The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein: The Far East, Palestine, and Spain, 1922-1923

ISBN-13: 9780691174419

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 05-29-2018

Pages: 384

Product Dimensions: 6.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

Ze'ev Rosenkranz is senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology. Previously, he was the Bern Dibner Curator of the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is the author of Einstein Before Israel (Princeton) and The Einstein Scrapbook.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Historical Introduction

The voyage is splendid. I am enchanted with Japan and the Japanese and am sure that you would be, too. Moreover, such a sea voyage is a splendid existence for a ponderer anyway — like a monastery. Added to it is the caressing heat near the equator. Warm water drips lazily down from the sky and spreads peace and a plantlike dozing — this little letter testifies to it.

Albert Einstein to Niels Bohr, near Singapore, 10 January 1923

This Edition

This new edition presents Albert Einstein's complete travel diary from his half-year long voyage to the Far East, Palestine, and Spain from October 1922 to March 1923. Facsimiles of each of the pages from the original journal will be accompanied by a translation into English. Scholarly annotations will provide identification of the individuals, organizations, and locations mentioned in the diary entries, elucidate obscure references, supply additional information on the events recorded in the diary, and offer details of his travel itinerary not mentioned by Einstein in his journal. Even though the diary constitutes a riveting historical source in which Einstein recorded his immediate impressions, by its very nature it only provides one piece of the puzzle for reconstructing the course of the trip. Therefore, to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the voyage, the annotations draw on the contemporary local press coverage from the various countries Einstein visited, additional sources from his personal papers, diplomatic reports from the time of the trip, and contemporary articles and later memoirs and reminiscences of the participants. The edition will also include supplementary documents authored by Einstein that provide further context for the travel journal: letters and postcards dispatched from the voyage, speeches he gave at various ports of call along his journey, and articles he wrote on his impressions of the countries he visited, both during his trip and in its aftermath.

This journal was first published in its entirety in Volume 13 of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (CPAE) in 2012. For the purposes of this edition, the translation published in the English translation of Volume 13 of the CPAE has been substantially revised.

Previously, selected excerpts of the travel diary had been published in translation: the section of the diary pertaining to Einstein's visit to Japan appeared in Japanese in 2001; the Palestine entries in the diary were published in an edited version in Hebrew in 1999; and the entries for the Spanish leg of the journey appeared in English in 1988. A brief excerpt from the diary was also published in 1975.

The Travel Diary

This journal is one of six travel diaries penned by Einstein. No diary is extant for Einstein's first overseas voyage to the United States in the spring of 1921. Indeed, we do not know whether he kept a travel diary on that trip. The other extant diaries were written during his trip to South America, from March to May 1925, and his three trips to the United States when he visited the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena during the consecutive winter terms of 1930–1931, 1931–1932, and 1932–1933. Even though this amounts to five overseas trips, there are in fact six diaries, as Einstein used two notebooks on his last trip.

The travel diary presented here was written in a notebook that consists of 182 lined pages. The diary entries appear on 81 lined pages. These are followed by 82 blank lined pages and 19 lined pages and one unlined page of calculations. These calculations were written on the verso of this document (i.e., at the back end of the travel diary) and upside down in relation to the diary entries. The calculations are not included in this edition.

The diary provides us for the very first time with gripping insights into Einstein's journey experience. He wrote daily, on occasion accompanying his text with various drawings of interesting sightings, such as volcanoes, boats, and fish. He recorded both immediate impressions of his travel experiences and longer reflections on his readings, the people he met, and the places he visited. He also jotted down his musings on science, philosophy, art, and, occasionally, contemporary world events. The style of his diary was often very detailed, yet written in a quirky and (possibly due to lack of time) telegraphic manner. His observations of the individuals he encountered on his trip were frequently very succinct in nature — he could sum up their personalities and idiosyncrasies in just a few, often humorous or irreverent, words. As for the reason Einstein started to keep a travel diary for this specific trip, we can only speculate. However, it was most likely intended both as a record for himself and as reading matter for his two step-daughters, Ilse and Margot, who remained at home in Berlin. We can be certain that he did not intend it for posterity or for publication.

