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was bound up with it, also played a large part in the training of the younger generation.
    The writer Berthold Auerbach, who was active between 1840 and 1870, is perhaps characteristic of the life and intellectual temper of the Jews in Swabia in the time of Einstein’s parentsand grandparents. He was the first to portray the daily life of the peasants of the Black Forest. These
Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten
(
Tales of the Black Forest
) are probably somewhat too idealized and artificial for present-day taste, but they were considered by contemporaries to be a gratifying counterpoise to what was later called “Berlin gutter literature” and was regarded as a characteristic contribution of the Jews to German literature.
    It must also be mentioned that after 1871, as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia became the predominant power in Germany, and has profoundly affected and influenced the character of the Germans. The unification of the majority of the German tribes and the restoration of a powerful German Empire was not initiated by the intellectual class. Writers and scholars had long dreamed and sung of this goal, but they had hoped that, as the Swabian poet Uhland put it, “the Imperial crown of the new Germany would be anointed with a drop of democratic oil.” But the dream did not come true. Bismarck carried out his work not with “democratic oil,” but with “blood and iron,” and with methods that were opposed by all the intellectually progressive groups in Germany. Furthermore, the new Germany did not arise from the national elements possessing an older culture: the Swabians, Rhinelanders, and Austrians who had produced Schiller, Goethe, Mozart, and Beethoven. The rulers came from the tribes of the east, which were composed of those who had settled on soil won by conquering, Germanizing, and partially exterminating the original Slavic population, and of those descended from the subjugated tribes. They thus formed an amalgamation of oppressors and oppressed well able to command and obey.
    This situation placed the intellectual groups of all Germany, and particularly those of the older, cultural sections, in an ambiguous and partially mortifying position. They could not avoid admitting that the methods of the new rulers were more effective than their own, since they had been so successful; yet they could not overcome their aversion to the adoration of force and the glorification of order as ends in themselves. Such an empty mechanical arrangement of life was repugnant to them, with their inclination and aptitude for art and science. The new masters were not to their liking, but they were compelled to admire and to some extent to imitate them. The German scholars acquired a feeling of inferiority toward the Prussian officers, and learned to restrict themselves to their own “subject,” to leavepublic life to the ruling group as their “subject,” and to stand at attention, even intellectually, at the sound of a commanding voice.
    All this was equally true of the Jews. They, too, admired the new Empire and the energetic methods of its rulers. Even though in their homes they cultivated the intellectual tradition of the Jews and of the German classical period, yet in public life they tried to assimilate themselves to the ruling class in conduct and ideas.
    Only for those who were strong enough not to accord recognition to outward success and who could not be compensated by any external manifestation of power for the loss of freedom and the cultural atmosphere was it possible to maintain an independent attitude and to resist the prevailing trend. We shall see that from his youth Einstein belonged to these people. Even though later he frequently came into conflict with the prevailing tendencies in Germany, yet he always retained a certain attachment for his Swabian homeland and its people.
     
2.
Childhood
    Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 at Ulm, a middle-sized city in the Swabian part of