Rare 4.5 x 3.5 steward's admission pass for the "Professor Einstein Meeting" held at the Royal Albert Hall on October 3, 1933, imprinted with instructions: "Academic Dress to be worn by anyone entitled to do so, All Stewards should be at the Hall at 6 p.m." Held just a few months after the Nazis' rise to power in Germany, this was Albert Einstein's last public appearance before leaving Europe. In the address, he spoke on the subjects of academic freedom and the dangers faced by the intelligentsia under the new regime in Germany. Other speakers at the meeting were physicist and Nobel Prize winner Lord Ernest Rutherford; leading anti-Nazi politician and Nobel Prize winner Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain; preacher and suffragist Dr. Maude Royden; and leading economist and social reformer Sir William Beveridge. In fine condition.
In Einstein's important Royal Albert Hall speech, he presciently observed the looming crisis in Europe, posing the question: 'How can we save mankind and it's spiritual acquisitions of which we are the heirs and how can one save Europe from a new disaster?' He continued with a moving declaration of human rights in the intellectual space, citing these freedoms as the foundation of modern life: 'If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom we must keep clearly before us what is at stake, and what we owe to that freedom which our ancestors have won for us after hard struggles. Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister. There would be no comfortable houses for the mass of people, no railway, no wireless, no protection against epidemics, no cheap books, no culture and no enjoyment of art at all. There would be no machines to relieve the people from the arduous labor needed for the production of the essential necessities of life. Most people would lead a dull life of slavery just as under the ancient despotisms of Asia. It is only men who are free, who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worth while.'
Four days later, Albert Einstein sailed to New York from Southampton to start a new job at Princeton University, originally planning to be away for only six months. He was never to return to Europe again.