The history of this journal is an intriguing one. Following Einstein's decision not to return to Germany in the wake of the Nazis' rise to power in January 1933, his son-in-law, the German-Jewish literary critic and editor Rudolf Kayser, removed Einstein's personal papers (including this travel diary) from his apartment in Berlin to the French Embassy there and arranged for them to be transferred to France by diplomatic pouch. From there, they were shipped to Princeton, New Jersey, where Einstein had taken up residence.

In his last will and testament of 1950, Einstein appointed his loyal friend Otto Nathan and his long-term secretary Helen Dukas as trustees of his estate and Nathan as its sole executor. After Einstein's death in April 1955, Dukas also became the first archivist of his personal papers.

In February 1971, an agreement was signed between the Estate of Albert Einstein and Princeton University Press to publish a comprehensive edition of Einstein's writings and correspondence. This endeavor became The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. Physics professor John Stachel was appointed as editor-in-chief of the enterprise in 1976. A year later, it became evident that Otto Nathan was not satisfied with Stachel as editor. After first suggesting that he be dismissed, Nathan then urged that a triumvirate of editors be appointed that would include Stachel. When Princeton University Press decided to continue to support Stachel as the project's sole editor-in-chief and reject Nathan's demands, the Einstein Estate took legal action. As the parties could not reach an agreement, the matter eventually came before an arbitration judge in New York in the spring of 1980. As a result, the judge decided in favor of the Press. The legal actions and arbitration proceedings were very costly for the Einstein Estate. Therefore, the trustees decided to sell some of the original items in Einstein's personal papers to defray the costs. In early 1980, Otto Nathan asked the New York publisher and bibliophile James H. Heineman of the Heineman Foundation whether he would be interested in purchasing material from the Einstein Archives. The Heineman Foundation had previously purchased a thirty-five-page scientific manuscript by Einstein in 1976. In a "Note for the files," Nathan wrote "that funds might be needed for the payment of legal expenses resulting from the Court actions against Princeton University Press and from the forthcoming arbitration transactions." In October 1980, the Foundation purchased three important essays by Einstein from the Estate and donated them to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. In July 1981, the Estate requested appraisals of several Einstein manuscripts (including this travel diary) from two autograph sellers. One company claimed the market value of the journal was $95,000, whereas the other one priced it at merely $6,500. The following month, the Heineman Foundation purchased the travel diary for an unnamed price from the Estate and immediately deposited it in the "Dannie and Hettie Heineman Collection" at the Pierpont Morgan Library (now the Morgan Library & Museum), where the journal remains to this day.

Background of the Trip

Various decisive factors formed the background to Einstein's extensive tour of the Far and Middle East and Spain in late 1922 and early 1923. Einstein had traveled beyond the confines of Europe for the first time in the spring of 1921, when he toured the United States, thereby accompanying Chaim Weizmann, president of the London-based Zionist Organisation, to raise funds for the planned Hebrew University in Jerusalem and to establish ties with the American scientific community in the wake of World War I. Without explicitly declaring that he was on a mission to disseminate his new theories of relativity after achieving overnight fame in November 1919, by the time he had embarked on his trip to the Far East, Einstein had already lectured on his theories in numerous locations around Germany, as well as in Zurich, Oslo, Copenhagen, Leyden, Prague, and Vienna. On his return trip from the United States, he had also made a brief visit to the United Kingdom. During his first trip to Paris since the war in April 1922, Einstein participated in discussions on relativity at the Collège de France and at the French Philosophical Society.

