3l8 THE LATER JOURNEY
In December 1932 the Einsteins left once again for California. As they closed
their house in Caputh, Einstein turned to Elsa and said, 'Dreh dich um. Du
siehst's nie wieder,' Turn around. You will never see it again. And so it was.
What happened thereafter will be described in Section 25b.
I conclude the story of the Berlin days with an anecdote told by Harry, Count
Kessler, the chronicler of life in Berlin in the Weimar years. Some time in 1930
the sculptor Maillol came to Berlin. Einstein was one of the guests invited for a
lunch in his honor. When Einstein came in Maillol observed, 'Une belle tele; c'est
un poete?' And, said Kessler, 'I had to explain to him who Einstein was; he had
evidently never heard of him' [K12].
16e. The Later Writings
- The Man of Culture. All the papers Einstein published before finishing his
work on the formulation of general relativity deal either directly with research or
with reviews of research, with minor exceptions: a note in honor of Planck written
in 1913 [E53] and reviews of booklets on relativity by Brill and by Lorentz
[E53a]. Thereafter, the writings change, very slowly at first. From 1916 to 1920
we find the early eulogies—to Mach, Schwarzschild, Smoluchowski, Leo Arons—
and a few more reviews of others' work—of Lorentz's Paris lectures [E54], of
Helmholtz's lectures on Goethe [E55], of Weyl's book on relativity [E56]. After
1920 there is a far more noticeable change as he starts writing on public affairs,
political issues, education. The more important of these contributions have been
reprinted in various collections of Einstein essays. I shall not discuss them here.
After 1920 Einstein wrote fairly often on scientific personalities. He was, of
course, an obvious candidate for contributions commemorating Kepler [E57],
Newton [E57a], and Maxwell [E58]. In these essays he emphasized points of
general principle. On other occasions he clearly enjoyed writing about technical
issues, whether of a theoretical or an experimental nature, as, for example, his
pieces on Kelvin [E59] and Warburg [E60]. He spoke at Lorentz's grave and
commemorated him on other occasions as well [E61]. He wrote tributes [E62] to
Ehrenfest, Marie Curie, Nernst, Langevin, and Planck; also to Julius [E63],
Edison [E64], Michelson [E65], and Noether [E66]. He wrote in praise of Arago
[E67] and Newcomb [E68] and of his friend Berliner [E69]. As I have mentioned
before, these portraits show Einstein's keen perception of people and thereby con-
tribute to a composite portrait of Einstein himself. In addition, they make clear
that his interest in physics ranged far beyond his own immediate research.
Einstein had a lifelong interest in philosophy. As a schoolboy, he had read Kant.
With his friends in Bern he had studied Spinoza's ethics, Hume's treatise of
human nature, Mill's system of logic, Avenarius's critique of pure experience, and
other philosophical works. As I already remarked in Chapter 1, calling Einstein
a philosopher sheds as much light on him as calling him a musician. 'Is not all of
philosophy as if written in honey? It looks wonderful when one contemplates it,
but when one looks again it is all gone. Only mush remains,' he once said [R2].
