Einstein, Kafka and Planck vs. Time, Space and Conventions

World Premiere of a new play by Robert Marc Friedman

The foundations of European society were being shaken and World War I was about to deal them a final blow when Albert Einstein presented his general theory of relativity in Berlin on November 25, 1915 – now even space, time, gravity and the cosmos were no longer what they used to be. Everything seemed to be relative, all conventions were crumbling and God had left the building.

Within a few years, Einstein emerged as an internationally-acclaimed scientist comparable to Copernicus or Newton. In Stockholm, however, the Nobel Committee for Physics resisted the massive support for his theories of relativity. What was at stake was whether or not a prize should go to Einstein and his “corrupt Jewish science,” as it was called by those who would soon instigate the next European catastrophe.

At the same time in Prague, Franz Kafka whittled away at the conventions of literature – transforming sons into beetles, examining the fate of people lost in indecipherable bureaucratized societies and making the strange look normal.

Einstein and Kafka met in Prague. They had things in common.

Einstein had been recruited to Berlin by the highly-revered leader of German physics, Max Planck. Beyond their devotion to theoretical physics and classical music, however, they had few things in common.

Robert Marc Friedman’s new play tells a tale of strained friendships, the search for new perspectives and scientific integrity against a backdrop of a fierce battle between uncompromising opponents in a decaying society.

ROBERT MARC FRIEDMAN is a scholar and playwright born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York, and now living in Norway. After studying physical sciences and theatre at New York University, he earned a doctorate in history of science at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently professor at University of Oslo and professional member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Friedman researches the history of modern physical and environmental sciences in their social and cultural contexts. Among his numerous publications are Nobel Physics Prize in Perspective in Nature (1981), Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology (1989), and The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prizes in Science (2001). Friedman’s dramatizations of his research include a television film, Vitenskap i motvind (1982), for Norwegian State Broadcasting [NRK] and stageplays performed in several countries: Remembering Miss Meitner (2002), Becoming Albert Einstein (2005), and Amundsen vs Nansen (2011). Friedman’s numerous honors for both scholarly and artistic contributions, include Tetelman Fellow at Yale University (2009) for public understanding of science and the University of Oslo’s Public Outreach [Formidling] Prize (2015). He will be an artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Artist Residency (California) in 2016.

       
Pics: Gerald Wesolowski