The initiative that eventually led to Einstein's trip to the Far East, Palestine, and Spain originated with the president of the Kaizo-Sha publishing house in Tokyo, Sanehiko Yamamoto. However, there are various accounts as to the precise details surrounding the invitation. Writing twelve years after the visit, Yamamoto recalled that Einstein's invitation had come amidst the "sudden ideological change" in Japan between 1919 and 1921, a notable sign of which was the publication by Kaizo-Sha of a novel by the Japanese Christian pacifist and labor activist Toyohiko Kagawa. The novel's huge commercial success provided the funding for inviting Einstein and other prominent intellectuals, such as John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, and Margaret Sanger, to Japan. When asked to name the three greatest people in the world during his visit to Tokyo, Russell had allegedly told Yamamoto: "First Einstein, then Lenin. There is nobody else." Yamamoto wrote that he had then consulted the philosopher Kitaro Nishida and the science writer and former professor of physics Jun Ishiwara about relativity, in consequence of which he decided to allocate some 20,000 US dollars for Einstein's visit and dispatched his European correspondent Koshin Murobuse to visit Einstein in Berlin to discuss the terms. However, according to Jun Ishiwara, Yamamoto had consulted with Nishida and himself some nine months prior to Russell's visit to Japan. In yet a third account, Aizo Yokozeki, a former executive director of Kaizo-Sha, claimed that when Ishiwara suggested that the publishing house invite Einstein, they "did not know what to do." They consulted with Tokyo physicist Hantaro Nagaoka, who, while recommending that they invite Einstein, noted that the Japanese universities themselves had no funding to send Japanese students abroad or to invite Einstein to Japan.

In any case, there seems to have been some lack of coordination concerning the initial invitation. In late September 1921, Ishiwara extended an invitation to Einstein on behalf of the Kaizo journal to visit Japan for a month-long tour in exchange for an honorarium of ¥10,000 (approximately £1,300). At around the same time, Koshin Murobuse invited Einstein for a three months' visit, also on behalf of the Kaizo, and offered £2,000 for his lecture tour and travel expenses. Even though, in a moment of fatigue earlier in the year, he had already exclaimed that he was "sick and tired of lecturing onrelativity theory," Einstein responded positively. He thought of traveling to Japan in the fall of 1922. However, by early November, he had become displeased with the proposed financial terms: "The Japanese are real swindlers. They can get lost, for all I care. But I won't travel there under such lousy conditions." Soon thereafter he canceled the visit altogether, citing the discrepancy in the terms of the two invitations as the reason for the reversal in his decision.

However, merely five weeks later, Yamamoto, on behalf of the Kaizo-Sha, sent Einstein an official invitation and a contract with the following terms: a series of six scientific lectures in Tokyo and six popular lectures in various Japanese cities. The honorarium, which would include travel and lodging costs, would amount to £2,000. In mid-March 1922, Einstein admitted to his close friend and colleague Paul Ehrenfest that he had been "unable to resist the sirens of East Asia." Shortly thereafter he wrote to Ishiwara that his planned departure for Japan would have to be delayed by one month due to his expected attendance at the annual conference of the Society of German Scientists and Physicians in Leipzig in September. By August, the Imperial Academy of Japan had passed a resolution to welcome Einstein, and the Japanese government was preparing "a friendly welcome." However, a letter from Uzumi Doi, one of Nagaoka's own students at Tokyo Imperial University, in which he expressed his strong criticism of relativity, indicated that not everyone would welcome Einstein with the same enthusiasm. Doi urged him "to return to the orthodoxy, freeing from the destructive spell that you have been fallen under so long since you were a youth of 26 years of age."

During the negotiations regarding the invitation, Einstein revealed part of his motivation for his desire to embark on a trip to the Far East: "The invitation to Tokyo pleased me a great deal, as I have been interested in the people and culture of East Asia for a long time." Three weeks after his arrival in Japan, Einstein wrote an article on his impressions so far and returned to the issue of his reasons for accepting the invitation: "when [Sanehiko] Yamamoto's invitation to Japan arrived, I immediately resolved to embark on such a great voyage that must demand months, even though I am unable to offer any excuse other than that I would never have been able to forgive myself for letting a chance to see Japan with my own eyes pass unheeded. [...] in our country this land is shrouded more than any other in a veil of mystery."

