Quantum_ Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality - Manjit Kumar [22]
His parents tried to reason with him, but Einstein refused to go back to Munich. He had an alternative plan. He would stay in Milan and prepare for the entrance exams, the following October, of the Federal Polytechnikum in Zurich. Established in 1854, and renamed Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in 1911, the 'Poly' was not as prestigious as Germany's leading universities. However, it did not require graduation from a gymnasium as a precondition for entry. To be accepted, he explained to his parents, he just needed to pass its entrance exams.
They soon discovered the second part of their son's plan. He wanted to renounce his German nationality and thereby remove the possibility of ever being called up for military service by the Reich. Too young to do it himself, Einstein needed his father's consent. Hermann duly gave it and formally applied to the authorities for his son's release. It was January 1896 before they received official notification that Albert, at the cost of three marks, was no longer a German citizen. For the next five years he was legally stateless until he became a Swiss citizen. A renowned pacifist later in life, once he was granted his new nationality Einstein turned up for his Swiss army medical, on 13 March 1901, the day before his 22nd birthday. Fortunately, he was found unfit for military service because of sweaty flat feet and varicose veins.18 As a teenager back in Munich, it was not the thought of serving in the army that bothered him, but the prospect of donning a grey uniform on behalf of the militarism of the German Reich which he hated.
'The happy months of my sojourn in Italy are my most beautiful memories' was how Einstein, even after 50 years, recalled his new carefree existence.19 He helped his father and uncle with their electrical business and travelled here and there visiting friends and family. In the spring of 1895 the family moved to Pavia, just south of Milan, where the brothers opened a new factory that lasted little more than a year before it too closed. Although amid the upheaval he worked hard to prepare, Einstein failed the Poly entrance exams. Yet his mathematics and physics results were so impressive that the professor of physics invited him to attend his lectures. It was a tantalising offer, but for once Einstein took some sound advice. He had done so badly in languages, literature and history that the director of the Poly urged him to go back to school for another year and recommended one in Switzerland.
By the end of October Einstein was in Aarau, a town 30 miles west of Zurich. With its liberal ethos, the Aargau canton school provided a stimulating environment that enabled Einstein to thrive. The experience of boarding with the classics teacher and his family was to leave an indelible mark. Jost Winteler and his wife Pauline encouraged freethinking among their three daughters and four sons, and dinner each evening was always a lively and noisy affair. Before long the Wintelers became surrogate parents and he even referred to them as 'Papa Winteler' and 'Mama Winteler'. Whatever the old Einstein said later about being a lone traveller, the young Einstein needed people who cared about him and he for them. Soon it was September 1896 and exam time. Einstein passed easily and headed to Zurich and the Federal Polytechnikum.20
'A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much upon the future', Einstein had written at the start of a short essay called 'My Future Plans', during his two-hour French exam. But an inclination for abstract thinking