Damon’s Library: Einstein for Beginners
Part I: Einstein’s World
Albert Einstein was born into a world not of his own designs. It was a time of rapid industrialization and militant imperialism.
The date was March 14, 1879. He was born in Ulm, Germany. The awful specter of war loomed over Europe, foreshadowing events which would forge the young Einstein.
“The 1880’s marked the beginning of the age of imperialism and monopoly capitalism.” ~Lenin
The 19th century felt so long ago, but as we will soon see, there were similarities. For instance, the events leading up to the Franco-Prussian War included the German Empire blowing 5,000,000,000 francs on financial speculation in 1870. Three years later there was a world-wide financial crash which lasted for 17 years! This meant “hardship for ordinary people; great profits and consolidation for a few. Small businessmen, like Einstein’s father, were badly hit. This was a time of labor struggles, immigration, the rise of militant socialism.”
We can certainly see some patterns, especially in that last passage. 21st century politics is all abuzz with talks of populism, labor struggles, immigration, even “socialism” has become a popular topic.
This book definitely mentions socialism more than a few times. But it does not repeat the popular misconceptions people have between Germany and socialism. For starters, Otto Von Bismark, Chancellor of Germany 1871–1890, passed anti-socialist laws to suppress the working-class in 1870.
“The great questions of the day will not be settled by resolutions and majority votes but by blood and iron” ~ Otto Von Bismark 1815–1898
19th century Germany does not seem to be a very progressive place, at least not by present day standards. Communists, socialists, and anarchists had a rough time of it. The Great World-Wide Financial Crisis hurt Europe all over and stirred plenty of anti-Jewish sentiment. European Jews received plenty of blame for the crisis.
In fact, radical leftists of almost every stripe received heaps of persecution the world over nearly commensurate in the hostility the Jews received.
The word “anti-Semitism” was popularized in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr, who founded the League of Anti-Semites. This league would publish racialist tracts and Jewish banking conspiracies which would spread all over the world. The war against the Jews has begun.
I have heard more than once the word “anti-Semitism” was invented by the Jews to quell pointed criticisms against Zionism and crimes perpetrated by Israel. This, however, was not the case, and this was not the first time far-right groups have attempted to twist the origins of certain words with histories that naturally hurt their causes.
Back to Wilhelm Marr.
Friedrich Wilhelm Adolph Marr was a notable German agitator and publicist in the mid-19th century. In his early political life, he ran with democratic leftists movements.
“In 1843 Marr was expelled from Zürich under the accusation that he had furthered communist activities.[5] He turned to Lausanne, where he joined Hermann Döleke and Julius Standau, the founders of the secret Léman-Bund, which belonged to the “Junges Deutschland” (Young German Movement). Marr eventually became the head of the secret society and began to lean towards anarchism and atheism, founded another secret society, the “Schweizerischer Arbeiterbund” (Swiss Worker’s Union) and edited the “Blätter der Gegenwart für soziales Leben” (Present-Day Papers for Social Life, 1844/45). In 1845 he was expelled from Lausanne, too, and went to Hamburg. There he became a political journalist and published the satirical magazine “Mephistopheles” (1847/48–1852).[6] He belonged to the leftists of the radical-democratic “party” and was a delegate to the National Assembly in Frankfurt after the March-Revolution of 1848.[7] After the ultimate failure of the revolution he — like so many other former revolutionaries — became a proponent of the idea of German unification under Prussian leadership.[7]” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Marr
Marr’s speeches and writings first revealed signs of anti-Semitism in 1848, which began with his frustrations with the German Unification movement and the Congress of Vienna’s failure to create a unified German state, frustrations which were shared among many of the German youth. Jewish and other non-Germanic folk were not allowed to participate in this enterprise, unless they immediately renounced their religious and cultural identity and assimilate into the German Volk. Sounds familiar somehow. Where have we heard something like this before?
After the failure of the revolution he and his anarchist compatriots so craved, Marr’s politics moved in the opposite direction, which happens quite a bit with radicals. Neo-conservatives, for instance, were originally Trotskyists before denouncing LBJ’s Great Society and submitting themselves to the teachings of Leo Strauss. Some came from the “right-wing” of Socialist Party of America. Most neo-conservatives became liberal Democrats.
