Exterior of Einstein's former home at 49 Ram Straße, Bernie. Arched lintel adorned with the German "Albert Einstein House"
On November 18, 2019, I took a bus from Germany through the snow-capped Alps into Switzerland, with my first stop in Bern.
I have long heard that there is an Einstein house here. So, when I got out of the station, I followed the guidance of the mobile phone map to find Cram Street in the old city. This street is probably the most important street in Bern, and a sense of history permeates the air. This street has a gradient and goes all the way up, at the top of which is the famous bell tower. The buildings on both sides of the street are similar to the "arcade buildings" in Guangzhou, but they appear thicker, each door opening is arched, and there are more floors, generally three or four floors. The corridor, more than a meter above the ground, is lined with shops; every household on the outside of the corridor has a small door halfway down the street leading to the cellar, which is said to have been an air raid shelter. Although Switzerland was internationally recognized as a permanently neutral country in 1815 and promised not to be involved in war, it still needed to defend itself in the event of an invasion. Therefore, the architects of these buildings designed air raid shelters for each one, which became a fad. Later, after no war for a long time, it was converted into a cellar. Paved with stones, this street is a pedestrian street, and occasionally vehicles pass by, which seem to be mostly special vehicles.
Following the ramp, I found Number 49 as I approached the Great Bell Tower. It is a four-storey apartment building. The appearance is nothing special, I saw a one-man-tall full-body photo of Einstein holding a pipe on the second-floor window sill, and then looked closely to find that the wall above the door was embellished with the not-so-eye-catching red letter "einstein-haus" (Einstein's former home). To be honest, if you don't do your homework beforehand, even if you pass by here, it will be difficult to find. As I stepped onto the steps in front of the corridor with a small surprise of discovery, I couldn't help but mutter: the former residence of such a world-renowned "big god" university, if it were in China, would be a few intersections away, even on the nearby highway, there would be a unified eye-catching coffee-colored sign of the international tourism community, there would be eye-catching signs at the door, and even a archway at the entrance of the street, and this former residence of the master was almost submerged in the elegant and somewhat old streetscape. I think that many famous people in Europe have been like this, such as the Heine House in Düsseldorf and the Beethoven House in Bonn, it is like this - it is not that the Swiss do not know how great Einstein is, nor do they know how to publicize, nor do they not pay attention to this former residence, but embody a concept - that is, to protect the historical landscape. Standing on this street, you can imagine what it looked like more than a hundred years ago. If you were to shoot einstein's feature film here, maybe you just need to replace the car with a carriage and change the costume of the people to the costume of that time?
There is no sign at the entrance to Einstein's house. There is only a very ordinary glass sliding door of a house. Facing the door is a one-meter-wide walkway, next to which is a small café. I didn't see the managers, and I didn't see any promotional messages. Through the dark walkway, there is a small sign at the top of the stairs that say "Visit upstairs", climb the narrow and slightly steep little stairs to the second floor. The original management office was upstairs. The help desk occupies only a corner of the aisle upstairs, which seems cramped. An administrator aunt sat behind a simple counter. I bought a six-euro ticket to enter the house.
Interior of Einstein's house
These are two small rooms on the back floor facing the street, adding up to only more than twenty square meters, it is not an exaggeration to call it a snail house. Now it is made into a small exhibition hall, with almost no audience and no one to explain. Although the exhibition hall is small, it still feels empty, and it is obviously no longer the appearance of the past. There are very few physical objects, and there are several simple graphic exhibition boards and a few mirror frames on the wall, briefly telling the life story of Einstein. To be honest, when I first watched it, I was a little disappointed: so simple? But when I looked at it a second time, I saw an inconspicuous square table and a bed against the wall, and I saw the introduction, but it was Einstein's living relic. This bed was later used by him at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. In the cubicle of only a few square meters in the doorway, there is Einstein's desk, and above the desk, there is Einstein's famous mass-energy equation: "e =mc2". The desk was also the original, and it was on this small desk that Einstein wrote an epoch-making scientific paper - this is incredibly precious! I really didn't expect that this small seemingly simple exhibition hall really hid a priceless treasure!
It turned out that although the house was small, it was arguably the most important residence in Einstein's life: in 1903, at the age of 24, Einstein moved here, the year he had just married his college classmate Mileva Marik. At that time, he was only a small employee in a probationary period at the Swiss Federal Patent Office, and only "regularized" the following year. In essence, the work was only for subsistence, in order to have time to carry out his research. Two years later, he proposed his greatest theory here: the theory of relativity— and it was here in March 1905 that the 26-year-old Einstein proposed the optical quantum hypothesis, solving the problem of the photoelectric effect and opening up the situation for the development of quantum theory. In May, he completed the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", which formally proposed the principle of special relativity and ushered in a new era of physics. In one year, he successively proposed world-class major discoveries, published five papers of great significance in the history of world science in just two years, and began the study of many major discoveries later, and the entire scientific community was stunned. The year 1905 is thus known as the "Einstein Year of Miracles". You know, in April of that year, he submitted his doctoral dissertation "New Determination of Molecular Size" to the University of Zurich, and he had just received his doctorate. One cannot imagine that these great universities were proposed by a fledgling low-level technician and doctoral student at the National Patent Office who had just been regularized from a probationary period, and that he was "not professionally right", who had to work during the day, engaged in research in his spare time, and worked in such a small snail house, and achieved such great success.
On the exhibition wall, the curator writes Einstein's self-description in German and English: "Special relativity was born at 49 Cramstrasse in Bern, and the writings on general relativity also began in Bern. That's right, it's here!
The window facing Einstein's house gives you a street view of Cram Street. It is said that this place is called the most beautiful street scene by Goethe. I watched the exhibition several times, sat on a stool by the window and took a picture, then stood in front of the window and looked at the streetscape. I thought to myself: from an obscure clerk to a scientific giant, he only took two years! In addition to hard work, it seems that it can only be reduced to talent, and it seems that it is difficult to explain it in terms of talent alone. What a mystery Einstein! Albert Einstein once described himself: "It was a good time, a good time in Bern. "Brilliant spirit – behind the explosion of his talent, this quiet, gentle and unhurried Bernese urban culture is also intriguing.