Diary Illuminates Einstein's Last Years

b00le writes "Several sources carry versions of this story about the diary of Johanna Fantova who shared much of the last years of Einstein's life (and cut his hair) and witnessed his kindness and poltical activisim. The diary does not seem to have been translated from the German yet, but the site has extracts. According to this, Fantova tried to publish the diaries herself and of course failed to find an agent."

Comments

is this real?

[BobTheLawyer]

perhaps I'm being over-cynical, but I can't help wondering if this is a hoax.

Einstein calling Heisenberg "a big Nazi" is surely too funny to be true. The mistake mentioned in the article (reporting Einstein phoning his sister several years after she was dead) doesn't sound like the sort of mistake a real diarist would ever make.

thoughts, anyone?

Re:is this real?

[BuddieFox]

Einstein calling Heisenberg "a big Nazi" is surely too funny to be true.
Why would it not be true? Werner Heisenberg did a lot of nuclear research in germany during the second world war, research that was meant to lead to a german atom bomb.
I dont think just because Einsteing was Einstein everything he said every day had to sound poetic and/or thouroughly thought thru, maybe he just spoke his mind occasionally? :)

Re:is this real?

[BuddieFox]

I am aware of that. I am also aware that he did not sympathize with the nazis and only did his work because he had to. But nonetheless, he _did_ the work. There are stories of Heisenberg having to fake nazi sympathies in letters to friends because the nazis read everything he wrote, something that caused a lot of his old friends to think he really did sympathize with the nazis at the time and take offence.

Re:is this real?

[Welpa]

Actually, this is not so unbelievable. Heisenberg apparently did believe that Germany would win and was working on developing the atomic bomb for Hitler.

There has been a lot of attention devoted to a meeting, in 1941, between Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, in occupied Copenhagen. There has even been a play about it, called "Copenhagen".

You can read some documents about the meeting here .

Bed Head

[DeanFox]

If she is the one who cut his hair, I wonder what her writings must be like. Einstein, even on portrait day, looked worse than I do on my worst bed head day. It took so long to transcribe her notes because of her shaky hand?

Re:one of Einsteins better ideas

[Emperor Igor]

That's debateable. A UN with teeth would basically be a world government instead of a world forum. I don't think it's bearable for most countries to have laws primarily influenced by the values of other countries.

The successful de-politicization of Einstein...

[dpbsmith]

One of the more interesting things about society in the United States is the way in which "dangerous" ideas can be neutralized and forgotten without actual censorship. Jack London, Helen Keller, and Albert Einstein are good examples of people whose political opinions were successfully submerged in the popular consciousness by elevating the non-threatening aspects of their life and work.

An example from the right rather than the left would be Charles Lindbergh.

I remember being surprised by my discovery, in the sixties, that a) many people of my parents' generation at least recognize the tune and words of The Internationale, that virtually nobody from the sixties generation does--not even the real lefties--and that people from my parents' generation were largely unaware that people from the next generation don't know it. A song and a political emblem, into the memory hole without benefit of telescreens.

Godel (and Einstein) were mundane...

[1iar_parad0x]

On a tagential, but seemingly related note. Hao Wang's book "A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy" is a similar type of book. It's really more of a historical source, not a book. The author merely collected and recorded facts based on Godel's life. Godel and Einstein spent 20 years together at the Institute for Advanced Study. Often times they would take walks together and they seemed to be good friends. Also, Godel seemed to have had an active interest in cosmology, prehaps presceint of the rigourization of cosmological models in the post-Einstein era.

Godel lived a rather mundane life. He was no Feynman. He was quiet. While Einstein seemed to enjoy, if not ask, to be treated as a scientific god, Godel seemed to hate such exclusion. Often times, mathematicians and philosophers feared to even talk to the great Godel. Even Von Nuemann (who seemed to have little respect for Einstein [see Ulam's autobiography]), referred to Godel as the greatest philosopher since Aristotle. Facts, as found in Wang's book, such as Godel's fondness for "chicken and biscuits" or Godel spending Sunday mornings in bed reading the Bible are mundane. However, these men were mundane. They're world was completely of the mind. Often these men quirks are the only really interesting things about them. They were virtually indisguishable in public. In fact, in Martin Davis book, "The Universal Computer" Davis' wife exclaimed, upon first seeing Einstein and Godel together at Princeton, that see had seen "Einstein and his lawyer".

In the case of this woman's diaries, I'm more concerned she deified Einstein, thus tainting her view. I believe the publishers may have been right in this case. Her diaries probably read more like notes. They probably would have requried some extensive work or further research before being worthy of a book.