DOC.
73
APRIL
1915 87
73. To Heinrich
Zangger
[Berlin,
ca.
10
April
1915][1]
Dear friend
Zangger,
You
have
the
patience
of
an
angel
not
to
be
angry
about
my
silence.
But
I
console
myself
with the fact
that
your memory
does
not extend
far
enough
back
to
determine
the
degree
of
my
negligence reliably.
I
am now
starting
to
feel comfortable in
the
present-day
mad
turmoil,
in conscious
detachment
from
all
things
that
occupy
the
deranged
public
at
large. Why
is
it
not
acceptable
to
live
enjoyably
as a
member
of
the
madhouse staff?
All
madmen
are
respected
as
those for whom
the
building
that
they
are
inhabiting is
there. The
asylum
can
be selected
freely,
to
a
certain
degree-but
the
difference between
them
is less
than
you expect
as a
young
man.
Romain
Rolland,
who
currently
lives
in
Geneva,
recently
sent
me a
suggestion,
which-to
continue
the
metaphor-amounts to
the
organization
of
the
sane
staff at all
asylums
for
the
purpose
that
they
not
become
deranged
as
well.[2] Besides,
he
has
hopes
that
such
an
organization
would
even
cure
the
madmen,
more or
less.
The
optimist!
If
you
have
the
opportunity, look
after
him;
he
is
being persecuted
for his
international
mentality.[3]
Concerning science,
this
semester
I worked
on a
wonderful
experimental prob-
lem
together
with Lorentz’s son-in-law
at
the Reich
Institute.[4]
We
have
supplied
firm
experimental
proof
of
the existence
of
Ampere’s
molecular
currents
(explana-
tion for
para
and
ferromagnetism).
Namely,
if
the molecule’s
magnetic
moment
is provided by rotating
electrons
in
this
manner
spin axis
electron
then,
mechanically,
the
molecule
is
a
gyroscope
whose
axis coincides
with the
magnetic
one.
From
this, through
purely
theoretical and mechanical
means,
we
can
draw
the
conclusion:
iron core
solenoid coil
magnetic
field
If
you commutate
the
mag-
netic
poles
of
a
little
ro-
tatable
iron rod
suspended
within
a
coil
by inverting
the
current,
the
rod
receives
a
measurable and
precisely
pre-
dictable
angular
momentum.
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