"Albert Einstein. The world as I see it (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

the Academy. The Academy took cognizance of your
resignation in its plenary session of March 30, 1933.

While the Academy profoundly regrets the turn events have
taken, this regret is inspired by the thought that a man of the
highest scientific authority, whom many years of work among
Germans and many years of membership of our society must
have made familiar with the German character and German
habits of thought, should have chosen this moment to associate
himself with a body of people abroad who-partly no doubt
through ignorance of actual conditions and events-have done
much damage to our German people by disseminating erroneous
views and unfounded rumours. We had confidently expected
that one who had belonged to our Academy for so long would
have ranged himself, irrespective of his own political sympathies,
on the side of the defenders of our nation against the flood of lies
which has been let loose upon it. In these days of mud-slinging,
some of it vile, some of it ridiculous, a good word for the
German people from you in particular might have produced a
great effect, especially abroad. Instead of which your testimony
has served as a handle to the enemies not merely of the present
Government but of the German people. This has come as a
bitter and grievous disappointment to us, which would no doubt
have led inevitably to a parting of the ways even if we had not
received your resignation.

Yours faithfully,
(signed) von Ficker.

Le Coq-sur-Mer, Belgium, April 12, 1933

To the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin.

I have received your communication of the seventh instant and
deeply deplore the mental attitude displayed in it.

As regards the fact, I can only reply as follows: What you say
about my behaviour is, at bottom, merely another form of the
statement you have already published, in which you accuse me
of having taken part in atrocity-mongering against the German
nation. I have already, in my last letter, characterized this
accusation as slanderous.

You have also remarked that a "good word" on my part for "the
German people" would have produced a great effect abroad. To
this I must reply that such a testimony as you suggest would have
been equivalent to a repudiation of all those notions of justice
and liberty for which I have all my life stood. Such a testimony
would not be, as you put it, a good word for the German nation;
on the contrary, it would only have helped the cause of those