EINSTEIN-WEBSITE - Key Persons

Albert Schweitzer was born as the second child of a priest's family in Kaysersberg. Some months after his birth the family moved to Guensbach where Albert's father worked as a priest until his death. Albert attended elementary school there, followed by secondary school in Muenster and college in Muehlhausen. On June 18, 1893 he made his A-levels there. As a child he received a very good musical education which became the basis for his later magnificent organ playing. From 1893 to 1898 he studied theology and philosophy in Strasbourg, Paris and Berlin. His time of study was interrupted for a year in 1894, as he had to do his military service. From October 1898 on he had music lessons (organ, piano) with Charles Marie Widor (1844-1937) in Paris. It was also Widor who made Schweitzer newly interpret Bach's organ work. In 1899 he graduated from university in philosophy and in 1900 in theology. In 1902 he qualified as university lecturer in theology in Strasbourg where he afterwards worked as a private teacher. From 1903 to 1906 he was head of the monastery St. Thomas in Strasbourg. In 1905, at the age of 30, he decided to study medicine; he wanted to become a mission doctor. In November 1911 he finished his studies successfully and in June 1912 he married Helene Bresslau. In February 1913 he graduated from university in medicine. Shortly after that he went to Africa with his wife to the small jungle place called Lambaréné and built there a tropical hospital with a station for Hansen's disease which he paid for on his own. It was his aim to alleviate the illness and misery of the people living there. The hospital was financed by donations and Schweitzer's publications, speeches and organ concerts in Europe. During one of his journeys he was interned by the French in 1917 due to World War I. In January 1919 his daughter Rhena was born. Only in 1924 was he able to return to Lambaréné. Schweitzer decided to build a new, bigger hospital because the old one was too small. The new one was commissioned in January 1927 near the old one. It is still there today. In this hospital Schweitzer worked, except for a few interruptions, until his death. Albert Schweitzer published basic works concerning theology, religious philosophy and history of music. He was an excellent organ player and a magnificent expert and interpreter of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). In the course of his life he received numerous awards, prices and honorary promotions worldwide, eg in 1928 the Goethepreis of the city Frankfurt on the Main, in 1951 the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Nobel Prize for Peace for the year 1952 and he was bearer of the Ordens Pour le mérite. Albert Schweitzer continuously reached for truth, peace, freedom and humanity. He fought for prosecuted and threatened people and again and again spoke out loudly against the lunacy of arms race and against the danger of atomic wars. Albert Schweitzer died at the age of 90 on September 4, 1965. He is buried in Lambaréné, directly next to his wife, who had died in June 1957.

Friedrich Simon Archenhold died in Berlin on October 14, 1939 shortly after his 78 th birthday. With the coming to power of the Nazis began also the expulsion of his Jewish family. Archenhold‘s wife and coworker Alice as well as his daughter Hilde all died in the concentration camp in Theresienstadt. The sons Günter and Horst could emigrate to England. In December 1932 Albert Einstein and his family left Germany for good. He found a new home in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. On occasion of the 100 th birthday of Albert Einstein the big lecture hall of the Archenhold Observatory, in which Einstein held his first public speech about the theory of relativity in Berlin on June 2, 1915, received in a ceremony on March 15, 1979 the name Einstein Hall. At the same time a bronze was revealed next to the entrance of the hall, which was designed by the Berlin sculptor and bronze caster Hans Füssel (1897-1989). In the ceremony, in which participated among others the Borough Mayor, the City Counsel for Culture and public figures, the back then director of the Archenhold Observatory Dr. Dieter B. Herrmann held a speech about "Einstein, Archenhold and the popularisation of natural sciences". The theoretical physicist and astrophysicist Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Treder (1928-2006) opened the evening.

Job Titles:

• Member of Our Academy of Sciences

From 1909 to 1916 Albert Einstein worked on a generalization of his Special Theory of Relativity. The results of his efforts were published in March 1916 in the paper "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity". This theory investigates coordination systems which experience acceleration relative to each other and also the influence of gravitational fields to time and space. Whereas the Special Theory of Relativity was still intelligible to the layman, this did not apply to the General Theory of Relativity. Moreover, due to the relatively small relativistic effects, this theory was difficult to verify experimentally. Einstein - or his General Theory of Relativity - predicted the perihelion motion of mercury, the gravitational red shift as well as the deflection of light in a gravitational field. He was convinced that light deflection by the gravitational field of the sun could be observed during a total solar eclipse. After several failed observations of total solar eclipses proof came in 1919: On May 29 of that year the English astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington confirmed Einstein's prediction of light deflection when he observed a total solar eclipse on the volcanic island of Principe in the Gulf of Guinea in western Africa. A second expedition, led by Andrew Crommelin, observed this eclipse in Sobral, Brazil. Prof. Dr. Albert Einstein, the youngest member of our Academy of Sciences experienced this dilemma yesterday, when he wanted to explain the "Relativität der Bewegung und Gravitation" (Relativity of Motion and Gravitation) in the Treptow Observatory to a relatively large number of listeners. The inventor/co-inventor of the Principle of Relativity renounced all mathematical derivatives and tried to explain why place and time cannot be separated and how length and time depend on the state of motion. This means that all derived terms are dependent in the same way. It is plausible that we only have an adequate idea of the term "motion" if we indicate what it refers to. Only then can the terms "silence" or "motion" make any sense. However, it is not important whether a system moves itself or whether its environment is moved in the opposite direction. If I ride on a carousel and look at a tree the tree seems to move. If you sit in a well-suspensed express train which is driving calmly, it is normally not possible to say whether you move. If you look out of the window and see a second train, the other train seems to move. You can only detect changes of speed, a fast start-up or breaking as well as the train driving around curves, as the centrifugal force pushes you outwards. The motion of planet earth in its orbit around the sun can also not be detected with absolute certainty.