Table of Contents

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR ix INTRODUCTION 3 PART ONE: The Promise of German Life CHAPTER 1. Paul Ehrlich: The Founder of Chemotherapy 13 CHAPTER 2. Max Planck and the Trials of His Times 35 CHAPTER 3. Together and Apart: Fritz Haber and Albert Einstein 59 CHAPTER 4. Walther Rathenau. and the Vision of Modernity 165 PART TWO: The Great War and Consequent Terrors CHAPTER 5. Historians and the Great War: Private Experience and Public Explication 199 CHAPTER 6. Chaim Weizmann and Liberal Nationalism 223 CHAPTER 7. Freedom and Its Discontents: The Travails of the New Germany 253 CHAPTER 8. The Past Distorted: The Goldhagen Controversy 272 CHAPTER 9. Lost Homelands: German-Polish Reconciliation 289 NOTES 303 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 325 INDEX 329

Promotional Information

This wide-ranging collection of essays reminds us again that Fritz Stern is a living national treasure--in both Germany and the United States. It will interest and delight anyone who wishes to think deeply about how and why Germany, with all its potential, wrecked the century that it tried to dominate, and left a legacy that haunts us still. From Einstein to Goldhagen, Fritz Stern shows us again the extraordinary depth of his historical insights, and raises our understanding to a different level. -- Ambassador Richard Holbrooke Stern gives us penetrating character sketches of eminent Jews in pre-Nazi Germany, and he makes us feel for those whose lives ended in tragedy. -- Max Perutz, Nobel Laureate in chemistry and author of "I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity" Stern, prominent historian of Germany, who knew Einstein personally, a cousin of the late Otto Stern, intimate friend of Einstein, is uniquely qualified to write of Einstein's world. His main essay on Einstein and Haber, Stern's godfather, brilliantly sketches the contrast between those who saw the Nazi threat in time and those who saw it too late. A splendid book. -- Abraham Pais, Rockefeller University, author of "A Tale of Two Continents" and "Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein" The essays are clearly from a master's hand--well-crafted, thoughtful, learned, and wise. The biographical essays display Stern's gifts as a portraitist. With a few swift and confident strokes, he captures a series of extraordinary characters at moments of personal and public crisis. The historiographical essays display the author's critical intelligence and synthetic ability. -- James Sheehan, Stanford University

About the Author

Fritz Stern, University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, is the author of many books on the history of modern Europe, including Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire, Dreams and Delusions: The Drama of German History, The Politics of Cultural Despair. His books have been widely translated. He is the 1999 winner of Germany's prestigious Peace Prize, awarded annually by the German Publishers' Association at the Frankfurt Book Fair. A recipient of many prizes and fellowships, he received an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1985. He has been a member of the Editorial and Executive Committees of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein since 1984.

Reviews

"Stern's portrait of [Einstein] is sparklingly comic and profound... He writes with the wisdom and truth of a historian who never fails to empathize with the human uncertainty and frailty that operate in extreme as well as everyday historical conditions... No one has written better on the country's rise and fall than Fritz Stern."--Jackie Wullschlager. Financial Times "Elegiac, subtle and wide-ranging in scope, Fritz Stern's book goes a long way to restoring one's hopes for a Germany that once included Einstein."--Michael Burleigh, Times Literary Supplement "Revealing, absorbing, and often poignant... Frtiz Stern's writing has an unmatched authority and a magisterial sweep that throws a brilliant light on the tragic disintegration of a noble culture, one in which science reigned supreme... Stern's is the civilized voice of reason and understanding; his book is revealing, absorbing and often poignant."--Walter Gratzer, Nature "A superb and gripping collection of essays."--Stanley Hoffmann, Foreign Affairs "This is a book pervaded by a genuine sense of pity. Fritz Stern is alive to moral and historical ambiguity, arguing that there is no simple judgment on the compromises of a Max Planck, any more than there is a simple way to characterize German-Jewish relations or the circumstances that made the Holocaust possible. Fritz Stern has been successful beyond the historical profession as a voice of liberal tolerance... [He] has earned his reputation as a non-historian's historian."--David Blackbourn, London Review of Books "A rich collection of essays--some scholarly, others more personal--written during the past decade. Without ever pointing an accusatory finger, Stern's approach helps readers to grasp how the extraordinary potential for 'what could have been Germany's century' ended so disastrously."--Publishers Weekly "[In these] elegantly written essays... we come to understand something about the fabric of this world that no abstract social or cultural theory can provide... [I]t was a bright and shining moment and we should thank Fritz Stern for bringing it back to life so vividly."--Omer Barton, The Wall Street Journal "In his wide-ranging collection of nine essays, lectures and Festschriften, the eminent historian Fritz Stern, who grew up in Germany 'in the shadow of the First World War,' assembles a complex mosaic--mainly from historical and personal profiles of eminent Jewish scientists--illustrating the attitudes, prejudices, complexities, intricacies and subtle ambiguities of the relationship between Germans and Jews before Adolf Hitler and thereafter. Anti-Semitism, Mr. Stern finds, came in the most diverse guises--from irritation at Jewish successes to paranoid fear and fury at the thought of Jewish power threatening German life and virtue. He dismisses the view that the rabid anti-Semitism in Hitler's party was a reflection of the sentiments of German culture and questions theories that it formed an important bond between Hitler and the German population."--Viola Herms Drath, The Washington Times "[E]ssential reading for any student of Einstein..."--Jeremy Bernstein, The Times Higher Education Supplement "Well-documented, extremely readable collection... What makes this compendium a must for those interested in European history is that Stern not only places all of these people within the history of science, but also discusses how they both reflected and influenced the times in which they lived."--Choice "A small series of fine ... essays on eminent personalities surrounding Albert Einstein in pre-Hitler Germany, and some considerations illuminating the changes that followed each of the two world wars."--Helmut Rechenberg, Physics Today "Fritz Stern is alive to moral and historical ambiguity, arguing that there is no simple judgement on the compromises of a Max Planck, any more that there is a simple way to characterize German-Jewish relations or the circumstances that made the Holocaust possible."--London Review of Books

