Listen as Albert Einstein Calls for Peace and Social Justice in 1945

in History, Life, Physics | June 3rd, 2013

einstein justice

Here is a rare record­ing of Albert Ein­stein read­ing his speech on the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, “The War is Won, But the Peace is Not”:

The speech was deliv­ered on Decem­ber 10, 1945, at the Fifth Nobel Anniver­sary Din­ner at the Hotel Astor in New York. Only four months ear­li­er, the Unit­ed States had dropped atom­ic bombs on civil­ian pop­u­la­tions in the Japan­ese cities of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. Ein­stein did­n’t work on the atom­ic bomb, but in 1939 he had signed a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt urg­ing him to pro­cure ura­ni­um and accel­er­ate nuclear research. In his speech, Ein­stein draws a com­par­i­son between con­tem­po­rary physi­cists and the founder of the Nobel Prize, who invent­ed dyna­mite.

Physi­cists find them­selves in a posi­tion not unlike that of Alfred Nobel him­self. Alfred Nobel invent­ed the most pow­er­ful explo­sive ever known up to his time, a means of destruc­tion par excel­lence. In order to atone for this, in order to relieve his human con­science, he insti­tut­ed his awards for the pro­mo­tion of peace and for achieve­ments of peace. Today, the physi­cists who par­tic­i­pat­ed in forg­ing the most for­mi­da­ble and dan­ger­ous weapon of all times are harassed by an equal feel­ing of respon­si­bil­i­ty, not to say guilt. And we can­not desist from warn­ing, and warn­ing again, we can­not and should not slack­en in our efforts to make the nations of the world, and espe­cial­ly their gov­ern­ments, aware of the unspeak­able dis­as­ter they are cer­tain to pro­voke unless they change their atti­tude toward each oth­er and toward the task of shap­ing the future.

But Ein­stein says he is trou­bled by what he sees in the months fol­low­ing World War II.

The war is won, but the peace is not. The great pow­ers, unit­ed in fight­ing, are now divid­ed over the peace set­tle­ments. The world was promised free­dom from fear, but in fact fear has increased tremen­dous­ly since the ter­mi­na­tion of the war. The world was promised free­dom from want, but large parts of the world are faced with star­va­tion while oth­ers are liv­ing in abun­dance. The nations were promised lib­er­a­tion and jus­tice. But we have wit­nessed, and are wit­ness­ing even now, the sad spec­ta­cle of “lib­er­at­ing” armies fir­ing into pop­u­la­tions who want their inde­pen­dence and social equal­i­ty, and sup­port­ing in those coun­tries, by force of arms, such par­ties and per­son­al­i­ties as appear to be most suit­ed to serve vest­ed inter­ests. Ter­ri­to­r­i­al ques­tions and argu­ments of pow­er, obso­lete though they are, still pre­vail over the essen­tial demands of com­mon wel­fare and jus­tice.

Ein­stein then goes on to talk about a spe­cif­ic case: the plight of his own peo­ple, the Euro­pean Jews.

While in Europe ter­ri­to­ries are being dis­trib­uted with­out any qualms about the wish­es of the peo­ple con­cerned, the remain­ders of Euro­pean Jew­ry, one-fifth of its pre­war pop­u­la­tion, are again denied access to their haven in Pales­tine and left to hunger and cold and per­sist­ing hos­til­i­ty. There is no coun­try, even today, that would be will­ing or able to offer them a place where they could live in peace and secu­ri­ty. And the fact that many of them are still kept in the degrad­ing con­di­tions of con­cen­tra­tion camps by the Allies gives suf­fi­cient evi­dence of the shame­ful­ness and hope­less­ness of the sit­u­a­tion.

Ein­stein con­cludes by call­ing for “a rad­i­cal change in our whole atti­tude, in the entire polit­i­cal con­cept.” With­out doing so, he says, “human civ­i­liza­tion will be doomed.”

Note: The full text of “The War is Won, But the Peace is Not” is avail­able in the Ein­stein antholo­gies Out of My Lat­er Years and Ideas and Opin­ions.

