Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921. Photo: public domain.

A recently unveiled letter by Jewish physicist Albert Einstein being auctioned next month reveals his attempts to help a German academic leave Nazi Germany.

In the German-language letter dated Oct. 1, 1933, Einstein wrote to Scottish philosopher and Oxford academic Sir William David Ross concerning the German philologist and philosopher Julius Stenzel. The famed scientist urged Ross — who was provost of Oriel College, Oxford, from 1929 to 1947 and vice chancellor of Oxford University from 1941 to 1944 — to bring Stenzel to the United Kingdom or the United States as a guest lecturer.

Stenzel was a member of a disciplinary committee at the University of Kiel in Germany that expelled a group of Nazi students in 1930. Afterwards, the professor was denounced by a student and given a temporary leave of absence. He was transferred to the University of Halle in Germany on Nov. 1, 1933, under Section 5 of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service — a measure implemented by the Nazis to remove Jews from public positions.

When he wrote the letter, Einstein had already fled Nazi Germany and was living in the UK.

“Prof. Zangger, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Zurich, asked me to make you aware of Prof. Stenzel in Kiel, who lost his position,” Einstein wrote to Ross. “He researches the history of science in ancient Greece and he is not in the position to contact you from Germany. The question is if there is a possibility to invite this gentleman to England or America as a guest lecturer.”

On Oct. 17, 1933, Einstein and his wife Elsa moved to the US, where he took up a faculty position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Despite Einstein’s efforts, Stenzel never left Europe. Two years after being transferred to the University of Halle, he died following a serious illness.