"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 |
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