Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

As well as being one of the best known scientists of his day, Albert Einstein was also a politically active public intellectual, consistently extolling the virtues of pacifism and internationalism, and a member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. Here, he and his fellow Nobel Prize-winning scientist Max Planck are sat either side of the British Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald at a reception given by the German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning at the Reich chancellery in Berlin in July 1931 (MacDonald also attended a meeting of the ‘German-English Society’ at the Kaiserhof on this trip). While their positioning together tell us of Brüning’s wish to charm his guest-of-honour MacDonald, the animated discussion between MacDonald and Einstein speaks of a genuine connection between the men. Naturally, Erich Salomon was there to capture the scene. Two years later, in 1933, Einstein’s Jewish background forced him to emigrate to the US upon the rise of the Nazi party to power, his renown as a public figure compounding rather than mitigating his situation in Germany.

Berlinische Galerie. Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture, Erich-Salomon-Archiv