EINSTEIN ALBERT: (1879-1955)

EINSTEIN ALBERT: (1879-1955) German-born Theoretical Physicist, Nobel Prize winner for Physics, 1921. A fine A.L.S., `A. Einstein´, one page, 4to, Le Coq, Ostende, 16th April 1933, to Herr Hopf, in German. Einstein sends a very interesting letter to his collaborator, the Physician Ludwig Hopf, advocating in favour of the creation of a provisional university abroad, to accommodate German professors and students who will be dismissed by the newly installed Nazi regime, and states in part `I have no doubt that large-scale layoffs will follow. We have to try to create a kind of interim university for German teachers and students somewhere abroad (for example in England); in this way people could be supplied en masse without creating a reaction to increased competition abroad..´ Einstein further refers to the financing, to how they could afford the plan with lectures they could give, to cover emergency housing, etc.. and suggests `…It is difficult to find laboratories so we must concentrate on the theoretical..´ A letter of very good content related to the start of the Nazi regime and persecution of Jews. Very small overall minor age wear and very small crease to the upper right edge, otherwise G to VG Ludwig Hopf (1884-1939) German Jewish theoretical Physicist. Assistant to, and an early close collaborator and co-author to Einstein. Hopf made important contributions to special relativity and aerodynamics. In 1933, year of the present letter, with the Nazis coming to power in Germany, Hopf, being Jew, was put on leave at Aachen, and in 1934 lost his position entirely. Hopf remained in Germany until 1939 and escaped the Nazi regime only at the last minute. The SS was seeking to arrest him and were thwarted by his son Arnold posing as his father. Arnold was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, from which he was able to escape and emigrate to Kenya. Ludwig left Germany for Great Britain with his wife and three of his children, taking first a research position at Cambridge, moving shortly after to Dublin, in July 1939, to assume a professorship of mathematics at Trinity College, but died few months later of thyroid failure, in December 1939, at the early age of 55.