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Rediscovered: The First American Anti-Nazi Film, Banned by U.S. Censors and Forgotten for 80 Years

in Film, History | May 30th, 2013

On March 5, 1933, Ger­many held its last demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions until the end of WWII, and the Nation­al Social­ists gained a plu­ral­i­ty in the Reich­stag, with 43.9% of the vote and 288 seats. This event paved the way for the Enabling Act lat­er that month, which effec­tive­ly empow­ered Hitler as dic­ta­tor. It would seem in hind­sight that this turn—with all its atten­dant vio­lence, coer­cion, and hys­ter­i­cal nation­al­ist rhetoric—might have alarmed the West­ern pow­ers. And yet the oppo­site was true.

At least one news­man was alarmed, how­ev­er. And on the day of the 1933 elec­tions, he gained a brief audi­ence with the future Fuhrer. That man was Cor­nelius “Neil” Van­der­bilt IV, great-great-grand­son of the rail­road tycoon. Fed up with the malaise of his priv­i­leged peers, Van­der­bilt had moved to jour­nal­ism from his posi­tion as a dri­ver dur­ing the First World War. His name gave him access to Mus­soli­ni, Stal­in, and Hitler, whose impend­ing Reich became the sub­ject of Van­der­bilt’s doc­u­men­tary film, called Hitler’s Reign of Ter­ror, released on April 30, 1934, a short por­tion of which you can see above.

The New York­er obtained the clip from Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Thomas Doher­ty, who redis­cov­ered the film in a Bel­gian archive while research­ing a recent book. Vanderbilt’s doc­u­men­tary might well be the first Amer­i­can anti-Nazi film, but its con­tem­po­rary recep­tion speaks vol­umes about how crit­i­cism of the new Nazi regime was sup­pressed in the mid-thir­ties; the film was cen­sored across the U.S., denied a license, and banned.

What Van­der­bilt saw first-hand and chron­i­cled in his film is mild in com­par­i­son to what was to come. Nev­er­the­less, his take was pre­scient. He describes his anx­ious but par­tial­ly suc­cess­ful endeav­or to smug­gle footage across the Ger­man bor­der, pref­ac­ing the sto­ry by say­ing “there isn’t mon­ey enough in Hol­ly­wood to get me to go through it again.” (The scene above is a reen­act­ment, as is, quite obvi­ous­ly, the scene of Van­der­bilt’s meet­ing with Hitler.) Asked about his impres­sions of Hitler, Van­der­bilt has this to say:

Unques­tion­ably he is a man of real abil­i­ty, of force. But the way I sized him up after inter­view­ing him is that he is a strange com­bi­na­tion of Huey Long, Bil­ly Sun­day, and Al Capone…. I had nev­er heard a man so able to sway peo­ple.… In the hour and a half that Hitler talked to that packed audi­ence that night, he was as effec­tive as a bark­er in a sideshow trav­el­ing with a cir­cus.

Van­der­bilt says above that the ris­ing Nazi tide, “demand­ed revenge” and would not rest until they had it, to which his inter­view­er responds, “It all seems a ghast­ly, incred­i­ble night­mare.” Van­der­bilt’s vision seemed like a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic fever dream to his crit­ics as well.

Read the full sto­ry of the film over at The New Yorker’s Cul­ture Desk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style: The Ear­ly Pro­pa­gan­da Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Sir Edmund Hillary Describe His Everest Ascent, on the 60th Anniversary of His Climb

in History | May 29th, 2013

Six­ty years ago today, New Zealand explor­er Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sher­pa guide Ten­z­ing Nor­gay became the first climbers to ever reach the sum­mit of Mount Ever­est. This feat may not seem so sig­nif­i­cant now, when upwards of 150 peo­ple may reach the top of the 29,000-foot moun­tain on the best climb­ing day. In fact the sum­mit has become so over­crowd­ed that offi­cials are even debat­ing installing a lad­der for descents (to the hor­ror of seri­ous moun­taineers). But in 1953, Hillary and Norgay’s ascent was a pret­ty big deal, you might say. In the video above, excerpt­ed from Hillary’s appear­ance on the edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram Omnibus, watch the famous explor­er non­cha­lant­ly tell the sto­ry of his and Norgay’s con­quer­ing of Ever­est.

