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Vassar Acquires Rare Collection of Einstein Effects

• Date:   Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:04:07 -0800
• To:   sthc-l@library.ucla.edu
• From:   Russell A. Johnson <rjohnson@library.ucla.edu>
• Subject:   Vassar Acquires Rare Collection of Einstein Effects
• Message-ID:   f7d580f7b4ba.f7b4baf7d580@library.ucla.edu

Vassar Acquires Rare Collection of Einstein Effects

Forwarded to STHC-L (The Science, Technology, and Health Care Archives Forum) 
from ARCHIVES.

Russell Johnson
STHC-L administrator


----- Original Message -----
From: Ronald Patkus [patkus@VASSAR.EDU]
Date: Monday, January 12, 2004 9:23 am
Subject: Vassar Acquires Rare Collection of Einstein Effects

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY -- An alumnus has donated to Vassar College a rare
collection of over 150 of Albert Einstein's papers, inscribed books,
photographs, and ephemera, many of which reflect on the physicist's social
and cultural concerns. The collection is comprised mainly of
correspondence with economist Otto Nathan, Einstein's close friend and
estate executor who taught at Vassar and Princeton University. It also
includes correspondence with such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Louis
Brandeis, and Felix Frankfurter, as well as an anti-nuclear war petition
signed by both Einstein and Henry Wallace.

"This is a rich resource for both teaching and research. The many letters
between Einstein and Nathan are especially significant in documenting the
views of one of the twentieth century's most important thinkers," said Ron
Patkus, head of archives and special collections at Vassar College.

Most of Einstein's personal effects were donated to the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem upon his death in 1955. Vassar's new collection is the gift
of Mrs. Adele Gabel Bergreen and her husband Morris Bergreen, who were
left the rare items when Otto Nathan died in 1982. Nathan had taught Mrs.
Bergreen at Vassar, and they later became friends.

Both Einstein and Nathan fled Nazi Germany, and the most powerful letters
in the collection reflect Einstein's concerns with the rise of fascism and
the fate of Jews in Europe.

For example, in a letter to Nathan on July 14, 1936 Einstein wrote, "The
developments in Europe are unspeakably horrible. The Lord God appears to
have appointed the devil to be the chief clerk of it. The fascist danger
here also seems to be on the move." On September 15 of the same year he
continued, "The only good thing appears to be that Hitler in the awareness
of his power will commit enough stupidities to bring the whole world
against him."

Einstein came to believe that nuclear weapons were a profound risk to
civilization, and on November 12, 1945 he wrote to Nathan that, "The
physicists have figured things out well in that they are all against the
secret armament and for the prevention of war on an international basis
but they are hesitant to draw the last consequences, a world government
which alone rules over military power."

Public access to the Morris and Adele Bergreen Albert Einstein Collection
will begin in the special collections and archives department of Vassar
College's main library in 2004, and the library will mount a formal public
exhibition in late 2004 or early 2005. Extensive papers and personal
effects of poet Elizabeth Bishop and writer Mary McCarthy, both Vassar
alumnae, are among the many important holdings of the department.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent,
residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

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