What's the source of Einstein's "citizen of the world" quip?
shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/whats…
I like digging through old archives and tracing my way through quotes. Here's a particularly good one from Albert Einstein which is often peppered around the Internet without any sources.
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
Let's see if we can find it!
The earliest I can find is in the archives of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency who published this snippet:
Is this likely to be true? What other evidence is there that Einstein was there and made those remarks?
Flicking back a few weeks in the JTA archives is this evidence - "Sorbonne bestows degree on Einstein."
There are also contemporary photos of the ceremony which are included in various press clippings.
Is there anything previous to 1929?
Alice Calaprice's Quotable Einstein has the quote but attributes it differently:
From an address to the French Philosophical Society at the Sorbonne, April 6, 1922. See also French press clipping, April 7, 1922, Einstein Archive 36-378; and Berliner Tageblatt, April 8, 1922, Einstein Archive 79-535
I wasn't able to find the French press clipping - but the German paper is available.
My German is rusty and that font is hard but I don't think it says anything similar to the above quote. I think the 1922 date is merely the confusion between two different visits to the Sorbonne - which is the same conclusion as Wikiquote editors came to
OK, so what other sources are there for the quote? The JTA says:
The local papers feature a summary of the brief address made by Prof. Albert Einstein […]
So I suppose they were just re-reporting what others had said. Let's take a look in some of those newspapers via Bibliothèque nationale de France who have an excellent archive of newspapers.
There's a rather detailed report from L'Œuvre - but that makes no mention of the anecdote.
Similarly, there are other interviews and contemporary commentary - but this remark goes unnoticed by all of them.
I read through several dozen French papers from November 1929 until early December. I couldn't find anything resembling the remark in any of them.
OK, what about the German press?
Again it is possible to search German newspapers for those specific dates - and there are plenty of contemporary reports.
Nothing about him being a Weltbürger that I could see.
Similarly, British newspapers don't make reference to the joke despite their endless coverage of him.
Google's shitty AI hallucinates the quote as appearing in The Saturday Evening Post.
While that issue does have an extensive interview with Einstein, there's nothing even vaguely similar to the sentiment about being a citizen of the world. Never trust an AI!
Einstein is endlessly quotable - and had a good ear for a pithy turn of phrase. However, he was accompanied on this trip by the German Ambassador. Would it have been prudent for him to make such a politically charged joke in front of that audience?
Perhaps this is a mangled quotation? Einstein said something similar several years before the purported 1929 quote.
In Herman Bernstein's 1924 book "Celebrities of Our Time Interviews", there's the following quote:
That's much less pithy, but carries largely the same sentiment.
The original can be seen in the British Newspaper Archive of 1919
We publish to-day a translation of an article written for our readers by ALBERT EINSTEIN
[…] He adds that the different descriptions of him in England and Germany form an amusing example of relativity to the sentiments of the two countries. He is famous just now, and was described in our columns as a Swiss Jew, whereas in Germany he is called a German man of science. He suggests that were he suddenly to become a bête noire, the descriptions would be reversed, and he would be stigmatized here as a German man of science and in Germany as a Swiss Jew. We concede him his little jest.
However, do note that this is described as a translation. In his letter to Paul Ehrenfest on the 4th of December 1919, he says:
By the way, I myself participated in the cackling by writing a short article in the Times, in which I thanked our English colleagues, said a few things to characterize the theory, and at the end produced the following witticism: A simple application of the theory of relativity: today German newspapers are calling me a German man of science, the English, a Swiss Jew. If I come to be represented as a bete noire to the readerships, I should be a Swiss Jew for German newspapers and a German man of science for the English.'
See The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 9 The Berlin Years. I cannot find the original letter, but I assume Princeton's transcribers and translators are accurate.
Either way, that's two reputable sources which have Einstein expressing something similar. Perhaps the joke was repeated and refined by him as the years wore on? Perhaps an eager journalist took a half-remembered quote and gave it new life? Perhaps.
Well, dear reader, that's where you come in! I've exhausted all my research prowess. If you can find a transcript of his remarks, or a report older than the JTA's of the 4th of December 1929 where Einstein talks about being a "citizen of the world", please drop a comment in the box!
#politics #quote #yakShaving