And if you’re in a mood to do some vir­tu­al explor­ing your­self, from the com­fort of your own home, you can look around the Ever­est sum­mit cour­tesy of Google Earth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Climb Three of the World’s High­est Peaks on Google Street View

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Helen Keller Speaks About Her Greatest Regret — Never Mastering Speech

in History | May 23rd, 2013

Every Amer­i­can school­child — so it went in my gen­er­a­tion, any­way, and in sev­er­al before it — learns about Helen Keller, though gen­er­al­ly we only learn that, despite hav­ing lost both her sight and her hear­ing to scar­let fever, she man­aged to become a respect­ed pub­lic fig­ure. This sort of nota­bil­i­ty-in-the-face-of-adver­si­ty sto­ry so cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion, and I dare­say the Amer­i­can imag­i­na­tion espe­cial­ly, that Keller wound up the sub­ject of quite a few movies: not just doc­u­men­taries, but fea­ture films too, from 1919’s silent Deliv­er­ance to 1962’s The Mir­a­cle Work­er to 1984’s The Mir­a­cle Con­tin­ues. Yet it still takes see­ing the actu­al Keller, whose name has over the past 45 years become a byword for deaf­blind­ness, to believe her.

For­tu­nate­ly, clips like the one above allow us to do just that. Here, we see Keller com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Pol­ly Thomp­son, her assis­tant and com­pan­ion. Thomp­son could trans­late the touch-based lan­guage sys­tem she used with Keller, but in this film, we hear not just Thomp­son’s voice but Keller’s own. Her incom­plete mas­tery of speech, alas, remained Keller’s life­long regret. “It is not blind­ness or deaf­ness that bring me my dark­est hours,” she says, and Thomp­son repeats in her own the­atri­cal­ly clear, Scots-tinged elo­cu­tion. “It is the acute dis­ap­point­ment in not being able to speak nor­mal­ly. Long­ing­ly I feel how much more good I could have done if I had acquired nor­mal speech. But out of this sor­row­ful expe­ri­ence, I under­stand more ful­ly all human tragedies, thwart­ed ambi­tions, and the infi­nite capac­i­ty of hope.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Helen Keller Cap­tured on Video

Helen Keller Pays a Vis­it to Martha Graham’s Dance Stu­dio Cir­ca 1954

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Modern Artists Show How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Coins, Vases & Artisanal Glass

in Art, History | May 22nd, 2013

Some­times the old ways work best. That assump­tion, or at least the assump­tion that the most cen­turies-test­ed tech­niques can still pro­duce inter­est­ing results, under­pins many of the Art Insti­tute of Chicago’s Launch­pad videos. The series, designed to give vis­i­tors con­text for the arti­facts they see there, reveals the process behind the prod­uct, and some new prod­ucts may come out of some very old process­es indeed. In the case of the video at the top, we see the cre­ation of an ancient Greek vase — or, rather, a new vase, cre­at­ed as the ancient Greeks did — from the clay purifi­ca­tion to the knead­ing to the shap­ing to the illus­tra­tion to the fir­ing.

Just above, you can watch the ancient “free-blown tech­nique” of glass­mak­ing in action. Invent­ed around 40 B.C., glass-blow­ing gave the glass­mak­ers of the day a faster, cheap­er, more con­trol­lable way to work, which enabled them to pro­duce for a larg­er mar­ket than ever before. If you’d like to learn more about the method it dis­placed, the Art Insti­tute also has a video demon­strat­ing the old­er “core-formed” glass­mak­ing tech­nique. Pot­tery and glass­ware have an appeal­ing prac­ti­cal­i­ty, and first-rate arti­sans of those forms could no doubt make a good deal of mon­ey, but how did the mon­ey itself come into being? The Launch­pad video on coin pro­duc­tion in Ancient Greece, below, sheds light on mint­ing in antiq­ui­ty. Seri­ous artis­ti­cal­ly inclined numis­ma­tists will, of course, want to fol­low it up with its com­pan­ion piece on coin pro­duc­tion in the Roman world.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bal­ti­more Hair­dress­er Became a World-Renowned “Hair Archae­ol­o­gist” of Ancient Rome

