xlii
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
8
pointing
out
that
Einstein subscribes to the liberal
newspaper,
Berliner
Tageblatt,
and is
an
adherent of
the
pacifist
movement,
the
police
official notes that he has not
yet
made his
mark
politically.[8]
Giving up Württemberg citizenship
before his seventeenth
birthday,[9]
was
not
a
political
statement for
Einstein,
but
simply
a
way
of
avoiding a military-service
obligation
three
years
later.
Indeed,
there is
no
evidence
that
political
affairs had
impinged on
Einstein’s
world
during
his Swiss
years.
What
he does
bring
with
him
to Berlin, however,
is
a strong
commitment
to the
international character
of
all
sci-
entific
activity.
It is this above all else which
motivates
him
in
signing
the Mani-
festo
to
the
Europeans
in
October
1914. While this action also follows
from his
instinctive moral
outrage
at the violation
of
Belgian neutrality,
Einstein’s
protest
of
an
earlier
declaration
by
German
intellectuals
(Manifesto
to
the Civilized World
or
of
the
93)
is directed
against
what he
perceives
to
be
betrayal
by
these intellectuals
of
a
fundamental
responsibility:
that of
keeping open
the channels
of
international
scientific and cultural
dialogue.
This
betrayal
he finds all the
more
offensive
because
the declaration
of
solidarity
with the German
Army
is
proclaimed
from the
ranks
of
a
cultural
elite,
to
which he
himself
has
recently
been
recruited.
It is not
surprising
then that Einstein’s commitment to
political
matters
during
the
war
years
is tentative and
unsystematic.
His
priorities
as
always
remain with his
scientific work.
Thus,
it is
not
until the
summer
of
1915, fully
ten months
after
the
outbreak
of
the
war,
that he becomes
a
member
of
the
pacifist organization,
Bund
"Neues
Vaterland,"
and then
probably only
in order to
join a
committee
to
draft
an
Appeal
of
the
Intellectuals,
a
project
which is stillborn.
Cousin
Elsa
accompanies
him to his first
meeting
of
the Bund,
though
her further role in Einstein’s
testing
of
the
political
waters in Berlin is unclear. One
suggestive
avenue
of
influence still
needs to be
explored
in this
regard,
however. What
part
did Elsa
and Ilse’s confi-
dant,
the
physician
and
pacifist Georg
Nicolai,
who drew
up
the Manifesto
to
the
Europeans signed by
Einstein the
previous year, play
in
acquainting
him with the
bewildering array
of
political activity
in
Imperial
Germany?
Some indications
of
the
influence
that
Nicolai
sought
to exercise
over
Einstein
are given
in Docs.
57,
289,
302-304, and 541.
Confusing
it
certainly
must have seemed to the
political
novice.
Thus,
Einstein
remains silent
during
vehement
exchanges
in
sessions
of
the
Prussian
Academy
of
Sciences,
in which the issue is
debated
whether
foreign corresponding
members
of
the
Academy
from nations at
war
with
Germany
should
be
stripped
of
their
mem-
bership. Perhaps
he
agrees
with the
suggestion
of
Planck and other moderates
in
the
Academy
that
the
question
should
only
be addressed
after
the
war,
but the fact
remains
that
the minutes
of
those sessions
yield no
contribution from him.