News of the upcoming tour in Japan reawakened previous plans to invite Einstein to lecture in China. However, the negotiations were complex and, to some extent, contentious. In September 1920, Yuanpei Cai, rector of Beijing University, had invited Einstein to lecture there. Apparently, Jia-hua Zhu, a geologist from that university visiting at the University of Berlin, had conducted negotiations with Einstein in person on behalf of Cai. According to him, Einstein had promised that, after his tour of the United States, his next overseas visit would be to China. In March 1922, Zhu wrote to Einstein to renew the discussions after being informed of the planned tour in Japan. He told Einstein that his university actually wanted to invite him to stay for an entire year. However, he understood from the Chinese Embassy in Berlin that Einstein had informed them that, in light of his commitments in Japan, he only had time for a two-week lecture series in Beijing. Einstein replied that, at the time, he had been unable to accept either the financial terms or the long duration initially proposed. However, circumstances had now changed, as the financial compensation from Japan enabled him to honor his prior commitment to visit China. He therefore agreed to a two-week visit. In early April, Chenzu Wei, the Chinese envoy to Berlin, conveyed rector Cai's proposal for a course of lectures and a monthly honorarium of 1,000 Chinese dollars (about £120).Einstein restated his willingness to lecture, but requested a significantly higher honorarium. By late July, the Imperial University in Beijing had accepted his conditions.

As with the foreseen visit to China, the genesis of Einstein's plan to tour Palestine and of the initial preparations for his arrival was also somewhat convoluted. However, in contrast to the planned trips in the Far East, financial compensation was not an issue. Already in late 1921, in the wake of his somewhat successful trip to the United States, Einstein seems to have envisaged a visit to Palestine, where he could view for himself the settlement activities of the Yishuv, the local Jewish community. At the time, Chaim Weizmann had advised him that "there is as yet no great urgency to travel to Palestine." However, he did entreat Einstein to undertake another two-month tour of the United States. The first evidence we have of Einstein's renewed interest in touring Palestine can be found in papers from late September 1922. After he had met with Einstein on the very day of his departure from Berlin for the Far East, the German Zionist leader Kurt Blumenfeld (who had played a crucial role in Einstein's initial contacts with the Zionists in Berlin) noted that Einstein had agreed to accept an invitation to visit Palestine by Arthur Ruppin, the director of the Zionist Organisation's Palestine Office in Jaffa. He planned to travel to Palestine on his return trip from Java back to Berlin. Yet this visit was to be a brief one — only ten days. According to Blumenfeld, Einstein emphasized that this short sojourn was "not to be confused with his actual trip to Palestine." He quoted Einstein as saying "one should only travel directly to Palestine and not incidentally following a trip to other countries." Reports on the planned truncated trip appeared in the press on 6 October and the following days. It was immediately clarified that this was not to be the originally planned trip and that Einstein would remain in Palestine "for several months" after his return from the Far East. It was also reported that the goal of this brief trip was "to acquaint himself with conditions in the country" and he would "in particular [...] pay a visit to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where it is believed it will be possible for him to deliver several lectures."

---

Excerpted from "The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Princeton University Press.
Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

<

What People are Saying About This

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations, ix,
Preface, xiii,
Acknowledgments, xvii,
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION, 1,
TRAVEL DIARY Japan, Palestine, Spain, 6 October 1922â&8364;"12 March 1923, 79,
ADDITIONAL TEXTS, 243,
1. From Sanehiko Yamamoto, 15 January 1922, 243,
2. Kurt Blumenfeld: Report on a conversation with Prof. Einstein on the day of his departure to Japan, on 29 September 1922, 12 October 1922, 244,
3. Speech at Reception in Singapore, 2 November 1922, 244,
4. "Chat about My Impressions in Japan," on or after 7 December 1922, 245,
5. To Sanehiko Yamamoto, 12 December 1922, 251,
6. To Hans Albert and Eduard Einstein, 17 December 1922, 252,
7. To Wilhelm Solf, 20 December 1922, 253,
8. To Jun Ishiwara, between 23 and 29 December 1922, 253,
9. To Bansui Tsuchii (Doi), 30 December 1922, 254,
10. To Eiichi Tsuchii (Doi), 30 December 1922, 255,
11. To Yoshi Yamamoto, 30 December 1922, 256,
12. Speech at Jewish Reception in Shanghai, 1 January 1923, 256,
13. To Svante Arrhenius, 10 January 1923, 257,
14. To Niels Bohr, 10 January 1923, 258,
15. To Nippon Puroretaria Domei, 22 January 1923, 259,
16. To Arthur Ruppin, 3 or 5 February 1923, 261,
17. "Prof. Einstein on His Impressions of Palestine," before 24 April 1923, 261,
Chronology of Trip, 265,
Abbreviations, 277,
Notes, 279,
References, 333,
Index, 343,