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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1927 London Shown in Moving Color

in History | May 16th, 2013

Back dur­ing the 1920s, Claude Friese-Greene, an ear­ly British pio­neer of film, shot The Open Road, “a series of ten-minute trav­el­ogues of Britain,” which were meant “to be shown before the main fea­ture in cin­e­ma pro­grammes,” accord­ing to the British Film Insti­tute. Clips from that series have appeared for years on the BFI’s YouTube Chan­nel. But, in recent days, the hive mind of the inter­net has focused on these five min­utes of footage show­ing 1920s Lon­don in rare mov­ing col­or. What draws us to this footage? Per­haps one Vimeo com­menter put it best, say­ing: “Pro­found­ly mov­ing some­how. All those ghosts on film, fore­shad­ow­ing our foot­steps through the same city. Parts of Lon­don remain star­tling­ly unchanged. The mega­lopo­lis was less cor­po­rate then, more impe­r­i­al, cer­tain­ly less sus­pi­cious of the cam­era. But, those pas­tel shades of peo­ple are shown dodg­ing the traf­fic in the same way as we do, per­haps show­ing us a way through the labyrinth.” It’s hard not to stop and take notice when the past seems dis­tant, yet so close and famil­iar.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the King’s Speech 1938

Ear­ly Exper­i­ments in Col­or Film (1895–1935)

The Nor­mandy Inva­sion Cap­tured on 16 mm Kodachrome Film (1944)

Rare Col­or Footage of the 1939 World Series: Yan­kees v. Reds

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Ten Buildings That Changed America: Watch the Debut Episode from the New PBS Series

in Architecture, History, Television | May 15th, 2013

Every­one on the inter­net knows the bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment of click­ing on lists that sound more inter­est­ing than they turn out to be, just as enthu­si­asts of Amer­i­can his­to­ry have grown weary of hear­ing claims about what has or has­n’t “changed Amer­i­ca.” (Last year, com­e­dy writer Ali­son Agosti ele­gant­ly smacked down both trends in one tweet.) But I have a feel­ing that PBS and sta­tion WTTW’s new series Ten Build­ings that Changed Amer­i­ca can pull the com­bi­na­tion off with snap­pi­ness and insight. Host­ed by Geof­frey Baer, tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty and not­ed enthu­si­ast of Chica­go (an Amer­i­can built envi­ron­ment if ever there was one), the show promis­es a look at, among oth­er archi­tec­tur­al win­dows onto the Amer­i­can spir­it, “a state capi­tol that Thomas Jef­fer­son designed to resem­ble a Roman tem­ple, the home of Hen­ry Ford’s first assem­bly line, the first indoor region­al shop­ping mall,” and “an air­port with a swoop­ing con­crete roof that seems to float on air.”

You can watch the debut episode of Ten Build­ings that Changed Amer­i­ca online. It begins the cross-coun­try archi­tec­tur­al road trip in Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, where Baer vis­its future Pres­i­dent Thomas Jef­fer­son­’s state capi­tol build­ing. “As a found­ing father of the Unit­ed States, Thomas Jef­fer­son was pas­sion­ate about America’s inde­pen­dence from Britain,” says the show’s page on the build­ing. “He was no fan of the king of Eng­land and, by exten­sion, no fan of the Geor­gian archi­tec­ture that bore the kings’ name,” an incli­na­tion which got him look­ing toward France for inspi­ra­tion. Sub­se­quent episodes will exam­ine oth­er strik­ing, inno­v­a­tive, influ­en­tial, and oft-imi­tat­ed Amer­i­can build­ings: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House in Baer’s beloved Chica­go, Mies van der Rohe’s Sea­gram Build­ing in New York City, and even Frank Gehry’s Dis­ney Con­cert Hall, the still-con­tro­ver­sial new icon of the down­town Los Ange­les where I type this very post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

An Ani­mat­ed Tour of Falling­wa­ter, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Cre­ations

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Marie Antoinette, Shakespeare and Other Historical Figures Might Look Today

in Art, History | May 7th, 2013

historical figures todayWhat would a mod­ern Marie Antoinette look like? Her hair would hang down; her once crooked teeth would be straight­ened; she’d con­tin­ue to wear design­er clothes; and, yes, she’d sad­ly have some sur­gi­cal enhance­ments too. A far cry from how the more state­ly Queen Eliz­a­beth I might look today. These images come out of a Tele­graph gallery that gives his­tor­i­cal fig­ures a mod­ern makeover. Oth­er fig­ures re-imag­ined here include Shake­speare (who goes a lit­tle hip­ster doo­fus), Hen­ry VIII, and Admi­ral Lord Nel­son.

via Kot­tke

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