.140
Their sense of equality and human dignity

1354
01:17:09.140 --> 01:17:11.987
is mainly limited to men of white skins.

1355
01:17:11.987 --> 01:17:14.570
(mellow music)

1356
01:17:16.140 --> 01:17:19.990
Reactionary politicians have managed to instill suspicion

1357
01:17:19.990 --> 01:17:22.813
of all intellectual efforts into the public.

1358
01:17:29.488 --> 01:17:32.988
(elegant classical music)

1359
01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:37.230
Yes, I'm an old revolutionary.

1360
01:17:37.230 --> 01:17:40.923
Politically, I'm still a fire-spewing Vesuvius.

1361
01:17:59.071 --> 01:18:02.571
(elegant classical music)