Later Marr rejected the idea of Jewish assimilation into German culture in its entirety. This was where Marr left liberalism far behind and embraced conspiratorial ideas of “longstanding conflicts” between the Jewish people and Germans. Many of the conspiracy theories the right loves to dole out concerning a Jewish cabal controlling world finance were breathed into existence by men like Marr and his League of Anti-Semites almost 130 years ago.
The racialist rhetoric, which flared up in 19th century German political discourse, is a distant echo that eerily manifests now and again in our own present. Let us recall what Hermann Wagener, Bismark’s friend and confidant, said in regards to the Jews.
“The Jewish tribe has indeed a different blood from the Christian peoples of Europe, a different body, a different constitution, other affects and passions. If we add to these peculiarities the thick fat skin and the volatile, mostly disease inclined blood, we see before us the Jew as white Negro, but the robust nature and capacity for physical work of the Negro are missing adn are replaced by a brain which by size and activity bring the Jews close to the Caucasian peoples.” ~ Herman Wagener 1815–1889
I swear. It is like I am reading a tract composed by Richard Spencer or David Duke himself. It is important to note that racialist theories were chucked like the garbage they were as early as the ’30s and as late as the ’60s from discoveries made in genetics. Racialists claim it was political correctness run amok, but they have since adopted their own kind of political correctness in hopes their theories will be well received by the populace once more. “Their preferred labels include scientific racism (pre-2000),[note 1] race realism or racial realism (post-2000),[note 2] and human biodiversity or HBD (post-2010).[note 3]” — http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Racialism
“Blimey! If it ain’t the Jews, it’s the Irish and if not the Irish it’s the Blacks!” Over in Italy, “Mamma mia, with us, they blame the Sicilians!” ~ Einstein for Beginners, pg. 8
It seems that most every disenfranchised group received a fair share of the blame during this great depression. Wide-spread prejudice and racism was very much the norm during this time period, and such things were institutionalized and codified into law.
The massive amount of industrial expansion forced people throughout Europe off the land and into cities. Of course, the depression did not help matters. It exacerbates the Einsteins’ economic situation. The family business failed in 1880. The family moves from the small town of Ulm to the larger city of Munich when Albert was one year old. During this time, “[t]he rural Jewish population of southern Germany falls by 70% between 1870 and 1900. Many emigrate to the Americas.” — pg. 9
Hermann Einstein, Albert’s father, was a freeman of Buchau and lived from 1847 to 1902. The designation “freeman” was most interesting. Apparently, this was in regards to Jewish emancipation. They were not completely emancipated until the 1860’s. This meant Einstein before becoming a freeman could not have acted as a citizen of Germany and would have been denied basic rights.
Before Jewish emancipation, enclaves and small Jewish towns were the norm in Europe. The laws on the books institutionalized Jewish discrimination preventing them from “assimilating” into society or obtaining citizenship. They could not cultivate a sense of nationality or pride in the states they inhabited. They only had each other.
Pauline Koch was Albert’s mother. She lived from 1858 to 1920 and was the daughter of a court purveyor.
Hermann Einstein decided to go into business with his brother, Jacob, making dynamos, arc lights and other electrical devices. The chemical and electrical industries were booming in Germany.
The heavy chemical industries included bulk production of soda, nitrates, soap, as well as acids for bleaching, printing, explosives, and fertilizers. Light chemicals were pharmaceuticals, plastics, and dyes. Chemical research went into finding uses for coal byproducts.
The electrical side focused on electroplating for fancy tableware in the 1840s. Think of plating inexpensive metals with things like gold, silver, or platinum. Selling plated accessories to the middle-class was big business then, as it is now. Electrical experimentation in 1837 saw advances in batteries, telegraphs, cables, insulated wire coils (important for the invention of radio), switches, and instrumentation. Electrical lighting, arc lighting for streets, docks, and railways, even lighting for homes, started in the 1860s and increased in popularity. The 1880s saw a massive production in electric power from power plants, mostly from coal. This meant power for furnaces, massive machines, and electrified railways.
The electrical industry was going through “a period of intense monopolization,” and that will be left for another time when we discuss what industries were prevalent during this period and the concept of monopolization. We will discuss the burgeoning electrical and communications industry which grew up just as fast as Einstein himself. These industries would eventually pave the way towards research centers completely devoted to studying physics, Einstein’s future occupation.
I hope you enjoyed this installment. Stay tuned, as I present more intriguing stories from Einstein’s past.