"Stern's portrait of [Einstein] is sparklingly comic and profound... He writes with the wisdom and truth of a historian who never fails to empathize with the human uncertainty and frailty that operate in extreme as well as everyday historical conditions... No one has written better on the country's rise and fall than Fritz Stern."--Jackie Wullschlager. Financial Times "Elegiac, subtle and wide-ranging in scope, Fritz Stern's book goes a long way to restoring one's hopes for a Germany that once included Einstein."--Michael Burleigh, Times Literary Supplement "Revealing, absorbing, and often poignant... Frtiz Stern's writing has an unmatched authority and a magisterial sweep that throws a brilliant light on the tragic disintegration of a noble culture, one in which science reigned supreme... Stern's is the civilized voice of reason and understanding; his book is revealing, absorbing and often poignant."--Walter Gratzer, Nature "A superb and gripping collection of essays."--Stanley Hoffmann, Foreign Affairs "This is a book pervaded by a genuine sense of pity. Fritz Stern is alive to moral and historical ambiguity, arguing that there is no simple judgment on the compromises of a Max Planck, any more than there is a simple way to characterize German-Jewish relations or the circumstances that made the Holocaust possible. Fritz Stern has been successful beyond the historical profession as a voice of liberal tolerance... [He] has earned his reputation as a non-historian's historian."--David Blackbourn, London Review of Books "A rich collection of essays--some scholarly, others more personal--written during the past decade. Without ever pointing an accusatory finger, Stern's approach helps readers to grasp how the extraordinary potential for 'what could have been Germany's century' ended so disastrously."--Publishers Weekly "[In these] elegantly written essays... we come to understand something about the fabric of this world that no abstract social or cultural theory can provide... [I]t was a bright and shining moment and we should thank Fritz Stern for bringing it back to life so vividly."--Omer Barton, The Wall Street Journal "In his wide-ranging collection of nine essays, lectures and Festschriften, the eminent historian Fritz Stern, who grew up in Germany 'in the shadow of the First World War,' assembles a complex mosaic--mainly from historical and personal profiles of eminent Jewish scientists--illustrating the attitudes, prejudices, complexities, intricacies and subtle ambiguities of the relationship between Germans and Jews before Adolf Hitler and thereafter. Anti-Semitism, Mr. Stern finds, came in the most diverse guises--from irritation at Jewish successes to paranoid fear and fury at the thought of Jewish power threatening German life and virtue. He dismisses the view that the rabid anti-Semitism in Hitler's party was a reflection of the sentiments of German culture and questions theories that it formed an important bond between Hitler and the German population."--Viola Herms Drath, The Washington Times "[E]ssential reading for any student of Einstein..."--Jeremy Bernstein, The Times Higher Education Supplement "Well-documented, extremely readable collection... What makes this compendium a must for those interested in European history is that Stern not only places all of these people within the history of science, but also discusses how they both reflected and influenced the times in which they lived."--Choice "A small series of fine ... essays on eminent personalities surrounding Albert Einstein in pre-Hitler Germany, and some considerations illuminating the changes that followed each of the two world wars."--Helmut Rechenberg, Physics Today "Fritz Stern is alive to moral and historical ambiguity, arguing that there is no simple judgement on the compromises of a Max Planck, any more that there is a simple way to characterize German-Jewish relations or the circumstances that made the Holocaust possible."--London Review of Books

Distinguished historian Stern (Gold and Iron, Dreams and Delusions, etc.) presents a rich collection of essaysÄsome scholarly, others more personalÄwritten during the past decade. The book's first part centers around the lives of four visionary scientists (Paul Ehrlich, Max Planck, Fritz Haber and Albert Einstein), allowing Stern to draw attention to what he calls "Germany's second Geniezeit," or Age of Genius, an era filled with great promise and yet punctuated by war and violence. His subjects, internationally acclaimed figures in modern science, were also committed German patriots, all of whom (except Einstein) were outspoken supporters of the German war effort in 1914. The extended chapter on Haber and Einstein meticulously documents the careers of these two highly assimilated German Jews who, despite numerous obstacles, managed to become leading public intellectuals of their time. In the second half of the book, Stern reevaluates major debates concerning the First World War, German unification, the representation of the Holocaust and contemporary German-Polish relations. Without ever pointing an accusatory finger, Stern's approach helps readers to grasp how the extraordinary potential for "what could have been "Germany's century" ended so disastrously. Stern launches a corrective to the notion of German peculiarity, insisting instead on the greater universal import of interpreting the German past. As he persuasively argues, "No country, no society, is shielded from the evils that the passivity of decent citizens can bring about. That is a German lesson of the twentieth centuryÄfor all of us." (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.