One-man show reveals the essence of Einstein

The world’s greatest physicist always believed morality trumped science.

And the man whose name is synonymous with genius had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project, played the violin, dropped out of high school and called himself a pacifist.

“He despised authority,” said Albuquerque’s Tom Schuch, who plays Albert Einstein in the one-man show “Einstein: A Stage Portrait” by Willard Simms.

	If you go WHAT: “Einstein: A Stage Portrait” by Willard Simms, starring Tom Schuch WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday WHERE: Teatro Paraguas Studio, 3205 Calle Marie COST: $16; $12 seniors and students. CONTACT: 505-424-1601

Performances will be at the Teatro Paraguas Studio, 3205 Calle Marie, at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday.

It’s 1946, the Bomb has dropped, leaving the world forever changed, and Einstein has invited the audience into his home to set the record straight.

To prepare for the role of the great scientist with the explosive hair, Schuch (pronounced “shook”) combed through biographies and videos capturing nuances from the way Einstein walked to how he carried himself before a room full of people.

“It’s about the human side of Einstein,” Schuch explained. “People said he played the violin from the age of 4. He loved Mozart. He had two children – two boys. He loved to sail on his sailboat. And he had a great sense of humor. He loved to tell jokes and listen to jokes. He loved ice cream — vanilla.”

The actor was surprised when he first heard Einstein’s voice.

“I thought he would sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Schuch continued. “Instead, he sounded more Prussian.”

Einstein likely picked up the northern German accent from working with academics, Schuch explained.

In his later years, he became a vegetarian. He was a member of the NAACP who called racism “America’s worst disease.”

An avid supporter of Zionism, in 1952 the non-observant Jew turned down the chance to become the president of Israel.

Pressed by his father to pursue electrical engineering in Munich, Einstein clashed with his teachers and resented Germany’s rigid teaching method. Largely self-taught, he later wrote that the spirit of learning and creativity drowned in strict rote learning. At just 17, he enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching program in Zurich. He found a job at the Bern patent office evaluating electromagnetic devices.

He developed his theory of relativity at 26. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.

While visiting the U.S. in 1933, Einstein decided not to return to Germany due to the rise of the Nazis. By then, the German government had passed laws barring Jews from any official position. The Third Reich targeted his books in their Nazi book burnings. The S.S. raided his cottage and confiscated his sailboat. He also learned his name was on a hit list with a $5,000 bounty for his head.

Einstein took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where he remained until his death in 1955.

“He became almost a cartoon character,” Schuch said. “You think immediately about the crazy hair and the mustache. He didn’t care. He didn’t wear socks.”

After talking to a woman who had worked as Einstein’s secretary at Princeton University, Schuch learned the professor had always worn holes through the elbows of his clothing.

“She said the first time she saw him, he looked like he lived on the streets,” he added.

In 1939, Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt warning him that German scientists might win the race to build an atomic bomb. Although the letter likely pushed FDR into accelerating the arms race, Einstein was not part of its development.

“He was not asked to go anywhere near the Manhattan Project,” Schuch said. “The FBI considered him a communist. (He wasn’t.) He’s got a huge FBI file.

“He was very regretful that his theories and equations led to that.”

For Einstein, war was a disease. But after Hitler assumed power, he renounced that pacifism.

“There are people now who say the probability that he had Asperger’s was pretty high,” Schuch said, adding, “He’s well-known in those circles.

“He was socially awkward,” Schuch continued. “His ability to think about very difficult problems in a large group of people without being distracted …”

Some called him anti-social and an introvert.

“He would lock himself in his study at home and no one was allowed to disturb him.”

Needless to say, his parenting and relationship skills suffered.

“He was not a good father,” Schuch said. “Although he loved his kids, he was just not available emotionally. He was not a good husband, either. Their marriage was more of a partnership than a romantic relationship.

“A friend said the only time he saw Einstein crying was when his mother died and when (his wife) Elsa died.”

In 1954, the year before his death, Einstein wrote to Linus Pauling calling his decision to warn Roosevelt of the possible German development of nuclear weapons his greatest regret, although he realized there was justification.

He died after the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm at 76.

At his memorial, Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness … There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.”